目前的虛擬社群都是建立在主從架構下的網路服務。然而在主從架構下建立的服務仍有一些不足之處，如維護的成本隨著社群的擴大而快速的增加，以及個人資料集中也增加誤用的風險。在點對點網路架構底下有許多優點可以改善或避免在主從架構中的不足之處。因此我們的研究打算將虛擬社群的應用擴展到點對點的網路架構中。
而在虛擬社群的組隊的方法目前有兩種主要的方式，一是依靠人與人的關係決定，二是依靠個人的能力指標來分組。但這兩種方式各有所偏重。在本研究之中，我們在目前的方法之中引入社會網路的概念來幫助團隊的組成以便克服目前方法的不足。除此之外，由於點對點網路的天性就是任何的資料交換與處理都必須經由網路上訊息的傳遞才可行，因此本研究所提出的方法論亦著重在減少網路上的傳遞成本，以便在團隊組成的過程中以更高的效率來完成，此外更能保持所選出來的團隊成員的能力都能儘可能的符合所要求的工作。

Most of virtual communities are built on the client/server system. There are some limitations on the client/server system such as the maintenance cost and the personal attribute protection. The peer-to-peer system has some strengths to overcome the limitations of client/server system. Therefore, we are willing to export the virtual community on the peer-to-peer system.
There are two main team formation approaches in the current virtual community collaboration. Either one of these approaches alone has its limitations. In this study, we adopt the social network concept to design a team formation mechanism in order to overcome the limitations of current approaches. Besides, because of the natural of peer-to-peer system, the exchange of messages is sending and receiving on the network. The mechanism proposed in this research can also reduce the traffic cost of the team formation process. Furthermore, it maintains the fitness of members who are chosen in the same team.

Chapter 1. Introduction 10
1.1 Research Background 10
1.2 Research Motivation 12
1.3 Research Objectives 13
1.4 Research Limitations 14
1.5 Thesis Organization 14
Chapter 2. Literature Review 16
2.1 Peer to Peer Networks 16
2.2 JXTA 18
2.3 Social Network Analysis 21
2.4 Dynamic Team Formation 22
2.5 Fuzzy Adaptive Resonance Theory (Fuzzy ART) 24
Chapter 3. Research Framework 27
3.1 The Design of Team Formation Mechanisms 28
3.1.1 Social Network Updating 29
3.1.2 Learning to allocate Candidates 31
3.1.3 Invitation candidates to form a team 33
3.1.4 Task execution 34
3.2 The Development of Communication Platform 35
3.2.1 General purpose functions 36
3.2.2 Specific functions 38
3.3 The Design of Evaluation 41
Chapter 4. Experimental Results 43
4.1 Experimental Design 43
4.2 Hypothesis 46
Chapter 5. Analysis of Experimental Results 48
5.1 Social Network Analysis 48
5.1.1 Mean degree and density 50
5.1.2 K-core 51
5.1.3 Closeness centrality 62
5.2 Dependence Variables Analysis 72
5.2.1 Traffic cost 72
5.2.2 Expertise gap 75
Chapter 6. Conclusion and Future Research 78

Ambroszkiewicz, S., Matyja, O. and Penczek, W. (1998). Team formation by self-interested Mobile Agents, 4-th Australian DAI-workshop, Springer LNAI 1544.
Balakrishnan, H., Kaashoek, M.F., Karger, D., Morris, R. and Stoica, I. (2003). Looking up data in P2P systems, Communication of the ACM, 46(2), 43-48.
Banks, A., and David, P. (1999). Inter-organizational structures for knowledge sharing, ACM, 135-137.
Bock, R.D., and Husain, S.Z. (1950). An adaptation of Holzinger’s B-coefficients for the analysis of sociometric data. Sociometry. 13, 146-153.
Bonacich, P. (1987). Power and centrality: A family of measures, The American Journal of Sociology, 92(5), 1170-1182.
Brandes, U. (2001). A faster algorithm for betweenness centrality, Journal of Mathematical Sociology, 25(2), 163-177.
Butts, C.T. (2001). The complexity of social networks: theoretical and empirical findings, Social Networks, 23(1), 31–72.
Carpenter, G. and Grossberg, S. (2001). Adaptive resonance theory: stable self organization of neural recognition codes in response to arbitrary lists of input patterns, Proc. 8th Annu. Conf. Cognitive Sci. Soc., 45-62.
Chen, C.H. (2001). Developing social network analysis system for virtual teams in a professional virtual community, Master Thesis of National Sun-Yat-San University, Taiwan.
Clark, D. (2001). Face-to-Face with Peer-to-Peer Networking. IEEE COMPUTER, 34(1), 18-21.
Cohen, P. R., Levesque, H. R., and Smith, I. (1998). On team formation, In J. Hintikka, and R. Tuomela, Edditors, Contemporary Action Theory, Synthese.
Eades, P. (1984). A heuristic for Graph Drawing, Cong. Numer., 42, 149-160.
Freeman, L.C. (1979). Centrality in social networks: I. conceptual clarification, Social Networks, 1(1), 215-239.
Garton, L., Haythornthwaite, C., and Wellman, B. (1997). Studying online social networks, Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, 3(1).
Hanneman, R.A. Introduction to social network methods, http://faculty.ucr.edu/~hanneman/SOC157/NETTEXT.PDF.
Haythornthwaite, C., Wellman, B., and Mantei, M. (1995). Work relationships and media use: A social network analysis, Group Decision and Negotiation, 4(3), 193-211.
Jiang, P. and Mair, Q. (2002). A self-organizational management network based on adaptive resonance theory, Agent Technology Workshops.
Kimball, L.,Boundaryless facilitation, http://www.tmn.com/~lisa/bnd2.htm.
Laumann, E., Marsden, P., and Prensky, D. (1983). The boundary specification problem in network analysis, In R. Burt and M. Minor (Eds.), Applied network analysis, Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 18-34.
Li, Gong. (2002). Project JXTA: A Technology Overview, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Montgomery, Douglas C. (2001). Design and analysis of experiments, 4thed.
NetMiner (2003). User Manual, Cyram NetMiner v 2.0.1, 1-2.
Newman, M.E.J., Elsevier Science B.V.(2003). Ego-centered networks and the ripple effect, Social Networks, 25(1), 83–95.
Robert, A., Hanneman H. (2001). Introduction to Social Network Methods, Department of Sociology University of California.
Sabidussi, G. (1966). The centrality index of a graph, Psychometrika, 31, 581-603.
Seidman, S and Foster, B. (1978). A graph theoretic generalization of the clique concept, J or Math, Soc, 6, 139-154.
Seidman, S. (1983). “Network structure and minimum degree”. Social Networks, 5, 269-287.
Schoder, D. and Fischbach, K. (2003), Peer-to-peer prospects, Communication of the ACM, 46(2), 27-29.
Scott, J. (2001), Social Network Analysis, London: Sage.
Sun Microsystems, Inc. (2001). Project JXTA: Programmer’s Guide, http://www.jxta.org/docs/JxtaProgGuide_v2.pdf.
Tidhar, G., Rao, A. S., Ljungberg, M., Kinny, D. N. and Sonenberg, E. A. (1992). Skills and capabilities in real-time team formation, Technical Report 27, Australian Artificial Intelligence Institute, Melbourne, Australia.
Townsend, A., DeMarie, S., and Hendrickson, A. (1998). Virtual teams: technology and the workplace of the future, Academy of Management Executive, 12(3), 17-29.
Wasserman, S. and Faust, K. (1994). Social Network analysis: Method and Applications, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wellman, B. (1982). “Studying personal communities, In P. Marsden and N. Lin (Eds.), Social structure and network analysis, Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 61-80.
Wellman, B. (1996). For a social network analysis of computer networks: a sociological perspective on collaborative work and virtual community, Proceedings of the 1996 ACM SIGCPR/SIGMIS Conference, Denver, Colorado US, 11-13.
Wilson, J.B. (2002), JXTA, New Riders.