Posting As Time Killing

Description
This pattern occurs when users add content as a time-consuming activity due to lack of stimulation, either from the service itself or in a real environment.

Examples
An example is when a person is waiting for the bus and visits, for instance, Facebook from her phone. She then shares some content with the only reason being the sharing itself, as opposed to when people choose to share content when they actually have something specific to share.

Pros and Cons
This is a result of lack of design for the time aspect, when to share content (at all or of different types). The application might want to keep this pattern in order to increase the activity on their site, but well-visited sites might not need Posting as Time Killing since the users of that active site might find the time killing posts uninteresting comparing to other posts. If the pattern was removed the quality of content could be improved.

Relations
This pattern occurs because of the user's possibility to post (Crumlish & Malone) anything she wishes. If there were a filter (for example a moderator that must approve the post) this pattern might not occur equally often. However, Group Moderation (Crumlish & Malone) is mostely used against posted content that are aggressive or in other ways disturbing.

This pattern is somewhat contradicted by the pattern Collecting Information to Share which states that users tend to not post at all until they have substantial content to share. Also Self-Censoring counter Posting as Time Killing.

Contributors
Created by Patric Westberg from the inspiration of Malin Mattsson and Magnus Spånggård.