Week 12 Readings

Articles

Blossom, J. (2011). “What makes social media tick: seven secrets of social media.” In Content Nationl Surviving and Thriving as Social Media Changes Our Work, Out Lives, and Our Future. Indianapolis: John Wiley & Sons.

             Blossom specifically defines social media as “any highly scalable and accessible communications technology or technique that enables any individual to influence groups of individuals easily” (Blossom, 2011, p. 1). His logic sounds reasonable. He elucidates how although the scale and access differs between technologies and audiences involved, there is a constant need for social media to be scalable and easy to access (Blossom, 2011, p. 2-3). He additionally explains that social media remains a peer-to-peer medium, users relating to each other as peers and basing their authority on whether they share information considered authoritative by each other, and that its influence is unpredictable on the masses due to its scalability, information meant for a limited audience sometimes reaching greater influences in the wider world (Blossom, 2011, p. 3). I agree with the first part of his definition; social media is social in that many users can use and access technologies that allow them to communicate to a wide group of people. However, I disagree with the rest of his definition. While a user may engage in social media to influence others, that is just one reason. Numerous other causes can motivate a user to utilize social media, such as seeking information – thus being influenced themselves – or just communicating with others that they cannot talk or write to normally (whether due to the busyness of their own lives or geographical distances). As for his elucidation on “peer-to-peer,” I think that depends on the social media and individuals involved. Some hierarchy remains; mods and admins of discussion sites, for example, can delete posts made by regular users, undermining their wish to influence others.

 

Allan, C. (2007, April). “Using a wiki to manage a library instruction program: Sharing knowledge to better serve patrons.” C&RL News 68(4): 242-244.

             As I was reading the article, I kept on being distracted by the presentation of the content itself. While it was largely readable, the article divided into clear categories, the scan kept skipping on individual letters. For example, the sentence “The wiki, which is accessible by invited users at speci c URL, somewhat visually resembles a word processing program” (Allan, 2007, p. 242) has lost letters (“fi”) in the word “specific” while the sentence “The   rst use of the wiki deals with sharing information and new experiences….” (Allan, 2007, p. 243) loses the first two letters of the second word “rst” – based on latter paragraphs, probably was meant to be “first.” Such a problem does not lie with the writer, but with the digital format. It was published in an academic journal, so such glaring misspellings would have been fixed, and copying and pasting the sentences in a separate document retrieves the letters. This reminds me of our OCR task in the first assignment – not all of the information we were required to OCR had legible results – and my own troubles with making quotation marks and hyphens uploaded onto my website in assignment 5 (which, at this time, are still unsuccessful). Ultimately, this is a good lesson in itself when working with digital tools – become familiar with digitization and be prepared for some information not automatically translating well into new formats.

            The article itself was enlightening on the topic of wikis. Having heard about Wikipedia, I originally thought it was the only one of its kind – quite a naïve belief, considering that its format and type suggests development from a root model. So the idea that I could create my own wiki was interesting and could be beneficial for me in my future career. Whether I could fully use them as C. Allan (2007) suggests for libraries, such as managing public services information, collaborating on and monitoring reference questions, and evaluating databases (p. 242-243) or find my own uses, I don’t know – I’ll have to test them out myself to see. Curious about the “best known sites” Allan notes – seedwiki, pbwiki, jotspot, twiki.org, and phpwiki – (Allan, 2007, p. 242) I decided to look them up online and understand better how you would go about creating one. However, there have been many changes since 2007. twiki.org, pbwiki (relaunched as pbworks), jotspot (bought by Google and renamed Google Sites – http://www.crunchbase.com/company/jotspot), and phpwiki (changing its web address from phpwiki.org to http://phpwiki.sourceforge.net/) remain wiki providers. seedwiki has been turned off (see http://seedwiki.com/ for its creator’s last words). Comparing the past to the present was interesting – most of them have persisted in providing wiki tools, but have developed as well, either changing its structure or management.

 

Arch, X. (2007, February). “Creating the academic library folksonomy: Put social tagging to work at your institution.” C&RL News 68 (2): 80-81.

             I found the risks, which X. Arch (2007) notes in his article, to be quite interesting. Specifically, Arch asserts that one issue in including social tagging is that spagging may occur, during which “users with bad intentions” tag irrelevant or inappropriate sites so as to make a profit or create chaos (Arch, 2007, p. 81). I agree that these are two main reasons for a user to tag unsuitable sites – it is part of human nature to seek ways to profit themselves in any way, whether by acquiring monetary sources or causing trouble for others. I think, however, that such a view assumes that everyone can rightly judge the nature of a site. Some may have tagged sites that they thought was helpful and relevant to the tagging or they may have misread the tags available. Thus, I would add that users with well-intentioned purposed but lead by ill judgment could be a cause for concern as well. Another issue was that, without a proper standard taught or enforced, users would have little knowledge in creating tags following a shared terminology nor would they know what keywords to choose (Arch, 2007, p. 81). I think this is a viable problem that should be solved. In such a case, a standard should be used. Although this may go against the idea of a folksonomy, such a taxonomy cannot be helpful if no one understands how to use it. It doesn’t have to be something strict and official, just a loose basis that could be a model for future additions to the tags. In such a case, you could mix both standards and local jargon – use standards for ideas that have few words to represent them and to act as a template for how to form keywords, use users’ inflections in what type of words are more common among the majority.

 

Wales, J. (2006, August). “Jimmy Wales: The birth of Wikipedia.” TED Talks video, 20:05. Accessed November 21, 2013. http://www.ted.com/talks/jimmy_wales_on_the_birth_of_wikipedia.html.

            J. Wales’s (2006) stances on neutrality seem to conflict somewhat with his analysis of the structure of those who run/edit/manage Wikipedia itself. He asserts that Wikipedia follows a neutrality policy that is nonnegotiable, wherein users must merely report information and any controversies without bias for any side (Wales, 2006, 0:07:45-0:09:02). I think that this is a good standard to follow overall; Wikipedia is a global phenomenon, so there are more differences in personal opinions, political and economic beliefs, philosophies, religions, and societal factors to take into consideration than in one country alone. Such a stance not only allows the users to work with each other without contentions as Wales promotes (Wales, 2006, 0:09:03-0:010:00) but it also means that information about individual points will not be limited by one point-of-view but encompass more facets – not every detail, since neutrality does imply a side that considers the main opinionated, upfront viewpoints involved, but at least a varied mix of points from every side rather than one viewpoint.

            When compared to the structure of Wikipedia’s “staff,” though, the neutrality policy appears a little off. Wales explains that the management of the site derives principles from a wide variety of political philosophies, including the democratic nuances of voting for the erasure or inclusion of pages, the aristocratic assumption that certain figures who have worked closely with the set-up and management of Wikipedia for a certain length of time exert greater influence in the framework, and monarchic principles – not “benevolent dictator,” which Wales refuses to acknowledge – that Wales, the founder, makes the final decisions over everything (Wales, 2006, 0:14:08-0:17:50). Such a mishmash of political standards does not imply an anti-political or a flexible management standpoint alone, but a different form of management style. It is democracy tempered, a social construct that – while having relative equality amongst its management – still assumes clear leadership whose opinions do matter. If the “aristocratic” members and the “Queen” deemed it, they could alter the neutrality principle itself, declaring an opinion to be “neutral” when it is not while other members will have to yield to such a decision.