Designed for Good: Community Well-Being Oriented Online Databases for Youth - Community-Built Databases: Research and Development - page 305

multiple media and technologies. Youth spend a lot of their time searching for
information on the Internet and are attracted to web spaces that make this process
“fun” [ 7 ]. A community database for the youth could provide this information in a
stronglyvisualmannerwithafocusonpictures, interactive content and other
media. The information can further be made more accessible with the use of
knowledge maps or symbols to support the meaning of text content following the
principles of concept maps, mind maps, conceptual diagrams and visual meta-
phors [ 29 ].
Community databases are web-based technologies where the creation of links to
any web resource is identified by a URL. However, young users of community
databases do not want to click on “boring” links but rather see the linked content
directly integrated into the site. An example of a web space that does this is
MySpace, which enables young people to represent themselves using a “MashUp”
of different media.
Youth are not just consumers of content; they are also motivated to contribute
to web spaces [ 74 ], thereby popularising technologies which make it easy for them
to add and edit content. An editor for community databases that makes the data
entry “fun” could be an opportunity for youth to be enabled and motivated to
contribute their own content to the database.
12.8.1 Social Collaboration Dimension
Youth are seeking pillars for simple navigation in a complex and confusing world
and tend to understand knowledge in a social context [ 62 ]. Consequently, youth
seek to modify the web spaces so as to “leave their mark” and receive acknowl-
edgement and other positive feedback for their contributions. For community
databases, this has two implications: youth should directly see who has contributed
what content and they should be able to create their own identity in the community
database. Most community databases allow traceability of users and the content
they have contributed. However, this is mostly hidden in special “version” pages
that are often not easy to understand. Some community databases allow direct
contributions to pages by leaving comments rather than editing the page directly,
and the comments are directly attributed to the user who made the comment. Most
community databases allow users to create their own personal pages.
In addition, the creation of a coherent identity is an important part of adolescence
[ 78 ]. Online role-play games are a good illustration of this concept where users are
able to create virtual identities and are encouraged by the social dynamics of the
virtual world to make their virtual identity stronger and “more appreciated” [ 11 ].
Allowing the content to be enriched with the meta-data of the author of the content
adds a social dimension to collaboration. As a result, rather than collaborating on
topics and content with anonymous users, it becomes more a communication
process between virtual identities that present themselves through their contribu-
tions and personally designed pages.