Reaction to Chapter 2 Blogging America

For Com 430z I have read chapter two of Aaron Barlow’s book called Blogging America. Barlow talks about many aspects of blogs in this chapter of his book. He starts out by telling the audience if we keep blogging at this rate, there will be a whopping five hundred million blogs by the year 2010. Barlow also points out in the start of this chapter the even with the 75 million blogs already on the web, there are still people who do not know anything about them.

Blogs are also seen by many people as not being creditable. Anyone anywhere can be the author of their own blog saying anything they want. There is no one to stop them, edit their work, or censor what the user’s say. To me I see blogs being more like journals and should not be used regularly for sources of information but more or sources of entertainment. Barlow tells us that the blogs may be created to get peoples opinions about a certain thing or even just to relieve a little stress. They may be used for educational purposes such as our Com 430z class or they could be started for a business.

Personally the only blog that I use is the one for this class. Reading this chapter made me realize that blogging is actually pretty popular and not just something that people with no time do. I can really look into anything I want and even have one so only my friends and I can use. Truthfully I have not spent much time looking at people’s blogs and reading what they write. I am sure that one day I will be introduced to it and will become a blog-aholic. My motorcycle forums are addicting as it is so I can only imagine me blogging about any given topic.

Barlow, Aaron. Blogging America. (2008). The Blogs in Society (Chapter 2).

Essay # 3

Searching the World Wide Web is not always as simple as it may seem. The actuall search and finding the right "keyword" may be the easy part, although the hard part is to find reliable sources with accurate and creditable information. Web 2.0 provides many different search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Ask, all of which allows users to find virtually whatever they need. For Com 430z the ultimate task is to create a Wiki on a Web 2.0 medium such as the one I have chosen called Facebook. This essay will consist of my evaluation of information that I have found about Facebook as well as my assessment on the search engines and reliability of the sources used.


Searching smart as users is extremely important and we must not believe everything we see on the Web. We need to search for reliable and accurate sources to provide us with information on the topic that we are researching. My search engine of choice would be Google. It is set as my homepage and is the first thing that pops up when I open up my Internet Explorer. That being said, Google was the first out of three search engines I used to find information on Facebook. I wanted to start out simple so I started out searching with a keyword of "Facebook" to see what I would get back. The first two results were links leading me directly to the site itself and the third one lead me to Wikipedia. Wikipedia describes Facebook as a social networking site and tells me the history, features, and a ton more about the site. Wikipedia is a great way to find information on the Web quickly and most of the time accurately. Although it is discussed as a not so reliable source because virtually anyone can edit and twist around the information.


After searching for a bit I found that the keyword "Facebook" was much too broad and needed to make a more specific one. So I did just that and changed the keyword to "History of Facebook". The hit returned was from a website called Mashable. Information on Mashable seemed to be reliable and accurate and actually much of it related very well to the Wikipedia site. The Mashable site actually has a place where users could make posts and agree or disagree about the article. Personally I would not call this a reliable source being it came from an author who is not known and did not provide proof of where the information came from. For someone’s everyday use this article would be fine, but for someone who needs a scholarly and reliable source this would not fit the category. Google had returned many different sites on the "History of Facebook" but at this point I was looking for a complete reliable source. At the bottom of the Google search I found an article from the International Herald Tribune.This site talked about many aspects of Facebook and many things involving around Facebook which was I was looking for. This site is a known creditable source of information and reliable enough for me to mention it in this paper.


After messing around with Google for quite some time I decided it was time to move on. I decided to continue with Ask.com. I started my searches with the same keyword "History of Facebook". Many of the articles that came up were actually ones that I have seen before and lighted up purple which means that it had been clicked on already. Although I did find on the first page of hits, a site that I had not yet been to. It lead me to Chronicle.com. There was not much on this site at all except for a brief article linking us to the Mashable site that I have previously talked about. It is really at this point that I am realizing that Google and Ask are providing the same information that I have been finding. Really to me the history of Facebook is not something that is extremely important to me and have not found an incredible amount of information about it. This being said I have not found an extreme amount of reliable information on it so I decided to take advantage of being a student at the University of Albany and use an online resource offered by the library.


EBSCO has a ton of scholarly articles so I decided to search "History of Facebook" and see what I got in return. It led me to a reliable article that spoke about the aspects and history of Facebook. All of the information that the author of this article got was from reliable sources and this would be a great article to find what you need on the subject of matter. Another database on the library website is called ComAbstracts here I found a few topics about Facebook but nothing that really related to what I was looking for. It is extremely hard to really find exactly what you want when searching for specific things.


After searching on the library databases I pretty much came up empty. I decided to go back to searching on search engines to see what I can find on the "History of Facebook". In my return I decided to use Yahoo to research more information to contribute to the Wiki project. Yahoo is basically the same concept as Google and Ask. I decided to stick with the same keyword although I had a feeling I would be having the same results come back to me. I was right, the keyword kept giving me the same results that Google and Ask. I did find one thing that stood out to me because I had not seen it in the other searches I have done. The search came back and lead me to About.com where I found again the same information I have been founding. It was at this point where I thought to myself, "if I keep finding the same exact information on these sites, then it must be reliable and correct information that I am reading."


I have come to the conclusion that the keyword" History of Facebook" lead me to some accurate and reliable sources of information. They provided me with the information necessary to create my own Wiki when it comes time for the final project. Although I found what I was looking for I was not completely satisfied, so I decided to look around a bit more and use different keywords. The keywords I used were " What is Facebook, Who is Facebook, All about Facebook, and Background information on Facebook. " I found that I received back most of the same information that I have been finding except for the keywords "Background information on Facebook". It actually was almost too many keywords because the type of information I was receiving was really all kinds of different things. I learned from this paper that not everything on the Web is a reliable source to use. The searcher must really choose wisely on the information they choose to use in their academic papers.

For my com 430z class I read an article by Michael Zimmer called "The externalities of search 2.0; The emerging privacy threats when the drive for the perfect search engine meets Web 2.0."


Zimmer starts this article out by talking about the creating "perfect search engine" that supplies users accurate information and at a high rate of speed. These search engines would remember your old searches so it can make future searches better. Instead of searching for keywords we would be able to type in full sentences and receive a relevant answer. He mentions that in order to have a "perfect search engine" you must have "perfect reach" and "perfect recall". These would give access to all information available on the World Wide Web and would deliver the personalized results depending on who the person searching is.


He continues in his article with the prevalence of personal information that can be accessed on the Web 2.0. Explaining that users (especially younger ones) are very lose with giving out personal information. Zimmer is also concerned with the amount of privacy that we have. At one point in his article he talks about Lack of "Privacy via Obscurity" speaking about the fact that we can look up people using google which can also be used for finding out background information on people that may even be used in pre employment hiring decisions.


By the end of the article he talks about the possible effects that searching could have. He talks about things such as the "Disciplinary power, Panoptic Sorting, and Invisibility and Allure of Search 2.0."


Great things are offered by search 2.0 but there are always people looking to take advantage of mistakes that other people may make. Identity theft is a huge issue with credit cards and things of that nature. As technology progresses it is moving to the web. I have always been one to watch what I say and be sure not to release too much personal information. At first I was even scared to give my credit card number to Ebay until I learned about secure sites and things of that nature. Many people do not realize that even giving out their last name on the web could place them in serious problems. I really think that Zimmer is trying to point out issues such as privacy so we will be more careful with our personal information.




References
Zimmer, Michael. (2008). The externalities of search 2.0; The emerging privacy threats when the drive for the perfect search engine meets Web 2.0. First Monday, 13. Retrieved August 21, 2008 from http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2136/1944

Essay # 2

"Usenet, a world wide distributed Internet discussion system"(Wikipedia.org, 2008) has become a tremendous part of communicators daily lifestyles. It allows people to communicate through the Internet using forums, blogs, message boards, and even others to speak about common interest. Unfortunately, users have to deal with many problems such as the false sense of identity, spammers and even free riders. For the past week I have been observing two motorcycle forums and will discuss my observations in the following essay.


The Usenet was introduced to us in 1979, allowing users to read and post public messages to each other regarding specific topics. Once being able to count on a single hand the amount of bulletin boards created by Usenet when it first came around. There are now countless amounts of bulletin boards on the Internet as a result. It is great! People can discuss common topics with each other from all around the world, getting all different kinds of opinions and ideas. Although and unfortunately along with the good comes bad and the Usenet shows some of both (Mostly good). An article written by Kollock and Smith (1996) primarily on the Usenet shows us problems we may run into. Just as Professor Stromer-Galley stated on our class blog spot (http://com430z.blogspot.com/) "Their essay focused on Usenet and the problem of cooperation in online environments where there are few rules and little by way of sanctioning to stop unwanted behavior"(Stromer-Galley, 2008).


For the past seven days I have been observing two motorcycle forums, just looking at the interactions between the people who posted and in some events the people who did not. The forums are for Kawasaki motorcycles but specifically for the Ninja 650r. I am currently an active member in the forums and check as well as make post on them daily. These forums are used to ask questions and in reply people will answer questions to the best of their ability. In addition, people sell and buy parts, accessories, and even bikes. We post pictures of our bikes, ourselves, and we also have a section for off topic postings where we can post anything we want about anything we want. So personally for me Usenet and these forums have become part of my daily life, checking them three sometimes four times a day.
On the second day of my observations I came to my first personal roadblock, the Free-Rider problem. "Free Riders are those who consume more than their fair share of a resource, or shoulder less than a fair share of the costs of its production" (Wikipedia.org, 2008). More or less this means that there are either people that contribute unrelated information, opinions, and flat out nonsense. Or they sit back letting everyone else contribute and end up benefiting from their work and efforts. I read about this in an article by Kollock and Smith where they explain in their article Managing the virtual commons that "Boundary and bandwidth restrictions would have a direct effect on each user of the group, by the Free Riders of the group" (Kollock and Smith, 2008, Pg. 116).


I saw on the forums that people were posting in wrong sections of the forums and even posting a question and not replying to the responses received from others. For example, on the forums is a section for "Off Topic Postings" in this section you can make threads and discuss what ever you would like. Even though this is available for people to post in I was still seeing political nonsense all over the other sections such as "Maintenance" and "For Sale". In fact, we had one person join the forums just to create spam. According to the online Wikipedia "Spamming is the abuse of electronic messaging systems to indiscriminately send unsolicited bulk messages"(Wikipedia.org, 2008). This person signed up for the purpose promoting political propaganda. They posted numerous times in several different sections; made up pictures and quotes all over the place. Fortunately, a moderator caught them banned their IP address and deleted all of their post. Precautions have now been made on the forums to stop these spammers who are taking us away from the real purpose of being on these forums. I truly believe, that if we ignore these spammers and free riders, and do not act bothered by them, that they will slowly start to disappear (At least off our forums).


Brining me to my next major issue, which is Identity. Most of these forums are really an identity free environment. By identity free I mean no one knows who you really are (Age, gender, and so on.). People who join, create a nickname a password and that is it, they are in. In most cases their faces are never seen and their true identity is never revealed. Now this may not always be such a bad thing, but in the case of spammers and free riders it is. For example in our class, we all entered a private Internet Relay Chat (IRC). When joining the IRC each student was given a random nickname, so no one knew who was who. The class had a specific topic to stay on top of, but since their true identity’s were never revealed and could in reality not get in trouble, students immediately spammed the IRC. Talking about penises, drinking, and a ton more of what I thought was actually funny stuff. My point being is that none of them would have ever acted in this way if their nicknames were their first and last names. So as you can see these problems all really link together.


Now on my forums we do not get many spammers. But in the case of identity problems I see a whole new one. Mine being that suppose I was to ask a question about an engine problem I might be having. I post the question and get a response from a user. How do I know that this user is a credible source of information? In other words, how do I know that this person is not telling me the exact opposite of what I should do? They might in fact be telling me something that might make the problem even worse. So not only is Identity an issue for spammers it is also an issue for credibility.


Personally for the forums I have been observing, the problems with free riding, spamming, and Identity have not really been a huge factor. I have only been watching for a short period and have not seen too many bad encounters, but that might not be the case for others. In the end I believe that if we ignore the spammers and free riders they will eventually go away. They might even go away faster if we could solve the issue of identity. People would not commit crimes if they knew they would get caught. Same concept applies to spamming, people would not spam if they knew they would be identified.





References

Usenet. (2008, September 15). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 03:10, September 24, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Usenet&oldid=238615653


Kollock, P. & Smith, M. (1996). Managing the virtual commons: Cooperation and conflict in computer communities. In S. C. Herring (Ed.), Computer-mediated communication: Linguistic, social and cross-cultural perspectives (pp.109-129). Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.


http://com430z.blogspot.com/

Free rider problem. (2008, August 27). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 03:09, September 24, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Free_rider_problem&oldid=234653145


Spam (electronic). (2008, September 22). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 04:51, September 24, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Spam_(electronic)&oldid=240253542




Forums Observed


http://www.riderforums.com/


http://www.ninja650.com/phpbb/index.php

September 24th Reaction

For my Com 430z class we were assigned to read an article called "What is Web 2.0: Design patterns and business models for the next generation of software" that was written by Tim O’Reilly. As O’Reilly states "This article is an attempt to clarify just what we mean by "Web 2.0". In the article they go over several different ways that web has changed and advanced from "Web 1.0". He talks about "The Web As Platform" specifically about Netscape being the old and Google being the new. Describing the differences between the two, giving reasons how and why Google has taken over.


In the article O’Reilly also talks about "Harnessing Collective Intelligence". In this section he talks specifically about blogging and how it has become popular. He describes a blog as "just a personal home page in diary format." From here he talks about many other topics including "Data Is The Next Intel Inside, End Of The Software Release Cycle, Lightweight Programming Models, Software Above The Level Of A Single Device, And Rich User Experiences". By the end of the article O’Reilly speaks about seven characteristics that companies with "Web 2.0" should have. He points out that these may not be all of them but these are the "core competencies of Web 2.0 companies."


I think that the "Web 2.0" and the new features are a great thing, Its great that we can blog and communicate with people. The bad thing is that there is always that person who has to ruin things for everyone. I am talking about the spammers on the web. People who are up to no good and to me are really just a pain in the rear end. Really leading to the identity problem. The spam because no one knows who they are. If there identity was known I highly doubt they would spam much.






O'Reilly, Tim. (2005). What is Web 2.0: Design patterns and business models for the next generation of software. Retrieved August 21, 2008 from http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html.

September 23rd Journal

Today there is much more action on the forums. There were pages and pages of post and new threads that I went through and it is still early in the afternoon. One was a post on how to fix a particular item on a motorcycle called the "Clutch". This whole time I am reading the directions on how to fix it and thinking to myself who is this person telling me how to do this. In this situation I really did not need the directions because I was not having the problem. But if it were me having the problem, how do I know if I can trust this person? Maybe this person is really telling me something that is extremely wrong and could blow my whole bike up. How do I know I can trust what he is saying?

September 22nd Journal

Surprisingly today there has not been much activity at all on the forums. A little upsetting to me actually because it has become a source of entertainment for me. In my past journal post I have been talking about the issue of the Free Rider problem.




Now I would like to bring up the issue of identity. Basically the point being is that you do not know who you are talking to on the other end of the computer. Most of the time we see some sort or nickname so there is some source of identity. But names can be misleading. For example, speed demon376 (Just a random name I made up) may be very miss leading. I do not know this persons gender or age or anything else about them. One might ask must we really know if they are male or female and even how old they are? Personally I feel I do not need to know. But to others it might. Especially when it comes to the topic of experience and riding motorcycles.