Online communities, socio-technical systems where people interact with others, depend on new members coming to the community. While the majority of research in online communities relation to the recruitment of new members has focused on new members’ socialization and retention, little work has focused on how potential new members who are not yet a member of the community make the decision on whether they are willing to join in the online community. To understand this initial decision process, we investigated how potential new members build mental models of the online community from their first experience within the community, and how this process impacts the decision to continue participating in the community. We interviewed 31 potential new members of the online communities, Quora and Reddit, to better understand how they evaluate a new community. We found that the process of understanding a community involves orienting toward multiple different aspects of the community, including the content available on the community, the people who are already part of the community, and the technology interface and mechanisms that control the community. Participants who focused on consuming and enjoying content were much more likely to express an interest in future participation in these communities than participants who just evaluated the community, looking at the people in the community or the technology of the community. This extends previous considerations for recruiting new members in online communities. We conclude by discussing how our findings can have broad implications in developing successful online communities and suggesting future research efforts that could help understand potential new members.

在线社区，即人们与他人互动的社会技术系统，取决于新加入社区的成员。尽管在线社区中与招募新会员有关的大多数研究都集中在新会员的社交化和保留方面，但很少有工作致力于潜在的新会员尚未成为社区成员的人将决定是否愿意加入在线社区。为了了解此初始决策过程，我们调查了潜在的新成员如何根据其在社区中的第一次经验来构建在线社区的心理模型，以及此过程如何影响继续参与社区的决策。我们采访了31个潜在的在线社区新成员Quora和Reddit，以更好地了解他们如何评估新社区。我们发现，了解社区的过程涉及面向社区的多个不同方面，包括社区中可用的内容，已经属于社区的人员以及控制社区的技术接口和机制。与仅评估社区，看社区中的人或社区的技术的参与者相比，专注于消费和享受内容的参与者更有可能对未来参与这些社区表达兴趣。这扩展了先前在在线社区中招募新成员的考虑。最后，我们讨论了我们的发现如何对成功建立在线社区产生广泛的影响，并提出了可以帮助理解潜在新成员的未来研究工作。这扩展了先前在在线社区中招募新成员的考虑。最后，我们讨论了我们的发现如何对成功建立在线社区产生广泛的影响，并提出了可以帮助理解潜在新成员的未来研究工作。这扩展了先前在在线社区中招募新成员的考虑。最后，我们讨论了我们的发现如何对成功建立在线社区产生广泛的影响，并提出了可以帮助理解潜在新成员的未来研究工作。