User talk:CnnrC

This page will be used as part of a class project. CnnrC (discuss • contribs) 13:44, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

I will be working on Online Communities CnnrC (discuss • contribs) 13:39, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

Online and Offline Identities


Social media is a powerful tool that has allowed thousands of people around the world to make a career out of simply being themselves. However, as the platforms continue to grow many people are questioning the authenticity of the influencers that are on top. To be the most liked, the most popular and the most followed many of these people are not being themselves. Photo manipulation through editing to make the body look smaller, more tanned, more smooth and curvy in just the right places allow users to completely falsify themselves in order to look perfect. As all of the biggest influencers are known to do this it creates a trickle-down effect where more and more ordinary people are also doing the same thing to fit into the new 'perfect' of society.



I do not believe myself to be above this. I edit my pictures to make myself look as good as possible and I personally believe that I am quite good at making the edits as natural as possible. My friends ask me to edit their pictures for them too sometimes. This isn't necessarily a bad thing by itself but it can lead to negative thinking habits in real life where you expect yourself to look like the perfectly edited pictures that you post. The desire to look perfect and get the most likes can become like an addiction and when you don't get as many likes as you are used to it can negatively affect your mental wellbeing. Comparing yourself to others on Instagram is almost inevitable and constantly doing this may lead to depression and anxiety. As I have gotten older I have definitely made a conscious decision as to how I portray myself on different social media platforms. I view Instagram almost like a portfolio of my best work and only upload content I am proud of whereas back when the platform first came out in 2010 (I first started using it in 2011) I would upload any fun pictures with my friends that I liked. Facebook I now only upload either big things that have happened in my life (starting uni, passing driving test) and as a digital photo album whereas in 2009-2012 I would write any random statuses that came to mind. Twitter is the only social media website I use where I still feel free to be myself as I don't have any interest in building a following on it and I use it mostly to follow Youtubers and my friends. Having the freedom to choose how to portray yourself online in ways that you can't in real life is part of the fun of the internet in my opinion. It can provide the opportunity to experiment with identity issues and be whoever you want to be.

Annotated Bibliography
Terranova T, 2004: "Network Culture: Politics for the Information Age", p.84-88

In this article Terranova discusses collective intelligence - described as being universally distributed intelligence that is constantly being enhanced and coordinated with the goal of enriching individuals. The author aims to analyse the difference between labour and employment in a digital space. Their research focuses on how users create content for free online. This article is useful for research about users attitude towards free labour when the labour is online. The main limitation of the article is that it doesn’t provide much new evidence, instead mostly focusing on being descriptive and making academic references. This article could be useful as supplementary information when discussing collective intelligence.

What are Wikis?


Wikis can be defined as being "hypertextual system for storage and transmission of information" which in simple terms means a sorted collection of information. The most popular and formal Wiki is Wikipedia, currently the 5th most viewed website on the internet. This is unsurprising as almost anything searched for on a web search engine provides a Wikipedia result in the top five results. Wikibooks are different in that individual users have more freedom to create books on their own interests (provided the information is accurate) whereas Wikipedia has stricter guidelines and can be very selective over what subjects are actually allowed their own pages. There are also various other Wiki projects where users can find dedicated Wiki sites for almost anything from Star Wars to Justin Bieber.

Anybody can edit pages on Wiki projects making them the definition of collective intelligence. All contributors can be traced and anything written can be deleted (and anything deleted can be restored) meaning that contributors are always ensuring that information is correct and of a high quality with no purposeful vandalism being left viewable. Communities can grow in these Wikis, especially the "fandom" wikis as people share information about their interests and work together to create an interesting page. Users can learn from each other while also feeling useful as they can contribute their own knowledge to pages. They are free to create, free to edit and free to view meaning that absolutely anybody can get involved. However due to the factor of anybody being able to edit it is possible for users to end up in "edit wars" or arguments over copyrighted images. Both parties could think that their edit is the correct or more important one meaning that they are stuck in an endless cycle of replacing each others work.

Overall, wikis are a great place to learn and share information however the methods in which you can do so can be limiting due to strict policies on how pages should look and how relevant the information you are trying to share is.

INSTRUCTOR FEEDBACK: ENGAGEMENT ON DISCUSSION PAGES & CONTRIBS
Grade descriptors for Engagement: Engagement on discussion pages, and contribs of this standard attain the following grade descriptor. Whereas not all of the elements here will be directly relevant to your particular response to the brief, this descriptor will give you a clearer idea of how the grade you have been given relates to the standards and quality expected of work at this level:
 * Excellent. Among other things, contributions will probably demonstrate a complex, critical understanding of the themes of the module. They will communicate very effectively, making excellent and creative use of the possibilities of the form (including formatting, links, as well as perhaps copyright-free videos and images, linked to from Wiki Commons), and may be written with some skill and flair. They will address the assignment tasks in a thoughtful and transparent way on the Discussion Pages. They will make insightful connections between original examples and relevant concepts, justifying decision-making with transparency. They will be informed by serious reading and reflection, are likely to demonstrate originality of thought, and will probably be rewarding and informative for the reader as well as for fellow researchers collaborating. The wiki markup formatting will be impeccable. This is at the lower end of this particular grade band, but still, this represents some very good work!

As instructed in the labs, and outlined in the assessment brief documentation, students should be engaging at least once a day, for the duration of the project. The following points illustrate how this engagement is evaluated.

Evidence from contribs to both editing and discussion of content (i.e. volume and breadth of editorial activity as evidenced through ‘contribs’). These are primarily considered for quality rather than quantity, but as a broad guideline:
 * Each item on a contribs list that are 3000+ characters are deemed “considerable”
 * Each item on a contribs list that are 2000+ characters are deemed “significant”
 * Each item on a contribs list that are 1000+ characters are deemed “substantial”
 * Items on a contribs list that are <1000 characters are important, and are considered in the round when evaluating contribs as a whole because of their aggregate value

Overall:
 * several smaller contribs across the whole project period, as well as a small but important number of substantial and significant contribs

Engagement with and learning from the community on Discussion Pages
 * Evidence of peer-assisted learning and collaboration
 * Excellent
 * Evidence of reading, sharing, and application of research to the essay
 * Excellent
 * Evidence of peer-review of others’ work
 * Excellent

Reflexive, creative and well-managed use of Discussion Pages
 * Clear delegation of tasks
 * Excellent
 * Clearly labelled sections and subsections
 * Excellent
 * Contributions are all signed
 * Excellent

Civility. Your conduct is a key component of any collaboration, especially in the context of an online knowledge-building community. Please respect others, as well as observe the rules for civility on wiki projects. All contribs are moderated.
 * Excellent

GregXenon01 (discuss • contribs) 15:23, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

Instructor Feedback on Wiki Exercise Portfolio
Posts and comments on other people’s work, of this standard, roughly correspond to the following grade descriptor. Depending on where your actual mark is in relation to the making criteria as outlined in the relevant documentation, it should give you an idea of strengths and weaknesses within the achieved grade band overall:


 * 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.


 * This work is at the upper end of this particular grade band, but even so improvement would go a long way to attaining a higher mark. I think in order to engage with the wiki exercises a bit more, it might be useful for you to look at the Grade Descriptors and criteria in the module handbook to get more of an idea of how to hit those targets. In particular, these all seem rather on the short side.


 * Making more use of the wiki functionality and markup would have gone a long way to improving fluidity and functionality of posts. I suspect that, if you become more familiar and proficient with the platform, that this would make a difference.


 * Re: responses to other people’s posts – these are fairly good, if a little brief, and the peer-review element for Ex4 is missing. Remember that the comments are "worth" as much as posts themselves. The reason for this is not only to help encourage discussion (a key element of wiki collaboration!) but also to get you to reflect upon your own work. This can all, of course be used to fuel ideas that might form part of your project work.

General:
 * Reading and research: evidence of critical engagement with set materials; evidence of independent reading of appropriate academic and peer-reviewed material – all fair.


 * Argument and analysis: well-articulated and well-supported argument; evidence of critical thinking (through taking a position in relation to key ideas from the module, and supporting this position); evidence of relational thinking (through making connections between key ideas from the module and wider literature, and supporting these connections); evidence of independent critical ability – needs improvement.


 * Presentation: fair use of wiki markup and organisational skills.

GregXenon01 (discuss • contribs) 16:25, 1 May 2019 (UTC)