I belong to numerous communities. These include the Eagle Scouts, my church, college students in general, and my friends. There is one group I belong to, however, which is particularly interesting for many reasons, not the least of which is the fact that it is an online community. Its physical makeup is unusual, both for a real-world community and for an
online community.
I'll start by explaining why the HalfBakery is a community, and what "community" means to me. Webster's Collegiate Dictionary has several definitions of a community, including "an interacting group of various kinds of individuals in a common location." The members of the HalfBakery community are very varied in their ideas, beliefs, occupations, and even their locations. We all interact via our ideas. As I will explain later, members of this community are allowed to do many things with their (and
other peoples') ideas. The "common location" in which we interact is the HalfBakery forum. The aforementioned definition of "community" is similar to mine, although it implies that the individuals of which it consists live in the same geographical location. I believe, instead, that a community is a group of people with some common interest, who participate together in an activity relating to that interest. While the HalfBakery is not a geographical area, it is a place where these people, and others who share an interest in invention, interact.
I did not choose the HalfBakery solely because it was a community to which I belong. I have already shown that I am a member of several communities, but the HalfBakery, in my opinion, is one of the most interesting and dynamic among these. The common interest of the members of the HalfBakery, as well as its namesake, is the creation and elaboration of half-baked ideas. These vary from ridiculous, satirical inventions, (such as using a catapult to get to work), to more practical and useful ideas (such as cream-cheese rings shaped like bagels), and even ideas for improving the HalfBakery community and the world at large. In addition to getting a wide variety of good ideas (or at least good laughs), the many people who compose this community give comments which often give one insights into other communities and cultures.
Before the HalfBakery is described more in depth, there are some usual terms and conditions which need to be more clearly defined. The words "handle" and "username" are synonymous, and refer to the pseudonym by which each member of the HalfBakery is known. Usernames appear at the end of each members ideas, links, and annotations. "Wallpaper" is a repeating image which serves as a backing to the content on a web page. "HalfBakers," "members," "viewers," and "users" are all people who visit the HalfBakery. HalfBakers and members are people who have an account on the HalfBakery. They can contribute ideas, annotations, and links. Viewers and users, however, can be anyone who visits the HalfBakery. One final term which appears a lot on the HalfBakery is "baked." While the HalfBakery is ideally a place to suggest questionably good ideas which have not yet been created (in other words, half-baked ideas), sometimes an idea turns out to have already been invented. When this happens to an idea, it is no longer half-baked, and is instead fully baked, or just "baked."
The format of this paper is somewhat unusual, as well. This is because, since this paper is about the HalfBakery, the HalfBakers have been asked to contribute ideas on what should and should not be put into this paper. Rather than suggesting content, many of the members suggested alterations I could make to the layout. For example, one user wanted me to "include at least 5 spelling mistakes (10 year old reading level words), one giant run-on sentence that spans half a page, alternate using single and double spacing at regular intervals, deface at least one page with a coffee mug ring, and of course the paper itself should smell like fish." Still other people felt that "the entire paper should be written in haiku, with every other line written from right to left, rather than left to right," and that I should "include a page of text which when viewed up close appears normal, but as you get further away from it turns out to be a cunningly disguised portrait of home economics prodigy, Jamie Oliver." Obviously, most of these suggestions were made in jest. The desire for grammatical errors is a remark on the amount of bad spelling on the HalfBakery. This is one result of the informality of the internet. Many people are more extroverted and jestful on the internet due to the anonymity. The other suggestions mentioned were references to other ideas which have been proposed on the HalfBakery. While I may not be able to meet all of the HalfBakers' wishes, there were some good ideas, too. For example, one user wanted me to use the title, "Baked. It's called a research paper on the Halfbakery," as my title. While this title is ambiguous at first, its meaning becomes clear when the paper is read. Because this was posted as an idea on the HalfBakery, once it is complete, it will be baked. Another good idea was to include some of our English-related ideas as artifacts.
The physical makeup of the HalfBakery is unusual for an online community. Most of the content on the internet, whether it is part of a community or not, is laden with pictures and wallpaper. The HalfBakery, on the other hand, has a plain white background with fairly uniform text styles and no illustrations other than the HalfBakery logo and the vote tally indicators. Upon entering the HalfBakery, members find themselves in the main index. This area consists of eleven category headings arranged in a three-by-four grid (with the last space in the grid is left blank). As I shall explain later, each category contains different types of ideas. The three most recent ideas which have been posted in each category, along with their pictorial vote tally (explained later) are listed below their respective headings. The font in which each of these ideas has been listed gives the viewer some information about when it was posted: ideas listed in a bold font were created less than a week ago, and ideas with tan backgrounds haven't been changed since the last time the viewer visited the HalfBakery.
Upon clicking any of the idea titles, the viewer is taken to an idea page. This page lists the idea's name in a large, bold font, and the subtitle below it. To the left of these is a cluster of voting paraphernalia. Below is the description, which elaborates on the idea and explains it in full. The description is ended with the handle of the user who created it, and the date it was created. Below the description is the link list, and to the right of the idea is the list of annotations.
One of the great things about the HalfBakery is the ability of members to add to other members ideas, and not just their own. They do this through the link list, voting, and the annotations. The link list, as the name implies, is a list of links to other sites on the internet which members of the HalfBakery believe to be relevant to the idea. Users who wish to post a link fill in the web address of the site they're linking to, the title of the link, and a short description. The aforementioned cluster of "voting paraphernalia" consists of the pictorial vote tally in the upper-left corner of the group, the numerical tally below it, and links which allow one to vote on an idea to the right. The pictorial tally is a small picture consisting of either croissants or fish skeletons (known to the HalfBakers as "stinky fish"), depending on whether the net vote is for or against the idea. If the vote is good, the idea gets a number of croissants, awarded in half-croissant increments. On the other hand, if the idea is bad, the idea will get some "stinky fish." The numerical vote tally lists the number of votes for the idea, preceded by a plus sign, followed by the number of votes against it (with a minus sign). Finally, on the right are two links labeled "for" and "against," which allow each HalfBaker to cast one vote for or against the idea. The annotations section is a list of notes other members have made to the idea. These can be elaborations on the idea, questions about it, reminiscences of related events, or even things which are totally unrelated. Each annotation is concluded with the username of the contributor, and the date of the posting.
Both the main index and the ideas of the HalfBakery have some common elements. In the upper-left corner of the screen is the half-croissant (the HalfBakery's logo), and a randomly-selected expression such as "a few slices short of a loaf," or "carpe demi." Below this is a list of links to various other important parts of the HalfBakery. These links all fall into three categories. The first category, "idea," allows HalfBakers to do various things with ideas, such as adding, annotating, and posting a link on an idea. This category also contains links which allow one to search for ideas, or jump to an idea at random. The middle list of links is labeled "meta," and contains important areas like "news," which Jutta, the person who maintains the HalfBakery, uses to inform HalfBakers of important changes, and "t-shirt" where you can buy official HalfBakery merchandise. The final group of links is "account," which allows members to edit, destroy, of log out of their account.
On the bottom of both the main index and the idea pages is the category list. This is similar to the category headings in the main index. Clicking on any of the categories takes you to all of the ideas in that category, which are divided into subcategories. There are twelve different categories (one more than the categories listed in the main index.) The categories
"business," "car," "computer," "health," and "product" are self-explanatory. "Culture" contains ideas for new forms of music, games, celebrations, television shows, and other things which define and influence our culture. "Fashion" contains more than just clothing. There are also ideas for glasses and contacts, hair-replacement alternatives, and anatomical changes. "Food" contains not only food, but also cutlery and means for storing and delivering it. "Home" has ideas for improving your house, as well as means to control pets and children. Ideas for changing government services, public places, travel, games, politics, communication, and all other thing associated with the public are in the "public" category. The "other" category is for ideas which don't fit into any of the other categories. The "halfbakery" category contains ideas for improving the HalfBakery. Due to a recent excess of postings in this category, it is the one category which appears at the bottom of the screen, but not in the main index.
While the HalfBakery's design and its theme encourage users to contribute some interesting material, it is the HalfBakers themselves who have had the largest hand in making the HalfBakery what it is. You can already see that members of the HalfBakery are mostly jovial and rarely serious. They are also very creative; otherwise they would not participate in the HalfBakery. Most of the HalfBakers have a computer-related job. These are likely the only character trait which the HalfBakers have in common. A few weeks on the HalfBakery will show that the people who compose it come from diverse backgrounds, because we often reveal our occupations and interests in our posts. An email survey has revealed a lot of variety in the members of the HalfBakery, as well. For instance, the user known as "centauri" is in his mid-twenties, lives in a residential area in Seattle, and is working on a Masters in Physics. PeterSealy (one word), on the other hand, is forty and lives in New York, working as a "computer consultant on Wall Street." As a HalfBaker, he is "very pedantic, highly critical of unoriginal ideas, fond of insulting egnor (a fellow HalfBaker), but essentially kind-hearted." Rmutt lives in Silicon Valley and works as a research scientist, and DeGroof lives in North Carolina and is a computer programmer. Both are nearing forty. PotatoStew lives near Philadelphia, has jobs including web design and illustrating, and is fond of outdoor activities.
"Jutta," however, is one of the most important members of the HalfBakery community, because she is the one who has created and continues to maintain and improve it. Jutta is a "thirtyish female" from the Bay Area who works as a computer programmer. According to her, it started out as a number of her own half-baked ideas which she had put on her website. These generated a lot of discussion with visitors, and evolved into the HalfBakery.
There are also many HalfBakers who live in other parts of the world. UnaBubba works as an accountant, and runs a few other businesses on the side. He describes himself as "A family man and brutally irreverent, iconoclastic pedant who loves a good debate, on practically any topic you can name, from Quantum Mechanics to WWII history to The Decline of British
Imperialism and Its Implications for The Australian Republican Movement." S(vowel deleted)rr(vowel deleted)b(vowel deleted)n is a bookseller whose personal motto is "take nothing seriously," although he doesn't take personal mottos very seriously. Both live in Australia. Wes is much closer. He resides in Ontario, Canada, and has almost completed a Bachelor's Degree in Materials Engineering & Management. He has frequently taken ideas from the HalfBakery to his New Products Marketing class, and they consistently generate laughter, although many get serious discussion. There are also a number of HalfBakers who reside in Britain, and at least one who lives in the Gaelic region.
The HalfBakery is a very interesting community. It as a community, it is
very unusual, as both an online community and as a community in general.
While it is sparce in it's decor, the HalfBakery is rich in content. This
is because of the contributions of a diverse group of people, and the
diligence of Jutta. So, the HalfBakery is not only a community, but one
which is exceptionally diverse, intriguing, and unique.
Works Cited
Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary: Tenth Edition.
Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, Inc., 1999.
The HalfBakery. Ed. Jutta. 10 August 1999. 15 March 2001. http://www.halfbakery.com
HalfBakery Research Project. Justin Danner. 8 March 2001.
Various writers. "Re: Questionnaire." Email response to Justin Danner. 20
March 2001.