research-article

Tell me about my family: a study of cooperative research on ancestry.com

Authors:

Heather Willever-Farr,

Andrea ForteAuthors Info & Claims

iConference '12: Proceedings of the 2012 iConference

Pages 303 - 310

https://doi.org/10.1145/2132176.2132215

Published: 07 February 2012 Publication History

Abstract

Q&A forums for the exchange of genealogical information are becoming increasingly common on the web. Yet, relatively little is known about the socio-technical dimensions of genealogists' interactions in such forums. This study examined exchanges between genealogists on a popular Q&A message board on Ancestry.com. Our findings suggest that the web context shapes the types of exchanges and cooperative activities in which genealogists engage. Research has found that in face-to-face exchanges genealogists tend to help other genealogists by providing instructional guidance both on a one-to-one and a many-to-one basis. Our findings suggest that the presence of online genealogical data and the affordances of interactive computer technologies may be pushing answerers away from providing instruction on how to find family history data and pushing them toward providing those data outright. Answerers worked cooperatively to provide family data, suggesting that the web context is leading many genealogists to engage in cooperative research not collaborative instruction.

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Cited By

Mohanty VLuther K(2023)DoubleCheck: Designing Community-based Assessability for Historical Person IdentificationJournal on Computing and Cultural Heritage 10.1145/362530316:4(1-27)Online publication date: 16-Nov-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3625303
Mohanty VLuther K(2023)Photo Steward: A Deliberative Collective Intelligence Workflow for Validating Historical ArchivesProceedings of The ACM Collective Intelligence Conference10.1145/3582269.3615600(34-52)Online publication date: 6-Nov-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3582269.3615600
Azizatikarna KParung DAmirullah DHidayat ACenggoro TBudiarto ASimon Pardamean B(2022)Web Development of Direct-to-consumer Genetics Testing2022 4th International Conference on Cybernetics and Intelligent System (ICORIS)10.1109/ICORIS56080.2022.10031450(1-6)Online publication date: 8-Oct-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICORIS56080.2022.10031450
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Index Terms

Tell me about my family: a study of cooperative research on ancestry.com
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Computing / technology policy

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cover image ACM Other conferences

iConference '12: Proceedings of the 2012 iConference

February 2012

667 pages

ISBN:9781450307826

DOI:10.1145/2132176

Conference Chair:
Jens-Erik Mai
University of Toronto

Copyright © 2012 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 07 February 2012

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iConference '12: iConference 2012

February 7 - 10, 2012

Ontario, Toronto, Canada

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Cited By

Mohanty VLuther K(2023)DoubleCheck: Designing Community-based Assessability for Historical Person IdentificationJournal on Computing and Cultural Heritage 10.1145/362530316:4(1-27)Online publication date: 16-Nov-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3625303
Mohanty VLuther K(2023)Photo Steward: A Deliberative Collective Intelligence Workflow for Validating Historical ArchivesProceedings of The ACM Collective Intelligence Conference10.1145/3582269.3615600(34-52)Online publication date: 6-Nov-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3582269.3615600
Azizatikarna KParung DAmirullah DHidayat ACenggoro TBudiarto ASimon Pardamean B(2022)Web Development of Direct-to-consumer Genetics Testing2022 4th International Conference on Cybernetics and Intelligent System (ICORIS)10.1109/ICORIS56080.2022.10031450(1-6)Online publication date: 8-Oct-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICORIS56080.2022.10031450
Roued HCastenbrandt HRevuelta-Eugercios B(2022)Search, save and share: family historians’ engagement practices with digital platformsArchival Science10.1007/s10502-022-09404-423:2(187-206)Online publication date: 17-Oct-2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-022-09404-4
Rigger MSu Z(2020)Finding bugs in database systems via query partitioningProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/34282794:OOPSLA(1-30)Online publication date: 13-Nov-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3428279
Zhang HHao YLatif SBassily RRountev A(2020)Differentially-private software frequency profiling under linear constraintsProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/34282714:OOPSLA(1-24)Online publication date: 13-Nov-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3428271
Livinskii VBabokin DRegehr J(2020)Random testing for C and C++ compilers with YARPGenProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/34282644:OOPSLA(1-25)Online publication date: 13-Nov-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3428264
Kallas KNiksic FStanford CAlur R(2020)DiffStream: differential output testing for stream processing programsProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/34282214:OOPSLA(1-29)Online publication date: 13-Nov-2020
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Mohanty VThames DMehta SLuther K(2020)Photo SleuthACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems10.1145/336584210:4(1-36)Online publication date: 16-Oct-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3365842
Helland P(2019)Write Amplification Versus Read PerspirationQueue10.1145/3358955.336450917:4(4-9)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2019
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