Introduction:

In my previous articles for Reefkeeping Magazine, I detailed some observations on live rock hitchhikers, specifically Nudibranchs and Cirolanid isopods. While writing those articles I began to think about a picture bigger than just a single article about a hitchhiker. I started wondering what hobbyists could do to advance the hobby beyond its current state. How could concerned hobbyists help advance the level of knowledge in the hobby to the benefit of all hobbyists?

I am currently a doctoral student at the University of Houston, and I have been examining how communities function and how education takes place online. I started to realize that there are a lot of similarities between what I read in the literature and what is taking place in the saltwater aquarium community. But, what is the saltwater aquarium community? For the purposes of this article I will define it as follows:

The saltwater aquarium community is a collection of hobbyists who are trying to learn from each other and find ways to improve their aquariums, the health of the organisms under their care and the nature of the hobby itself.

This definition may appear limited, as it does not include retailers, wholesalers, importers, exporters, public aquariums, and others, but I am focusing on just the hobbyists for two reasons:

1. I have little experience with any of the other groups listed above; I cannot even claim to be a novice in my understanding of those groups. Remember, as good aquarium educators, we should not attempt to address topics with which we do not have sufficient personal experience.

2. The educational topics I will present in this article are most commonly used to define informal volunteer communities, which fit nicely with the definition.

Communities of Practice

As I was performing a literature search, I realized that the saltwater community has many things in common with a term in educational literature: Communities of Practice, or COP. This should not be confused with the "Tang Police" or "Tang Cops" that lurk on most discussion forums. Wenger et al (2002) defined COP as "groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis."

While COPs take on a variety of forms, they all share a basic structure. First, they all have a domain of knowledge; in our case it is the saltwater aquarium hobby. Second, they all have a community of people who care about this topic. Third, they all have a shared practice that they are developing to be effective in their domain.

However, COPs, especially distributed communities of practice, or COPs that rely mostly on online instead of face-to-face communication, encounter a number of issues. Table 1 combines some of the problems listed in Wenger et al (2002) with some issues facing the saltwater aquarium COP.

Joining the Saltwater Aquarium COP

Lave and Wenger (1991) introduced a term central to the idea of COP: legitimate peripheral participation. Legitimate peripheral participation is the process of defining ways of belonging to a community of practice or, put another way, it is the slow process by which a new learner in the community learns to participate as a useful member of that community. For the saltwater aquarium COP, this is the process of a member new to an online forum learning the rules of interacting and belonging to that forum.

"Legitimate" refers to the social control of that community's resources. A good example of this is the history of logging onto saltwater aquarium discussion forums. In the 1990s it was much more common than it is now for a person to be able to log onto a discussion forum and interact with the community by posting comments as a "guest," leaving no way to track that person. This led to a lot of personal attacks and abuse on the forums, which is a common phenomenon in anonymous environments (Suler & Phillips, 1998; Douglas & McGarty, 2002; Suler, 2004). Now most discussion forums require you to register before you can post.

The process of requiring a logon to the forum allows legitimate participation on the forum. With this change in social control, users can now be banned for inappropriate behavior, otherwise known as illegitimate participation. It should be noted that Lave and Wenger (1991) believe there is no such thing as illegitimate participation, and that any participation will help a person learn how to become part of that community. I disagree with this point, as personal attacks and other inappropriate behavior do not seem like legitimate participation to me.

Many members of the saltwater community can be considered legitimate peripheral participants. Those who rarely or never participate are called "lurkers". While it is often said that "lurkers" make up the majority of users on saltwater discussion forums, I found no references that have attempted to quantify them. So I decided to conduct a poll on some aquarium discussion forums to see if I could get a feel for the percentage of lurkers in our community.

Forum Characteristics

I chose to conduct my poll on a total of eight discussion forums with a variety of characteristics, to see if there would be any differences in the responses to the poll. Table 2 lists some of those characteristics for each discussion forum polled.

Poll Question #1

Of the threads that you read, what percentage do you actually post a reply to? The entire poll can be found below in Appendix 3 and the results of the poll are listed in Table 3.

Of the poll's respondents, 43%-92% reported they respond to 30% or less of the threads they read. It is interesting to note that of the foreign websites polled, the percentage of users in the 30% or less categories was 43%, 55%, 65% and 92%, while the four American websites had 73%, 85%, 88% and 90% of the respondents in the 30% or less category.

One thing that surprised me was the low percentage of registered users responding to the polls. Both polls I conducted were open for two weeks. This may have limited the number of people responding, but in all forums polled less than 2.8% of the registered users actually voted in the poll (see Appendix 4 for more details). Considering that the majority of the users polled respond to 30% or less of the threads that they read, and that less than 3% of the users registered for each website actually responded to the poll, the results seem to indicate that lurkers do make up a large percentage of the saltwater community online. I then started wondering how many saltwater discussion forums are actually used by the people responding to my polls, so I decided to post another poll on the same forums listed above.

Poll Question #2

How many aquarium discussion forums do you participate in at least once a month?  The entire poll can be found below in Appendix 3.

What can we tell from this poll? Of those polled, no more than 10% of the hobbyists visit more than five websites each month, and 55-85% of the respondents visit three or fewer websites per month. These data seem to support the idea that a large community of practice will fragment into local or regional communities to counteract the size of a larger overall community (Wenger et al, 2002).

I compiled a list of all the websites listed in the respondents' top three websites, and have listed them alphabetically in Appendix 1.  This small set of respondents resulted in a list of over 50 websites that are frequently visited and that have at least 300 registered users. I was unaware of about 35 of these websites, and I've been active in the online community for over two years. If these results are indicative of the rest of the community, then they suggest that the online saltwater aquarium COP is highly fragmented, so reaching a large percentage of the reefkeeping community will be difficult. These polls do have some limitations, which I have listed in Appendix 2.

Recommendations for the Saltwater Aquarium COP

So what have we learned from COPs and this polling data? How can it help the saltwater aquarium COP? Given the indications of a high number of lurkers and a fragmented saltwater aquarium COP, I think it is very important as aquarium educators to:

1. Be very careful with how we present information online. The vast majority of the learners you reach will only read your material, instead of interacting with you.

2. If we feel we have good information to share with the COP, it should be posted in as many places as possible to reach the fragmented community.

3. Discussion threads are typically buried rapidly in large discussion forums. I suggest that if we have good information for the COP, we attempt to get that information published in an online or print hobbyist magazine, which tend to be more permanent and have a wider audience than individual discussion threads or forums. Your information may also benefit from being peer-reviewed or edited for content, hopefully by experts, so that you are not spreading misinformation in the hobby.

Introduction to Aquarium Research

As I have worked on my degree, I have been presented with many methods and opinions on how to conduct educational research. Often these methods and opinions are contradictory (can anyone think of another community whose methods and opinions are contradictory?), but there are some commonalities amongst the advice:

1. Search the literature to identify a hole in the research and define your research question.
2. Design a way to use proven methodology to research that question.
3. Conduct your research using appropriate instruments to collect data.
4. Interpret your results concisely and report them to a peer-reviewed publication.
5. If your results are published, learn from the resulting discussion how to improve your research.
6. Do not take critical comments of your work as a personal attack; rather, treat them for what they are; ways to improve your work.

I searched the online aquarium publications and found no articles related to trying to quantify the percentage of "lurkers" and the community's fragmentation. I then used an accepted method of gathering data (online polls) and conducted my limited research, sometimes called a pilot study. I tried to report my results clearly and I await any discussions that take place in my author forum. I have also looked at my methods and results and realized many ways I could improve upon them in a follow-up study. Hopefully, I will have time in the future to conduct a more in-depth study on the saltwater COP.

Aquarium research by the average hobbyist could benefit from following the above six steps. Several additional tips are provided in the article Writing for the Ornamental Aquatics Industry by Steven Pro. In my list of suggested readings at the end of this article, I have listed some articles covering a wide range of what could be called aquarium research.

Some of these are long-term observations, another is an excellent experimental design and yet another is a description of steps taken during the recovery of a sick animal. These articles are examples of efforts that add to our hobby's body of knowledge. It should be noted that studies that do not use a rigorous experimental design and manipulation of a variable should not be called aquarium research. They are still important, but should be called aquarium observations instead.

Changing a Shared Practice: Isolating and Identifying Live Rock Hitchhikers

Bandura (1977) reported that people new to an area of study frequently copy the examples set by more advanced people or experts in that field. This seems to be a common occurrence in the saltwater aquarium COP, especially when dealing with live rock hitchhikers. Unfortunately, live rock hitchhikers have received a bad reputation and, when posting questions for identification online, hobbyists' responses are typically dominated by the opinion of removing and killing the animal or plant in question. In the face of multiple opinions that a hitchhiker is "bad," it is not surprising that new hobbyists follow this advice and kill the hitchhiker. Unfortunately, I have found many cases of desirable hitchhikers being killed because the new hobbyist was told to kill it immediately.

The tragedy of this significant amount of needless death aside, this advice is detrimental to the hobbyist as well. By flushing or freezing an unidentified animal, the hobbyist loses an excellent opportunity to conduct research. It is well known that hobbyists get very excited when starting the hobby, but sometimes that excitement is directed toward impatiently waiting for the tank to cycle, throwing out "bad" hitchhikers and immediately adding fish or corals the day after their nitrite reading is zero. There are many reasons that this is not the best way to start in the hobby, as stated by Eric Borneman in The Building of a Reef (tank).

I suggest that hobbyists take a different approach, starting the moment they put live rock into their tank or curing bin. They should avoid the common trend of impatiently waiting for the cycle to end, and instead start learning how to conduct aquarium research or observations, identify experts or knowledgeable hobbyists who can help them, and attempt to identify the animals and plants emerging from their rocks. Hitchhikers can be fascinating creatures that give the hobbyist plenty of opportunities to observe and research, and help them begin participating in the COP.

Taking this approach, hobbyists will start to form trust and relationships that can help them immediately and later on when they begin adding other life to their tank. This approach should help to reduce the number of new hobbyists who use their first online post to ask, "My tank just finished cycling, and I added animal 'X' to my tank, and it looks like it is dying. Why?"

Hitchhiker Tank

Many hitchhikers will be unknown, most will have misinformation about them presented online and/or will take some time to identify. Instead of throwing unknown hitchhikers out immediately, I suggest placing them into a cup in the sump or clipped to the side of the tank (maintaining water quality with water changes, of course) or, even better, into a dedicated hitchhiker tank. If you have the space and money to do so, this will allow you to carefully observe hitchhikers where they can't affect your main tank. Something as small as a 10 or 20-gallon tank with adequate lights, flow and filtration can turn into a nice hitchhiker research tank to study diet and behavior. It is also much easier to find a hitchhiker in smaller tanks, to remove them for pictures or to return them to the main tank. The diversity and beauty of hitchhikers can be quite stunning.

Slideshow:

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A Great Opportunity for Learning

The number of organisms added to your tank on live rock will significantly outnumber the cumulative total of all the organisms you add deliberately in the future. Research on well-known corals and fish is definitely important, especially for captive raising of currently wild caught species, but many people are focused on that already and it takes a significant amount of time and investment to conduct this research.

What I was surprised to find as I researched this article is the lack of research by hobbyists that has been reported on live rock hitchhikers. There is some good information, although a little dated, in the Hitchhiker's FAQ v3.0, and a variety of articles on WetWebMedia and by Robert Toonen as well as a slideshow identification series here on Reefkeeping Magazine (Part I, Part II). Still, the largest number of organisms we add to our tank is one of the least researched topics in popular aquarium literature. Talk about a hole in the research! This is another area where I think beginning hobbyists can help contribute important information to the hobby.

Part of this lack of research may come from the commonly shared practice of suggesting killing or flushing away hitchhikers immediately. It amazes me to see someone ask what a hitchhiker is using a blurry picture, or worse, a vague text description, and then watch a flood of people say it is probably bad, and it should be flushed away immediately. I experienced this firsthand when I setup my current tank.

I received two relatively small shipments of live rock from Florida, and I've already published my observations on two of my hitchhikers: Aeolid Nudibranchs and Cirolanid Isopods. It should be noted that I had to ignore the advice of many people who told me to kill the nudibranchs and to use chemicals to kill my cirolanids, which would have killed off a significant portion of my biological fauna if used in my display tank. If I had done either of those, neither article would have been possible. I suggest a new shared practice when it comes to live rock hitchhikers: ISOLATE and IDENTIFY.

You might be thinking, "Come on, Brian, what am I going to find on my live rock? It is mostly dead after a long transit time anyway, right?" That is true in some cases, but live rock's transit time is decreasing and aquacultured live rock that is sometimes shipped in water provides many opportunities for research. By isolating and attempting to identify your new critters, you may just contribute new knowledge to the hobby, and maybe even save the lives of animals that clung to life during their brutal trip from the ocean to your tank.

Conclusion

I presented a lot of information this time, but understanding COP and suggesting how new hobbyists can take a different approach and actually contribute to the hobby will hopefully get new hobbyists off to a better start. For example, the time spent researching hitchhikers will help them become stronger hobbyists and contribute additional information on live rock hitchhikers that are just waiting to be discovered. As hobbyists utilize every chance they have to learn new information, they can help advance the hobby.

My next installment in this series will detail an effort I have started to advance the saltwater COP: Project DIBS, otherwise known as the Desirable Invertebrates Breeding Society.

Acknowledgements:

I would like to thank several of my fellow graduate students for reviewing this article for its educational aspects. I would like to thank the Reefkeeping editing team for all their help in getting this article ready for publication. I would like to thank everyone who participated in the polls, and give a good on ya to my new blokes, mates and sheilas in Australia. The discussion with them about the polls was very interesting and insightful. On my first visit to Australia I will thank them for the crash course on Australian culture with a round of warm Fosters.

References:

Borneman, E.H. (2004). An "Insider's" Guide to Reef Aquaria. Reefkeeping Magazine. 3(1). Available at: http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-02/eb/index.php

Bandura, A. (1977). Social learning theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Prentice Hall.

Robbins, D. (2003). Media Review. Advanced Aquarist's Online Magazine. Vol 2(12). Available at: http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/dec2003/media.htm

Borneman, E.H. (2005). The Collection, Holding, Shipping and Transport of Coral Reef Organisms, Part 2: Collection Issues. Reefkeeping Magazine. Vol 4(11). Available at: http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-12/index.php

Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge. 138pp.

Pro, S. (2005). Writing for the Ornamental Aquatics Industry. Conscientious Aquarist. Vol 2(2). Available at: http://www.wetwebmedia.com/ca/volume_2/cav2i2/aquarium_writing/writing.htm

Shimek, R. L. (2004). Live Rock as a Biological Filter: Hit or Myth? Reefkeeping Magazine. Vol 3(4). Available at: http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-05/rs/feature/index.php

Suler, J.R. (2004). The Online Disinhibition Effect. Cyberpsychology & Behavior. 7(3). 321-236.

Suler, J.R. & Phillips, W. (1998). The bad boys of cyberspace: Deviant behavior in a multimedia chat community. Cyberpsychology & Behavior. 1(3) p. 275-294.

Wenger, E., McDermott, R. & Snyder, W. M. (2002). Cultivating Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge. Harvard Business School Press. Boston. 284pp.

Douglas, K.M. & C. McGarty. (2002). Internet Identifiability and Beyond: A Model of the Effects of Identifiability on Communicative Behavior. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice. 6(1) p. 17-26.

Additional Reading:

Saltwater Aquarium COP and COP

For those of you interested in the term Communities of Practice and an excellent work on the changing nature of knowledge, I strongly recommend reading the Wenger, et al, (2002) book on Cultivating Communities of Practice listed above.

Eraut, M. (2004). Sharing Practice: Problems and Possibilities. Learning in Health and Social Care. 3(4). p 171-178.

Eraut, M, F. Maillardet, C. Miller, S. Steadman, A. Ali, C. Blackman & J. Furner. (2004). Learning in the Professional Workplace: Relationships between Learning Factors and Contextual Factors. AERA Conference Paper. San Diego.

Shoup, S. (2004) Discussion Board Tips. Reefkeeping Magazine. Vol 3(10). Available at: http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-11/nftt/index.php

Weiner, D. & E. Borneman. (2004). A pledge for change. Tropical Fish Hobbyist. 53(2): 8-9.

Examples of Aquarium Research

Borneman, E.H. (2005). The Need to Breathe, Part 2: Experimental Tanks. Reefkeeping Magazine. Vol 4(6). Available at: http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-07/eb/index.php

Borneman, E.H. (2003). Reproduction in Aquarium Corals: Part II. Reports of Sexual Spawning in Captivity. Reefkeeping Magazine. Vol 2(5).
Available at: http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-06/eb/index.php

Credabel, J. (2005). The Care and Propagation of Goniopora. Reefkeeping Magazine. Vol 4(9). Available at: http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-10/nftt/index.php

Durso, R. (2005). Asexual Reproduction of Catalaphyllia jardinei (Elegance coral). Reefkeeping Magazine. Vol 4(5). Available at:
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-06/nftt/index.php

Pro, S. (2005). The Effects of Various "Reef-Safe" Treatments on Xenia sp. in a Controlled Setting. Reefkeeping Magazine. Vol 4(11). Available at:
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-12/sp/index.php

Rubiano, M. (2006). The Little Brain that Could. Reefkeeping Magazine. Vol 4(12). Available at: http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-01/nftt/index.php

Appendix 1: Websites Cited Visited At Least Once Per Month by Poll Respondents:

Appendix 2: Limitations of Polls Used

1. While 52,000 registered users may seem like a lot, considering that the estimated number of marine aquarists is anywhere from 1.5 to 2 million (Borneman, 2005; Robbins, 2003), this sample is less than 2% of the total community, and less than 3% of that number (2%) actually responded to the polls, so it may not be a representative sample of the population.

2. It should be noted that some of the registered users are probably no longer using or rarely use the forum, but there was no effective way to gather this data, so the percentage of users who voted is probably higher than reported, but we cannot know how much higher. I did find a few forums that report active users and registered users. The number of active users was typically 20-50% of the number of registered users on that website.

3. The response rate to these polls also may have been directly related to how interesting these polls were to the people scanning threads to read. Maybe if I had promised a free coral to every respondent, I might have had a much higher response rate. I also made a few formatting errors on a couple of the polls that, while minor, may have altered their response rate.

4. With all of these limitations, does that mean that these polls are basically useless? I would argue they are not; I set out with the idea of getting a loose snapshot of a limited portion of the community in a way that no one had done before; in education this is typically called a pilot study. If we look at these results with that in mind, then they are worth reporting.

Appendix 3: Full Poll Questions Posted:

Poll #1:

Howdy y'all! My name is Brian, and I'm writing to you from Houston, TX in the USA. I've been a saltwater reefkeeper for just a little over four years now. I'm very interested in online reefing communities and how they function. I'm doing a little bit of informal research, and I have a question for anyone who wants to respond.

Of the threads that you read, what percentage do you actually post a reply to? (Please don't count lounge/off topic or buy/sell/trade forums.)

If you see this poll on another reef website, please do not answer again.
Feel free to add a comment on WHY you reply to the percentage you do (some examples might be: like to help, don't know information, not interested in replying).

Options:
0-15%
16-30%
31-45%
46-60%
61-75%
76-90%
91% +

Poll #2:

Hello all,

I'm collecting a little more informal research; I'm interested in learning about the online community for the aquarium hobby.

How many aquarium discussion forums do you participate in at least once a month? (Please do not count websites that you visit only to buy things; I'm interested in participation reading and/or responding to discussion threads).

Feel free to list the top three websites you visit and why. If a website has not been listed yet in the replies, please include a URL I can follow to the site.

If you see this poll on another reef website, please do not answer again.

Thanks,

Brian

Options:
0
1
2
3
4-5
6-7
8-9
10+

Appendix 4, Table 1: Percentage of Users Responding to Poll #1.

Forum ID Registered Users Number of Users Voting in the Poll % of Users who Voted Forum A 27,898 30 0.01% Forum B 1,441 36 2.5% Forum C 7,836 16 0.2% Forum D 2,990 19 0.6% Forum E 820 18 2.2% Forum F 3,219 90 2.8% Forum G 5,751 14 0.2% Forum H 2,257 29 1.3%

Appendix 4, Table 2: Percentage of Registered Users Replying to Poll #2.

Forum ID Registered Users Number of Users Voting in the Poll % of Users who Voted Forum A 27,898 38 0.01% Forum B 1,441 36 2.5% Forum C 7,836 37 0.5% Forum E 820 22 2.7% Forum F 3,219 67 2.1% Forum G 5,751 22 0.4% Forum H 2,257 36 1.6%