User talk:Frkelly

Hi my name is frkelly, I study at University of Stirling and this is my discussion page as part of my class project on insight into Wikibooks. Frkelly (discuss • contribs) 18:06, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Wiki Exercise #1 : What Makes a Good Wiki?
In my time at university, the use of social media platforms such as Facebook can make a huge difference in helping tasks such as group essays and projects. Sharing a range of ideas from a numerous students can effectively help build a greater knowledge of a particular subject due to the discourse that can be achieved on social media. My own experience in using social media to share ideas and collaborate with students in my group is primarily through Facebook and creating a group message to communicate. This was done to share ideas, figure out who was taking on each role and effectively create a dialogue among ourselves to produce the best possible work for our project.

One of the differences between social media platforms and wiki engagement is who sees the content. Posts published on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are usually intended for followers/friends and intended to be expressive and share parts of their lives while interacting/engaging with other users. On the other hand Wikipedia posts are designed for the public, as anybody can see the information posted. There is also an interaction of users but this is with the sole purpose of sharing and discussing information that will hopefully give people vaster knowledge of a particular subject.

Frkelly (discuss • contribs) 10:01, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Marker’s Feedback on Wiki Exercise #1


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 in relation to Understanding and Engagement elements, it should give you an idea of strengths and weaknesses within the achieved grade band overall.


 * Satisfactory. Among other things, satisfactory entries may try to relate an idea from the module to an original example, but might not be very convincing. They may waste space on synopsis or description, rather than making a point. They may have spelling or grammatical errors and typos. They might not demonstrate more than a single quick pass at the assignment, informed only by lecture and/or cursory reading. They may suggest reading but not thinking (or indeed the reverse). The wiki markup formatting will need some work.


 * This post is at the upper end of this grade band (it's located here primarily because it is rather too brief, and needs to go into much greater depth), so a little improvement will 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 (especially for this, perhaps, the Understanding) criteria in the module handbook to get more of an idea of how to hit those targets. Less instrumentally, and more in relation to this particular post,making more use of the wiki functionality and markup would go a long way to improving fluidity and functionality of posts. I suspect that, as you become more familiar and proficient with the platform, that this will make a considerable difference. This, and more detail, drawing from relevant reading and research that you are doing to provide evidence to support your argument.


 * Re: responses to other people’s posts – these are fairly good, if a little brief and need more detail in order to solicit engagement from other wikimedians (which will become really important later into the project). 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.

GregXenon01 (discuss • contribs) 18:19, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Wiki Exercise No. 2 Visibility and Data Trails
In the present day, we get very little privacy. Everything we post, every word we write can be accessed by somebody in some way. Even this post will be seen by somebody and could be seen by anybody.

Social media platforms contain a variety of privacy, we can pick and choose who we want to see the content we publish. We can even 'untag' ourselves from photos that other people have posted in which we are featured. All this means we can develop some sort of privacy but online we are always visible to a certain extent.

We can choose who sees our profiles, but we do not get a say on social media the adverts we are shown. On social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter we are fed countless adverts and even 'suggested posts' that are chosen based on our recent browsing history. Gerard Hastings claims that on the likes of Twitter and Facebook we are the "product" and that any notion we our online identities retain some sort of privacy is wrong. This leaves us clearly visible to the organisations who are desperate to sell us their goods/services through taking information from our searches.

Technology is a means to let others see part of our self. In terms of my own online identity, speaking from my own personal experience of my online identity, I am very visible. My privacy settings on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook let anybody see my activity and posts, this means that I am clearly visible online to anybody who would want to see my profiles.

In A Networked Self by Mendelson and Papacharissi they claim that people online put on some sort of "performance." So you could argue that my lack of privacy setting and visibility online are all some sort of act in order to portray myself to the online community in a way I want to be perceived.

I have never really considered changing my privacy settings, I do not post a lot on social media and what I do post, I feel comfortable with anyone seeing what I post. Photographs play a large part in how our identity is presented. Take for example the photos I post, these are largely photos from social events at University that obviously I want to share with people the memories that I have had with them and in some form, let the majority see that I am a socialable person who attends University. You could argue this is all part of the "performance."

I use a variety of social media platforms, primarily Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, where I post Does this transparency of my online identity then define me as a 'student' if the majority of my posts are regarding University and going out?

Visibility is not only available to my online peers but also to potential employers. I feel comfortable with being entirely visible to employers as I feel my online profiles hold some sort of idea as to who I am as a person, meaning if employers were to look me up they would see I am somebody with a wide range of interests and an outgoing individual.

Frkelly (discuss • contribs) 11:56, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Personal Experience
In my time as a student at University of Stirling I have often struggled to remain focused. Whether I am reading an article, writing an essay or even reading a book I find the amount of time I can remain focused to be very limited. If I read a word I do not understand, I look it up, I then find myself opening another time and before I know it I am looking up something that is completely unrealted to what I was doing five minutes ago.

To deal with all the information that is out there I do try my best to remain focused. The way I try to deal with this is usually through sticking to the task I am doing, the way I do this is by having as few devices around as possible. For instance if I am trying to do an essay I like to have the TV off and my phone somewhere else in the room, this means I am less tempted to aimlessly look through my phone or glance at the TV every so often. Even as I write this entry now I have looked at my phone a number of times and looked at BBC News, all for the sake of procrastination. I also try keep as few tabs open as possible. This may seem a strange method but I often find if I have numerous tabs open I have a tendency to click on one from time to time and to click on one and look something up, usually nothing to do with the task at hand.

I often find YouTube is by far the most distracting website/app, you go to watch one video and they all have suggested/related videos. You then find yourself watching video after video and this can be the case with Facebook and Twitter where you scroll through endlessly watching videos.

Information in Current Age
Years ago you would have to spend a long time reading through books to find out the information you wanted to know. In the current day and age with technological advances all we have to do is ask our phone a question and in an instant we get the answer, it could not be easier.

At our fingertips we have the ability to find the answer to so many questions we may have, and yet in my experience I waste my time and what many would consider pointless facts. Without looking anything up I could tell you that Meryl Streep has 20 oscar nominations but could not tell you who my local MP is.

Workflow
Recently, like many other students, I have had numerous deadlines in the past week. I was away all of reading week and for the past few days have had to work hard on two essays, the project and these wiki exercises. I have found my workflow has managed to cope with the demands of the contribution to the WikiBook project as my work ethic over the last while has improved. To improve this workflo me and my group have discussed exactly what sections of the WikiBook we will work on so everybody know their role. We will also give each other any assistance necessary in order to collectively produce the best possible project.

Frkelly (discuss • contribs) 01:21, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Comments on Wiki Exercise #3
This post is very interesting to read as I also find it hard to concentrate on essays, etc. I found I could relate easily to this and found it insightful. It was a interesting choice to keep the post within 3 sections as it makes reading the piece easier in terms of splitting up what to read and when, it's not something I see a lot. However, I would have like to see you go into more detail on the habits of people before the internet/ information age otherwise that whole paragraph could fit into the section about personal experience. It is interesting that you include how this information overload can be an advantage in terms of community and working together through communication, something that Wikipedia doesn't excel at. I noticed one spelling error though, other than that I found this to be a good piece to read. Ianthe2nd (discuss • contribs) 12:04, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Wiki Exercise #4: Reflective Account
Throughout the wiki exercise I would say I found the collaborative nature of the project to be reasonably effective in helping us to come together in order to produce the best possible work but it was not without its limits.

Colaborative Nature of the WikiBook
Collective intelligence sees intelligence fundamentally as a resource and I would say that during this project there was a real coming together towards the end of the deadline. I began to feel a true sense of collaboration and understand first hand how the idea of collective intelligence means that we can all contribute our ideas/suggestions in order to produce a page that is contains the best possible content and the layout means it is easy to read. A week before the WikiBook was due I felt that every question was being answered and people shared things they had learned over the last few weeks in order to help everyone produce the best possible content.

We managed to set up different sections of the discussion page and once this was done it made it a lot easier to get a response from people in the group or help others out. Once the sections were made up that is when the collaboration really took off and it helped demonstrate to me that in collaborative group work, organisation is essential otherwise nobody gets the answers they are looking for and the group work can potentially fall apart.

I had few face-to-face meetings with my group, we initially began our discussion on WhatsApp to decide what aspects of the topic we wanted to do before we started to join in on the project discussion page. When meeting face-to-face, most of our discussions consisted of generally what we thought was expected of our Wiki and how we were going to tackle our particular subject. For me, it was hard to grasp the concept of the discussion page as it originally had no sections, everybody asked questions regarding referencing styles, format and who was covering what topics. Most questions remained unanswered for some time before we began to organise the discussion page and once this was done I found it much easier to collaborate and discuss with other people regarding the WikiBook.

Previous Experience of Online Collaboration
I found the format peculiar, as an avid user of Wikipedia I am used to the format but when it came to writing I had no clue what to do. My previous interaction with wikis was always consuming information rather than producing it. David Gauntlett made this point, "people are not typically creative" and that "the anticipated mode of engagement is consumption rather than creativity." I have never collaborated with people online in the sense of working together to publish a project and it was unusual for me at first, but by the end of the project I felt a lot more comfortable with the format and engaging with other users on the discussion pages.

As Christian Fuchs said he believes Wikis represent a new way of collaborative decision-making. I would agree as this way of communicating and making decisions is unlike any other form of communication I have experienced. I found it difficult to get a quick response, even when you tagged somebody in the post as you have wait until somebody logs on before they get a notification and potentially answer. This is a problem I found when working, when previously collaborating in group projects you would message somebody on a group chat, they get an alert on their phone and you get a response quickly. When working on the wiki, if I had a question it would take hours, maybe a day before it was answered, which created problems. As previously mentioned this changed towards the end of the project but in comparison to other forms of communicating through groups chats I found it a completely different experience.

Frkelly (discuss • contribs) 13:16, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Comments
Hi @Frkelly, i found this article to be a great personal reflective response to your experience in the wiki project. Your use of examples throughout the piece grounds it and makes it relatable not only to people who have also taken part in the project but to those who have ever used wiki as a form of discussion and collaboration. The points you raise about not being able to get a response for an indefinite amount go time are relatable and show quite a significant flaw with the wiki system. As group collaboration relies completely on the participation of everyone in said group, certain other troubles arise. Your mentioning of David Gauntlett and his points about creativity were interesting and eye-opening. They accurately labeled the public as consumers first, and producers second and this point helped to show why there were potential struggles with the wiki project as a whole. It seems like it is a part of our human nature to consume rather than produce and when we do produce, it is more often than not, individually (especially at university, through the form of essays/individual assignments/written exams). Your personal recounts of how you managed to overcome previous struggles and doubts with the project and in the end create a piece you were happy with suggest that wiki is something that won't naturally 'click' with the majority of people, but that overtime, will improve as an individual and group skill. Your article is well structured with sub headings and your writing is eloquent and clear. i enjoyed reading the article. Bricedoesn&#39;tlikehighfives (discuss • contribs) 01:26, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

Content (weighted 20%)
The introduction section is very well-written, summarising many key points in relation to the subject matter. The presentation of a concept (i.e. in this case Fuchs and Sevignani) framing key ideas for discussion, and providing a foundational basis to proceed with an argument, is a really neat idea. It sets up what is essentially, the most theory-oriented discussion in the book, and this isn’t a negative by any means. In fact, it provides a crucial element of balance through which to address the more applied approaches that are perhaps more in evidence in other chapters.

A concerted effort is made throughout to communicate sophisticated ideas in concise ways. The overall structure is well thought out, and evidences deliberation, delegation and timely organisation. Coverage of many of the salient issues encountered in the module are touched upon, either explicitly or in passing, and this is a useful strategy for grounding some of the more abstract ideas.

Lots of live links are made – this chapter makes the most out of the platforms functionality, which in turn is read quite easily as a reflection made on the kind of platform used and the audiences for which you might be writing this chapter. This approach works very well overall. However, I think that more could be made of making interwiki links to various relevant sections in other chapters (especially, perhaps, chapters on Hive mind, or privacy in the Digital Age.)

The sections on Information Society and Network Society are particularly well put together. Although these are perhaps the least theoretically heavy, the way that you discuss and structure the concepts gives these sections a real sense of narrative. Some really good uses of examples and case here to illustrate points made. I would have liked to have seen some use of images or wiki formatting to break up the text a little bit more here, however. The same goes for the section on critical theory – however, this section is much less successful, as it seems rather abstract, and detached from the subject matter. It is factually correct, fairly well written and historically accurate, but perhaps the least satisfying section in the chapter because of this. The sections that immediately follow, featuring the material on social media, are very strong, although again, interwiki links to material on other chapters would make a considerable improvement to the argument overall and to the wikibook more generally.

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.


 * Good. Your contribution to the book page gives a good brief overview of the subject under discussion in your chosen themed chapter. There is a good range of concepts associated with your subject, and the effort to deliver critical definitions, drawing from relevant literature and scholarship, and your own critical voice in the building of a robust argument is very much in evidence. The primary and secondary sources you found about the chapter’s themes cover a good 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


 * Good. Among other things, good entries will make a clear point in a clear way. They will relate concepts to original examples in a straightforward fashion. They will make effective use of the possibilities of the form (including links, as well as perhaps copyright-free videos and images, linked to from Wiki Commons). They may also demonstrate a broader understanding of the module's themes and concerns, and are likely to show evidence of reading and thinking about the subject material. The wiki markup formatting will be very clear.


 * Reading and research:
 * evidence of critical engagement with set materials, featuring discriminating command of a good range of relevant materials and analyses
 * evidence of independent reading of appropriate academic and peer-reviewed material to a fairly wide degree
 * Argument and analysis:
 * well-articulated and well-supported argument through judgement relating to key issues, concepts or procedures
 * 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);
 * clear evidence of independent critical ability

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