Purpose

This study aims to investigate the nature and evolution of online communities in the early stages of their life cycles. The authors analyze the topics of discussions in an online community to identify issues related to community development. The authors also compare the topics of exemplary questions that founding members believed to be asked with the real questions based on members' information needs.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors use Medical Sciences Stack Exchange, a health Q&A community of Stack Exchange, which requires four stages of development: definition, commitment, private beta and public beta. The authors collect postings of discussions and health questions in the first three stages, perform a content analysis of the postings and analyze the topics of discussions and health questions.

Findings

The authors find that the topics of discussions evolved dynamically with the issues of community governance, role as a medical/health community, members and roles, content management, quality control and community design. The authors also find that the real questions included more specific and diverse issues than the exemplary questions that founding members expected.

Originality/value

Theoretically, this study tests the community life cycle model in an online community that has explicit phase markers. The findings could shed light on community development and help prioritize issues to solve and decisions to make in its early stages. Additionally, this study focuses on the challenges and concerns in online health community building and solutions generated by collective efforts that could influence health communications in online communities.

中文翻译：

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早期的在线社区发展：生命周期模型在医学科学中的应用

目的

本研究旨在调查在线社区在其生命周期早期阶段的性质和演变。作者分析了在线社区中的讨论主题，以确定与社区发展相关的问题。作者还根据成员的信息需求比较了创始成员认为提出的示例性问题与真实问题的主题。

设计/方法/方法

作者使用 Stack Exchange 的健康问答社区 Medical Sciences Stack Exchange，它需要四个开发阶段：定义、承诺、私人测试版和公开测试版。作者在前三个阶段收集讨论和健康问题的帖子，对帖子进行内容分析，分析讨论和健康问题的主题。

发现

作者发现，讨论的主题随着社区治理、作为医疗/健康社区的角色、成员和角色、内容管理、质量控制和社区设计等问题而动态演变。作者还发现，与创始成员预期的示例性问题相比，真正的问题包括更具体和多样化的问题。

原创性/价值

从理论上讲，本研究测试了具有明确阶段标记的在线社区中的社区生命周期模型。这些发现可以阐明社区发展，并有助于在早期阶段确定要解决的问题和决策的优先级。此外，本研究重点关注在线健康社区建设中的挑战和关注点，以及集体努力产生的可能影响在线社区健康交流的解决方案。