{"id":{"repo_id":"uiuc","oai_identifier":"oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/132457"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/uiuc/oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/132457","repository":{"repo_id":"uiuc","name":"University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign","base_url":"https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh"},"display":{"title":"Computational approaches for democratizing online community governance","abstract":"Although democracy is a common real-world governance model, large swaths of the social media landscape are run in a quasi-dictatorial manner. From Usenet newsgroups to Reddit subreddits, online communities are managed by volunteer moderators who have sole authority to create and enforce community rules. While rules are vital to community health (preventing trolling, keeping communities on-topic, etc), community members have little voice in their creation or implementation. Part of this is due to inadequate tooling. Online communities require democratic governance technologies that are able to function within the unique dynamics of online social life: massive scale, highly fluid user populations, and pseudo-anonymous communication. Although the potential benefits of democratizing online community governance have been broadly argued for in prior work, designing effective governance technologies has remained elusive. As such, this thesis has dual goals. First, I seek to conduct quantitative analysis to better understand the contexts in which online communities should utilize democratization. Second, I want to use this analysis to inform the design and deployment of new democratization technologies. Concretely, I provide evidence that democratization efforts may have the most impact if they target what I call the “practice”-level of governance, focusing on the application of rules to specific cases. Further, I highlight the potential problems that user-base fluidity poses to democratic governance: when a community doubles in size overnight, whose concerns should prioritized? Those of long time users? Or newcomers? In light of these insights, I design Venire, a machine-learning based tool for facilitating practice-level democratization. My work provides a roadmap for future efforts to democratize online community governance, ensuring that the online social spaces we participate in actually reflect our values.","abstract_html":"Although democracy is a common real-world governance model, large swaths of the social media landscape are run in a quasi-dictatorial manner. From Usenet newsgroups to Reddit subreddits, online communities are managed by volunteer moderators who have sole authority to create and enforce community rules. While rules are vital to community health (preventing trolling, keeping communities on-topic, etc), community members have little voice in their creation or implementation. Part of this is due to inadequate tooling. Online communities require democratic governance technologies that are able to function within the unique dynamics of online social life: massive scale, highly fluid user populations, and pseudo-anonymous communication. Although the potential benefits of democratizing online community governance have been broadly argued for in prior work, designing effective governance technologies has remained elusive. As such, this thesis has dual goals. First, I seek to conduct quantitative analysis to better understand the contexts in which online communities should utilize democratization. Second, I want to use this analysis to inform the design and deployment of new democratization technologies. Concretely, I provide evidence that democratization efforts may have the most impact if they target what I call the “practice”-level of governance, focusing on the application of rules to specific cases. Further, I highlight the potential problems that user-base fluidity poses to democratic governance: when a community doubles in size overnight, whose concerns should prioritized? Those of long time users? Or newcomers? In light of these insights, I design Venire, a machine-learning based tool for facilitating practice-level democratization. My work provides a roadmap for future efforts to democratize online community governance, ensuring that the online social spaces we participate in actually reflect our values.","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Koshy, Vinay"],"institution":"University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign","degree_name":"Ph.D.","degree_level":"Dissertation","degree_discipline":"Computer Science","degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":["Karahalios, Karrie","Sundaram, Hari","Chandrasekharan, Eshwar","Zhang, Amy X"],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2025,"date_issued":"2025-12","date_published":"2025-12","updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:25:07Z","subjects":["Human-Computer Interaction","Human-AI interaction","Computational Social Science","Computer Supported and Cooperative Work","Social Computing","Online Communities"],"languages":["en"],"rights":["Copyright 2025 Vinay Koshy"],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[]},"links":{"outbound_url":"https://hdl.handle.net/2142/132457","outbound_label":"Handle","outbound_source":"dc:identifier"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor","label":"Contributor","values":["Karahalios, Karrie","Sundaram, Hari","Chandrasekharan, Eshwar","Zhang, Amy X"]},{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Koshy, Vinay"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date","label":"Dc Date","values":["2025-12","2025-08-26"]},{"key":"dc:type","label":"Dc Type","values":["text","Thesis"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_discipline","label":"Discipline","values":["Computer Science"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_level","label":"Degree Level","values":["Dissertation"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_name","label":"Degree Name","values":["Ph.D."]},{"key":"thesis:institution_name","label":"Thesis Institution Name","values":["University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["Human-Computer Interaction","Human-AI interaction","Computational Social Science","Computer Supported and Cooperative Work","Social Computing","Online Communities"]}]},{"id":"language_rights","label":"Language and Rights","entries":[{"key":"dc:language","label":"Dc Language","values":["en"]},{"key":"dc:rights","label":"Dc Rights","values":["Copyright 2025 Vinay Koshy"]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["https://hdl.handle.net/2142/132457"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description","label":"Description","values":["Although democracy is a common real-world governance model, large swaths of the social media landscape are run in a quasi-dictatorial manner. From Usenet newsgroups to Reddit subreddits, online communities are managed by volunteer moderators who have sole authority to create and enforce community rules. While rules are vital to community health (preventing trolling, keeping communities on-topic, etc), community members have little voice in their creation or implementation. Part of this is due to inadequate tooling. Online communities require democratic governance technologies that are able to function within the unique dynamics of online social life: massive scale, highly fluid user populations, and pseudo-anonymous communication. Although the potential benefits of democratizing online community governance have been broadly argued for in prior work, designing effective governance technologies has remained elusive. As such, this thesis has dual goals. First, I seek to conduct quantitative analysis to better understand the contexts in which online communities should utilize democratization. Second, I want to use this analysis to inform the design and deployment of new democratization technologies. Concretely, I provide evidence that democratization efforts may have the most impact if they target what I call the “practice”-level of governance, focusing on the application of rules to specific cases. Further, I highlight the potential problems that user-base fluidity poses to democratic governance: when a community doubles in size overnight, whose concerns should prioritized? Those of long time users? Or newcomers? In light of these insights, I design Venire, a machine-learning based tool for facilitating practice-level democratization. My work provides a roadmap for future efforts to democratize online community governance, ensuring that the online social spaces we participate in actually reflect our values.","Submission original under an indefinite embargo labeled 'Open Access'. The submission was exported from vireo on 2026-02-19 without embargo terms","The student, Vinay Koshy, accepted the attached license on 2025-08-22 at 12:20.","The student, Vinay Koshy, submitted this Dissertation for approval on 2025-08-22 at 12:43.","This Dissertation was approved for publication on 2025-08-26 at 15:11.","DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #22776 on 2026-02-19 at 18:24:12"]},{"key":"dc:format","label":"Dc Format","values":["application/pdf"]},{"key":"dc:title","label":"Title","values":["Computational approaches for democratizing online community governance"]}]}],"canonical_facts":{"dc:contributor":["Karahalios, Karrie","Sundaram, Hari","Chandrasekharan, Eshwar","Zhang, Amy X"],"dc:creator":["Koshy, Vinay"],"dc:date":["2025-12","2025-08-26"],"dc:description":["Although democracy is a common real-world governance model, large swaths of the social media landscape are run in a quasi-dictatorial manner. From Usenet newsgroups to Reddit subreddits, online communities are managed by volunteer moderators who have sole authority to create and enforce community rules. While rules are vital to community health (preventing trolling, keeping communities on-topic, etc), community members have little voice in their creation or implementation. Part of this is due to inadequate tooling. Online communities require democratic governance technologies that are able to function within the unique dynamics of online social life: massive scale, highly fluid user populations, and pseudo-anonymous communication. Although the potential benefits of democratizing online community governance have been broadly argued for in prior work, designing effective governance technologies has remained elusive. As such, this thesis has dual goals. First, I seek to conduct quantitative analysis to better understand the contexts in which online communities should utilize democratization. Second, I want to use this analysis to inform the design and deployment of new democratization technologies. Concretely, I provide evidence that democratization efforts may have the most impact if they target what I call the “practice”-level of governance, focusing on the application of rules to specific cases. Further, I highlight the potential problems that user-base fluidity poses to democratic governance: when a community doubles in size overnight, whose concerns should prioritized? Those of long time users? Or newcomers? In light of these insights, I design Venire, a machine-learning based tool for facilitating practice-level democratization. My work provides a roadmap for future efforts to democratize online community governance, ensuring that the online social spaces we participate in actually reflect our values.","Submission original under an indefinite embargo labeled 'Open Access'. The submission was exported from vireo on 2026-02-19 without embargo terms","The student, Vinay Koshy, accepted the attached license on 2025-08-22 at 12:20.","The student, Vinay Koshy, submitted this Dissertation for approval on 2025-08-22 at 12:43.","This Dissertation was approved for publication on 2025-08-26 at 15:11.","DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #22776 on 2026-02-19 at 18:24:12"],"dc:format":["application/pdf"],"dc:identifier":["https://hdl.handle.net/2142/132457"],"dc:language":["en"],"dc:rights":["Copyright 2025 Vinay Koshy"],"dc:subject":["Human-Computer Interaction","Human-AI interaction","Computational Social Science","Computer Supported and Cooperative Work","Social Computing","Online Communities"],"dc:title":["Computational approaches for democratizing online community governance"],"dc:type":["text","Thesis"],"thesis:degree_discipline":["Computer Science"],"thesis:degree_level":["Dissertation"],"thesis:degree_name":["Ph.D."],"thesis:institution_name":["University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign"]},"updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:25:07Z"}