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added reviews and changelog for charlie's orgculture paper

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Reviewer 4 (AC)
Contribution and Criteria for Evaluation
This paper makes a useful and somehow long-overlooked contribution by researching how groups that are, in this case, completely online (but also across spaces, media multiplexity), succeed and fail in their mergers. I think this is useful for game studies and, even larger in scope, online community work.
As such, the sampling frame is highly important: are the chosen groups representative of larger, more general groups? And, how is the research carried out?
First Round Review from AC (if needed)
Comments on CSCW Paper, WoW Guild Mergers
I really like the topic of this paper, and I think with a few changes it will be a good CSCW submission! I want it to succeed!!!!
I am so positively motivated by your study that I have reviewed it fully, not just read it and made a meta-review based on the work of the other three reviewers. As such, there are comments that are my independent review and then summary comments that wrap up my review and the review from the other three regular reviewers.
One item you must address is how you came about the sample. It seems unbelievable that you set out to study one successful merger and one failed merger of similar guilds and then found it on the very first attempt. More likely, I imagine, is that you were studying guild mergers and one failed, and you realized this was a good research opportunity (as indeed it is one!). But you don’t explain this, and you need to be clear about your sample and the research.
Another item I think needs to be better addressed is the connection of your theoretical concepts that were the important items for the mergers to the literature in the writeup.
“inductive codes emergent from data as well as deductive codes derived from theory.”
So, when we get to the analysis, we have a variety of items, but it isn’t clear where they came from, and there is so much good social work that a lot of your items should be derived from the literature, but then there isn’t really any literature mentioned in a way that connects it to the analysis much after the lit review IIRC.
So, in Table 2, I am left wondering where these items came from. They should be grounded in the literature. Also the items in section 6.2. They all seem like good, sensible items, but I don’t see that you need to be making them up on your own, we have enough community literature that they should be in there somewhere. Or be more clear about using, essentially, grounded theory but also the concepts that drove the results.
(A final small summary thought, since I don't see that affordances were a huge part of the story -- both guilds had the same affordances available, but one group used them to a better effect -- so perhaps you need to stress a little more "these are the important, community-building affordances" and I think you will find they are communicative ones, which is general but that's what builds community. So it is not entirely a design story, but one where if you build enough communicative tools, and people can easily communicate in other spaces, they will, because that's what people do -- talk and form bonds, communicate and form communities.)
Smaller comments, some of which are very picky, but let’s have you make this thing as robust as possible!
“organizational culture, a phenomena that has been mostly unstudied by social computing researchers”
I’m not sure I agree with that, as how do you robustly define who is a social computing researcher?
“Future social computing systems design and research should attend to and support the role of organizational culture in shaping the outcomes of cooperative work and play.”
It’s not clear to me how to do that, as so much social interaction occurs over more than one channel (so like in WoW, on guild forums on the web, and now in Discord, all of which are controlled by different interests).
In this paragraph:
“Newcomer socialization has been one of the most important topics in research into online communities [7, 15]. This work has relied heavily on a distinction between collective, institutional practices of socialization and individualized, “on-the-job” socialization [25]. In particular, social computing researchers have sought to evaluate the relevant effectiveness of the two different socialization tactics in different online contexts [15].”
I am hesitant about “social computing researchers” here because really I think you’re considering, appropriately, all communities: online, offline, and partially mediated. I know of no work that suggests people in communities act differently when any type of media is introduced—maybe they now have different tools and so can take new actions, but technology changes, people don’t. So I think you’re correctly thinking of the larger issue (human behavior) but then make it too narrow in the write-up.
Needs cite: “basic training in the military is a classic example”
“Although this process has been studied in organization science, this model of newcomer socialization has received very little attention in social computing research to date.”
Is there any reason to expect it is any different? I do not think there is one.
I would also again be hesitant to carve out “social computing research” as if it is its own, distinct, field, with clearly defined and strong boundaries. So much work is interdisciplinary. If you’re studying the sociology of mediated computer use, that’s a bunch of different fields right there (sociology, communication studies, media psychology….). Social computing research, to me, isn’t a new area of study, it’s a collection of specific methods (both new and old, so, scraping, but, regressions, for example, or, ML regressions….) and associated large-scale data.
Typo: “Edgar Schein, the term is used to to describe:”
The Schein quote is great, it fits communities, especially historical ones, perfectly.
“To our knowledge, mergers in online groups have never been studied.”
This paper sort of looks at mergers, but it is more focused on groups that stay together across guild moves:
Poor, N., & Skoric, M. M. (2016). Play together, stay together? Community cohesion and stability in an MMO. Proceedings of the 2016 Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. http://doi.org/10.1109/HICSS.2016.283
They also have a paper which looks at a guild that fell apart, reminiscent of some of the drama the guilds in your paper encountered:
Poor, N., & Skoric, M. M. (2014). Death of a guild, birth of a network: Online community ties within and beyond code. Games and Culture, 9(3), 182–202. http://doi.org/10.1177/1555412014537401
Additionally, you could include a link to this book when you discuss “drama”, although you don’t call it drama in the paper:
Chen, M. (2012). Leet noobs: The life and death of an expert player group in World of Warcraft. New York, NY: Peter Lang.
(“combined with intra-group conflict”, at that point, drama would be a good thing to mention.)
Experience should not be in quotes, as it is the correct word:
“Player characters increase in power by collecting “experience” from activities”
I have not raided in WoW but I have for over a year in another game, so am curious about the levels for WoW raids:
“Raids can be attempted at four difficulty levels: “Looking For Raid”, “Normal”, “Heroic,” or “Mythic”.”
LfR is a level??? That seems weird.
“Encounters with a raid boss usually last between 5 to 10 minutes.”
Really? Given my experience in other games, that seems unbelievable. Do you have a cite for that? Although it is possible I am just misremembering, it’s been a while since I stopped playing, and raid bosses may be like the fish that got away in my mind: they get bigger as they recede in time. Possibly there is a difference between “trying and wiping a few times” and “did it on the first try.” However, this will depend on how good the raid group is for that encounter in terms of gear and practice with that boss’s specifics (the song and dance, I called it: when the adds come in, who to burn down first, when to run in and when to run away, etc.).
On raid member selection:
“This choice is usually made on the level, experience, and power of the players’ characters.”
Well, no, that’s wrong. Sure, you can’t use characters that are too low level or too high level. However, really the only considerations are do they have enough power (level and gear) and overall class composition of the raid. You need the right balance of tanks, healers, and dps.
Cite for this? “mergers between guilds are very common”
I don’t understand this:
“WoW’s affordances make individual recruitment into established guilds difficult”
My unguilded characters would get occasional whispers to join, but beyond that I don’t understand what you are saying. What about the affordances?
“Williams observed that guild mergers were “as contentious as any real world corporate-merger””
Well, yes, Dmitri tends to overstate things to make his work seem more important than it is (besides using his work as a citation mill for himself).
Typo: “Although he had not been active recently, the he had been an active participant in WoW”
I don’t understand this:
“In response to requests from his ethnographic subjects, he participated in the two post-merger guilds”
That makes it seem backwards maybe. You should have been asking them to research their guilds, but here it seems like they are asking you.
I like that you mention IRB.
“Within each merger, the guilds were superficially similar to each other.”
Instead of superficially maybe use “similar to each other in theoretically relevant some ways”. We don’t want a superficial comparison, we want a good comparison, grounded in theory.
“Players in Salty Dogs fell under one of two categories”
Maybe “into” instead of “under”.
I really like Figure 2.
“Salty Dogs members often shared strong social bonds outside of the game. “
Explain strong social bonds, give some examples.
“By September 2017, sustained attrition…”
Maybe just attrition, “sustained attrition” sounds like something that needs to be defined.
“…Salty Dogs had only 11 players on its raid team.”
You might want, at some point, to mention raid alliances. (Maybe even DKP.)
“Incredibly, Divinity’s leadership never even formally announced that a merger had occurred.”
I agree that that is incredible but that’s kind of editorializing and so drop incredibly.
“While gaming is inherently a ludic activity,”
What does that mean? (Honestly I am not a fan of the word ludic, does it mean gaming, or playful or what? Most style guides suggest avoiding using Latinate words.) So like, gaming is a playful activity. Sure. (This is not the transition sentence you are looking for.)
This is great:
“Although Divinity also used a Discord server, it lacked structure and was rarely used by its guild leaders or members; most of its usage appeared to be from former Mirage members. Divinity began hosting a guild website in July, a month after the merger, but it was rarely used by the majority of the community and, as a result, was taken down in August.”
Communication is community. You can cite John Dewey and James Carey here, or even Robin Dunbar. Bring out the big guns when they’re in your corner.
This does not make a lot of sense to me:
“In addition, the strategies employed by Praise the Sun, and overlooked by Divinity, suggest avenues for design. Mergers may not happen every day, but when they do, systems designers and community leaders can pursue them strategically, taking the culture of existing communities and organizations into account. This may even be true for de novo systems as designers can select from existing UI features, roles, technical tools, and metaphors with which to build a new community culture.”
I don’t see that these were design issues – both guilds had all the same options and technologies available. One group used those affordances in certain ways, the other didn’t. Also, that the successful merger used a variety of technologies (in WoW, Discord, and the web) makes me wonder about how this is a design issue when the technologies they used are controlled by a variety of stakeholders. That one group succeeded tells me we do have the right designs, unless they had to overcome a lot to use them and the other group tried and failed, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
“Finally, our results underscore the importance of “third place” virtual activities…”
I have more and more hesitation about the “third place” concept. There was work in the home and there was socializing in the work area. You don’t need to change anything about that, but you can think about it if you like.
Requested revisions:
Explain how you came about your sample (as in my review).
Highlight the connections between your theoretical items and the literature more.
I suggest thinking about all the reviewer comments, not just the issues I raise here in the meta-review.
One reviewer stresses tools, culture, and design. I think this is a ripe avenue for some further exploration and discussion in the work.
One reviewer, who helpfully listed some relevant literature, some of which I recognized and have used in my research as well, stresses the importance of clarifying your theoretical framing and conceptualization of organization (I would add, both cultural and communication), and although there are a lot of slightly different definitions of organizational culture, I think most readers will understand that and it’s not a problem. Choose one and stick with it robustly (well more robustly than you have). Then connect this and the literature more strongly to the items you arrive at for the analysis (strengthening/clarifying and connecting go hand in hand.)
I agree that the guild names become confusing, and would like you to make that easier for the readers. How exactly, I’m not sure, there are probably a few ways to do this. It is important to know that one guild kept its name. Maybe guildname(X), where X = {PreS, PostS, PreF, PostF} for pre- and post-merger and also Success and Fail, although this is a bit clumsy. But there are two important dimensions, sadly both pre and post start with P. Oh maybe Before and After, guildname(BS) wait no BS may not be the best abbreviation. (“AF” also has a slangy impolite meaning currently.) Hopefully you will arrive at a workable solution! Oh perhaps guildA(1S), where the number is the stage of merger (so 1= pre and 2= post) and S and F (I think knowing S/F ahead of time is helpful and I think that is recognized in the paper). You do not need to use my specific suggestion but clarifying is needed to make it easier for readers.
Reviewer 2 (2AC)
First Round Overall Recommendation
5 - Definitely acceptable (ready as-is)
Contribution and Criteria for Evaluation
The authors studied mergers in World of Warcraft raid guilds through a 6-month ethnography. In doing so, they aimed to understand the merger process, what actions shaped the merger process and techniques that recognized, mitigated and effectively managed differences in the cultures involved in the mergers.
First Round Review
I thoroughly enjoyed this paper. The topic is novel, the method appropriate and rigorous, the contribution clear, the results interesting and the writing excellent.
The authors report a six month ethnography of two mergers between World of Warcraft raid guilds. In doing so, they are able to identify differences in the pre-merger cultures of the guilds and examine the actions before, during, and after the mergers that might have lead to quite different outcomes. This is a fascinating study. Although mergers have been studies extensively in the off-line world, little is known how this process unfolds online.
The method was exemplary with extensive participant observations (10 hours per week) and observations of out of game interactions, as well as interviews with guild leaders and members.
The authors found greater cultural compatibility between guilds in the successful merger (which is consistent with previous research on mergers) and, more importantly, that how the groups managed conflict was also quite different. The insights regarding how the guilds planned the merger, how they socialized new members, and the role of non-task based socializing were all well described, supported, and interesting.
The authors do a commendable job of integrating their findings with theory. I particularly appreciated the discussion of settled and unsettled cultures and how "settling" happens online.
I have two primary suggestions for strengthening this paper:
1) The abstract is rather weak and doesn't do a good job of capturing the contributions of the work. I recommend revising the abstract.
2) Under "alternative explanations," the authors discuss technological tools, but It seems that rather than an alternative explanation this could be considered another difference between the groups that is intertwined with culture, rather than separate from it. I encourage the authors to consider integrating the use of technological tools into the analysis rather than treating it as an alliterative explanation.
3) I'd like to have seen more on design implications. Not just system design, but online communities, more generally. And, more specific ideas about what this might look like. How can communities be designed to integrate cultures more effectively? What might these "third places" look like? If you could give a bit more thought to design implications, I think the impact of the paper could be greater.
Reviewer 1 (reviewer)
Contribution and Criteria for Evaluation
The authors study two cases of merging communities in an MMPORG through the lens of organisational culture theory. World of Warcraft is the MMPORG and the merging communities are "raid guilds". The authors claim that this is the first work that investigates organisational culture in the context of online groups and that it contributes to research on newcomer socialisation in online communities.
First Round Review
The paper is very well written and certainly sells a coherent story. It is clear why the authors chose the subject matter for their study and they are right in saying that this angle is under-researched in the field.
World of Warcraft seems like a reasonable choice for the study at a first sight, though at this point I find a slight between the level of detail the game itself is described compared to the link to theory about organisational culture. This harms the paper because it is not really clear if the authors attribute the real constructs from organisational culture to the World of Warcraft setting. While in section 3.2. they state "Although none of this work has engaged with the literature on organisational culture, some has categorised raid guilds using dichotomies that might reflect cultural differences." Then they list examples of those "dichotomies", such as “task-oriented” or “social-oriented”. I want to highlight two problems here: First, the use of the word "might" indicates the uncertainty whether these are actual constructs used in theories on organisational culture. Second, going back to the introductory paragraph about organisational culture (side note: which is very short) lets me find the following definition of organisational culture given by the authors: "Organisational culture is essentially a conceptual model for what works and how things should be." Altogether, I fail to see how this definition fits with what the authors' definition of organisational culture, and I find this important theoretical grounding of the paper unfortunately not sufficient.
In order to be a bit more constructive about this: Literature on online communities has focused on norms and cultural aspects. Research on online communities and organisational studies tends to avoid the concept of 'culture' because it is too vague and difficult to operationalise. It has been more fruitful to look at social capital, norms, rules, regulations, rituals, etc., which are all components of culture. I suggest a look at the following literature:
Levina, N. and Arriaga, M., 2014. Distinction and status production on user-generated content platforms: Using Bourdieu’s theory of cultural production to understand social dynamics in online fields. Information Systems Research, 25(3), pp.468-488.
Iriberri, A. and Leroy, G., 2009. A life-cycle perspective on online community success. ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), 41(2), p.11.
Yang, J., Morris, M.R., Teevan, J., Adamic, L.A. and Ackerman, M.S., 2011. Culture Matters: A Survey Study of Social Q&A Behavior. Icwsm, 11(11), pp.409-416.
Campbell, J., Fletcher, G. and Greenhill, A., 2009. Conflict and identity shape shifting in an online financial community. Information Systems Journal, 19(5), pp.461-478.
Eagar, T., Beekhuyzen, J. and Campbell, J., 2015. When Online Communities Collide: Boundary Identity Construction and Spanning.
The remainder of the paper reads very well, and I think the authors are to be applauded for their choice of an ethnographic study as well as the way they present the findings of this study. One thing to mention here is that a six-month ethnographic study is very short for this type of research. Together with the critique on the theoretical underpinning this could actually be a chance for the authors to work on that aspect of the paper for a bit more while continuing their observation of the raid guilds.
The reflection on alternative explanation (hidden variables) is quite crucial. The authors pick two important aspects but they do not engage with literature from organisational studies that could support their argument or indicate what they should look for to confirm or reject these alternative explanations (see sections 7.1 and 7.2 in the paper).
Due to the small scope of the ethnographic setting the generalisability of findings is quite limited.
Altogether, I think this is a timely and unique piece of work. The authors made substantial efforts to document their two cases and show some interesting findings. However, I am a bit worried about the theoretical underpinning and would recommend to substantially revise this submission so that it adequately reflects what organisational culture is and what is known in the discipline so far. While I think this is a doable revision (doable major revision if this was a journal submission) I am not entirely sure if it will be possible to fix this under the schedule of this conference.
Reviewer 3 (reviewer)
First Round Overall Recommendation
4 - Probably acceptable (with minor modifications)
Contribution and Criteria for Evaluation
The paper reports on two ethnographies of how guilds merged in World of Warcraft, drawing comparisons between the two events. I expect the paper to provide insights into how such mergers can be carried out successfully and how to design systems that support such activity.
First Round Review
> Review Summary:
Overall a solid contribution that looks at an interesting space.
> Paper Summary:
The paper develops an understanding of how two similar groups can be merged successfully or unsuccessfully by analyzing two guild mergers in World of Warcraft. It reports on two ethnographies of these events, comparing one that was successful to one that was not. Implications for design and research that focus on understanding organization culture, designing for mergers, and identifying the value of "third places" to support groups in developing a shared culture.
> Strengths:
There is a lot to like in this paper. It looks to be a well-executed and well-put-together pair of ethnographies on two guild merger events. The descriptions of the activities are clear. The story that emerges is interesting and insightful. I appreciated the alternative explanations as well as the design implications.
> Major Issues:
I do not have any major issues to raise about this paper.
> Minor Issues:
- If possible, it would be great if the authors could work out a better way to signal which guild is which throughout the paper. I found myself constantly needing to go back to the beginning because I would go "wait, was this the successful one or the unsuccessful one?" or "is this a pre-merge or post-merge group?" I'm not sure what the best approach to this would be. Since the group names are anonymized, maybe just giving them boring but clear titles would be better? Maybe adding stars or superscript numbers? I don't have a great solution, but this was a VERY frustrating part of the reading experience!
> References:
No further suggestions.

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\begin{document}
\title{Revision Summary for ``Managing Organizational Culture in Online Group Mergers''}
\author{}
\date{}
\maketitle
\vspace{-1.5cm}
We thank all the reviewers for the extremely thoughtful comments on our original submission. We have reworked much of the manuscript in response to the ACs' and reviewers' suggestions with respect to both conceptual, analytic, and stylistic aspects of our paper. We believe the revised submission improves on the original enormously as a result.
The rest of this document provides a detailed summary of all the changes we have made. We divide these into the following sections: (§\ref{sec:framing}) improvements to our theoretical framing and background; (§\ref{sec:implications}) reworking of our implications section in our discussion; (§\ref{sec:methodology}) a clearer articulation of our methodology; (§\ref{sec:identification}) changes to make our cases more identifiable; (§\ref{sec:minor}) a large number of changes to address minor issues; and (§\ref{sec:notrequested}) a small number of changes we have made that were not requested by the reviewers. In a final section (§\ref{sec:notmade}) we discuss two changes that were requested but which we have opted not to make without further input from the ACs and reviewers. Within each section, we indicate which reviewer(s) raised concerns and describe how and where we have addressed the concern(s) in our manuscript.
We are deeply grateful for the time and effort that the entire review team has invested in our manuscript and we hope it is clear that we have taken this feedback very seriously. We have done our best to address the issues you each raised in your reviews and look forward to your responses.
\section{Improvements to theoretical framing and background}
\label{sec:framing}
% A key theme across the ACs' and reviewers' comments concerned the theoretical framing and the relationship of technological affordances and leadership. Based on this feedback, we have tried to address these issues by profoundly restructuring and refining several elements of our manuscript.
\subsection{Improved description of organizational culture theory}
% R1: However, I am a bit worried about the theoretical underpinning and would recommend to substantially revise this submission so that it adequately reflects what organisational culture is and what is known in the discipline so far.
% 1AC (1AC): One reviewer, who helpfully listed some relevant literature, some of which I recognized and have used in my research as well, stresses the importance of clarifying your theoretical framing and conceptualization of organization (I would add, both cultural and communication), and although there are a lot of slightly different definitions of organizational culture, I think most readers will understand that and it’s not a problem. Choose one and stick with it robustly (well more robustly than you have). Then connect this and the literature more strongly to the items you arrive at for the analysis (strengthening/clarifying and connecting go hand in hand.)
R1 said:
\begin{quote}
I am a bit worried about the theoretical underpinning and would recommend to substantially revise this submission so that it adequately reflects what organisational culture is and what is known in the discipline so far.
\end{quote}
The 1AC echoed this point. We agree that the original submission could have a stronger theoretical foundation and have taken steps to address this issue in several ways:
\begin{itemize}
\item In the Background and Theory sections, we have expanded on our underlying theoretical framework by going into more detail about Edgar Schein's conceptualization of organizational culture and how this can be used as a framework for understanding and analyzing the cultures of online groups.
\item The Background and Theory section has also been expanded to include what is and isn't known about organizational culture in studies of online communities to date, including a number of new citations to literature suggested by the reviewers.
\item Finally, in changes detailed below, we further ground our framing by detailing how we used this theoretical framework in the coding of the field notes and interview data in our methodology section.
\end{itemize}
\subsection{Better connecting theory and our findings}
% R1: World of Warcraft seems like a reasonable choice for the study at a first sight, though at this point I find a slight between the level of detail the game itself is described compared to the link to theory about organisational culture. This harms the paper because it is not really clear if the authors attribute the real constructs from organisational culture to the World of Warcraft setting. While in section 3.2. they state "Although none of this work has engaged with the literature on organisational culture, some has categorised raid guilds using dichotomies that might reflect cultural differences." Then they list examples of those "dichotomies", such as “task-oriented” or “social-oriented”. I want to highlight two problems here: First, the use of the word "might" indicates the uncertainty whether these are actual constructs used in theories on organisational culture. Second, going back to the introductory paragraph about organisational culture (side note: which is very short) lets me find the following definition of organisational culture given by the authors: "Organisational culture is essentially a conceptual model for what works and how things should be." Altogether, I fail to see how this definition fits with what the authors' definition of organisational culture, and I find this important theoretical grounding of the paper unfortunately not sufficient.
In addition to requesting a stronger theoretical underpinning, R1 and 1AC both requested a more robust application of theoretical concepts and literature to our findings.
R1 said:
\begin{quote}
World of Warcraft seems like a reasonable choice for the study at a first sight, though at this point I find a slight between the level of detail the game itself is described compared to the link to theory about organisational culture. This harms the paper because it is not really clear if the authors attribute the real constructs from organisational culture to the World of Warcraft setting.
\end{quote}
1AC made a similar comment:
\begin{quote}
Another item I think needs to be better addressed is the connection of your theoretical concepts that were the important items for the mergers to the literature in the writeup...Also the items in section 6.2. % They all seem like good, sensible items, but I don’t see that you need to be making them up on your own, we have enough community literature that they should be in there somewhere. Or be more clear about using, essentially, grounded theory but also the concepts that drove the results
\end{quote}
We agree that the theory and literature was not applied in a sufficiently thorough way in the original manuscript. We have made several changes to improve this in the paper:
\begin{itemize}
\item The concepts in 6.2 that 1AC mentions have now been clearly introduced as concepts that emerged from our coding process.
\item The Methodology section now includes detail on the deductive coding process using the organizational culture framework.
\item The Pre-existing Differences in Organizational Culture section now clearly states how we used Schein's concept of organizational culture to come up with the core cultural characteristics of the guilds.
\item The section on Leadership and Technology now is connected with literature on communication and technology in organization studies.
\item The Discussion now includes additional connections to the literature that our findings support.
\end{itemize}
\subsubsection{Clarifying the categories and attributes of raid guilds in Tables 1 and 2}
\label{sec:tables}
% So, when we get to the analysis, we have a variety of items, but it isn’t clear where they came from, and there is so much good social work that a lot of your items should be derived from the literature, but then there isn’t really any literature mentioned in a way that connects it to the analysis much after the lit review IIRC.
% So, in Table 2, I am left wondering where these items came from. They should be grounded in the literature.
Although not directly requested by the reviewers, we sensed that the characteristics used to describe the guilds in our study in our tables were not thoroughly grounded in literature. We have made the following changes to address this:
\begin{itemize}
\item Table 1 now includes a section with Empirical Attributes of the guilds as well as Theoretical Attributes for the social ordering of guilds that have been derived from previous research.
\item Table 2 now reflects the core cultural attributes that we arrived at from our analysis, driven by our theoretical framework, and is labeled clearly to reflect this change.
\item Both of these tables---and their relationship to theory---are clearly described when they are introduced in the text.
\end{itemize}
\subsection{Engagement with additional literature}
% 1AC
% “To our knowledge, mergers in online groups have never been studied.”
% This paper sort of looks at mergers, but it is more focused on groups that stay together across guild moves:
% Poor, N., & Skoric, M. M. (2016). Play together, stay together? Community cohesion and stability in an MMO. Proceedings of the 2016 Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. http://doi.org/10.1109/HICSS.2016.283
% They also have a paper which looks at a guild that fell apart, reminiscent of some of the drama the guilds in your paper encountered:
% Poor, N., & Skoric, M. M. (2014). Death of a guild, birth of a network: Online community ties within and beyond4 code. Games and Culture, 9(3), 182–202. http://doi.org/10.1177/1555412014537401
% Additionally, you could include a link to this book when you discuss “drama”, although you don’t call it drama in the paper:
% Chen, M. (2012). Leet noobs: The life and death of an expert player group in World of Warcraft. New York, NY: Peter Lang.
% (“combined with intra-group conflict”, at that point, drama would be a good thing to mention.)
1AC and R1 pointed us to a series of pieces of related work and urged us to consider using this work to frame our study better and to sharpen and clarify our contribution. We now cite a number of new pieces in the paper:
\begin{itemize}
\item As suggested by 1AC, we cite \citet{poor_death_2014} to demonstrate how previous work documented the way that a complex constellation of factors can feed attrition which can lead to the collapse of even solidly established guilds.
\item We have cited \citet{chen_leet_2011} as evidence of how intra-guild conflict can threaten guilds' continued existence.
\item As suggested by 1AC, we cite \citet{poor_play_2016} as an example of research into guild stability.
% R1: Levina, N. and Arriaga, M., 2014. Distinction and status production on user-generated content platforms: Using Bourdieu’s theory of cultural production to understand social dynamics in online fields. Information Systems Research, 25(3), pp.468-488.
\item As suggested by R1, we cite \citet{levina_distinction_2014} as an example of social computing research applying theories of cultural production to online communities.
% R1: Yang, J., Morris, M.R., Teevan, J., Adamic, L.A. and Ackerman, M.S., 2011. Culture Matters: A Survey Study of Social Q&A Behavior. Icwsm, 11(11), pp.409-416.
\item As suggested by R1, we cite \citet{yang_culture_2011} to show how cultural differences must be emphasized in the design of social computing systems.
% R1: Eagar, T., Beekhuyzen, J. and Campbell, J., 2015. When Online Communities Collide: Boundary Identity Construction and Spanning.
\item As suggested by R1, we cite \citet{eagar_when_2015} to demonstrate evidence of how inter-group conflict between different online communities construct social boundaries.
\end{itemize}
In most cases, we have added new text to summarize and interpret these findings. We appreciated each of these references and agree with the reviewers that they help frame our study and integrate it more effectively into the literature.
\subsection{Improved discussion of technological affordances}
% R4 (1AC): (A final small summary thought, since I don't see that affordances were a huge part of the story -- both guilds had the same affordances available, but one group used them to a better effect -- so perhaps you need to stress a little amore "these are the important, community-building affordances" and I think you will find they are communicative ones, which is general but that's what builds community. So it is not entirely a design story, but one where if you build enough communicative tools, and people can easily communicate in other spaces, they will, because that's what people do -- talk and form bonds, communicate and form communities.) One reviewer stresses tools, culture, and design. I think this is a ripe avenue for some further exploration and discussion in the work.
% 1AC: “Although Divinity also used a Discord server, it lacked structure and was rarely used by its guild leaders or members; most of its usage appeared to be from former Mirage members. Divinity began hosting a guild website in July, a month after the merger, but it was rarely used by the majority of the community and, as a result, was taken down in August.” Communication is community. You can cite John Dewey and James Carey here, or even Robin Dunbar. Bring out the big guns when they’re in your corner.
% R1: The reflection on alternative explanation (hidden variables) is quite crucial. The authors pick two important aspects but they do not engage with literature from organisational studies that could support their argument or indicate what they should look for to confirm or reject these alternative explanations (see sections 7.1 and 7.2 in the paper).
% R2 (2AC: Under "alternative explanations," the authors discuss technological tools, but It seems that rather than an alternative explanation this could be considered another difference between the groups that is intertwined with culture, rather than separate from it. I encourage the authors to consider integrating the use of technological tools into the analysis rather than treating it as an alliterative explanation.
R1, the 2AC, and the 1AC each pointed out that our discussion of technological affordances in our section on Alternative Explanations suffered from a poor connection to the literature. R1 said:
\begin{quote}
The reflection on alternative explanation (hidden variables) is quite crucial. The authors pick two important aspects but they do not engage with literature from organisational studies that could support their argument or indicate what they should look for to confirm or reject these alternative explanations
\end{quote}
The 2AC said:
\begin{quote}
Under ``alternative explanations,'' the authors discuss technological tools, but It seems that rather than an alternative explanation this could be considered another difference between the groups that is intertwined with culture, rather than separate from it. I encourage the authors to consider integrating the use of technological tools into the analysis rather than treating it as an [alternative] explanation.
\end{quote}
These points were echoed by the 1AC who suggested that the role of technology presented ``a ripe avenue for some further exploration and discussion in the work'' and suggested that we engage with theory more directly in this regard.
We agree with R1, 2AC, and 1AC that this section of the paper needed improvement, a stronger connection to organization theory, and better integration into the rest of our paper. As a result, we rewrote this section after reconsidering the use of technological tools into our analysis and implemented several changes:
\begin{itemize}
\item First, we changed the section header from ``Alternative Explanations'' to ``Additional Factors'' to better capture its role in our argument and to further integrate it into our findings as per the 2AC.
\item Additionally, we made the section a first-level sub-heading in our Findings section.
\item We have described the differences in the two mergers based on their extensive use of communication tools and effective leadership as additional factors that may have contributed to success or failure, but do not fit neatly into Schein's notion of organizational culture.
\item We have added text to conclude that despite using similar tools, it was the organizational culture of the more successful group that resulted in more efficient use of its tools.
\item Finally, we have adopted 1AC's suggestion and draw support for this point from some of \citepos{barley_technology_1986}'s work indicating that culture shapes technology use in organizations.
\end{itemize}
\subsection{Revising the abstract to better capture our work's contributions}
% R2: The abstract is rather weak and doesn't do a good job of capturing the contributions of the work. I recommend revising the abstract.
2AC pointed out that our abstract did not do a good job of capturing the contributions of our work. We have revised our abstract to do so.
\section{Broadening the impact of our design and research implications}
\label{sec:implications}
% 2AC (2AC): I'd like to have seen more on design implications. Not just system design, but online communities, more generally. And, more specific ideas about what this might look like. How can communities be designed to integrate cultures more effectively? What might these "third places" look like? If you could give a bit more thought to design implications, I think the impact of the paper could be greater.
% 1AC (1AC): This does not make a lot of sense to me:
% “In addition, the strategies employed by Praise the Sun, and overlooked by Divinity, suggest avenues for design. Mergers may not happen every day, but when they do, systems designers and community leaders can pursue them strategically, taking the culture of existing communities and organizations into account. This may even be true for de novo systems as designers can select from existing UI features, roles, technical tools, and metaphors with which to build a new community culture.”
% I don’t see that these were design issues – both guilds had all the same options and technologies available. One group used those affordances in certain ways, the other didn’t. Also, that the successful merger used a variety of technologies (in WoW, Discord, and the web) makes me wonder about how this is a design issue when the technologies they used are controlled by a variety of stakeholders. That one group succeeded tells me we do have the right designs, unless they had to overcome a lot to use them and the other group tried and failed, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
2AC requested that our design and research implications go beyond system design and expand into online communities more generally:
\begin{quote}
I'd like to have seen more on design implications. Not just system design, but online communities, more generally. And, more specific ideas about what this might look like. How can communities be designed to integrate cultures more effectively? What might these ``third places'' look like? If you could give a bit more thought to design implications, I think the impact of the paper could be greater.
\end{quote}
We revised our ``Implications of Design and Research'' section to go beyond systems and interface design and into more general claims about online communities and virtual teams. We have retitled the section ``Implications for Leadership, Research, and Design.''
This section is now divided into three parts:
\begin{itemize}
\item First, we suggest that virtual team leaders and online community managers seek to better understand and accommodate the organizational culture of groups as they encounter potentially destabilizing intergroup conflicts.
\item Second, we illustrate the usefulness of Schein’s conceptualization of organizational culture for assessing group dynamics in social computing research.
\item Third, we show that our results also underscore the importance of ``third place'' virtual activities as an effective strategy for newcomer socialization and building solidarity to retain new and existing members. As requested by 2AC, we give examples as to what ``third places'' may look like and how online community leaders may handle growth through mergers or acquisitions.
\end{itemize}
1AC also commented on this section, wondering ``how this is a design issue when the technologies they used are controlled by a variety of stakeholders'' and pointing out:
\begin{quote}
It’s not clear to me [what designers might do], as so much social interaction occurs over more than one channel (so like in WoW, on guild forums on the web, and now in Discord, all of which are controlled by different interests).
\end{quote}
We think this is an excellent point and have made two changes to address it:
\begin{itemize}
\item First, we moved our discussion about technology up into our Findings section.
\item Second, we now end the implications section by making the point that because ``third places activities span technical systems controlled by different interests (e.g., Discord servers are distinct from game infrastructure), supporting third places may provide an important challenge to traditional socio-technical design processes.''
\end{itemize}
\section{Clarifications on methodology}
\label{sec:methodology}
% The reviewers also raised concerns about the clarity of the sample in the text and requested more clarification on how it the sample was gathered. We address those issues here.
\subsection{Clarification of analytic approach}
% 1AC (1AC): Highlight the connections between your theoretical items and the literature more.
% Another item I think needs to be better addressed is the connection of your theoretical concepts that were the important items for the mergers to the literature in the writeup.
% “inductive codes emergent from data as well as deductive codes derived from theory.”
% So, when we get to the analysis, we have a variety of items, but it isn’t clear where they came from, and there is so much good social work that a lot of your items should be derived from the literature, but then there isn’t really any literature mentioned in a way that connects it to the analysis much after the lit review IIRC.
% So, in Table 2, I am left wondering where these items came from. They should be grounded in the literature. Also the items in section 6.2. They all seem like good, sensible items, but I don’t see that you need to be making them up on your own, we have enough community literature that they should be in there somewhere. Or be more clear about using, essentially, grounded theory but also the concepts that drove the results.
1AC asked us to reflect more explicitly on the analytic methods that helped us arrive at our findings:
\begin{quote}
So, when we get to the analysis, we have a variety of items, but it isn’t clear where they came from. ... [You should] be more clear about using, essentially, grounded theory but also the concepts that drove the results.
\end{quote}
We have added several sentences to our methodology section to make our use of grounded theory and the way in which we have incorporated literature into this process clearer.
Our analytic approach---based on \citepos{boellstorff_ethnography_2012} handbook---is indeed based on grounded-theory. We have added text to our methodology section to explain this along with a quote from \citet{glaser_discovery_1967}. We have also explained that our work follows \citepos{charmaz_constructing_2015} approach to grounded theory which advocates ``an open mind, not an empty head'' by urging researchers to incorporate sensitizing codes drawn from existing theory into the inductive coding processes. We have tried to make all of this much clearer and added citations to both \citet{glaser_discovery_1967} and \citet{charmaz_constructing_2015}.
\subsection{Clarifying how and when the samples were discovered}
% 1AC (1AC): One item you must address is how you came about the sample. It seems unbelievable that you set out to study one successful merger and one failed merger of similar guilds and then found it on the very first attempt. More likely, I imagine, is that you were studying guild mergers and one failed, and you realized this was a good research opportunity (as indeed it is one!). But you don’t explain this, and you need to be clear about your sample and the research. Explain how you came about your sample (as in my review).
1AC requested that we more clearly explain how we came about the sample. They also expressed confusion over the intention of our study:
\begin{quote}
It seems unbelievable that you set out to study one successful merger and one failed merger of similar guilds and then found it on the very first attempt. More likely, I imagine, is that you were studying guild mergers and one failed, and you realized this was a good research opportunity (as indeed it is one!).
\end{quote}
1AC is correct that we were initially studying guild mergers in general and that during our study, one of the mergers failed. We made several changes to address this:
\begin{itemize}
\item We added more detail on how the guilds were recruited into the study in our Methodology section.
% \item We revised the order in which the two mergers are introduced to be chronological (for some reason this was not the case in the previous iteration of the paper!).
\item We explain, at several places in the paper, that we had no \textit{ex ante} reason to expect either case to end up succeeding or failing. % in hopes that the framing of our study is clear and that the results were unexpected.
\end{itemize}
\subsection{Concerns related to duration of our fieldwork}
% R1: One thing to mention here is that a six-month ethnographic study is very short for this type of research.
R1 expressed some concern about the fact that our fieldwork was conducted entirely over a 6 month period. We have made several changes in response:
\begin{itemize}
\item We address this in the Methodology section by explaining that the duration coincides with the length of time between the beginning and end of the June 2017 raid patch. In the sense that it refers to a complete ``cycle'' within the game's social world, six months was a natural period of time. The 6 month duration was by design for this reason.
\item We added text to discuss this limitation in the Discussion. We mention that were limited to six months of field work in that one our cases ceased to exist and the other went on a planned hiatus to wait for new game content to be released.
\item We also underscore (as we describe in the methodology section) that our first author brought extensive prior experience with WoW to the project. We believe this facilitated both his understanding of the social processes he observed, his access to the guilds, and his ability to discern salient features of participants' actions and statements throughout the project---all things that would often be accomplished during field work.
\end{itemize}
%\subsection{Improvement to help with guild identification}
\section{New notation to assist readers in identify cases}
\label{sec:identification}
% 1AC: I agree that the guild names become confusing, and would like you to make that easier for the readers. How exactly, I’m not sure, there are probably a few ways to do this. It is important to know that one guild kept its name. Maybe guildname(X), where X = {PreS, PostS, PreF, PostF} for pre- and post-merger and also Success and Fail, although this is a bit clumsy. But there are two important dimensions, sadly both pre and post start with P. Oh maybe Before and After, guildname(BS) wait no BS may not be the best abbreviation. (“AF” also has a slangy impolite meaning currently.) Hopefully you will arrive at a workable solution! Oh perhaps guildA(1S), where the number is the stage of merger (so 1= pre and 2= post) and S and F (I think knowing S/F ahead of time is helpful and I think that is recognized in the paper). You do not need to use my specific suggestion but clarifying is needed to make it easier for readers.
% R3: If possible, it would be great if the authors could work out a better way to signal which guild is which throughout the paper. I found myself constantly needing to go back to the beginning because I would go "wait, was this the successful one or the unsuccessful one?" or "is this a pre-merge or post-merge group?" I'm not sure what the best approach to this would be. Since the group names are anonymized, maybe just giving them boring but clear titles would be better? Maybe adding stars or superscript numbers? I don't have a great solution, but this was a VERY frustrating part of the reading experience!
R3 asked for a way to more consistently signal which guild belonged to which merger throughout the paper:
\begin{quote}
If possible, it would be great if the authors could work out a better way to signal which guild is which throughout the paper. I found myself constantly needing to go back to the beginning because I would go ``wait, was this the successful one or the unsuccessful one?'' or ``is this a pre-merge or post-merge group?'' ... Maybe adding stars or superscript numbers? I don't have a great solution, but this was a VERY frustrating part of the reading experience!
\end{quote}
1AC echoed this concern and spent some time discussing potential approaches.
We agree that the original submission did not do a good job making it easy to keep track of the different cases in our study. We now use colored subscripts to clearly identify the two merger cases and guilds throughout the paper. The colors of the subscripts match the colors of the merged groups in Figure 2 so that guilds that merged with each other have the same color. The text of the subscripts are the initials of the original groups. The result looks like:
\begin{itemize}
\item Merger A: \textbf{Salty Dogs\textcolor{m2}{\textsubscript{SD}} + Fragment\textcolor{m2}{\textsubscript{F}} → Sun Bros\textcolor{m2}{\textsubscript{SD+F}}}
\item Merger B: \textbf{Divinity\textcolor{m1}{\textsubscript{D}} + Mirage\textcolor{m1}{\textsubscript{M}} → Divinity\textcolor{m1}{\textsubscript{D+M}}}
\end{itemize}
We hope this makes the names less confusing and easier to remember by linking them with the plots and using the colors as an additional mnemonic for readers. We really want to make sure that readers can keep track of the cases while reading the paper and would welcome reviewers' feedback on this approach or other suggestions.
\section{Minor Changes}
\label{sec:minor}
We addressed a large number of minor changes requested by the reviewers:
\begin{itemize}
% 1AC: “While gaming is inherently a ludic activity,”
% What does that mean? (Honestly I am not a fan of the word ludic, does it mean gaming, or playful or what? Most style guides suggest avoiding using Latinate words.) So like, gaming is a playful activity. Sure. (This is not the transition sentence you are looking for.)
\item We removed the word ``ludic'' as requested by 1AC. We agree it's redundant.
% 1AC: Cite for this? “mergers between guilds are very common”
\item 1AC asked for a citation for phrase “mergers between guilds are very common.” We have added a citations \citet{williams_tree_2006} which contains statements to this effect.
% 1AC: “Incredibly, Divinity’s leadership never even formally announced that a merger had occurred.”
% I agree that that is incredible but that’s kind of editorializing and so drop incredibly.
\item We have attempted to remove words like ``suprisingly'' and ``incredibly'' from the manuscript. We agree with 1AC that they are unnecessary.
% Typo: “Edgar Schein, the term is used to to describe:”
\item 1AC pointed out a typo in the line ``Edgar Schein, the term is used to to describe.'' We fixed the typo.
% 1AC: Typo: “Although he had not been active recently, the he had been an active participant in WoW”
\item 1AC pointed out a typo in the line ``Although he had not been active recently, the he had been an active participant in WoW.'' We fixed the typo.
% 1AC: “By September 2017, sustained attrition…”
% Maybe just attrition, “sustained attrition” sounds like something that needs to be defined.
\item 1AC suggested we remove ``sustained'' from the line ``By September 2017, sustained attrition...'' We removed the term.
% % Needs cite: “basic training in the military is a classic example”
\item 1AC requested a citation for ``basic training in the military is a classic example.'' Because the example did not seem necessary, we removed the example entirely.
% 1AC: Experience should not be in quotes, as it is the correct word:
% “Player characters increase in power by collecting “experience” from activities”
\item As suggested by 1AC, We removed the quotes around ``experience'' in the line ``Player characters increase in power by collecting ``experience'' from activities.''
% 1AC: I have not raided in WoW but I have for over a year in another game, so am curious about the levels for WoW raids:
% “Raids can be attempted at four difficulty levels: “Looking For Raid”, “Normal”, “Heroic,” or “Mythic”.”
% LfR is a level??? That seems weird.
\item 1AC expressed confusion about the reference to the ``Looking For Raid'' difficulty level in section 3.1. LFR, also known as ``Raid Finder,'' is in fact both a raid difficulty level and a grouping tool within \textit{World of Warcraft}. However, we've revised this line to more clearly describe the four raid difficulty levels in WoW: ``Raids can be attempted at several difficulty levels: ``Normal'', ``Heroic,'' or ``Mythic'', as well as a fourth ``Raid Finder'' difficulty that can only be accessed using the game’s Raid Finder system.'' We also very briefly explain what Raid Finder is.
% 1AC: “Encounters with a raid boss usually last between 5 to 10 minutes.”
% Really? Given my experience in other games, that seems unbelievable. Do you have a cite for that? Although it is possible I am just misremembering, it’s been a while since I stopped playing, and raid bosses may be like the fish that got away in my mind: they get bigger as they recede in time. Possibly there is a difference between “trying and wiping a few times” and “did it on the first try.” However, this will depend on how good the raid group is for that encounter in terms of gear and practice with that boss’s specifics (the song and dance, I called it: when the adds come in, who to burn down first, when to run in and when to run away, etc.).
\item 1AC was not convinced that raid boss encounters last between 5 to 10 minutes in the line ``Encounters with a raid boss usually last between 5 to 10 minutes.'' We edited this line to make a more general observation about raid boss encounters: ``Encounters with a raid boss usually last for 5 minutes while more difficult bosses may last longer.''
If 1AC believes a citation is needed for this, we could reference the combat logging site like \url{http://www.worldoflogs.com/zone/eu-us/tomb-of-sargeras/kiljaeden} which shows the average time on raid boss encounters. Please let us know if you think we should do this.
% 1AC: On raid member selection:
% “This choice is usually made on the level, experience, and power of the players’ characters.”
% Well, no, that’s wrong. Sure, you can’t use characters that are too low level or too high level. However, really the only considerations are do they have enough power (level and gear) and overall class composition of the raid. You need the right balance of tanks, healers, and dps.
\item We clarified how raid members are selected into raid teams by incorporating 1AC's suggestion on including class composition of the raid. We added a sentence that reads: ``This choice is usually made on the player's level, power of the players' characters derived from their gear, and whether the player's character specializes in a role that fits within the raid team's composition.''
% 1AC: I don’t understand this:
% “WoW’s affordances make individual recruitment into established guilds difficult”
% My unguilded characters would get occasional whispers to join, but beyond that I don’t understand what you are saying. What about the affordances?
\item We removed the line ``WoW’s affordances make individual recruitment into established guilds difficult'' in 3.2 as we agree with 1AC that it was confusing. This line now just focuses on the general challenges of attracting and retaining members.
% 1AC: I don’t understand this:
% “In response to requests from his ethnographic subjects, he participated in the two post-merger guilds”
% That makes it seem backwards maybe. You should have been asking them to research their guilds, but here it seems like they are asking you.
\item We agree with 1AC that the line ``In response to requests from his ethnographic subjects, he participated in the two post-merger guilds'' was confusing as it did make it seem like the guilds came to us first while it was the other way around. This line has been edited out and the first author's participation in the guilds has been more clearly stated in the methodology and case study sections.
% 1AC: “Within each merger, the guilds were superficially similar to each other.”
% Instead of superficially maybe use “similar to each other in theoretically relevant some ways”. We don’t want a superficial comparison, we want a good comparison, grounded in theory.
\item In section 5, we change the line ``Within each merger, the guilds were superficially similar to each other'' to say the guilds were similar in some empirical and theoretical ways. We agree with 1AC that this comparison should not be superficial and hope that the revision to this line sufficiently addresses their concern.
% 1AC: “Players in Salty Dogs fell under one of two categories”
% Maybe “into” instead of “under”.
\item We changed ``under'' to ``into'' in the line ``Players in Salty Dogs fell under one of two categories'', as requested by 1AC.
% 1AC: “Salty Dogs members often shared strong social bonds outside of the game. “
% Explain strong social bonds, give some examples.
\item In support of our claim that ``Salty Dogs members often shared strong social bonds outside of the game,'' we added examples of how social bonds were shared outside of WoW, as requested by 1AC.
% 1AC: “organizational culture, a phenomena that has been mostly unstudied by social computing researchers”
% I’m not sure I agree with that, as how do you robustly define who is a social computing researcher?
\item 1AC expressed disagreement with our claim that organizational culture is mostly unstudied by social computing scholars and asked how `social computing scholars' can be robustly defined. While we meant to refer to scholars of online communities in HCI and adjacent fields, we went ahead and removed the line `a phenomena that been mostly unstudied by social computing researchers' as it did not serve an essential purpose.
\end{itemize}
\section{Other changes not suggested by reviewers}
\label{sec:notrequested}
We have made several changes that were not suggested by reviewers but that we believe strengthen the manuscript:
\begin{itemize}
% Table 1 change to capture both empirical and theoretical characteristics of the guilds in the study
\item As mentioned above in §\ref{sec:tables}, we reformatted Table 1 to include theoretical categories for the guilds in our study. Table 2 was reformatted to reflect the cultural attributes that emerged from our coding process.
% Title change to more accurately reflect intended research goals
\item We have changed our title from ``Managing Organizational Culture in Successful Online Group Mergers'' to remove the word ``Successful.'' The new title is ``Managing Organizational Culture in Online Group Mergers.'' We believe this change more accurately frames the intent of our study which compares more and less successful organizational mergers.
%\subsubsection{Changed one guild pseudonym}
\item Although it was not requested by any of the reviewers, we changed the pseudonym for the guild previously labeled as ``Praise the Sun'' to ``Sun Bros'' which we preferred both because it was slightly shorter and because we felt better reflected the spirit of the non-anonymized name.
\item In the section \textit{World of Warcraft} Raid Guilds, we replaced ``a chain mail vest or a wizard's ring'' with ``the Robe of Aqueous Command or the Gauntlets of Spiteful Haunting'' in the second paragraph. This was not pointed out by the reviewers, but we noticed that our generic substitutes for actual in-game items does not make sense when we say that these are ``the game's most sought after items.'' We preferred this replacement because we believe it will more accurately describe the empirical setting and the extrinsic factors that motivate players to raid.
\item Although not pointed out by any of the reviewers, we have added several citations to, and short description of, new work by \citet{tan_tracing_2018} published at ICWSM three weeks ago that shows that new subcommunities on Reddit typically grow by incorporating large number of individuals with shared in experience in other Reddit subcommunities.
\item We have edited our document to clean up our prose and remove redundant text.
\end{itemize}
\section{Requests from reviewers that we did not address}
\label{sec:notmade}
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Reviewer 4 (AC)
There were two changes that was requested that we did not make:
\begin{itemize}
% “…Salty Dogs had only 11 players on its raid team.”
% You might want, at some point, to mention raid alliances. (Maybe even DKP.)
\item 1AC suggested that we mention raid alliances or ``DKP.'' We did not see an obvious way to integrate this into our manuscript without it becoming distracting so we have not made this change. We'd welcome more specific direction in this regard.
% 1AC: In this paragraph:
% “Newcomer socialization has been one of the most important topics in research into online communities [7, 15]. This work has relied heavily on a distinction between collective, institutional practices of socialization and individualized, “on-the-job” socialization [25]. In particular, social computing researchers have sought to evaluate the relevant effectiveness of the two different socialization tactics in different online contexts [15].”
% I am hesitant about “social computing researchers” here because really I think you’re considering, appropriately, all communities: online, offline, and partially mediated. I know of no work that suggests people in communities act differently when any type of media is introduced—maybe they now have different tools and so can take new actions, but technology changes, people don’t. So I think you’re correctly thinking of the larger issue (human behavior) but then make it too narrow in the write-up.
% 1AC: “Although this process has been studied in organization science, this model of newcomer socialization has received very little attention in social computing research to date.”
% Is there any reason to expect it is any different? I do not think there is one.
% I would also again be hesitant to carve out “social computing research” as if it is its own, distinct, field, with clearly defined and strong boundaries. So much work is interdisciplinary. If you’re studying the sociology of mediated computer use, that’s a bunch of different fields right there (sociology, communication studies, media psychology….). Social computing research, to me, isn’t a new area of study, it’s a collection of specific methods (both new and old, so, scraping, but, regressions, for example, or, ML regressions….) and associated large-scale data.
\item 1AC voiced skepticism about the way in which we refer to ``social computing researchers'' and ``social computing research'' saying, ``I would again be hesitant to carve out `social computing research' as if it is its own, distinct, field, with clearly defined and strong boundaries.''
We agree with the 1AC that social computing is not a distinct field with clearly defined boundaries. We have edited our manuscript to try to avoid giving the perception that we believe it is. That said, although we have removed the phrase from the two places the 1AC pointed out, many other similar references remain.
% Like most work at CSCW, our work is interdisciplinary. Our paper builds on research in computing, organization studies, game studies, management, communication, sociology, information systems, and more.
Given that we are submitting to the \textit{ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing}, we felt that the term ``social computing'' was an appropriate way to refer to that audience of scholars interested in online groups and communities to whom this work is primarily targeted. We note that the 1AC's concern may have less to do with our paper and more to do with the term itself and its adoption by CSCW several years ago. Our usage reflects this incorporation of the term into the full name of CSCW. The primary audience for this paper is attendees of CSCW and readers of its proceedings who---although clearly an intellectually diverse bunch---are drawn together by their shared interest in computer-mediated social interaction and organization.
If 1AC could suggest an alternative way of referring to this scholarly group---or suggest a way to avoid doing so---we are happy to consider additional changes in this regard.
\end{itemize}
% NOTE: lets' just not say anything about this one -mako
% “Williams observed that guild mergers were “as contentious as any real world corporate-merger””
% Well, yes, Dmitri tends to overstate things to make his work seem more important than it is (besides using his work as a citation mill for himself).
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Reviewer 1 (reviewer)
% In order to be a bit more constructive about this: Literature on online communities has focused on norms and cultural aspects. Research on online communities and organisational studies tends to avoid the concept of 'culture' because it is too vague and difficult to operationalise. It has been more fruitful to look at social capital, norms, rules, regulations, rituals, etc., which are all components of culture. I suggest a look at the following literature:
% Iriberri, A. and Leroy, G., 2009. A life-cycle perspective on online community success. ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), 41(2), p.11.
% Campbell, J., Fletcher, G. and Greenhill, A., 2009. Conflict and identity shape shifting in an online financial community. Information Systems Journal, 19(5), pp.461-478.
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