User talk:BrianstirlingStudent

This is my User discussion page. Where I will be working. --BrianstirlingStudent (discuss • contribs) 13:38, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Wiki Exercise #2: Visibility and Data Trails

My online visibility is rather large, however, while I do have several different social media accounts, the only real account that are openly connected to my real world identity are my Facebook page, my LinkdIn account, and my professional email. My online visibility takes place in the forms of several different social media accounts, which include Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Imgur, Youtube, Tumblr, and Tinder. I also have 3 email, a School based one, a professional one, and a private personal one that I use for a majority of my social media.

The kinds of information regarding me thats available online varies depending on the social media account in question. Several photos of me from through out the years are available on not only my Facebook page but also on other pages that have tagged me. My age, name, and much of my basic contact info is available easily for other to see, as well as where I live/have lived and where I am currently studying. My personal interests, taste in music/film/television is open to the public, and a large number of online comment I have made throughout the years have been archived. Other information also includes my list of friends and family and more private information such as phone numbers. I have chosen to share my more personal such as photos and life events with my close friends and family because not only are those the people I'm most comfortable with sharing but they're also the ones who would find it most relevant. For things such as tweets, reddit post, youtube comments, I choose to share those with the whole of the open web, behind a certain degree on anonymity as not only am I more free to say what I want but I also don't have to concern myself with what people may think about what I say (to a degree) as there is a fair degree of separation between random internet users.

A fair amount of this information is under my control, as I'm the one who decides whether or not it goes online in the first place. However one must consider how much overlapping info occurs in social media. A person could easily link an instagram photo to face book which could lead to a twitter account they were hoping to keep private, and so on and so on. Theres also privacy settings on different social media accounts, such as Facebook where setting can be altered so that you need to be friends with a person to see their page. Theres also the problem however of how much the corporation lets out in regards to your privacy. There have been several cases of personalized ads on Facebook and Gmail based on information you sent through on the platform. This ultimately show that while you do in most cases have the power over what information regarding you gets put online, once its there the actual control over how private it remains is not entirely in your hands. So in the end you really don't know exactly how much information is under your control. BrianstirlingStudent (discuss • contribs) 01:07, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Comments on Wiki Exercise #2

 * Hey Brian. I found your comments about who you feel comfortable sharing information and photos with on Facebook interesting! I understand how comments, photos and memories you share may be more relative and interesting to closer family members and friends rather than people you have met but you don’t really ‘know’. Personally, if I was to share something that I’d rather only been seen by family, I’d use messenger or email. However, I know I act differently with my friends than I do with my parents and other family members. I have family on Facebook and when I’m tagged in something that they might not be used to seeing, I sometimes untag myself to prevent this. I don’t mind if a lot of my friends that I’m not that close to on Facebook see it but I’d rather not immediate family (depending on the member) seeing it. I find it interesting how we contrast.

I also found your comments linkage of profile medias intriguing! This is actually something I forgot about myself. When I upload an Instagram picture, it often also gets uploaded to Twitter, Flickr and elsewhere. If I had wanted these profiles to be kept more anonymously, I could have had people trace my photos to find these profiles! Great post. CammeyNotCameron (discuss • contribs) 16:24, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Hello, I found your post a very interesting read. Your point about feeling free to speak your mind more when you are behind a degree of anonymity intrigued me, as I'm curious as to why this is. Is this just a general statement, or do you find that many of your opinions differ from that of your family and peers, and therefore have to create a level of separation when expressing your thoughts? I've personally found that myself and my friends are fairly like-minded, but older members of my family can make statements online that I find incredibly unpleasant, and would love to reply under a mask of anonymity that sites like Facebook don't allow. It is understandable why, as online visibility is necessary to prevent people from running rampant, but you do you believe that it is a necessary evil or do you think we would benefit from a larger access to anonymity online? Thanks! LydiaWithTheFringe (discuss • contribs) 10:15, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Wiki Exercise #3: Information Overload

Its very difficult to deal the sheer amount of information available out on the web, and its very easy to be distracted while doing work because online distractions and entertainment are there. From Facebook to Youtube, to any of the numerous social media and general entertainment sites online, its difficult to stay on track sometimes. Generally some of the decisions I make to handing this abundance is filtering out useful and pertinent information from the less important or not relevant pieces. My workflow has been alright with the demands of the wikibook though I wish some of my essays were more spread out. Im not sure about my colleagues but Im trying to take notes on my subject ahead of time in order to make work easier. 139.153.69.138 (discuss) 20:28, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

Hi there, I completely agree with your point about social media and entertainment sites being a huge distraction when doing work online. I think even adverts and pop-ups from the websites we use for research can be distracting and lead us into doing something else that we shouldn't be doing. I also try and filter out unnecessary information when I can, but I feel like this is quite hard to do, especially if you aren't 100% confident on what you are researching and you can't tell if things are unnecessary or not. I'm also trying to take notes ahead of time to make the wikiproject easier because there is going to be a lot of information that everyone will need to write. Cathym97 (discuss • contribs) 11:33, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Wiki Exercise #4: Wikibook Project Reflective Account

In my reflection of the Wiki project, I should reflect upon the wiki itself, specifically how it is as a platform. Now while before this project I didn't have a Wikipedia account, I had done plenty of work on several different fandom wiki, all of which were done in a similar manner to the wiki project (albeit with much more niche topics). My experience with the wiki project hasn't really changed my opinion on Wikis as much as it has solidified the options I already held. To me a wiki is an excellent source of useful information meant for quick and easy access which one could easily loose hours to if you get side tracked, and while those are wonderful aspects there are still problems that plague wikis as a whole. Namely the frankly overwhelming and visually unappealing look of a wiki's edit code. Not only is this something that turns off several people from participating in wikis but to make the wiki more visual appealing and useful requires a knowledge of particular HTML codes that could easily create a mistake in the wiki as a whole. Its easy to see why many of the student petered using social media to discuss things rather than the wiki itself for these reasons. Other sites are just so much more appealing to the eyes and easy to make sense of.

So my personal experiences with this project were decent I suppose. I met up with my group twice but in that short time we were able to quickly put together a plan of what would happen, who would do what work and where it would be put. It wasn't particularly difficult though I suppose with more time we could have met up more to discuss the further improvement of the wiki, but then again we could just as easily do that online so really meeting in person was only necessary for hashing out some of the finer detail of who the construction for our part of the wiki would go. I don't think anyone in the group had particular trouble from what I could see, and when we made our wikis, it was clear that we were following suit in terms of structure, based on what others have done, which in a way is very indicative of the nature of wikis. The wiki articles themselves were very good however for discussion in terms of how the ever growing digital culture has affected and changed our perceptions of privacy, personal freedoms, information, entertainment, ect. And even if some discussions didn't go far there was still more than enough information posted by the individual users that we could gain a clear understanding of the topics they were talking about.

Ultimately I think the wiki project was beneficial and helpful. While my actual wiki skill didn't see a dramatic improvement, I was able to get a better understanding of the platform itself and better appreciate it for what does and provides. I was also able to participate in several discussions regarding new digital culture and some of these were actual kind of entertaining. However my enjoyment of the topic can not cover for the faults of the wiki. Wikibook is still is visual mess when editing, and is incredibly off-putting at times. Plus the mandatory nature of the wikibook some misses the point of why wikis grew so quickly. The idea of individuals seeking to further inform other on a topic they feel strongly about, further field by a passion to put that information in a place where anyone can easily access it. Still I think it was a good exposure for those who hadn't dabbled in wikis before and helpful (possibly even deeper look into the nature of wikis) return for those who were familiar. BrianstirlingStudent (discuss • contribs) 00:09, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

Hey Brian, I like that you admitted to taking the structure of your pages from somewhere else, because I totally did that too with my group. I agree that HTML coding can be a very difficult thing to get right and that the editing code is somewhat difficult to use, but getting used to it allows one to very quickly conform wiki pages to their purpose. It seems like we had very similar experiences with our groups about structuring the project and getting it done, and I do think that working on the talk pages to get our stuff done was much more efficient than meeting up IRL, and that it really helped us get organized and spread useful information around. ZachIsWack (discuss • contribs) 13:00, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

Content (weighted 20%)
The introduction section here is a little brief, however it draws its strength from being well written, in an accessible language. In addition to this, very usefully, each section has been laid out in bullet point format, with a very brief summative sentence for each section. The sections themselves represent wide coverage of many of the main issues surrounding privacy in contemporary popular culture.

However, of particular use here – and very much a strength of the chapter as a whole, is the section that draws together the issues raised here, and applies these to other areas of the wikibook as a whole, explicitly making more of the platform than would otherwise have been, had the groups decided to write this chapter in isolation. To be clear, the execution of this section could have been better – greatly improved through more systematic use of interwiki links to draw attention to the specific pages, sections and issues from the various pages in the wikibook which you were commenting on. Another specific section here that could have been improved is the section on celebrity vlogging. Whereas it is true that there hasn’t been a lot written on this (yet – there is a growing interest in the scholarship, and we can expect much more appearing in the short term), it should have been acknowledged that the scholarship on celebrity culture as a whole is very well established, and that most of the issues raised in relation to YouTubers (e.g. “the price of fame”, privacy issues, and the implied “fair game” logic) are covered in existing debates on celebrity. All that said, the potential for this last section was recognised and other parts of it fully engaged with existing research in the field, and therefore is rewarded.

Structure-wise, the chapter seems to hang together fairly well – the definitions section at the beginning, whilst by no means exhaustive, gives the reader a sense of the subject matter under discussion early on, and also some useful working definitions of key terms used. Some typo errors and inconsistency of formatting appear dotted throughout, but these are not the norm for this chapter. Odd inclusion of bibliographical material of theorists, but no discussion or application their ideas in that section (especially in the case of Fuchs, where it lists a few of his research association and academic achievements. A little bit more joined-up work would have improved on this section enormously.

The unusual step of including a survey and posting the results here is an extremely useful one. Something that absolutely HAS to be thought through in ALL future work is that if one is conducting a survey (even if for demonstration purposes, as included here) or indeed ANY work with people, one must go through an ethics approval process – this is to ensure no harms (relative or absolute) occur for researchers or participants. This process will become more apparent later in the degree programme, particularly in final year projects. The glossary is really useful – not quite exhaustive, but good for quick reference purposes. Use of interwiki links in here would have been useful. The references section again evidences research, reading and sharing of resources. Some of the formatting seems to go awry towards the end, so a little more joined-up thinking there would have been useful, but overall good.


 * Satisfactory. Your contribution to the book page gives a satisfactory brief overview of the subject under discussion in your chosen themed chapter. There is a fair range of concepts associated with your subject, and an effort to deliver critical definitions. There is evidence that you draw from relevant literature and scholarship, however your own critical voice in the building of a robust argument is slightly lost, perhaps due to a variable depth of understanding the subject matter or over reliance on rote learning. The primary and secondary sources you found about the chapter’s themes cover a somewhat circumscribed range and depth of subject matter.

Wiki Exercise Portfolio (Understanding weighted 30%)
Posts and comments on other people’s work, of this standard, roughly corresponds to the following grade descriptor. Depending on where your actual mark is overall (and particularly in relation to Understanding and Engagement elements), that should give you an idea of strengths and weaknesses within the achieved grade band, relative to the descriptor


 * Poor. Among other things, poor entries may just offer links without real comment or apparent point. They may offer nothing more than poor-quality synopsis or description of material of dubious relevance. They may have serious clarity problems (including dead links, random graphics) which affect comprehension (or even worse, admin warnings or take-down notices for copyright infringement). They might be off-topic, private trivia, or of unclear relevance. The wiki markup formatting will be of a poor standard.


 * Reading and research:
 * lack evidence of critical engagement with set materials, featuring command of a limited range of relevant materials and analyses
 * little evidence of independent reading of appropriate academic and peer-reviewed material
 * Argument and analysis:
 * poor argument through judgement relating to key issues, concepts or procedures
 * lack of evidence of critical thinking (through taking a position in relation to key ideas from the module, and supporting this position);
 * limited evidence of relational thinking (through making connections between key ideas from the module and wider literature, and supporting these connections);

Engagement (weighted 50%)

 * No evidence from contributions to both editing and discussion of content (i.e. volume and breadth of activity as evidenced through contribs)
 * No engagement with and learning from other Wikipedians about the task of writing/editing content for a Wikibook
 * Little or no use of discussion pages