Reminiscences on Influential Papers

This issue's contributors cover papers that focus on different aspects of accessing data: RDFs, approximate nearest neighbor search, and compact hash tables. Furthermore, they all highlight the impact of the papers not only on their own research and career but also for the community in general. Enjoy reading! While I will keep inviting members of the data management community, and neighboring communities, to contribute to this column, I also welcome unsolicited contributions. Please contact me if you are interested.

Community management has remained the dominant paradigm for managing rural water supplies in sub-Saharan Africa. There is a widespread perception that community participation principles are inherently embedded in the community management model. In this paper, we analyze how an international nongovernmental organization engages rural communities in their rural water projects, and the ways in which community members are able to participate in the management and governance of their water supplies. Qualitative data were collected in 18 study communities – six each in Ghana, Kenya, and Zambia – through interviews, focus group discussions, and participatory mapping with community and water committee members. We argue that community management does not inherently lead to broader community participation, but rather that fostering community participation requires intentionality. We recommend implementers use collaborative planning processes and explicitly engage with intra-community diversity and inequalities in order to facilitate the opportunity for all community members to meaningfully participate in decision-making. Collaborative planning with diverse groups will also allow community members to realize their rights to transparency and accountability once community management structures are in place.

The growth of online video-game players has seen a parallel growth in online gaming communities. Membership in these communities has been well known to play a vital role in shaping social connections and fostering social capital. This systematic review explored the role of interacting virtual identities in shaping the relationship between membership in gaming communities and social capital as an outcome. Online databases of Scopus, APA PsycNet, Web of Science, the Digital Game Research Association Digital Library, and the Association for Computing Machinery Digital Library were screened (January 1, 2000-October 23, 2023). From an initial pool of 5,720 studies, 33 were finalized for inclusion after quality assessment. Results highlight that interacting identities affect players' experiences of social support and social capital. The extent to which positive social interactions were experienced and social capital was accumulated depended on (a) the number of interacting salient identities and (b) the degree to which salient identities were marginalized in the respective gaming community. Prevalent identities in different social contexts (the non-virtual world, online gaming communities, and specific virtual worlds) and how their interactions affect social capital have been discussed. This study contributes to theory by demonstrating how intersecting identities influence social capital dynamics in virtual spaces. It also offers insights for community managers on creating inclusive environments that enhance positive social experiences and social capital accumulation.

Algorithmic rankers take a collection of candidates as input and produce a ranking (permutation) of the candidates as output. The simplest kind of ranker is score-based; it computes a score of each candidate independently and returns the candidates in score order. Another common kind of ranker is learning-to-rank, where supervised learning is used to predict the ranking of unseen candidates. For both kinds of rankers, we may output the entire permutation or only the highest scoring k candidates, the top-k. Set selection is a special case of ranking that ignores the relative order among the top-k. In the past few years, there has been much work on incorporating fairness and diversity requirements into algorithmic rankers, with contributions coming from the data management, algorithms, information retrieval, and recommender systems communities. In my talk I will offer a broad perspective that connects formalizations and algorithmic approaches across subfields, grounding them in a common narrative around the value frameworks that motivate specific fairness- and diversity-enhancing interventions. I will discuss some recent and ongoing work, and will outline future research directions where the data management community is well-positioned to make lasting impact, especially if we attack these problems with our rich theory-meets-systems toolkit.

In the US and beyond, a paradigm shift is underway toward community-based care, motivated by changes in policies, payment models and social norms. A significant aspect of this shift for disability activists and policy makers is ensuring participation in community life for individuals with disabilities living in residential homes. Despite a U.S. government ruling that encourages community participation and provides federal and state funding to realize it, little progress has been made. This study builds on and integrates the expanded model of value creation with relational coordination theory by investigating how the resources and relationships between care providers, adults with disabilities, family members, and community members can be leveraged to create value for residents through meaningful community participation. The purpose of our community case study was to assess and improve the quality of relationships between stakeholder groups, including direct care staff and managers, residents, family members, and the community through an action research intervention. This study took place in a residential group home in a Northeastern US community serving adults with disabilities from acquired brain injury. A pre-test post-test design was used and quantitative assessments of relational coordination were collected through electronic surveys, administered at baseline, and post-intervention. Direct care staff, supervisors, the house manager, and nursing staff completed the survey. Qualitative data were collected through focus groups, change team meetings, and key informant interviews. Direct care staff formed a change team to reflect on their baseline relational coordination data and identified the weak ties between direct care staff, family members, and the community as an area of concern. Staff chose to hold a community-wide open house to provide an opportunity to foster greater understanding among staff, residents, family, and community members. The change team and other staff members coordinated with local schools, business owners, town officials, churches, and neighbors. The event was attended by 50 people, about two-thirds from the community. Following the intervention, there was an increase in staff relational coordination with the community. While statistical significance could not be assessed, the change in staff RC with the community was considered qualitatively significant in that real connections were made with members of the community both directly and afterwards. Despite a small sample size, a residential setting where management was favorable to initiating staff-led interventions, and no comparison or control group, our small pilot study provides tentative evidence that engaging direct care staff in efforts to improve relational coordination with community members may succeed in building relationships that are essential to realizing the goal of greater participation in community life.

There is increasing evidence of the high deforestation rate of Ghana’s forest reserves as a result of non-proper management. This study focused on deepening the understanding of the prospects and challenges in the management of the Mpameso Forest Reserve in Ghana. Based on a qualitative study, major stakeholders such as traditional heads, community members, and members of the forestry department were interviewed. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis. Results show that respondents were aware of the relevance of the forest reserve. Though there is a collaborative effort between the forestry commission, the chiefs, and the communities, challenges such as a lack of collaboration between chiefs and the forestry department in the district, and encroachment by community members, among other factors, affected the sustainability of the forest reserve.. The study recommends an alternative livelihood should be provided, consideration for the creation of an ecotourism park, and intensification of the enforcement of laws protecting the forest reserve and its sanctions.

BackgroundAddressing the knowledge gaps for female genital schistosomiasis (FGS) among healthcare professionals and community members in endemic areas to improve early detection and management is crucial. In Ghana, limited knowledge, entrenched socio-cultural beliefs, and inadequate healthcare resources hinder effective FGS management. This study utilized a systematic intervention mapping (IM) approach to design targeted health promotion interventions in Ghana’s Lower Manya-Krobo and Shai Osudoku Municipalities.MethodsThe five IM steps are as follows:1) Conducting needs assessment and identifying implementation adopters; 2) developing program objectives and outlining the desired outcome and performance objectives; 3) selecting theoretical methods and designing implementation strategies; 4) developing implementation materials, and tools, and protocols; and 5) evaluate implementation outcome. During the needs assessment, surveys and focused group discussions with 856 women and 252 healthcare workers and discussions with community members highlighted widespread misinformation and gaps in knowledge, attitudes, and practices related to FGS. Stakeholders’ engagement then guided the mapping of context-specific interventions and the development of program objectives. Intervention materials, including FGS posters, jingles in four languages, screening tools, and reporting forms, were created and distributed through accessible local channels. Training sessions were also conducted to build healthcare workers’ diagnostic and management capacities.ResultsThe study revealed that Implementation mapping (IM), grounded in needs assessment and stakeholder involvement, facilitated the creation of tailored, evidence-based strategies. These strategies reached the intended population and improved awareness and attitudes among healthcare workers and community members. The findings emphasized the need for adaptive intervention that accounts for varying healthcare settings and community contexts to effectively address FGS knowledge gaps. It also revealed that the provision of adequate system support and needed logistics enhances FGS case diagnosis and management.ConclusionThe intervention in Lower Manya-Krobo Municipal enhanced public health outcomes by improving community awareness, case detection, and management of FGS, demonstrating its potential for broader application in endemic regions. The study highlighted the need for tailored approaches to address varying healthcare dynamics and resource constraints. Continued monitoring and evaluation are crucial to ensure the long-term sustainability and effectiveness of such interventions, offering valuable insights for policymakers, clinicians, and public health practitioners.

Facebook brand community bonding: The direct and moderating effect of value creation behaviour

With the advance of the World Wide Web, more and more people learn new knowledge and share information from traditional face-to-face communication to online communities on the Internet. An online community is a platform on the Internet, where members read articles, post comments, and interact with other members. However, in operating and maintaining an online community for a long term, many community managers face this problem: many community members only browse articles of their interest; they do not post new articles, comments, replies, or provide any meaningful information. Facing this problem, community managers should realize why members share and provide information. This study regards involvement as a motive to explore word-of-month communication (a sharing behavior) and develops two antecedent variables: cognitive involvement and affective involvement. It seeks to know how these two types of involvement motivate members to perform electronic word-of-month communication. At last, this study aims to provide online community managers with better solutions and suggestions to work on their communities.

The Nuclear Risk Management for Native Communities (NRMNC) project is a collaborative academic, community-based, tribal project, which conducts the three essential elements of participatory research: research, education, and community action, named here as "community-based hazards management." This article describes the goals and outcomes of this effort in assisting Native American communities in Nevada, Utah, and Southern California affected by nuclear fallout from U.S. weapons testing in the 1950s and 1960s. The NRMNC project sought to create new models for dealing with health research and risk communication needs in an environmental justice setting. The following results of this four-year project are discussed: (1) building a community-based environmental health infrastructure, (2) building community capacities through workshops and educational materials, (3) conducting both technical and community research, and (4) facilitating community-based hazards management planning. We describe such positive outcomes as the improvements in the scientific database through participatory research activities, the development of equitable relationships between scientists and community members, and the creation of a sustaining program intervention for long-term community needs. The project's outcomes are presented as an expansion to limited scientific risk management outcomes in the environmental health field that often are solely quantitative and lack relevance to community concerns about environmental health impacts from contamination.

Health inequity is a critical problem in the United States and one that primarily affects marginalized communities. One critical aspect to interventions addressing this issue is the aim to increase health literacy, so that members of these communities can make informed decisions and feel empowered to take charge of their personal health. Our team developed a transformational game that uses self-efficacy to address players’ health literacy in context. Using properties from both visual novel and strategy simulation genres, we present a game in which players take on the role of a community manager who works to better their community by completing quests from non-player character (NPC) community members. The current paper contributes our research and iterative design processes, and highlights future directions utilizing focus groups and playtesting with community members, game development, and evaluation studies to assess impact.

The ambitious climate goals of the European Union to complete the transition toward an entirely renewable energy supply request new balancing concepts to better cope with the required increase of distributed and volatile energy sources. Energy Communities could be an enabler thereto, the idea being that the community management coordinates heterogeneous energy assets, owned and operated by community members, to jointly utilize their resources internally and thereby reduce external grid load. In this paper we present an analysis of functional requirements to initiate a new technical framework for Energy Communities. This first functional description of Energy Community management aiming on community internal energy balancing is provided as a starting point for integration profiles development according to the Integrating the Energy System (IES) approach.

This chapter identifies emerging paradigm shifts for research that can address the next generation of practice and policy questions in early childhood development (ECD) in low- and middle-income (LAMI) countries. We discuss new developments in approaches to considering equity; quality and its improvement; the multisectoral nature of ECD programs and policies; and the development of research capacity. In each section, we identify underlying tensions and challenges in the global ECD context, paying particular attention to issues of inequity, social exclusion, and cultural diversity, and we highlight innovative directions and initiatives. We conclude that the promise of expanding both knowledge bases and programs and policies in ECD across LAMI countries requires new approaches to examining patterns of inclusion, exclusion, and cultural specificity, as well as partnerships among researchers, practitioners, caregivers, community members, and policymakers.

This study aimed to explore the lived experiences of Kimberley Aboriginal people with type 2 diabetes managed by remote Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services using phenomenological analysis. Semi-structured interviews formulated by Aboriginal Health Workers, researchers and other clinicians were used to obtain qualitative data from 13 adult Aboriginal patients with type 2 diabetes managed in two remote communities in the Kimberley. Together with expert opinion from local Aboriginal Health Workers and clinicians, the information was used to develop strategies to improve diabetes management. Of 915 regular adult patients in the two communities, 27% had type 2 diabetes; 83% with glycated haemoglobin A >10%. Key qualitative themes included: the need for culturally relevant education and pictorial resources; importance of continuous therapeutic relationships with healthcare staff; lifestyle management advice that takes into account local and cultural factors; and the involvement of Aboriginal community members and families in support roles. Recommendations to improve diabetes management in the remote communities have been made collaboratively with community input. This study provides a framework for culturally relevant recommendations to assist patients with diabetes, for collaborative research, and for communication among patients, Aboriginal Health Workers, community members, researchers and other clinicians. Interventions based on recommendations from this study will be the focus of further collaborative research.

Findings from the study suggest that the community is highly vulnerable to droughts and disaster risks because of poor adaptive mechanisms, overreliance on water-dependent activities and lack of adequate support from different stakeholders. Community members use different mechanisms during- and ex-post-drought, depending on the stage or severity of the drought. The government and stakeholders should promote community awareness and early warning systems for droughts to mitigate disaster risks. These initiatives should ideally be combined with strengthening existing response measures and educating communities to adequately prepare for droughts and their aftermath.