Using Foreign Forums

The paper considers the use of online technical discussions by software developers in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, drawing on the results of a 5 month interview study. In the course of their daily work, Brazilian software developers routinely rely on online resources, which include as a key component foreign forum dedicated to technical questions. In rare cases, they actively participate in those forums; somewhat more often they "lurk." Even more often, however, forum posts are simply found while searching for a specific topic. Forums are thus experienced not as intertwining threads of conversations, but rather as a searchable collection of questions and answers free from conversational context, which is appreciated in a detached, asocial way. The paper thus looks at the use of persistent conversations by people who are not party to them - not even as lurkers. It considers some of the reasons for such non-participatory use, including the reasons one would presume to be universal (e.g., the ease of searching), as well as those that may be specific to members of peripheral communities. The paper contrasts the forms of engagement with foreign and local (or national) technical forums, showing how foreign conversations are construed as asocial "sources of knowledge" while local forums are seen as spaces that bring together national or local communities of developers