document_title: Online community

question_text: what do you call a website where contents can be edited by other members of the community

question_tokens: what do you call a website where contents can be edited by other members of the community

text: Online community

text: Categorization[edit]

text: The idea of a community is not a new concept. On the telephone, in ham radio and in the online world, social interactions no longer have to be based on proximity; instead they can literally be with anyone anywhere.[3] The study of communities has had to adapt along with the new technologies. Many researchers have used ethnography to attempt to understand what people do in online spaces, how they express themselves, what motivates them, how they govern themselves, what attracts them, and why some people prefer to observe rather than participate.[3] Online communities can congregate around a shared interest and can be spread across multiple websites.[4]

text: Some signs of community are:

text:
Content: articles, information, and news about a topic of interest to a group of people.
Forums or newsgroups and email: so that community members can communicate in delayed fashion.
Chat and instant messaging: so that community members can communicate more immediately.[5]

text: Development[edit]

text: There is a set of values known as netiquette (or Internet etiquette) to consider as an online community develops. Some of these values include: opportunity, education, culture, democracy, human services, equality within the economy, information, sustainability, and communication.[6] An online community's purpose is to serve as a common ground for people who share the same interest(s).[6]

text: Online communities may be used as calendars to keep up with events such as upcoming gatherings or sporting events. They also form around activities and hobbies. Many online communities relating to health care help inform, advise and support patients and their families. Students can take classes online and they may communicate with their professors and peers online. Businesses have also started using online communities to communicate with their customers about their products and services as well as to share information about the business. Other online communities allow a wide variety of professionals to come together to share thoughts, ideas and theories.[6]

text: Fandom is an example of what online communities can evolve into. Online communities have grown in influence in "shaping the phenomena around which they organize" according to Nancy K. Baym's work.[4] She says that: "More than any other commercial sector, the popular culture industry relies on online communities to publicize and provide testimonials for their products." The strength of the online community's power is displayed through the season 3 premiere of BBC's Sherlock. Online activity by fans seem to have had a noticeable influence on the plot and direction of the season opening episode. Mark Lawson of The Guardian recounts how fans have, to a degree, directed the outcome of the events of the episode. He says that "Sherlock has always been one of the most web-aware shows, among the first to find a satisfying way of representing electronic chatter on-screen."[7]

text: Discussions where members may post their feedback are essential in the development of an online community.[8] Online communities may encourage individuals to come together to teach and learn from one another. They may encourage learners to discuss and learn about real-world problems/situations as well as focus on such things as teamwork, collaborative thinking and personal experiences.[9][10]

text: Classification[edit]

text: Online communities are dynamic by nature and there are researchers and organizations working to classify them. For example, it is important to know the security, access, and technology requirements of a given type of community as it may evolve from an open to a private and regulated forum.[10] A number of authors have studied online communities to better understand how they are structured. It has been argued that the technical aspects of online communities, such as whether pages can be created and edited by many, as is the case with wikis including Wikipedia, or whether only certain users can post entries and edit them, as is the case with most blogs, can place online communities into stylistic categories. Another approach argues that "online community" is a metaphor and that contributors actively negotiate the meaning of the term, including values and social norms.[11]

text: Some research has looked at the users of online communities. Amy Jo Kim has classified the rituals and stages of online community interaction and called it the 'Membership life cycle'.[12] Clay Shirky talks about community of practice whose members collaborate and help each other in order to make something better or improve a certain skill. What makes these communities bond is "love" of something as demonstrated by members who go out of their way to help without any financial interest.[13][14] Campbell et al. developed a character theory for analyzing online communities, based on tribal typologies. In the communities they investigated they identified three character types:[15][16]

text:
The Big Man (offer a form of order and stability to the community by absorbing many conflictual situations personally)
The Sorcerer (will not engage in reciprocity with others in the community)
The Trickster (generally a comical yet complex figure that is found in most of the world's culture)

text: A 2001 McKinsey & Company study showed that only 2% of transaction site customers returned after their first purchase, while 60% of new online communities users began using and visiting the sites regularly after their first experiences.[citation needed] Online communities have changed the game for retail firms, forcing them to change their business strategies. Companies have to network more, adjust computations, and alter their organizational structures. This leads to changes in a company's communications with their manufacturers including the information shared and made accessible for further productivity and profits. Because consumers and customers in all fields are becoming accustomed to more interaction and engagement online, adjustments must be considered made in order to keep audiences intrigued.[10]

text: It may be beneficial to introduce a term described by Ray Oldenberg called a third place to help classify online communities. A "third place is a generic designation for a great variety of public places that host the regular, voluntary, informal, and happily anticipated gatherings of individuals beyond the realm of home and work" (Oldenburg, p. 16). An online community can take on the role of a third place. Third places have characteristics that many online communities exhibit, for example: they provide neutral ground for all parties; they are levelers, easily accessible and highly accommodating; conversation is the main activity; they allow people to keep a low profile, and a few others. While these may be characteristics to help classify online communities, they may not all apply to a specific online community nor does an online community need to embody each of these characteristics.

text: The four requirements of "virtual settlement" include: interactivity, a variety of communicators, a common public place where members can meet and interact, and sustained membership over time. Based on these considerations, it can be said that microblogs such as Twitter can be classified as online communities.[17]

text: Building communities[edit]

text: According to Dorine C. Andrews, author of Audience-Specific Online Community Design there are three parts to building an online community: starting the online community, encouraging early online interaction, and moving to a self-sustaining interactive environment.[18] When starting an online community, it may be effective to create webpages that appeal to specific interests. Online communities with clear topics and easy access tend to be most effective. In order to gain early interaction by members, privacy guarantees and content discussions are very important.[18] Successful online communities tend to be able to function self-sufficiently.[18]

text: Participation[edit]

text: There are two major types of participation in online communities: public participation and non-public participation, also called lurking. Lurkers are participants who join a virtual community but do not contribute. In contrast, public participants, or posters, are those who join virtual communities and openly express their beliefs and opinions. Both lurkers and posters frequently enter communities to find answers and to gather general information. For example, there are several online communities dedicated to technology. In these communities, posters are generally experts in the field who can offer technological insight and answer questions, while lurkers tend to be technological novices who use the communities to find answers and to learn.[19]

text: In general, virtual community participation is influenced by how participants view themselves in society as well as norms, both of society and of the online community.[20] Participants also join online communities for friendship and support. In a sense, virtual communities may fill social voids in participants' offline lives.[21]

text: Sociologist Barry Wellman presents the idea of "globalization" – the Internet's ability to extend participants' social connections to people around the world while also aiding them in further engagement with their local communities.[22]

text: Aspects of successful online communities[edit]

text: An article entitled "The real value of on-line communities," written by A Armstrong and J Hagel of the Harvard Business Review,[23] addresses a handful of elements that are key to the growth of an online community and its success in drawing in members. In this example, the article which was available on mendeley.com focuses specifically on online communities related to business, but its points can be transferred and can apply to any online community. The article addresses four main categories of business-based online communities, but states that a truly successful one will combine qualities of each of them: communities of transaction, communities of interest, communities of fantasy, and communities of relationship. Anubhav Choudhury, from incrediblogger.net, provides basic descriptions of each of these four types of online communities.[24]

text:
Communities of transaction emphasize the importance of buying and selling products in a social online manner where people must interact in order to complete the transaction.
Communities of interest involve the online interaction of people with specific knowledge on a certain topic.
Communities of fantasy encourage people to participate in online alternative forms of reality, such as games where they are represented by avatars.
Communities of relationship often reveal or at least partially protect someone's identity while allowing them to communicate with others, such as in online dating services.

text: Membership lifecycle[edit]

text: Amy Jo Kim's membership lifecycle states that members of online communities begin their life in a community as visitors, or lurkers. After breaking through a barrier, people become novices and participate in community life. After contributing for a sustained period of time they become regulars. If they break through another barrier they become leaders, and once they have contributed to the community for some time they become elders. This life cycle can be applied to many virtual communities, most obviously to bulletin board systems, but also to blogs, mailing lists (list serve) and wiki-based communities like Wikipedia.

text: A similar model can be found in the works of Lave and Wenger, who illustrate a cycle of how users become incorporated into virtual communities using the principles of legitimate peripheral participation. They suggest five types of trajectories amongst a learning community:[25]

text:
Peripheral (i.e. Lurker) – An outside, unstructured participation
Inbound (i.e. Novice) – Newcomer is invested in the community and heading towards full participation
Insider (i.e. Regular) – Full committed community participant
Boundary (i.e. Leader) – A leader, sustains membership participation and brokers interactions
Outbound (i.e. Elder) – Process of leaving the community due to new relationships, new positions, new outlooks

text: The following shows the correlation between the learning trajectories and Web 2.0 community participation by using the example of YouTube.

text: Peripheral (Lurker) – Observing the community and viewing content. Does not add to the community content or discussion. The user occasionally goes onto YouTube.com to check out a video that someone has directed them to.

text: Inbound (Novice) – Just beginning to engage the community. Starts to provide content. Tentatively interacts in a few discussions. The user comments on other user's videos. Potentially posts a video of his or her own.

text: Insider (Regular) – Consistently adds to the community discussion and content. Interacts with other users. Regularly posts videos. Either videos they have found or made themselves. Makes a concerted effort to comment and rate other users' videos.

text: Boundary (Leader) – Recognized as a veteran participant. Connects with regulars to make higher concepts ideas. Community grants their opinion greater consideration. The user has become recognized as a contributor to watch. Possibly their videos are podcasts commenting on the state of YouTube and its community. The user would not consider watching another user's videos without commenting on them. Will often correct a user in behavior the community considers inappropriate. Will reference other user's videos in their comments as a way to cross link content.

text: Outbound (Elders) – Leave the community. Their interests may have changed, the community may have moved in a direction that they don't agree with or they may no longer have time to maintain a constant presence in the community.

text: Newcomers (Inbound)[edit]

text: Newcomers are important for online communities. Online communities rely on volunteers' contribution, and most online communities face high turnover rate as one of their main challenges. For example, only a minority of Wikipedia users contribute regularly, and only a minority of those contributors participate in community discussions. In one study conducted by Carnegie Mellon University, they found that "more than two-thirds (68%) of newcomers to Usenet groups were never seen again after their first post".[26] Above facts reflect a point that recruiting and remaining new members have become a very crucial problem for online communities: the communities will eventually wither away without replacing members who leave.

text: Newcomers are new members of the online communities and thus often face many barriers when contributing to a project, and those barriers they face might lead them to give up the project or even leave the community. By conducting a systematic literature review over 20 primary studies regarding to the barriers faced by newcomers when contributing to the open source software projects, Steinmacher et al. identified 15 different barriers and they classified those barriers into five categories as described below.[27]

text:
Social Interaction: this category describes the barriers when newcomers interact with existing members of the community. The three barriers that they found have main influence on newcomers are: "lack of social interaction with project members", "not receiving a timely response", and "receiving an improper response".
Newcomers' Previous Knowledge: this category describes the barriers which is regarding to the newcomers' previous experience related to this project. The three barriers they found classified into this part are: "lack of domain expertise", "lack of technical expertise", and "lack of knowledge of project practices".
Finding a Way to Start: this category describes the issues when newcomers try to start contributing. The two barriers they found are: "Difficulty to find an appropriate task to start with", and "Difficulty to find a mentor".
Documentation: documentation of the project also shown to be barriers for newcomers especially in the Open Source Software projects. The three barriers they found are: "Outdated documentation","Too much documentation", and "Unclear code comments".
Technical Hurdles: technical barriers are also one of the major issue when newcomers start contributing. This category includes barriers: "Issues setting up a local workspace", "Code complexity" and "Software architecture complexity".

text: Because of the barriers described above, it is very necessary that online communities engage newcomers and help them to adjust to the new environment. From online communities' side, new comers can be both beneficial and harmful to online communities. On the one side, newcomers can bring online communities innovative ideas and resources. On the other side, their misbehavior caused by lack experiences can be also harmful to communities. Kraut et al. defined five basic issues faced by online communities when dealing with newcomers, and proposed several design claims for each problem in their book Building Successful Online Communities.[28]

text:
Recruitment. Online communities need to keep recruiting new members in the face of high turnover rate of their existing members. Three suggestions are made in the book:

Interpersonal recruitment: recruit new members by old members' personal relationship
Word of mouth recruitment: new members will join in the community because of the word-of-mouth influence from existing member
Impersonal advertisement: although the direct effect is weaker than previous two strategies, impersonal advertising can effectively increase number of people joining among potential members with little prior knowledge of the community.

Selection. Another challenge for online communities is to select the members who are a good fit. Unlike the offline organizations, the problem of selecting right candidates is more problematic for online communities since the anonymity of the users and the ease of creating new identities online. Two approaches are suggested in the book:

Self-selection: make sure that only good fit members will choose to join.
Screen: make sure that only good fit members will allow to join.

Keeping Newcomers Around. Before new members start feel the commitment and do major contribution, they must be around long enough in online communities to learn the norms and form the community attachment. However, majority of them tend to leave the communities at this period of time. At this period of time, new members are usually very sensitive to either positive or negative evidence they received from group, which may largely impact the users' decision on whether they quit or stay. Authors suggested two approaches:

Entry Barriers: Higher entry barriers will de more likely to drive away new members, but those members who survived from this severe initiation process should have stronger commitment than those members with lower entry barriers.
Interactions with existing members: communication with existing member and getting respond from them in friendly environment encourage the new members commitment. The existing members are encouraged to treat the newcomers gently. One research did by Halfaker et al.[29] mentioned in the book suggested reverting new members' work in Wikipedia will likely to make them leave the communities. Thus, new members are more likely to stay and develop commitment if the interaction between existing member and new members are friendly and gentle. The book suggested different ways, including "introduction threads" in the communities, "assign the responsibilities of having friendly interactions with newcomers to designed older-timers", and "discouraging hostility towards newcomers who make mistakes".

Socialization. Different online communities have their own norms and regulations, and new members need to learn to participate in an appropriate way. Thus, socialization is a process through which new members acquire the behaviors and attitude essential to playing their roles in a group or organization. Previous research in organizational socialization[30] demonstrated that newcomers' active information seeking and organizational socialization tactics are associated with better performance, higher job satisfaction, more committed to the organization, more likely to stay and thus lower turnover rate. However, this institutionalized socialization tactics are not popular used in online setting, and most online communities are still using the individualized socialization tactics where newcomers being socialized individually and in a more informal way in their training process. Thus, in order to keep new members, the design suggestions given by this book are: "using formal, sequential and collective socialization tactics" and "old-timers can provide formal mentorship to newcomers."
Protection. Newcomers are different from the existing members, and thus the influx of newcomers might change the environment or the culture developed by existing members. New members might also behave inappropriately and thus be potential harmful to online communities as a result of their lack of experience. Different communities might also have different level of damage tolerance, some might be more fragile to newcomers' inappropriate behavior (such as open source group collaboration software project) while others are not (such as some discussion forums). So the speed of integrating new members with existing communities really depends on community types and its goals, and groups need to have protection mechanisms that serve to multiple purposes.

text: Roles in an online community[edit]

text: Although online societies differ in content from real society, the roles people assume in their online communities are quite similar. Elliot Volkman[31] points out several categories of people that play a role in the cycle of social networking, these include:

text:
Community architect – Creates the online community, sets goals and decides the purpose of the site.
Community manager – Oversees the progress of the society. Enforces rules, encourages social norms, assists new members, and spreads awareness about the community.
Professional member – This is a member who is paid to contribute to the site. The purpose of this role is to keep the community active.
Free members – These members visit sites most often and represent the majority of the contributors. Their contributions are crucial to the sites' progress.
Passive lurker – These people do not contribute to the site but rather absorb the content, discussion, and advice.
Active lurker – Consumes the content and shares that content with personal networks and other communities.
Power users – These people push for new discussion, provide positive feedback to community managers, and sometimes even act as community managers themselves. They have a major influence on the site and make up only a small percentage of the users.

text: Motivations and barriers to participation[edit]

text: Successful online communities motivate online participation. Methods of motivating participation in these communities have been investigated in several studies.

text: There are many persuasive factors that draw users into online communities. Peer-to-peer systems and social networking sites rely heavily on member contribution. Users' underlying motivations to involve themselves in these communities have been linked to some persuasion theories of sociology.

text:
According to the reciprocation theory, a successful online community must provide its users with benefits that compensate for the costs of time, effort and materials members provide. People often join these communities expecting some sort of reward.
The consistency theory says that once people make a public commitment to a virtual society, they will often feel obligated to stay consistent with their commitment by continuing contributions.
The social validation theory explains how people are more likely to join and participate in an online community if it is socially acceptable and popular.

text: One of the greatest attractions towards online communities is the sense of connection users build among members. Participation and contribution are influenced when members of an online community are aware of their global audience.[32]

text: The majority of people learn by example and often follow others, especially when it comes to participation.[33] Individuals are reserved about contributing to an online community for many reasons including but not limited to a fear of criticism or inaccuracy. Users may withhold information that they don't believe is particularly interesting, relevant, or truthful. In order to challenge these contribution barriers, producers of these sites are responsible for developing knowledge-based and foundation-based trust among the community.[34]

text: Users' perception of audience is another reason that makes users participate in online communities. Results showed that users usually underestimate their amount of audiences in online communities. Social media users guess that their audience is 27% of its real size. Regardless of this underestimation, it is shown that amount of audience affects users' self-presentation and also content production which means a higher level of participation.[35]

text: There are two types of virtual online communities (VOC): dependent and self-sustained VOCs. The dependent VOCs are those who use the virtual community as extensions of themselves,[clarification needed] they interact with people they know. Self-sustained VOCs are communities where relationships between participating members is formed and maintained through encounters in the online community.[36] For all VOCs, there is the issue of creating identity and reputation in the community. People can create whatever identity they would like to through their interactions with other members. The username is what members identify each other by but it says very little about the person behind it. The main features in online communities that attract people are a shared communication environment, relationships formed and nurtured, a sense of belonging to a group, the internal structure of the group, common space shared by people with similar ideas and interests. The three most critical issues are belonging, identity, and interest. For an online community to flourish there needs to be consistent participation, interest, and motivation.[37]

text: Research conducted by Helen Wang applied the Technology Acceptance Model to online community participation.[38] Internet self-efficacy positively predicted perceived ease of use. Research found that participants' beliefs in their abilities to use the internet and web-based tools determined how much effort was expected. Community environment positively predicted perceived ease of use and usefulness. Intrinsic motivation positively predicted perceived ease of use, usefulness, and actual use. The technology acceptance model positively predicts how likely it is that an individual will participate in an online community.

text: Consumer-vendor interaction[edit]

text: Establishing a relationship between the consumer and a seller has become a new science with the emergence of online communities. It is a new market to be tapped by companies and to do so, requires an understanding of the relationships built on online communities. Online communities gather people around common interests and these common interests can include brands, products, and services.[39]:50 Companies not only have a chance to reach a new group of consumers in online communities, but to also tap into information about the consumers. Companies have a chance to learn about the consumers in an environment that they feel a certain amount of anonymity and are thus, more open to allowing a company to see what they really want or are looking for.

text: In order to establish a relationship with the consumer a company must seek a way to identify with how individuals interact with the community. This is done by understanding the relationships an individual has with an online community. There are six identifiable relationship statuses: considered status, committed status, inactive status, faded status, recognized status, and unrecognized status.[39]:56 Unrecognized status means the consumer is unaware of the online community or has not decided the community to be useful. The recognized status is where a person is aware of the community, but is not entirely involved. A considered status is when a person begins their involvement with the site. The usage at this stage is still very sporadic. The committed status is when a relationship between a person and an online community is established and the person gets fully involved with the community. The inactive status is when an online community has not relevance to a person. The faded status is when a person has begun to fade away from a site.[39]:57 It is important to be able to recognize which group or status the consumer holds, because it might help determine which approach to use.

text: Companies not only need to understand how a consumer functions within an online community, but also a company "should understand the communality of an online community"[40]:401 This means a company must understand the dynamic and structure of the online community to be able to establish a relationship with the consumer. Online communities have cultures of their own, and to be able to establish a commercial relationship or even engage at all, one must understand the community values and proprieties. It has even been proved beneficial to treat online commercial relationships more as friendships rather than business transactions.

text: Through online engagement, because of the smoke screen of anonymity, it allows a person to be able to socially interact with strangers in a much more personal way.[39]:69 This personal connection the consumer feels translates to how they want to establish relationships online. They separate what is commercial or spam and what is relational. Relational becomes what they associate with human interaction while commercial is what they associate with digital or non-human interaction. Thus the online community should not be viewed as "merely a sales channel".[41]:537 Instead it should be viewed as a network for establishing interpersonal communications with the consumer.

text: Growth cycle[edit]

text: Most online communities grow slowly at first, due in part to the fact that the strength of motivation for contributing is usually proportional to the size of the community. As the size of the potential audience increases, so does the attraction of writing and contributing. This, coupled with the fact that organizational culture does not change overnight, means creators can expect slow progress at first with a new virtual community. As more people begin to participate, however, the aforementioned motivations will increase, creating a virtuous cycle in which more participation begets more participation.

text: Community adoption can be forecast with the Bass diffusion model, originally conceived by Frank Bass to describe the process by which new products get adopted as an interaction between innovative early adopters and those who follow them.

text: Online learning community[edit]

text: Online learning is a form of online community. The sites are designed to educate. Colleges and universities may offer many of their classes online to their students; this allows each student to take the class at his or her own pace.

text: According to an article published in volume 21, issue 5 of the European Management Journal titled "Learning in Online Forums",[42] researchers conducted a series of studies about online learning. They found that while good online learning is difficult to plan, it is quite conducive to educational learning. Online learning can bring together a diverse group of people, and although it is asynchronous learning, if the forum is set up using all the best tools and strategies, it can be very effective.

text: Another study was published[43] in volume 55, issue 1 of Computers and Education and found results supporting the findings of the article mentioned above. The researchers found that motivation, enjoyment, and team contributions on learning outcomes enhanced students learning and that the students felt they learned well with it. A study published in the same journal[44] looks at how social networking can foster individual well-being and develop skills which can improve the learning experience.

text: These articles look at a variety of different types of online learning. They suggest that online learning can be quite productive and educational if created and maintained properly.

text: One feature of online communities is that they are not constrained by time thereby giving members the ability to move through periods of high to low activity over a period of time. This dynamic nature maintains a freshness and variety that traditional methods of learning might not have been able to provide.[citation needed]

text: It appears that online communities such as Wikipedia have become a source of professional learning.[citation needed] They are an active learning environment in which learners converse and inquire.

text: In a study exclusive to teachers in online communities, results showed that membership in online communities provided teachers with a rich source of professional learning that satisfied each member of the community.[45]

text: Saurabh Tyagi[46] describes benefits of online community learning which include:

text:
No physical boundaries: Online communities do not limit their membership nor exclude based on where one lives.
Supports in-class learning: Due to time constraints, discussion boards are more efficient for question & answer sessions than allowing time after lectures to ask questions.
Build a social and collaborative learning experience: People are best able to learn when they engage, communicate, and collaborate with each other. Online communities create an environment where users can collaborate through social interaction and shared experiences.
Self-governance: Anyone who can access the internet is self-empowered. The immediate access to information allows users to educate themselves.

text: These terms are taken from Edudemic, a site about teaching and learning. The article "How to Build Effective Online Learning Communities"[46] provides background information about online communities as well as how to incorporate learning within an online community.[46]

text: Online health community[edit]

text: Online health communities is one example of online communities which is heavily used by internet users.[47][48][49] A key benefit of online health communities is providing user access to other users with similar problems or experiences which has a significant impact on the lives of their members.[47] Through people participation, online health communities will be able to offer patients opportunities for emotional support[50][51] and also will provide them access to experience-based information about particular problem or possible treatment strategies. Even in some studies, it is shown that users find experienced-based information more relevant than information which was prescribed by professionals.[52][53][54] Moreover, allowing patients to collaborate anonymously in some of online health communities suggests users a non-judgmental environment to share their problems, knowledge, and experiences.[55]

text: Problems[edit]

text: Online communities are relatively new and unexplored areas. They promote a whole new community that prior to the Internet was not available. Although they can promote a vast array of positive qualities, such as relationships without regard to race, religion, gender, or geography,[56] they can also lead to multiple problems.

text: The theory of risk perception, an uncertainty in participating in an online community, is quite common, particularly when in the following online circumstances:

text:
performances,
financial,
opportunity/time,
safety,
social,
psychological loss.[57]

text: Clay Shirky explains one of these problems like two hoola-hoops. With the emersion of online communities there is a "real life" hoola-hoop and the other and "online life". These two hoops used to be completely separate but now they have swung together and overlap. The problem with this overlap is that there is no distinction anymore between face-to-face interactions and virtual ones; they are one in the same. Shirky illustrates this by explaining a meeting. A group of people will sit in a meeting but they will all be connected into a virtual world also, using online communities such as wiki.[58]

text: A further problem is identity formation with the ambiguous real-virtual life mix. Identity formation in the real world consisted of "one body, one identity",[citation needed] but the online communities allow you to create "as many electronic personae" as you please. This can lead to identity deception. Claiming to be someone you're not can be problematic with other online community users and for yourself. Creating a false identity can cause confusion and ambivalence about which identity is true.

text: A lack of trust regarding personal or professional information is problematic with questions of identity or information reciprocity. Often, if information is given to another user of an online community, one expects equal information shared back. However, this may not be the case or the other user may use the information given in harmful ways.[59] The construction of an individual's identity within an online community requires self-presentation. Self-presentation is the act of "writing the self into being", in which a person's identity is formed by what that person says, does, or shows. This also poses a potential problem as such self-representation is open for interpretation as well as misinterpretation. While an individual's online identity can be entirely constructed with a few of his/her own sentences, perceptions of this identity can be entirely misguided and incorrect.

text: Online communities present the problems of preoccupation, distraction, detachment, and desensitization to an individual, although online support groups exist now. Online communities do present potential risks, and users must remember to be careful and remember that just because an online community feels safe does not mean it necessarily is.[22]

text: Trolling and harassment[edit]

text: The most common problem with online communities tend to be online harassment, meaning threatening or offensive content aimed at known friends or strangers through ways of online technology. Where such posting is done "for the lulz" (that is, for the fun of it), then it is known as trolling.[60] Sometimes trolling is done in order to harm others for the gratification of the person posting. The primary motivation for such posters, known in character theory as "snerts", is the sense of power and exposure it gives them.[61] Online harassment tends to affect adolescents the most due to their risk-taking behavior and decision-making processes. One notable example is that of Natasha MacBryde who was tormented by Sean Duffy, who was later prosecuted.[62] In 2010, Alexis Pilkington, a 17-year-old New Yorker committed suicide. Trolls pounced on her tribute page posting insensitive and hurtful images of nooses and other suicidal symbolism. Four years prior to that an 18-year-old died in a car crash in California. Trolls took images of her disfigured body they found on the internet and used them to torture the girl's grieving parents.[63] Psychological research has shown that anonymity increases unethical behavior through what is called the online disinhibition effect. Many website and online communities have attempted to combat trolling. There has not been a single effective method to discourage anonymity, and arguments exist claiming that removing Internet users' anonymity is an intrusion of their privacy and violates their right to free speech. Julie Zhou, writing for the New York Times, comments that "There's no way to truly rid the Internet of anonymity. After all, names and e-mail addresses can be faked. And in any case many commenters write things that are rude or inflammatory under their real names". Thus, some trolls don't even bother to hide their actions and take pride in their behavior.[63] The rate of reported online harassment has been increasing as there has been a 50% increase in accounts of youth online harassment from the years 2000–2005.[64]

text: Another form of harassment prevalent online is called flaming. According to a study conducted by Peter J. Moor, flaming is defined as displaying hostility by insulting, swearing or using otherwise offensive language.[65] Flaming can be done in either a group style format (the comments section on YouTube) or in a one-on-one format (private messaging on Facebook). Several studies have shown that flaming is more apparent in computer mediated conversation than in face to face interaction.[66] For example, a study conducted by Kiesler et al. found that people who met online judged each other more harshly than those who met face to face.[67] The study goes on to say that the people who communicated by computer "felt and acted as though the setting was more impersonal, and their behavior was more uninhibited. These findings suggest that computer-mediated communication ... elicits asocial or unregulated behavior".[68]

text: Unregulated communities are established when online users communicate on a site although there are no mutual terms of usage. There is no regulator. Online interest groups or anonymous blogs are examples of unregulated communities.[10]

text: Cyberbullying is also prominent online. Cyberbullying is defined as willful and repeated harm inflicted towards another through information technology mediums.[69] Cyberbullying victimization has ascended to the forefront of the public agenda after a number of news stories came out on the topic.[70] For example, Rutgers freshman Tyler Clementi committed suicide in 2010 after his roommate secretly filmed him in an intimate encounter and then streamed the video over the Internet.[71] Numerous states, such as New Jersey, have created and passed laws that do not allow any sort of harassment on, near, or off school grounds that disrupts or interferes with the operation of the school or the rights of other students.[72]

text: Trolling and cyber bullying in online communities are very difficult to stop for several reasons:

text:
Community members don't wish to violate libertarian ideologies that state everyone has the right to speak.
The distributed nature of online communities make it difficult for members to come to an agreement.
Deciding who should moderate and how create difficulty of community management.

text: An online community is a group of people with common interests who use the Internet (web sites, email, instant messaging, etc) to communicate, work together and pursue their interests over time.

text: Hazing[edit]

text: A lesser known problem is hazing within online communities. Members of an elite online community use hazing to display their power, produce inequality, and instill loyalty into newcomers. While online hazing doesn't inflict physical duress, "the status values of domination and subordination are just as effectively transmitted".[73] Elite members of the in-group may haze by employing derogatory terms to refer to newcomers, using deception or playing mind games, or participating in intimidation, among other activities.[74]

text: "[T]hrough hazing, established members tell newcomers that they must be able to tolerate a certain level of aggressiveness, grossness, and obnoxiousness in order to fit in and be accepted by the BlueSky community".[75]

text: Privacy[edit]

text: Online communities like social networking websites have a very unclear distinction between private and public information. For most social networks, users have to give personal information to add to their profiles. Usually, users can control what type of information other people in the online community can access based on the users familiarity with the people or the users level of comfort. These limitations are known as "privacy settings". Privacy settings bring up the question of how privacy settings and terms of service affect the expectation of privacy in social media. After all, the purpose of an online community is to share a common space with one another. Furthermore, it is hard to take legal action when a user feels that his or her privacy has been invaded because he or she technically knew what the online community entailed.[76] Creator of the social networking site Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, noticed a change in users' behavior from when he first initiated Facebook. It seemed that "society's willingness to share has created an environment where privacy concerns are less important to users of social networks today than they were when social networking began".[77] However even though a user might keep his or her personal information private, his or her activity is open to the whole web to access. When a user posts information to a site or comments or responds to information posted by others, social networking sites create a tracking record of the user's activity.[78]

text: Legal issues[edit]

text: The examples and perspective in this section deal primarily with the United States and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. You may improve this article, discuss the issue on the talk page, or create a new article, as appropriate. (June 2014) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

text: In the USA, two of the most important laws dealing with legal issues of online communities, especially social networking sites are Section 512c of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

text: Section 512c removes liability for copyright infringement from sites that let users post content, so long as there is a way by which the copyright owner can request the removal of infringing content. The website may not receive any financial benefit from the infringing activities.

text: Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act gives protection from any liability as a result from the publication provided by another party. Common issues include defamation, but many courts have expanded it to include other claims as well.[79]

text: Online communities of various kinds (social networking sites, blogs, media sharing sites, etc.) are posing new challenges for all levels of law enforcement in combating many kinds of crimes including harassment, identity theft, copyright infringement, etc.

text: Copyright law is being challenged and debated with the shift in how individuals now disseminate their intellectual property. Individuals come together via online communities in collaborative efforts to create. Many describe current copyright law as being ill-equipped to manage the interests of individuals or groups involved in these collaborative efforts. Some say that these laws may even discourage this kind of production.[80]

text: Laws governing online behavior pose another challenge to lawmakers in that they must work to enact laws that protect the public without infringing upon their rights to free speech. Perhaps the most talked about issue of this sort is that of cyberbullying. Some scholars call for collaborative efforts between parents, schools, lawmakers, and law enforcement to curtail cyberbullying.[81]

text: Laws must continually adapt to the ever-changing landscape of social media in all its forms; some legal scholars contend that lawmakers need to take an interdisciplinary approach to creating effective policy whether it is regulatory, for public safety, or otherwise. Experts in the social sciences can shed light on new trends that emerge in the usage of social media by different segments of society (including youths).[82] Armed with this data, lawmakers can write and pass legislation that protect and empower various online community members.


document_title: Sugar cubes

question_text: one cube of sugar is how many teaspoons

question_tokens: one cube of sugar is how many teaspoons

root

text: Sugar cubes

text: Sugar cubes may refer to one of the following:

tag: p

text:
Sugar, shaped in cubes usually measuring about 4 grams (3/4 tsp) each, often used for coffee or tea. Sugar cubes can be created to look roughly the same size but contain reduced sugar content through a special production process.[1] Additionally, they can contain a blend of acesulfame K and sugar, or a blend of acesulfame K, sugar, and aspartame.[1]
The Sugarcubes, a rock-pop band from Iceland
A Cube of Sugar, a 2011 Iranian film

tag: ul


document_title: Varroa destructor

question_text: which life stage of the honey bee is most commonly fed upon by the varroa mite

text: Varroa destructor

text: Physical description[edit]

text: The adult female mite is reddish-brown in color, while the male is white. Varroa mites are flat, having a button shape. They are 1–1.8 mm long, 1.5–2 mm wide and have eight legs.

text: Reproduction, infection and hive mortality[edit]

text: Mites reproduce on a 10-day cycle. The female mite enters a honey bee brood cell. As soon as the cell is capped, the Varroa mite lays eggs on the larva. The young mites, typically several females and one male, hatch in about the same time as the young bee develops and leave the cell with the host. When the young bee emerges from the cell after pupation, the Varroa mites also leave and spread to other bees and larvae. The mite preferentially infests drone cells, allowing the mite to reproduce one more time with the extra three days it takes a drone to emerge vs a worker bee. This can cause genetic defects such as useless wings or viruses and fungi in the bee.

text: The adults suck the "blood" (hemolymph) of adult honey bees for sustenance, leaving open wounds and transmitting diseases and viruses. The compromised adult bees are more prone to infections. With the exception of some resistance in the Russian strains and bees that have Varroa sensitive hygiene (about 10% of colonies naturally have it), the European Apis mellifera bees are almost completely defenseless against these parasites. (Russian honey bees are one-third to one-half less susceptible to mite reproduction).[2]

text: The model for the population dynamics is exponential growth when bee brood are available, and exponential decline when no brood is available. In 12 weeks, the number of mites in a western honey bee hive can multiply by (roughly) 12. High mite populations in the autumn can cause a crisis when drone rearing ceases and the mites switch to worker larvae, causing a quick population crash and often hive death.

text: Once infected with a Varroa destructor mite, there are two ways for which the honey bee may be damaged. Firstly, the mite’s consumption of hemolymph weakens both the adult bee and the larva, in particular it significantly decreases the weight of both the hatching and adult bee. Additionally infected adult worker bees have a lower lifespan than ordinary worker bees, they furthermore tend to be absent from the colony far more than ordinary bees which could be due to their reduced ability to navigate. Secondly, the mites are vectors of various viruses, in particular the Deformed wing virus [3]

text: After the initial developmental stages, when the young bee matures it leaves the brood cell and takes the mite with it. Varroa destructor then leaves the young bee for an older one, preferably for a nurse bee because nurse bees spend more time near the brood giving the mite more ample opportunity to reproduce. In fact because the nurse bee spends more time around the drone brood rather than the worker brood many more drones are infected with Varroa destructor.[3]

text: Varroa mites have been found on Tricia larvae of some wasp species, such as Vespula vulgaris, and flower-feeding insects such as the bumblebee, Bombus pennsylvanicus, the scarab beetle, Phanaeus vindex, and the flower-fly, Palpada vinetorum.[4] It parasitizes the young larvae and feeds on the internal organs of the hosts. Although the Varroa mite cannot reproduce on these insects, its presence on them may be a means by which it spreads short distances (phoresy).

text: Introduction around the world[edit]

text: Varroa mites originally only occurred in Asia, on the Asian honeybee, Apis cerana, but this species has been introduced to many other countries on several continents, resulting in disastrous infestations of European honeybees.[5]

text:
Early 1960s Japan, USSR
1960s–1970s Eastern Europe
1970s Brazil[6]
Late 1970s South America
1980 Poland
1982 France
1984 Switzerland, Spain, Italy
1987 Portugal
1987 United States
1989 Canada
1992 United Kingdom[7]
2000 New Zealand (North Island)
2006 New Zealand (South Island)[8]
2007 Hawaii (Oahu, Hawaii Island)[9][10]
2008 Hawaii (Big Island)

text: As of mid-2012, Australia is thought to be free of the mite.[11][12] In early 2010, an isolated subspecies of bee was discovered in Kufra (southeastern Libya) that appears to be free of the mite.[13] The Hawaiian islands of Maui, Kauai, Molokai, and Lanai are all free of the mite.

text: Identification[edit]

text: Until recently, V. destructor was thought to be a closely related mite species called Varroa jacobsoni. Both species parasitize the Asian honey bee, A. cerana. However, the species originally described as V. jacobsoni by Anthonie Cornelis Oudemans in 1904 is not the same species that also attacks Apis mellifera. The jump to A. mellifera probably first took place in the Philippines in the early 1960s where imported A. mellifera came into close contact with infected A. cerana. Until 2000, scientists had not identified V. destructor as a separate species. This late identification in 2000 by Anderson and Trueman corrected some previous confusion and mislabeling in the scientific literature.[14]

text: Varroosis[edit]

text: The infection and subsequent parasitic disease caused by Varroa mites is called varroosis. Sometimes, the incorrect names varroatosis or varroasis are used. A parasitic disease name must be formed from the taxonomic name of the parasite and the suffix -osis[15] as provided in the Standardised Nomenclature by the World Association for the Advancement of Veterinary Parasitology.[16] For example, the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) uses the name varroosis in the OIE Terrestrial Manual.[17]

text: Treatments have met with limited success. First, the bees were medicated with fluvalinate, which had about 95% mite falls. However, the last 5% became resistant to it, and later, almost immune. Fluvalinate was followed by coumaphos.

text: Control or preventive measures and treatment[edit]

text: Chemical measures[edit]

text: Varroa mites can be treated with commercially available miticides. Miticides must be applied carefully to minimize the contamination of honey that might be consumed by humans. Proper use of miticides also slows the development of resistance by the mites.

text: Synthetic chemicals

text:
Pyrethroid insecticide (Fluvalinate) as strips
Organophosphate insecticide (Coumaphos or Check-mite) as strips
Manley's Thymol Crystal and surgical spirit recipe with sugar as food[18]

text: Naturally occurring chemicals

text:
Formic acid as vapor or pads (Mite-Away)
Powdered sugar (Dowda method), talc, or other "safe" powders with a grain size between 5 and 15 μm (0.20 and 0.59 mils) can be sprinkled on the bees.
Essential oils, especially lemon, mint and thyme oil[19]
Sugar esters (Sucrocide) in spray application
Oxalic acid trickling method or applied as vapor
Mineral oil (food grade) as vapor and in direct application on paper or cords
Natural hops compounds in strip application (Hopguard)

text: However the most effective way of protecting bees against the Varroa destructor is by breeding bees that are resistant to these mites.[3]

text: Physical, mechanical, behavioral methods[edit]

text: Varroa mites can also be controlled through nonchemical means. Most of these controls are intended to reduce the mite population to a manageable level, not to eliminate the mites completely.

text:
Perforated bottom board method is used by many beekeepers on their hives. When mites occasionally fall off a bee, they must climb back up to parasitize another bee. If the beehive has a screened floor with mesh the right size, the mite will fall through and cannot return to the beehive. The screened bottom board is also being credited with increased circulation of air, which reduces condensation in a hive during the winter. Studies at Cornell University done over two years found that screened bottoms have no measurable effect at all.[20] Screened bottom boards with sticky boards (glue traps) separate mites that fall through the screen and the sticky board prevents them from crawling back up. Insecticide may also be applied to the sticky boards to help kill the mites.
Heating method, first used by beekeepers in Eastern Europe in the 1970s, later became a global method. In this method, hive frames are heated to at least 104 °F (40 °C) for several hours at a time, which causes the mites to drop from the bees.[21][22] When combined with the perforated bottom board method, this can control varroa sufficiently to aid colony survival.[21] In Germany, anti-varroa heaters are manufactured for use by professional bee keepers. A thermosolar hive has been patented and manufactured in the Czech Republic.[22][23]
Limited drone brood cell method limits the brood space cell for Varroa mites to inhabit (4.9 mm across — about 0.5 mm smaller than standard), and also enhances the difference in size between worker and drone brood, with the intention of making the drone comb traps more effective in trapping Varroa mites. Small cell foundations have staunch advocates, though controlled studies have been generally inconclusive.
Comb trapping method (also known as the swarming method) is based on interrupting the honey bee brood cycle. It is an advanced method that removes capped brood from the hive, where the Varroa mites breed. The queen is confined to a comb using a comb cage. At 9-day intervals, the queen is confined to a new comb, and the brood in the old comb is left to be reared. The brood in the previous comb, now capped and infested with Varroa mites, is removed. The cycle is repeated. This complex method can remove up to 80% of Varroa mites in the hive.[citation needed]
Freezing drone brood method takes advantage of the Varroa mites' preference for longer living drone brood. The beekeeper will put a frame in the hive that is sized to encourage the queen to lay primarily drone brood. Once the brood is capped, the beekeeper removes the frame and puts it in the freezer. This kills the Varroa mites feeding on those bees. It also kills the drone brood, but most hives produce an excess of drone bees, so it is not generally considered a loss. After freezing, the frame can be returned to the hive. The nurse bees will clean out the dead brood (and dead mites) and the cycle continues.
Drone brood excision method is a variation applicable to top bar hives. Honey bees tend to place combs suitable for drone brood along the bottom and outer margins of the comb. Cutting this off at a late stage of development ("purple eye stage") and discarding it reduces the mite load on the colony. It also allows for inspection and counting of mites on the brood.

text: Genetic engineering[edit]

text: Researchers have been able to use RNA interference to knock out genes in the Varroa mite. There have also been efforts to breed for changes in the honey bees. Two strains have been developed in the United States that can detect damaged pupae under cappings and remove them before the infestation spreads further.[24][25] The “IN”/Indiana strain is under development at Purdue University to develop lines that groom off and bite phoretic Varroa to kill the mites.[26][27]


document_title: Mensural notation

question_text: the collection of parallel lines and spaces on which notes are written

text: Mensural notation

text: Note values[edit]

text:
Note values

Name

Century

13th

14th

15th

17th

Maxima

Mx

Longa

L

Breve

B

Semibreve

Sb

Minim

Mn

Semiminim

Sm

Fusa

F

Semifusa

Sf

tag: table

text: The system of note types used in mensural notation closely corresponds to the modern system. The mensural brevis is nominally the ancestor of the modern double whole note (breve); likewise, the semibrevis corresponds to the whole note (semibreve), the minima to the half note (minim), the semiminima to the quarter note (crotchet), and the fusa to the eighth note (quaver). Very rarely, mensural notation also used yet smaller subdivisions, such as the semifusa (corresponding to the sixteenth note or semiquaver). On the other hand, there were also two larger values, the longa (quadruple whole note or long) and the maxima (or duplex longa, called a large in Britain), which are no longer in regular use today.

text: Despite these nominal equivalences, each note had a much shorter temporal value than its modern counterpart. Between the 14th and 16th centuries, composers repeatedly introduced new note shapes for ever smaller temporal divisions of rhythm, and the older, longer notes were slowed down in proportion. The basic metrical relationship of a long to a short beat shifted from longa–breve in the 13th century, to breve–semibreve in the 14th, to semibreve–minim by the end of the 15th, and finally to minim–semiminim (i.e., half and quarter notes, or minim and crotchet) in modern notation. Thus, what was originally the shortest of all note values used, the semibreve, has become the longest note used routinely today, the whole note.

text: Originally, all notes were written in solid, filled-in form ("black notation"). In the mid-15th century, scribes began to use hollow note shapes ("white notation"), reserving black shapes only for the smallest note values. This change was probably motivated by the change from parchment to paper as the most common writing material, as paper was less suited to holding large dots of ink.[1]

text: Rests[edit]

text:
Rests

Value

Mensural

Modern

Mx

 or

L

 or

B

Sb

Mn

Sm

F

Sf

text: As with the notes, the shapes of the rest symbols in mensural notation are already similar to their modern descendants (with the smaller values being successively introduced in the course of the period of mensural notation). The rest symbols of the larger values had a clear visual logic reflecting their time durations, based on the breve rest being a vertical stroke the length of one staff space. For the longa rests, a visual distinction was made depending on whether the longa was imperfect (two breves long) or perfect. Accordingly, their signs were visually twice or three times the length of a breve rest respectively, while the semibreve rest was half that length. Maxima rests, in turn, were groups of two or three longa rests combined. If several longa rests followed each other, groups of either two or three of them were written together on the same staff line to indicate whether they were supposed to be grouped into perfect or imperfect maxima units.

text: Ligatures[edit]

text:
Binary ligatures

value

proprietasperfectio

desc.

asc.

B–L

cum propr.cum perf.

L–L

sine propr.cum perf.

B–B

cum propr.sine perf.

L–B

sine propr.sine perf.

Sb–Sb

cum opposita p.

text:
Generalized ligature rules

final L

final B

initial L

initial B

non-final L

Mx

text: Ligatures are groups of notes written together, usually indicating melismatic singing of the same syllable over several notes. Ligature forms exist only for the larger note values from the semibreve upwards. Their use in mensural notation was a holdover from the earlier modal rhythmic system, of which they inherited some of their rhythmic meaning.

text: The rhythmic values of ligatures in modal notation had been based on a metric re-interpretation of the ligature neumes used since much earlier in the notation of Gregorian plainchant. In modal notation, ligatures represented stereotyped rhythmic sequences of short and long notes, typically involving groups of one or more initial short notes (i.e., breves) and one final long note (i.e., a longa). In mensural notation, this rule was generalized, with all other rhythmic combinations being classified in terms of deviation from this basic pattern. In medieval terminology, a ligature possessed perfectio ("perfection")[2] if its final note was a longa (L), and it had proprietas ("its [normal] property") if its first note was a breve (B).[3]

text: Accordingly, a note pair of B–L (cum proprietate et cum perfectione) could be written with the most basic of ligature shapes, those inherited from plainchant, namely the descending clivis () and the ascending podatus (). Likewise, three-note groups of B–B–L could be written with some of the inherited ternary neumes, such as the porrectus (, direction down–up), the torculus (, direction up–down), or the scandicus (, direction up–up).

text: If, by way of exception, the first note was to be a longa, this was signaled by a reversal of its visual "property", namely the use of initial stems: the descending clivis had its downward stem removed (), while, conversely, the ascending podatus had one added to it ( or ).

text: On the other hand, if the final note was to be a breve (sine perfectione), this was signaled by a change in the noteheads themselves: the descending sequence of square heads was replaced with a single diagonal beam (), while the ascending podatus had its second note folded out to the right (). Both sequences correspond to the initial B–B segments of the ternary porrectus and torculus respectively.

text: If both exceptions co-occurred (sine proprietate et sine perfectione), both graphical alterations were combined accordingly.

text: In addition to sequences of longa and breve, ligatures could also contain pairs of semibreves (but not normally a single one).[4] These were called cum opposita proprietate, and always marked by an upward-pointing stem to the left of the note pair.

text: There were also some alternate versions of the ascending ligatures. Thus, the basic ascending B–L podatus shape was replaced by one where the second note was both folded out to the right and marked with an extra stem (), as if these two modifications were meant to cancel each other out.[5] The ascending L–L (sine proprietate) was modified accordingly.[6]

text: Ligatures could contain any number of notes. In multi-note ligatures, the rules about initial and final values are applied in analogy to those in the binary forms. In addition, the following rules hold for notes in all positions:[7]

text:
Any notehead with an upward stem to its left is the first of a pair of semibreves (cum opposita proprietate).
Any medial notehead with a downward stem to its right is a longa.
A prolonged, double-width notehead with or without a downward stem to its right is a maxima.
Any other notehead not covered by any of the rules above is a breve.

text: Mensurations[edit]

text:
Mensurations

Ternary

Binary

Maximodus

perfectus1 Mx = 3 L

imperfectus1 Mx = 2 L

Modus

perfectus 1 L = 3 B

imperfectus1 L = 2 B

Tempus

perfectum1 B = 3 Sb

imperfectum1 B = 2 Sb

Prolatio

maior1 Sb = 3 Mn

minor1 Sb = 2 Mn

text: Mensural notation distinguished between several basic metric patterns of a piece of music, which were defined as combinations of ternary and binary subdivisions of time on successive hierarchical levels and roughly correspond to modern bar structures. The division of the semibreve into minims was called prolatio, that of the breve into semibreves was called tempus, and that of the longa into breves was known as modus. The division of the maxima into longas was called modus maximarum or modus maior; in the modern literature it is also sometimes called maximodus. Each of these levels could be either perfect (ternary) or imperfect (binary). The two types of prolatio were also known as "major prolation" and "minor prolation" respectively.

text:
Mensuration signs

Tempus

Prolatio

Sign

Semibreves

Minims

Modern

1:4

1:2

1:1

perfectum

maior

98

94

92

perfectum

minor

34

32

31

imperfectum

maior

68

64

62

imperfectum

minor

24

22

21

text: The perfect modus and maximodus became rare in practice after the 14th century. Of most practical importance were the subdivisions from the breve downwards, as by that time the semibreves rather than the breves had taken over the function of the basic counting unit. The four possible combinations of tempus and prolatio could be signaled by a set of mensuration signs at the beginning of a composition: a circle for tempus perfectum, a semicircle for tempus imperfectum, each combined with a dot for prolatio maior, or no dot for prolatio minor. These correspond to modern measures of 98, 34, 68, and 24 respectively (assuming a reduction factor of 1:4 in transcription, i.e., mapping mensural minims to modern quavers), or alternatively 94, 32, 64 and 22 respectively (with a reduction factor of 1:2). In each case, one breve corresponds to one modern bar. In addition, each of these basic patterns had a diminished (diminutum) variant, indicated by a vertical stroke through the sign (, , , ). These so-called "cut signs" indicated a reduction of all temporal values by a factor of two. (The signs  and  are the source of the modern "common time" and "alla breve" signatures  and  respectively.) A reversed semicircle  was usually understood to be the same as .

text: There were normally no special signs for indicating the higher divisions of modus and maximodus. However, groups of longa rests at the beginning of a piece (which occurred frequently, as often some voices in a polyphonic composition would enter later than others) could be used as an indicator of the intended meter. If longa rests were written across three staff spaces, they were perfect; moreover, if they occurred in groups of three written together on the same staff line they indicated perfect maximodus. Occasionally, if no voice happened to have a sufficiently long rest at the beginning of the piece, a dummy rest symbol of one maxima's worth of longae would be written to the left of the mensuration sign; in that case it was understood as part of the time signature and not actually executed as a rest.

text: Imperfection and alteration[edit]

text: The time value of some notes could change according to their immediate context in certain situations. The rules for this were developed on the basis of the typical rhythmic nature of medieval music in the 13th century. Most of this music followed the same basic metric pattern, which in modern notation would be written as a swift 64 (or 68) meter.[8] Thus, melodies consisted mainly of ternary long notes (in modern notation, dotted minims), or alternating sequences of binary long notes and short notes (minims and crotchets), or groups of three short notes. In the 13th century, all of these were notated using only the longa and breve notes. A longa was automatically understood to fill a whole ternary metric group whenever it was in the neighborhood of other notes that did the same, i.e., whenever it was followed either by another longa or by a full group of three breves. When, however, the longa was preceded or followed by a single breve, then both filled a ternary group together. Thus, the longa had to be reduced to a value of two (it was "imperfected"). When, finally, there were only two breves in between two longae, then the two breves had to fill up a metrical group together. This was done by lengthening the second breve (brevis altera) to a value of two, while the first (brevis recta) kept its normal value.[9]

text:
Imperfection and alteration

a)

b)

c)

d)

e)

f)

g)

h)

i)

j)

k)

l)

m)

text: At the earliest stage, this basic principle applied only to the relation between longa and breve. Beginning with Franco of Cologne, the same pattern was also applied between breves and semibreves,[10] and finally, with Philippe de Vitry's theory of the Ars nova, it was taken yet another level down, to the newly introduced minims. From that time onwards, imperfection and alteration could happen on the level of breves and semibreves whenever the piece was in tempus perfectum, and it could happen between semibreves and minims if the piece was in prolatio maior. The divisions below the minim were invariably binary. Theorists developed an intricate set of precedence rules for when and how to apply imperfection, together with a complex terminology for its different types.[11]

text: Normally, a note was imperfected by one of the next smaller order, e.g., a breve (B) by a semibreve (Sb), and thereby lost one third of its own nominal value (ex. [a–c]). This was called "full imperfection" (imperfectio ad totum). It could be induced either backwards (a parte post), or forwards (a parte ante, ex. [c]). If both readings were possible, backwards imperfection took precedence. The smaller unit could also be replaced by a group of yet smaller notes of equivalent length, e.g., a semibreve's worth of minims or semiminims (ex. [d]). Imperfection could also apply recursively, for instance with an Sb imperfecting a preceding B and being itself imperfected by a following minim (ex. [e]), if the meter was suitable (e.g., tempus perfectum and prolatio maior).

text: Imperfection typically occurred if two larger notes were separated by a single smaller unit, as in a sequence of B–Sb–B–Sb. If, however, they were separated by a group of either two or three of the smaller units, there was no imperfection: in the case of two, alteration was applied instead (ex. [f]); while in the case of three the group was simply left to fill the space of a perfect unit by themselves (ex. [g]). If, in turn, there was a longer sequence of four or more smaller units before the next longer value, then the first of them induced imperfection (ex. [h]). Imperfection was barred on any note that was followed directly by another of the same order (similis ante similem perfecta). Thus, the middle part of a sequence like  could only be written using alteration (as shown in ex.[f]); the use of imperfection like in ex.(c) was excluded, because the presence of the subsequent breve blocked it.

text: The normal reading of the groups could be overridden by placing a separator dot (punctus divisionis) between the notes to indicate which of them were meant to form a ternary unit together (ex. [i]). If the separator dot was placed after a potentially ternary note (e.g., a breve in tempus perfectum), it typically had the effect of keeping it perfect, i.e., overriding an imperfection that would otherwise have applied to it. In these cases it was also called punctus perfectionis. Besides this, a dot could also be used in the same way as today: when it was placed after a note that was nominally binary (e.g., a breve in tempus imperfectum), it augmented it by one half (punctus augmentationis).[12]

text: In some situations, imperfection could be induced not by a note of the next smaller order but by an even smaller one. For instance, a breve in prolatio maior, which could be thought of as being composed of two perfect semibreves, could be imperfected by an adjacent minim, taking away one third of one of its two halves, thus reducing its total length from 6 to 5 (ex.[j]). This was called "partial imperfection" (imperfectio ad partem). Imperfection involving note values two orders apart (e.g., a breve by a minim, or a longa by a semibreve) was called "imperfection of an immediate part" (ad partem propinquam); while the (rarer) case where it occurred across even greater distances (e.g., between a longa and a minim) was known as "imperfection of a remote part" (ad partem remotam, ex. [k]). Finally, partial imperfection could also apply from both sides of a long note at once (ad partes, ex [l–m]). In this way, a note that was nominally 9 beats long could be reduced to any value down to 4, or a note that was 12 beats long to any value down to 7.[13]

text: Rests, unlike notes, had an invariable duration and could not be imperfected or altered; however, they could induce imperfection or alteration on a neighboring note.

text: Proportions and colorations[edit]

text: An individual composition was not limited to a single set of tempus and prolatio. Meters could be shifted in the course of a piece, either by inserting a new mensuration sign, or by using numeric proportions. A "3" indicates that all notes will be reduced to one-third of their value; a "2" indicates double tempo; a fraction "3/2" indicates three in the time of two, and so forth. The proportion 2 is usually understood to have the same effect as the use of a cut sign with a vertical stroke ( = ).

text: The use of numeric proportions can interact with the use of different basic mensurations in fairly complex ways. This has led to a certain amount of uncertainty and controversy over the correct interpretation of these notation devices, both in contemporary theory and in modern scholarship.[14]

text:
Coloration

a)

b)

c)

d)

text: Another way of altering the metrical value of notes was coloration. This refers to the device of literally marking a note as rhythmically exceptional by writing it in a different color. In the earlier period, when normal notes were black, the exceptional ones were written in red, or sometimes hollow. In the later period, the practice was reversed; as the normal notes were now hollow, the exceptional ones were filled out in black. In either case, "colored" notes are understood to have 2⁄3 of their normal duration, and are always imperfect with respect to their next smaller sub-divisions.

text: Coloration applied to a group of breves (ex. [a]) was known as color temporis, while that of a group of semibreves (ex. [b–c]) was called color prolationis. The resulting rhythmic effect, as expressed in modern notation, differs somewhat according to whether the affected notes were normally perfect or imperfect according to the basic mensuration of the music. Applied to perfect notes (ex. [a–b]), coloration creates the effect of a hemiola: three binary rhythmic groups in the space normally taken up by two ternary ones, but with the next smaller time units (semibreves in [a], minims in [b]) remaining constant. When applied to notes that were already imperfect according to their normal values (ex. [c]), coloration results in the effect of a group of triplets, with all rhythmic units reduced by two thirds.[15] Another special form of coloration was that applied to a group of a single semibreve and a following minim, called minor color (ex. [d]). Whereas it would logically be expected to result in a triplet group (), it was instead conventionally executed as a dotted group equivalent to a dotted minim and a semiminim (note that in the context of white notation, the colored – i.e., blackened – version of the minim in the minor color group happened to look just like a normal semiminim  anyway, even though nominally it was considered a different type of note.)[16]

text: The use of colored notes (at that time written in red) was introduced by Philippe de Vitry and flourished in the so-called ars subtilior of the late 14th century.

text:
B. Cordier, "Belle bonne sage"

 Upper voice, as written in the original

 Upper voice, transcribed. (Full score;  listen (help·info))

text: The example above, the chanson "Belle, bonne, sage" by Baude Cordier, written in a heart-shaped manuscript, is a rhythmically complex piece of ars subtilior. It uses several notation techniques for shifting between rhythms:[17]

text:
red notes: diminution 2⁄3
shift to prolatio maior: here with implied augmentation minim→semibreve
white notes: diminution 1⁄2 (two breves in the time of one)
proportion "3": diminution 1⁄3
proportion "8/9": eight notes in the time of nine notes of the preceding bar

text: Mensural canons[edit]

text: Sometimes, music was written in such a way that the same line of music had to be performed under two or more mensuration schemes, typically leading to slower (augmented) and faster (diminished) versions of the same passage. In such cases, the music was typically notated only once, and several different mensuration signs were placed in front of it together, often supplemented with a verbal instruction of how it should be executed (called a "canon").

text: This technique could be applied both successively and simultaneously. Successive mensural canons were a characteristic feature of late 14th and early 15th century isorhythmic motets. A famous example is Nuper rosarum flores by Guillaume Dufay, where the tenor (notated all in longa and a few breve values) is performed first as tempus perfectum (32), then tempus imperfectum (22), then tempus imperfectum diminutum (24), and finally tempus perfectum diminutum (34), leading to length relations of 6:4:2:3 between the four repetitions.

text: Pieces that demanded simultaneous execution of versions of the same music, i.e., contrapunctal canons, were written by several composers of the Franco-Flemish school in the late 15th and early 16th century, such as Josquin des Prez, Johannes Ockeghem or Pierre de la Rue. Ockeghem's Missa prolationum is famous for systematically exploring different ways of combining pairs of voices in mensural canons. In the example given below, from the first "Kyrie" of this mass, both upper voices sing the same notated line, one reading it as "tempus imperfectum" and the other as "tempus perfectum". The two lower voices are similarly coupled with each other. Each of the four voices thus starts the piece in a different mensuration, leading to different bar length in the modern transcription. (The lower voices, which are written in prolatio maior, later shift to a meter where all semibreves are imperfected through black coloration, which means they end up having the same length as those of the upper voices after all.)

text:
Manuscript page

 Original notation

 Transcription of the first few measures (full score;  listen (help·info))

text: Pitch notation[edit]

text: Whereas the rules of notating rhythm in Mensural notation were in many ways different from the modern system, the notation of pitch already followed much the same principles. Notes were written on staves of five (sometimes six) lines, prefixed with clefs, and could be altered by accidentals.

text: Clefs[edit]

text: Mensural notation generally uses C and F clefs, on various lines. G-clefs, while used infrequently throughout the period,  did not come into completely routine use until the later 16th century. Clefs were generally chosen to match the vocal range of a given voice, so as to avoid the need of ledger lines. Since middle C lies within that range for most voices, the C-clef is the one most frequently used. For mixed voices, a typical combination of clefs would have the bass clef (F on the fourth staff line) in the lowest voice, and tenor clef, alto clef and soprano clef (middle C on the fourth, third, and first staff line respectively) in the remaining voices. An alternative arrangement, known as chiavette, had the range of each voice shifted one third up, leading to a combination of F3, C3, C2 and G2 clefs.

text: Clefs originally bore shapes more or less closely resembling the letter they represented, but came to develop more ornamental shapes over time. In the F-clef, the two arms of the "F" were changed into two dots sitting to the right of a vertical stem. All three elements could be further modified; in particular, they were often styled as if they were note heads. The C-clef remained a simple, often square, "C"-like shape in most manuscripts, but its arms tended to become hollow rectangles or rhomboids in later manuscripts and especially in music prints of the 16th century. The G-clef developed a curved ornamental swash typically attached to the top of the letter, which ultimately evolved into the loop shape of the modern form.[18]

text:
C clef

F clef

G clef

text: Accidentals[edit]

text: The use of accidentals in medieval and renaissance music differs significantly from modern practice. Medieval notation used two accidental signs, the "b molle" () and the "b durum" (). While the former was identical in form to the modern flat sign (♭), the latter could be written in forms that resemble either the modern sharp (♯) or the modern natural (♮), but these functions were not distinguished from each other as they are today. The b molle served to pick out the lower of two alternative semitone steps for a given note (e.g., a B♭ as opposed to a B♮), while the b durum served to pick out the higher one (e.g., B♮ as opposed to B♭, but also F♯ as opposed to F♮, etc.).[19] The meanings of both signs thus overlaps with that of the natural sign today. Until the 16th century, only the flat signs regularly occurred as key signatures at the beginning of a staff (one or at most two flats).[20][21] Both forms of accidentals could occur as temporary accidentals elsewhere; however, in practice they were often not written but left to the performer to infer according to the rules of counterpoint and musica ficta.

text: Miscellaneous symbols[edit]

text: Mensural notation may contain a number of other symbols.

text: Custos[edit]

text: The custos (pl. custodes) appears at the end of the staff on or between the staff lines. It indicates the pitch of the first note that occurs on the following staff that belongs to that part relative to the clef of the current staff. This helps performers to prepare to sing the next note. If the next staff for the part occurs on the following page, two custodes may appear immediately next to each other.

text: Corona[edit]

text: The corona appears above the last note of the piece (or section). It is similar to the fermata in modern notation. It typically appears above the last note at each part of a piece to indicate the note should be held longer that its value indicates. If it does not appear at the end of a piece, typically a short pause is expected before proceeding with the notes after the note with the corona.

text: Signum Congruentiae[edit]

text: The signum congruentiae indicates the position of entry of another voice. This is used to denote canons. Instead of writing out all parts, only one part is written out. The signum congruentiae indicates that when the previous part has progressed up to the point where the signum congruentiae appears, the next part should enter (from the start).

text: There is some variation in the way signum congruentiae are denoted.

text: History[edit]

text: The most important early stages in the historical development of mensural notation are the works of Franco of Cologne (c. 1260), Petrus de Cruce (c. 1300), and Philippe de Vitry (1322). Franco, in his Ars cantus mensurabilis, was the first to describe the relations between maxima, longa and breve in terms that were independent of the fixed patterns of earlier rhythmic modes. He also refined the use of semibreves: while in earlier music, one breve could occasionally be replaced by two semibreves, Franco described the subdivision of the breve as ternary (perfect), dividing it either into three equal or two unequal semibreves (resulting in predominantly triplet rhythmic micro-patterns.)

text: Petrus de Cruce introduced subdivisions of the breve into even more short notes. However, he did not yet define these as separate smaller hierarchy levels (minim, semiminim etc.), but simply as variable numbers of semibreves. The exact rhythmic interpretation of these groups is partly uncertain. The technique of notating complex groups of short notes by sequences of multiple semibreves was later used more systematically in the notation of Italian Trecento music.

text: The decisive refinements that made notation even of extremely complex rhythmic patterns on multiple hierarchical metric levels possible were introduced in France during the time of the Ars nova, with Philippe de Vitry as the most important theoretician. The Ars nova introduced the shorter note values below the semibreve; it systematicized the relations of perfection and imperfection across all levels down to the minim, and it introduced the devices of proportions and coloration.

text: During the time of the Franco-Flemish school in Renaissance music, use of the French notation system spread throughout Europe. This period brought the replacement of black with white notation. It also brought a further slowing down of the duration of the larger note values while introducing even more new small ones (fusa, semifusa etc.). Towards the end of this period, the original rules of perfection and imperfection became gradually obsolescent, as did the use of ligatures. During the 17th century, the system of mensuration signs and proportions gradually developed into the modern time signatures, and new notation devices for time measurements, such as bar lines and ties, were introduced, thus ultimately leading towards the modern notation system.

text: Modern use[edit]

text: Today, music from the mensural period is normally transcribed into modern notation for performance or study, using a modern score layout, bar lines and often a modernized choice of clefs. A number of special editorial conventions for such transcriptions are common, especially in scholarly editions, where it is desirable that the basic characteristics of the original notation should be recoverable from the modern text.

text: While 19th and early 20th century editions of Renaissance music often preserved the large note values of the originals, including breves and longs, most modern editions will use scaled-down note values in order to match modern reading habits regarding tempo and beat structure. For 16th century music, a frequent scheme is diminution by a factor of 2 (i.e., rendering semibreves as modern minims), in a modern alla breve bar. Older music might be diminished by a factor of 4 (rendering semibreves as crotchets) or sometimes 8 (rendering breves as crotchets). For 13th-century pieces, diminution by 16 (rendering breves as quavers) is also common.[22] For 15th and 16th century music, bar divisions are usually chosen to match the time of a breve, while 14th century Ars nova pieces may be written in measures the length of a longa, and 13th century music in measures the length of a maxima.

text: To account for these editorial changes, scholarly editions often print a brief notation fragment in the original form in front of each staff at the beginning of a piece, called an "incipit", including the original clefs, mensuration signs, accidentals, and often the first few notes.[23] Alternatively, an annotation defining the mapping scheme may be provided over the staff, e.g., "=".

text: Where ligatures occur in the original text, this is conventionally marked by square brackets over the transcribed notes, while the use of coloration is sometimes marked by broken brackets (⌜...⌝). Flats or sharps that are not written in the original but suggested by the editor are typically indicated by placing them above the note rather than in front of it.

text: A special issue in representing Renaissance music is how to deal with its characteristic free-flowing rhythms, where modern bar lines can seem to overly highlight what is part of the natural articulation points of the melodic units. To avoid the excessive use of ties and to allow for a notation more closely reflecting the original, some editions will print bar lines not across the staves, but only in the intermediate spaces between them (a convention sometimes referred to by the German term Mensurstrich), allowing notes to be read as lasting across a bar line.[24][25]

text: For quoting mensural notation symbols in inline text, a number of characters have been included in the character encoding standard Unicode, in the "musical symbols" block. They are located at character codes U+1D1B6 through U+1D1CE.

text:
Unicode
Character name
Character
Image

U+1D1B6
Musical symbol maxima
𝆶

U+1D1B7
Musical symbol longa
𝆷

U+1D1B8
Musical symbol brevis
𝆸

U+1D1B9
Musical symbol semibrevis white
𝆹

U+1D1BA
Musical symbol semibrevis black
𝆺

U+1D1BB
Musical symbol minima
𝆹𝅥

U+1D1BC
Musical symbol minima black
𝆺𝅥

U+1D1BD
Musical symbol semiminima white
𝆹𝅥𝅮

U+1D1BE
Musical symbol semiminima black
𝆺𝅥𝅮

U+1D1BF
Musical symbol fusa white
𝆹𝅥𝅯

U+1D1C0
Musical symbol fusa black
𝆺𝅥𝅯

U+1D1C1
Musical symbol longa perfecta rest
𝇁

U+1D1C2
Musical symbol longa imperfecta rest
𝇂

U+1D1C3
Musical symbol brevis rest
𝇃

U+1D1C4
Musical symbol semibrevis rest
𝇄

U+1D1C5
Musical symbol minima rest
𝇅

U+1D1C6
Musical symbol semiminima rest
𝇆

U+1D1C7
Musical symbol tempus perfectum cum prolatione perfecta
𝇇

U+1D1C8
Musical symbol tempus perfectum cum prolatione imperfecta
𝇈

U+1D1C9
Musical symbol tempus perfectum cum prolatione perfecta diminution-1
𝇉

U+1D1CA
Musical symbol tempus imperfectum cum prolatione perfecta
𝇊

U+1D1CB
Musical symbol tempus imperfectum cum prolatione imperfecta
𝇋

U+1D1CC
Musical symbol tempus imperfectum cum prolatione imperfecta diminution-1
𝇌

U+1D1CD
Musical symbol tempus imperfectum cum prolatione imperfecta diminution-2
𝇍

U+1D1CE
Musical symbol tempus imperfectum cum prolatione imperfecta diminution-3
𝇎