User talk:Isabellathebull

A group of us will be creating a book for Wikibooks.

Isabellathebull (discuss • contribs) 17:09, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

Wiki Exercise #2: My Online Identity
How I have presented myself over the years online has changed fairly often due to how I have grown as a person over the years. Being someone who has always been uncomfortable in certain social situations, this idea of being able to present myself as confident online was magical to me. I have a lot of trouble talking to people that I don’t particularly know, I find it very difficult due to the anxiety of not knowing the person. However, with the mask of online communication I am able to present to others that I am in fact a confident and active person. As I previously mentioned however, this is not the full truth of myself. I present myself to others differently to how I actually am in real life.

Although online communication has benefited me greatly in terms of how it reflected who I was online it was completely false even without the intention of lying and mispresenting myself. Its just very difficult to not present yourself differently online as its what most people are doing. When looking at an aspect of online presentation that looks at perhaps Instagram models how they present themselves on Instagram is almost always not who they are in real life. There this need to over present ourselves online just to stick out among the thousands of other people online trying to prove themselves just as much. In my own personal experience there was a time on Instagram that I was not presenting myself honestly due to the fear of embarrassment. For example, when I was around 12 to 13 on Instagram I was very conscious of people being able to see what I liked and thus I refrained liking pictures that could have been related to the LQBTQ+ community due to the fear of people questioning my sexuality as I didn’t know myself.

When it comes to online identity is very hard to define, this can be said to be due to how easy it is to become someone you’re not through a social media platform. However, I am not saying this is a bad thing per say, when you get to the point in which you can be honest online the feeling of being yourself is overwhelming. Although the long-term effects of not representing yourself truthfully online can be quite damaging its clear in Bollmer’s theory that online presents is a mere performance of who we actually are based on what situation we are put in and thus we conform to the situation in the most popular way. Not only does online identify and online community allow us to falsely present ourselves online it allows us to be more confident and less emotional when it comes to doing things we don’t particular like. There’s this idea of allowing ourselves the benefits of talking to people we wouldn’t usually talk to out of anxiety and then moving on from it quickly enough to not have to worry about it. It is one of very few benefits of online identity. But I believe that we are trying to be their perfect person online, no matter who our real-life friends and ambitions are, I guess were just all trying to fit in.


 * Hi! I really enjoyed reading your essay. You make some really interesting points about your feelings with online identity. I completely agree with what you said about our online selves being a performance. I too have refrained from liking certain things, or sharing certain posts on my social media platforms because I knew it would not be approved by my peer group who at the time were most certainly my target audience. Yet, the more I have thought about this topic, the more I can see that maybe I was wrong in saying that this is what made my online and offline identities different. Yes it may be true that I have a lot more confidence when it comes to expressing myself online than I do off for I am not having to try and keep eye-contact with the other person, and I can apply an "emotional hit and run" if you will to whatever it is that I am putting out there. Yet, I would often not share such information when I knew a lot of people would be at the receiving end. Both on and offline, I will only ever share really personal information with my nearest and dearest. Or, the people who I trust. Being that on social media, we open ourselves up to a potentially global audience, where I believe the social norms of offline society still very much apply, we are far more cautious of what we put out there. Basically, what I am trying to say is that the way we present our identities both on and offline very much depends on who we are presenting to. We imagine different responses we will receive depending on the audience in question. And, from my own personal experience, I have found that the larger the audience - and more importantly, if this audience is made up of individuals who I would not feel completely comfortable with - the way in which I present myself is highly unlikely to reflect how I truly feel. Such a thought process is sad. Especially seeing as, with the 'always on culture' social media is now taking up such an huge proportion of our lives. Many would argue that we can use online communication platforms as a way of finding our true selves. It could be a way of us trying to learn how to be comfortable in our own skin. And, whilst I can see the argument that is trying to be made here, upon further reflection of this topic I am starting to worry that maybe this will only ever be wishful thinking. We may log on with the intention of exploring and expressing our true selves, but by scrolling through a stream of filtered photographs and selected posts, we are brainwashed into thinking that the only identity we can possess - both on and offline - is one which adheres to societal norms. BeccaWithFreckles (discuss • contribs) 10:45, 16 March 2019 (UTC)


 * Hello. I must say this was such an interesting read. I really enjoyed your perspective on this topic, you pointed out a few things that didn’t cross my mind when I was writing on this topic. I never really thought about the change we also go through in our online identities apart from our real-life identities, till you pointed it out in your essay. That part really made me question everything about my online Identity and reminded me of how I would act online in terms of liking, posting, retweeting and commenting because of how I would be viewed by people that knew me or people I was trying to ‘impress’, social media has a bigger part in our lives than we think. Yasi.sdt (discuss • contribs) 00:36, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

Wiki Exercise #3 : Annotated Bibliography
'''Suler, J. (2006). The First Decade of CyberPsychology. The Psychology Of Cyberspace, 1. Retrieved from http://users.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/decade.html'''

John Suler is a psychology professor who is based at Rider University in New Jersey. He is known for his extensive research into the cyberspace and specifically his work on Online Disinhibition. The purpose of this online article is to explain and develop Suler’s original ideas on cyberspace and identity. Suler makes many points but his main points revolve around how over time cyberspace has changed and how theorist need to understand this change better within the aspect of cyberspace as there is no real definition that can be made and if there was it would change for each individual. Suler’s main conclusions is however is that some aspects of cyberspace will never change. For example, the idea that the cyberspace allows online disinhibition due to varying degrees of “Imaginary identity”. When looking into cyberspace and disinhibition, Suler’s work can be extremely helpful and reliable. This is known due to his stature within the psychology bubble but also within the Digital media bubble and how he has related these two topics very clearly and concisely through all of his work.

Isabellathebull (discuss • contribs) 22:31, 21 March 2019 (UTC)


 * Hi! I think you provide a really effective overview of Suler's work here. He is such a key figure within this topic that I feel it is crucial we shine a light on all of the work that he has done. His points extremely influential and provide a clear understanding of just how much of an impact online disinhibition can have on our day to day lives. This will be really useful in the collaborative essay, and I feel it is key that we make sure we emphasise Suler's work as much as possible because he is so influential. BeccaWithFreckles (discuss • contribs) 10:11, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Wiki Exercise #4 : What is a Wiki?


When looking at what Wikibooks it can be defined as a collection of digitalised books that is created by the public for the public. It’s an open and free platform for those who wish to create and connect. Wikibooks is not commodified and thus it is free for all to use and explore. Wikibooks is a platform that promotes collaboration and allows all users to be able to reflect and learn from others and themselves.

In terms of visibility, Wikibooks creates visibility in many ways and allows people to be public with what they do on the platform. As Wikibooks is public domain and all published becomes public domain users are extremely visible if they want to be. Discuss and Contribs pages are a feature on all user pages and this allows for visibility as we can publicly see all of the user’s contributions to other pages as well as what they edit and create. However, users do have the ability to hide their real selves due to being able to create your own username, within terms and conditions a user can create any username they want and thus this allows for individuals to someone protect themselves from visibility by creating a discrete name that has nothing to do with who they are in real life.

Wikibooks is created around collaborative research each page and book being different form the next. In my own experience with Wikibooks this is an extremely important aspect to grasp when creating through this platform. By working on my own collaborative project, online disinhibition within Debates in Digital Culture 2019, its clear that Wikibooks has some real benefit for student participators as it has allowed me to be able to learn from and understand other people’s ideas through the discussion pages as well as sharing my own.

Wikibooks undoubtedly create a community between users of the platform due to the ability to collaborate on many different interests and ideas as well as share these with other users of the platform. This ability to jump between different topics and interests creates this sense of community as everyone is working together to create a platform of information not only for the users but for everyone who visits the site. It creates debates among the publishers that blossoms community thought the use of collaborative thinking and promotion of discussion through talk and discussion pages. However, this format may seem to be damaging to digital commons and what this means but in fact although its not exactly the most common terms of teamwork all in all it is still teamwork and thus Wikibooks does in fact represent what digital commons really is and upholds its values as Wikibooks is collaborated information for all. Wikibooks also allows for freedom of information, its allows users to create and discuss what they wish, however it does have to fall into the terms and conditions of Wikibooks as if not the article or edit may be deleted. It is common for platforms like this to have terms and conditions just so that the platform remains acceptable for all users and caters to what Wikibooks aims for which is collaboration. In the bigger picture wiki platforms are fairly emancipative and allows for users to discuss and collaborate on most topics within the media sphere.

Finally, when looking at this platform as a whole it is clear what its intentions are and how it can create collaboration and community through the creation of Wikibooks and articles across all wiki platforms. It is clear that there is some level of visibility within this platform however it is somewhat difficult to hide everything due to the layout of the platform as it wants to promote collaboration by making it somewhat difficult to become anonymous even if the individual is just an IP address. All in all as Halavais and Lackaff state “Wikipedia presents a new model of encyclopaedic knowledge creation” and not only does it create a new way of learning it creates a new way of communication and online community.

Isabellathebull (discuss • contribs) 08:18, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

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:
 * Very Poor. Often, contributions of this standard are quite brief, are structured poorly and are not spell-checked. They are often irrelevant, and offer little engagement with the concerns of the module or the assignment brief. Contributions of this grade may have been subject to admin warnings or take-down notices for copyright infringement. The wiki markup formatting will be of a very poor standard and as a result it will be difficult for the reader or fellow collaborators to engage with the discussion.

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:
 * There are a couple of substantial contribs in the last day of the project (which saved you, really), with one or two smaller contribs. However, this inconsistency and lack of engagement in the process means that there is very little evidence of learning and workflow. This is a real pity, because what is here indicates capability for very good work.

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

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

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.
 * Satisfactory

GregXenon01 (discuss • contribs) 16:04, 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:


 * 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.


 * This work is a very well written and structured set of portfolio assessments at the upper end of this grade band. Even so, perhaps a little improvement would go some 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.


 * Making more use of the wiki functionality and markup would have gone some 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 especially good. Generous, critically engaged, and supported through reference to your own reading. Solid work.

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


 * 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 – all good.


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

GregXenon01 (discuss • contribs) 16:52, 1 May 2019 (UTC)