Wayne State University Wayne State University Dissertations 1-1-2016 Emerging Genres Of Online Technical Communciation Luke Anthony Thominet Wayne State University, Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/oa_dissertations Part of the Other Communication Commons, and the Rhetoric Commons Recommended Citation Thominet, Luke Anthony, "Emerging Genres Of Online Technical Communciation" (2016). Wayne State University Dissertations. Paper 1597. This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@WayneState. It has been accepted for inclusion in Wayne State University Dissertations by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@WayneState. EMERGING GENRES OF ONLINE TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION by LUKE THOMINET DISSERTATION Submitted to the Graduate School of Wayne State University Detroit, Michigan in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 2016 MAJOR: ENGLISH (Rhetoric and Composition) Approved By: _____________________________________ Advisor Date _____________________________________ Date _____________________________________ Date _____________________________________ Date DEDICATION I would be nowhere without my family, so I dedicate this work to them. To my father with his sage rock advice. To my brother who is as loyal a friend as any might hope for. To my mother whose patience (and willingness to be an extra set of eyes for my scholarship) never ceases to amaze me. To Allison, who supports me when I need it most. And finally, also to Goob. You are missed. Thank you all for so much support and love over the years. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I especially want to thank my director, Jeff Pruchnic, for all the long meetings and for helping me make it through when I started to question my project. I also want to thank my committee, Richard Marback, Donnie Sackey, and Samantha Blackmon, for providing me with feedback and supporting my development as a researcher. And I would be remiss to not thank Ellen Barton, who took me under her wing as her research assistant and has continually pushed me toward better research design and better methods. I also owe a debt of gratitude to the reviewers at SIGDOC and TCQ. A section from first body chapter was revised and published in the SIGDOC 2015 proceedings. And my second body chapter was significantly revised and published as an article in the Summer 2016 issue of TCQ. The reviewers for both helped push me to make better arguments and to hone my writing. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Dedication ....................................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................ iii List of Tables ............................................................................................................................... viii List of Figures ................................................................................................................................ ix Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1 Methodology ................................................................................................................... 3 Chapter Descriptions ....................................................................................................... 5 Chapter 1 Crowdsourced Documentation Wikis ............................................................................ 7 Overview of the Genre .................................................................................................... 8 Value of the Genre ........................................................................................................ 10 Destabilizations in the Documentation Genre System.............................................. 11 Additional Value for Professionals ........................................................................... 13 Critique of the Genre .................................................................................................... 14 Analysis of Author support ........................................................................................... 21 Obligatory Content Areas ......................................................................................... 23 Conventional Content Areas ..................................................................................... 26 Optional Content Areas............................................................................................. 27 Critique of Current Author Support .............................................................................. 31 Choose an Action-Oriented Approach ...................................................................... 34 Anchor the Tool in the Task Domain ....................................................................... 35 Support Error Recognition and Recovery ................................................................. 36 Support Reading to Do, Study and Locate................................................................ 37 iv Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 37 Chapter 2 Player Video Game Reviews ....................................................................................... 39 Methods......................................................................................................................... 40 Development of Coding System ............................................................................... 41 Sample........................................................................................................................... 46 Desura ....................................................................................................................... 47 Gamespot .................................................................................................................. 47 Giant Bomb ............................................................................................................... 48 GOG (Good Old Games) .......................................................................................... 48 Metacritic .................................................................................................................. 48 Steam......................................................................................................................... 49 Basic Differences Between Revenue Models ........................................................... 49 Study Limitations ...................................................................................................... 50 Results ........................................................................................................................... 50 Discussion ..................................................................................................................... 53 Background Information Move ................................................................................. 54 Specific Aspects Move ............................................................................................. 57 Overall Quality Move ............................................................................................... 60 Narrate Game Experience Move ............................................................................... 63 Offer Advice Move ................................................................................................... 64 Influence of Individual Games on Reviews .............................................................. 66 Summary of Variation............................................................................................... 68 Influences on a Changing Genre ............................................................................... 69 v Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 72 Future Research ........................................................................................................ 74 Chapter 3 Open Development of Video Games ........................................................................... 75 Activity Theory Analysis .............................................................................................. 77 The Activity of Open Development .......................................................................... 79 OD Activities ............................................................................................................ 86 OD Genres .................................................................................................................... 99 Chats ....................................................................................................................... 101 Comments ............................................................................................................... 102 Dev Sites ................................................................................................................. 102 Digital Distribution Store Pages ............................................................................. 104 Fan Art .................................................................................................................... 105 Forums