Candidate Pattern: Collaboration follows identity

Summary	People are reluctant to collaborate before establishing the identity of themselves and their peers.
Status	alpha	Confidence	0
details...		Group	none

Problem

In online environments social information relating to identity can be occluded. Elaborating identity through social interactions is a key element in forming productive relationships through establishing trust and authenticity.

Context

This pattern is applicable to all online social environments though the socialisation process itself can occur on different platforms. 'When' is important i.e. this needs to be an early activity. Do not necessarily need to have a full picture of identity. So what are the key elements of identity we need to know about?

Solution

Provide both channels and spaces for articulating identity. This can be facilitated through a structured pre-activity. Dialog is an important aspect and allowing free discussions to allow for the performance of identity is key. Visualisation is important but can be deceptive. Online identity can be reflected in gathering of perspectives, views, taste and style. A task or scenario might be to describe your identity for example through the personalisation that you have carried out on your avatar and why or profile page. What we might describe as a process of mutual disclosure.

Notes, Links and References

Liabilities, potential risks, extensions, expected side-effects

======= Related ========
Leads to: Start With Introductions
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======= Rationale ========
See virtual team collaborations and knowledge of co-workers skill-set: Yide Shen. Transactive memory system development in virtual teams: the potential role of shared identity and shared context. SIGMIS-CPR '07: Proceedings of the 2007 ACM SIGMIS CPR conference on Computer personnel research, 228--230,ACM,New York, NY, USA,2007.
======= END Rationale ========

Licensing

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