k_UGC

— Q: what motivates me (and millions of others) to spend so much time browsing? Over the years I spent perhaps 100+ hours on this site (esp. during the years before 2007…)

Casual readers (including news junkies) probably spend hours scanning various forums, without a specific goal. A recreation, but I would say inefficient.  They would be distracted/attracted by low-quality UGC .

Some users found help on Rolia and expressed gratitude to Rolia. These users probably asked generic questions and received various pointers. Otherwise, I think they really should thank the specific posters who helped them.

Some users found local friends from bbs like Rolia. They can read the high volume of comments of a specific person and feel “I know this guy.” This is a unique value of bbs systems.

Even with opinion content, I actually learned some things but 鱼龙混杂… lots of worthless noise.

— Rolia is arguably more successful than similar bbs in the U.S., becuase of focus

Every Chinese immigrant forum has to work hard to identify topics of shared interest. A well-chosen topic would attract focused discussions with quality comments.

— age profile: I feel it was initially started by graduate students from China, and still targets students and ex-students as the main user group. As the earlier batch of students (my cohort) become less active Rolians after they turn 50, a younger batch of students take over, and continue to target China students.

Educational background? Some mainland immigrants to Canana may be less educated, as family memebers. Also, some percentage of the active commentators are not based in Canada or from China. However, the top bloggers are probably likely to be college educated.

— quality of UGC[user-generated content], quality of writers… Rolia is typical of many forums, but slightly better quality.

Most opinions + personal stories are much lower quality than in a regular newspapers or magazines [2]. Compared to bbs, the Rolia blogs have better quality becuase the blogger has skills + a reputation to protect.  Still, the blogs have no editorial quality control.

The information type of UGC (re: Hardwarezone) are better quality. This category also includes market place + QnA + educational + informational (personal) stories.

Some commentators are writers/bloggers, who write long pieces. 99% of the time, these longer pieces are more worthwhile. The other commentators are lazy, untrained, and only give brief, casual comments. These casual commentators are often college graduates, and can have valid opinions, but 鱼龙混杂.

The lowest quality is found in a group chat of casual one-liners, often between 2 enthuastic friends. They should really use email or wechat group, but they decided to pollute the bbs, and hijack a discussion thread. It’s like a gossip channel, or grapevine in bbs. Phrases are often encoded for each other but unreadable to the hundreds of others. Such discussions can cover opinions, knowledge,,, and capture the attention of casual browsers looking for information or quality opinions. Sadly, a valuable discussion thread is polluted as a river is polluted.

— [2] ReadersDigest .. features some of Rolia 精华区’s top 5 categories, but 5 times better quality. RD has industry’s highest quality reputation in categories like personal reflections/observations, personal stories, short biographies, personal essays. [[读者]] follows RD’s footsteps, and shows much better quality than Rolia 精华区.

In contrast, even the best personal blog lacks editorial review, although some tech bloggers do revise bposts based on reader feedback.

— UGC literature .. a special case. Often a talented fiction writer doesn’t absolutely need an editor from a publishing house.

• In the early years of huasing (华新) there were a couple of talented writers who posted original fictions .. tens of thousands of words. No editorial QC!
• Borong.Yu also posted some original fictions online

Given there’s no editor to select which fiction to publish, the only criteria I use is popularity in terms of page views. For UGC literature, this criteria is fairly effective, but not for other UGC 🙁

— case study: 内卷/躺平/runxue
These are popular among the Chinese graduates, and likely to grow in Chinese forums or blogs (Rolia? not sure). However, the UGC quality is inferior to published articles.