User talk:GlasgowTexan

This is GlasgowTexan (discuss • contribs) user discussion page, I will be exploring wikibooks and leaving my findings on this page. Please help me by leaving feedback to help me further understand wikibooks and also understand my University module GlasgowTexan (discuss • contribs) 14:15, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Wiki Exercise #1: Educational Assignment
One of my favourite pass times and procrastinating activities is browsing YouTube for fun and creative examples of film making. In my time doing this I discovered the Austin based company, and now film studio, Rooster Teeth. The company, which was formed by a group of friends that made Halo videos and recorded a comedy podcast called "The Drunk Tank", has evolved throughout the years and what started as only about four or so friends has now became a big film production studio with over one-hundred employees.

Rooster Teeth was officially founded and given it's comedic name on April 1 2003 by Burnie Burns, Joel Heyman, Gus Sarola, Geoff Ramsey and current CEO, Matt Hullum. Burnie and Matt met while studying film at the University of Texas in Austin, and met Joel, who was an actor, while working on a film. Eventually the Burnie would go on to meet Gus and Geoff while working for a company called Telenetwork, they would go on to make the website "Drunk Gamers" where they would drunkenly play and review games This was a ploy to try and get free games which would eventually backfire and instead tick off quite a few game developers. Eventually they realised that having "Drunk" in company title was not exactly a solid foundation for getting advertisements and free games, so the name changed to Rooster Teeth, which was a euphemism for cock bite.

The company started as a machinima based production team and is responsible for the hit online series, Red VS Blue, which is still made today with the original founders still voicing the main characters. They would later branch out into several different areas that would keep me from actually doing coursework or studying, the most important and successful branch out being Geoff's gaming group called Achievement Hunter, which is basically 20 - 40 minute videos of a group of folk playing video games with a sense of humour and no serious attitude towards anything at all.

Rooster Teeth also do live action productions like Immersion (which tries to bring aspects of video games to life with two lab rats ex. third person driving, split screen shooters etc.) and Social Disorder (which is a public prank show that escalates and causes me to cringe and laugh). Along with those productions Rooster Teeth also crowd funded and released their first ever film, Lazer Team, which starred Alan Ritchson and Colton Dunn, along with several Rooster Teeth employees, as unlikely protectors of Earth from an alien invasion.

In my time living in Austin I was fortunate enough to snag a three day internship with the comedy film studio and I will remember it as one of the best experiences I have ever had, as I even got to be in a video that was featured on their channel.

- This sounds awesome! If Texas wasn't already one of my top places to visit, it definitely is now. I'm wondering if you've heard of the rumoured 'multi-million' investment to build hollywood-style film studios in Gartcosh? Which is just a couple of miles out from Cumbernauld. From what I've read in the papers and online, the aim is to increase and enhance the Scottish film industry after the loss of Game of Thrones and the overall submissive attitude on our media production as it is. Afterall, Scotland is home to some of the most stunning locations that go unnoticed by film-makers, and not to mention hundreds and thousands of keen production students like ourselves nearby who would be more than happy to get involved. There's some more information on this here, and also here. 14buchananL (discuss • contribs) 21:11, 16 February 2016 (UTC)


 * How a simple YouTube startup involving gaming videos can spiral into a massive production company worth potentially millions is quite an amazing idea in general, and I think Rooster Teeth are a great example of the power the Internet has. I'm sure you are well aware of many other YouTube stars who have "made" it so to speak. Unfortunately, not all of them can stay as true to their original content and ethos as Rooster Teeth have. For example, when I was younger I was a massive fan of two gaming YouTube projects. The first was KSI. KSI started out simply playing video games, namely FIFA, just commentating and trying to make people laugh. He celebrated black humour, and pushed the boundaries a bit but his videos were great fun. He has grown so popular lately and now focuses much less on games, and puts out fewer videos than before. However, he has made his millions through YouTube and now owns a ferrari and has been signed by a record label!

Secondly is the channel The Yogscast. These guys started out playing video games, like Minecraft. What set them out from anyone else was their ability to make an incredibly hilarious and gripping TV series out of the Minecraft video series, titled Shadow of Israphel. This really draws comparisons with Red Vs. Blue. However, those videos became infrequent and were eventually cancelled outright, as they focused on other type of gaming coverage. While I personally lost interest in these channels, they have both become very successful entertainers and shows the strength of YouTube as a platform.

Thedellboy (discuss • contribs) 15:24, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

I would kill for an internship at Rooster Teeth. It would be so useful to see behind the scenes of such a successful producer of online content, although with the podcast and Game Time are pretty insightful as well. What sort of things did you do while you were working there? Would you mind sharing?

And Thedellboy, I had the same experience with The Yogscast. I watched Shadow of Israphel right from the beginning and lost interest in the channel when it was cancelled. I think that the difference between Rooster Teeth and The Yogscast is that Rooster Teeth came into being before it was easy to share content (the first Rooster Teeth content came out at a time when it wasn't possible to watch videos on the site, and you had to download and save them to be able to watch them), so there weren't really any other similar things to compete with. But The Yogscast started out on YouTube during Web 2.0, when it had become much easier to share content so there was a lot more content coming out that they had to compete with. The amount effort they put in compared to the amount of attention the videos got wasn't a whole lot, because it took a long time to get the building and choreography and recording and editing done and they were competing in an established market where people will just watch something else if you can't hold their attention. Rooster Teeth were kind of the only video game content out there at the time so they were able to hold their viewers' attention, and the Yogscast didn't have that luxury. --EmLouBrough (discuss • contribs) 10:28, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments Thedellboy, EmLouBrough and 14buchananl I found them all very interesting. I hadn't heard of the the Hollywood level studio being planned in Gartcosh but that seems extremely interesting as Scotland's film industry has been a little lacking in previous years, especially after Game of Thrones stopped filming scenes in Scotland. I have actually heard of Yogscast before, I used to watch them all the time, especially the Shadow of Israphel series that they created. I was extremely disappointed when they stopped doing it and then got mad at fans for asking for a conclusion to the cliff hanger. I unsubscribed to them as I felt that they had sold out a bit, but I might go back and review some of their new content to see if they have returned to the original fan service that they used to have. I will admit that they Let's Builds they did were amazing and I could never have done anything like that. GlasgowTexan (discuss • contribs) 12:06, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Wiki Exercise 1: Formative Feedback
This reflection offers a good description and history of Rooster Teeth. This could be expanded through a critical reflection of the company with reference to module themes. Since you are discussing YouTube, machinima and users as producers, there would be a lot of scope for this kind of critical engagement. The writing is generally of a good standard and you have used some wiki markup., although you should attempt to use more links for relevant information in future exercises. Don't forget to sign your contributions on discussion pages with 4 tildes so we can track your posts. Your comments engage with your colleagues' reflections and offer encourage, but once again, could take a more critical approach to the content and relate their ideas to themes within the module.

A post of this standard roughly corresponds to the following grade descriptor: 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. Sprowberry (discuss • contribs) 10:30, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

Wiki Exercise #2: Visibility and Online Footprint.
When considering how visible one is online a certain unsettling fear comes to realisation, how have I allowed myself to be this public online? I myself, while analysing my online footprint, have shocked myself by how big my footprint is and how much of myself I have allowed online. I am findable on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, VSCO cam, along with having my thoughts, actions and creative works shared across Soundcloud, Adobe Story, YouTube, Snapchat, the Fitbit App and, until recently, Tinder. Even my Just Eat app has memorised and suggests my most common orders before I've even decided what I want. The sad part is that we are raised in this digital culture in which we are so dependently plugged into, that tearing ourself away from these various outlets and accounts can be a painful struggle for some.

Even at looking who I share myself with has became a scare. On facebook I have 1,240 friends, or rather acquaintances. If I had to say how many of these people that I regularly talk to, I don't think I could. We have became so obsessed as a society with the lives of others rather than live our own lives. I have found that my personal happiness, in many situations, is brought down by jealousy due to seeing what others are currently doing with their lives. I assume that this social-emotional pattern will continue to develop well into my adult life, when all he acquaintances I have met and "friended" on Facebook start doing different things with their lives.

I find it disturbing that rather than tear myself away from these life manipulating "social networks" I continue to stay attached to them and rather communicate with people through likes and brief 140 character comments. I fear that these social networks, with every new update and set of terms and conditions that we briefly glance at for two seconds, are making us less social inept beings. We would rather send an email, text, tweet or facebook message than talk to someone on the phone and hear the emotional complexity in their voice.

GlasgowTexan (discuss • contribs) 16:24, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

"The sad part is that we are raised in this digital culture in which we are so dependently plugged into, that tearing our self away from these various outlets and accounts can be a painful struggle for some". I think this is a very interesting thought which you are scratching upon my friend and I would like to develop it a bit further. What you are talking about is the ideological framework within which we are all unconsciously caught underneath. Because ideology is the sum total of the assumptions that are taken for granted and thus the discourse that may attempt to contradict ideology functions unfortunately in the nuance of otherness, and otherness is very easily attacked and chopped. As ideology is presenting itself as the only legit nuance we are all unconsciously sustaining it. What I mean by that is that the ideology of the digital era commands every teenager to own at least one personal online account (most famously Facebook). The adolescent or the young adult that dares to break away from this digital culture is thus treated as the minor other. Nikolas135 (discuss • contribs) 00:05, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

I appreciate the development that you have proposed to the idea I wrote about, Nikolas135. I especially found interesting your idea that "ideology of the digital era commands every teenager to own at least one personal account". I find it curious that the generation bellow us rush to jump into social media at a younger age than ours ever did. It may be down to this social peer pressure to become more digitalised. I find it sad that we are now more obsessed with and more entertained by technology than what is outside and around us. Maybe one day we will see the decline of social media and watch a more self aware generation take over. GlasgowTexan (discuss • contribs) 17:03, 22 February 2016 (UTC)


 * I like the part where you touched upon apps like Just Eat which are offering you ideas before you have thought of yourself! It might be interesting to know whether there is a correlation between the size of your online footprint, and how independent are thoughts are. Hard to measure for sure, but I think I could say with a degree of certainty that a larger online footprint does equal an internet which "knows you" better. For example, Google's search mechanisms have become so intelligent. It can regularly predict my searches with a few letters, and if I begin making several Google searches in a short space of time, it can begin to sense which topic I am researching and predict obscure searches with only a couple of letters. It's genius, helpful, but also frightening. Our apps know us very well.


 * Perhaps the scariest app out there is Facebook messenger. Not everyone understands just how much the app can access. If you use Messenger, you have agreed to these surprising permissions. I have begun to notice after the last two years how places I visit and things I say will often be fed back to me in form of adverts. Just how much data are we offering to these companies? Thedellboy (discuss • contribs) 12:33, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Thedellboy I too find Facebook messengers terms to be scary, what is even more terrifying is that it is cemented in our lives due to it's ease an convenience. In fact it is the main messaging system that we, as students, use for work on group projects and films. Have you ever seen Parks and Recreation?. The is an episode in the last season called Gryzzlbox, in which the main characters of the show deal with a large American company data mining after the town accepts a free internet service from them. The whole final season, in which this episode falls under, is set in a near future and the show runners poke a lot of fun at the ideas of how intrusive the internet is while showing what it can transcend to if we do not make change. What I also find terrifying is the permanence of the information we provide online. Even after deleting information it still stays saved on the coding of sites and in the cloud. We are forever going to be part if the internet, even years after our death. Even right now, these comments will forever be connected to our online footprint GlasgowTexan (discuss • contribs) 16:48, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Wiki Exercise #3. Information overload
As a University student research is an important part of all assignments, and due to the ever growing ease of the internet so many more sources are becoming more readily available than in the age of our parents and educators. Due to this it could be argued that there is an influx of information that can either be labeled as false or misleading and that tampers with the capacity to learn and find truth. I personally as a journalism student find this influx of information as a blessing, it is good to know that no matter where I look for news I will find some sort of information, whether it be exaggerated and biased truths or a lack of clear details, I can still see the general story.

When trying to find out information I find, much like university essays, that it is better to use more than one source. So for news I like to evaluate how close news outlets have their stories to each other, this can often be humorous due to political biased in the establishments. I often compare The Independent, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, BBC News, The Daily Record and Fox News, the later of which is an extreme in the list.

GlasgowTexan (discuss • contribs) 22:40, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

Wiki Exercise #4: Wikibook Project Reflective Account
Our Wikibooks assessment consisted of five different groups working on one chapter, something that seemed hectic and confusing at times. I disagreed with much of the group work ethic that took place within my selective group and the chapter groups as a whole. I found working on the Chapter of Surveillance and Sousveillance to be something of an annoyance due to lack of convenient messaging patterns and an overall sense of unorganised chaos.

I found the Wikibooks discussion page to be of no help at all in the building of our chapter of "An Internet of Everything". So many groups had tried to start conversations in different formats and styles and as someone who likes one organised concrete style it was infuriating. I also did not want to find myself in the situation of editing other people's work just because it annoyed me so I was confused to the process and found myself asking the question, "what gives someone else the right to edit another's work?"

Many of the times in this project I would leave the discussion page for a few days to work on other course work and would later come back to see that I had missed a lot of conversation and delegation in the process of writing the chapter itself. This proved to be a hindrance, as it only discouraged me from joining in and it's only real success was in making me feel left out or behind for not being on at the correct moment in time.

I also found that because the assessment of Wikibooks was mainly on contributions and not content that it was a mad dash for people to get as many contributions as they could, and others who contributed more meaningful researched work of a higher standard and not in quantity may have suffered. I found at several times that I started doing an hour of research on something only to find out that someone else had updated the discussion page saying that they were going to contribute a section that was almost entirely the same as my work as I had been researching.

I came to conclusion on Civic Web from a journalistic perspective though while working on this. Does it matter how much detail is uploaded as long as it is uploaded fast? I found that often at times this project felt like the same competition that competing news organisations have, "who can upload the information first?" I find the idea of Wikipedia and Wikibooks being used as a political or news platform as a little absurd and would not really class this project as a prime example of what civiv web can be, true it got a collective of people working together on one project but surely it would be better if all participants in the project were on the same wavelength, which I can assure you was not the case.

I do think the project did exemplify the idea of a collective intelligence of sorts, in the idea that everyone pulled different areas of ideas in the process. Our chapter was extremely diverse and dove into the idea of news as a fourth estate, online watch dogs, the events in Ferguson, Missouri and even into surveillance in pop culture.

In future, if working on an assignment like this, it would be more beneficial to have assigned roles before starting the Wikibook rather than throwing five groups of five onto one discussion page and saying go.

GlasgowTexan (discuss • contribs) 10:48, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

I saw quite a deal of the competition and chaos that you mention and think your comparison of this project to news organisations spells out the experience of this project well. I found it difficult to join in on the discussions when I found that people had already proposed a topic, which leads me to believe that your suggestion of organising roles and topics before diving into the writing would have made the process much smoother. That would allow for some sort of debate on what direction to take, which was possible early in the project but was discouraged due to the fact that people had already jumped into the projects with the early suggestions and the potential of altering the process too heavily. It was also difficult to maintain contact due to the tendency of students to not check Wikibooks often enough (myself included), and makes one think that some sort of direct messaging might be useful to supplement the discussion page. JacobTheOhioan (discuss • contribs) 01:33, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

I definitely find elements of your analysis interesting and found myself facing similar issues throughout the project. Your suggestion of assigned roles is something I agree with, but I feel the task of delegation is also a key element of the assignment we should engage with, as communication and co-operation when working on a digital platform is something that may be invaluable to us in the future. However, I find your argument about the distribution of the work to be compelling, wherein the 'mad dash' grab of tasks led to an uneven While I shared this issue, I think collaboration may be the only realistic compromise. Although I fully realise the issue you faced, the only amicable compromise I could find was sharing these points of research and beginning a discourse on the topic. Your overall arguments presented here are interesting and in-tune with many of my own observations about the course and its make-up. I think your analysis of the platform that is unsuitable for hosting any kind of political and news is correct, but maybe because of issues in usability, and not from an issue arising from contributors (Although that is equally valid.) Blackflagdog (discuss • contribs) 10:57, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

Marker’s Feedback on Wikibook Project Work
Engagement was the single most important part of this assignment, yet there is little evidence of this in your contributions. When interacting with colleagues, you were mainly interested in claiming territory than collaboration. The wiki exercises vary in quality but provide some evidence that you understand much of the module content. This foundation should, however, be built upon through further reference to secondary reading and a move from description to analysis.

Content (weighted 20%)

 * 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.

Understanding (weighted 30%)

 * Reading and research:
 * evidence of limited critical engagement with set material, although most ideas and procedures insecurely grasped
 * evidence of independent reading of appropriate academic and peer-reviewed material limited, displaying a qualified familiarity with a minimally sufficient range of relevant materials
 * Argument and analysis:
 * poorly articulated and supported argument;
 * lack of evidence of critical thinking (through taking a position in relation to key ideas from the module, and supporting this position in discussion);
 * lack of evidence of relational thinking (through making connections between key ideas from the module and wider literature, and supporting these connections in discussion);
 * evidence of independent critical ability limited, due to the fact that your grasp of the analytical issues and concepts, although generally reasonable, is somewhat insecure.

Engagement (weighted 50%)

 * Evidence from contributions to both editing and discussion of content suggests somewhat deficient standard of engagement (i.e. volume and breadth of activity as evidenced through contribs)
 * lack of engagement with and learning from other Wikipedians about the task of writing/editing content for a Wikibook
 * Lacking in reflexive and creative use of discussion pages

Overall Mark % available on Succeed

FMSU9A4marker (discuss • contribs) 14:51, 3 May 2016 (UTC)