User talk:Kerencolling

My name is Keren Colling and I have had to create this page for a class project. Kerencolling (discuss • contribs) 15:29, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

Wiki Book Project Exercise #2
In today’s technological society, ourselves as individuals seem to share both a real life presence and that of an online one. These two persona’s and lives should theoretically be the same person, but from many academic standpoints, these two identities can be seen as completely opposite. Zizi Papacharissi states that “new media allow[s] people the opportunity to present various forms of themselves to others at a distance” (Papacharissi, 2010). Meaning that the internet and social networking sites as a whole, allows for us to become distant from the real life world and allows for us to present ourselves in a new way, thus meaning our online identity has been born.

However, Papacharissi also examines the way this phenomenon of editing one’s own perception has come about. She explains that “in everyday life people consciously and unconsciously work to define the ways in which they are perceived”(Papacharissi, 2010), meaning that we still are conscious to the way we are perceived by others, its just that new media and social networking sites allow for us to be perceived in a way in which we are in complete control of. She also states in conjunction with this point that “these identity presentations are supported by comments from other users”, which allows for the way we are perceiving ourselves to be shifted and molded into new identities over and over again. Recently, I conducted a short poll on Instagram, Instagram being one of the main social networking sites for people uploading photos of themselves or what they have been doing that day (most stereotypically, what they have eaten that day). I asked people 3 main questions:


 * Do you believe we have two different identities, one online and one offline?


 * Do you FaceTune your selfies? (FaceTune is an app where you can edit, reshape, resize different aspects of your body within your photos)


 * Would you ‘untag’ yourself from photos of yourself on Facebook if you did not like the way you looked in them?

I had 83 people willingly participate in my poll. For my first question, 86% of people agreed that we have two different identities. For my second question, only 11% of people admitted to editing their photos (this is only people who have admitted to it however) and for my third question, 68% of people admitted they would untag themselves from photo’s if they did not like the way they looked in them. From my own primary research and my understandings from the secondary research I have looked into, I believe we definitely do have two separate identities which are shaped by what we choose to show online and what we do not. I do believe that your real life identity and your online one do have to correspond with each other somehow, because you’ve only got yourself to work with. You can’t completely change the way you look, you can edit it, but you can’t physically change any features. For many of us, according to Papacharissi, we both “consciously and unconsciously transform ourselves before the camera and portray a version of ourselves who we hope to be”(Papacharissi, 2010). Although these identities are technically different, you can only elaborate on the basis of your original real life identity.

Wiki Exercise #2 Response
This is a really interesting way of approaching the question, by asking peers about their online and offline identities via an Instagram poll. The comment you make about usin FaceTune, “this is only people who have admitted to it however” really stands out for me. I think that one of the major elements of certain online personas is convincing peers and strangers that you are the same in offline life. Your suggestion is interesting in that people want to come across as natural and not enhanced, but in reality, there are a lot of aspects of impression that can’t be controlled face-to-face the same way they can be controlled online.

In their study on collective narcissism in college students’ Facebook photos, Mendelson and Papacharissi mention that a lot of participants viewed visibility as more important than impression management. Embarrassing Facebook photos were left online “suggesting that that their publicity surpasses the stated discontent or embarrassment brought on by the displayed image” (2010, p.262). Thus, having peers see that you were present in a social situation was, for these college students, the ultimate purpose to posting and sharing their personal lives online. Due to the nature of Facebook, this makes a lot of sense to me; however, I do believe there to be far more self-curation on Instagram. Do you think the nature of Instagram as a platform encourages more self-curation online (i.e., deleting bad photos or using FaceTune) than Facebook? Or is down to the individual? Do you think there are any dangers to this style of image management? Look forward to hearing your thoughts. Mmm00044 (discuss • contribs) 18:32, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

I really liked the way you approached answering this question, the use of an Instagram poll to see what other users thought about their online and offline identity was something I hadn't thought of. I found it interesting that the questions you chose to ask focussed on appearance, which is arguably one of the issues when it comes to social media. I'd be interested to analyse the data you collected further and see whether responses differ due to age and gender, for instance.

Do you think that people use apps like Facetune to alter their appearance due to the pressures that can come from being on social media and feeling pressurised to look a certain way? In my opinion, whilst we are online we are more in control and can therefore alter certain aspects of our appearance to make ourselves feel more confident, something which further alters our online identity from our offline identity. Jessiehosk27 (discuss • contribs) 16:55, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

Wiki Book Project Exercise #3

 * 1) DeSouza, M (2013) “A Case of the Red Pants Mondays: The Connection Between Fandom, Tumblr, and Consumption”. Major Papers by Master of Science Students, Paper 3. Retrieved from: http://digitalcommons.uri.edu/tmd_major_papers/3

This is a research paper conducted by DeSouza who attended the University of Rhode Island. Within this article, DeSouza begins to describe what exactly Tumblr and tells you exactly how it works. She provides us with examples of why you would follow someone on Tumblr and how you can interact with a person’s posts. She also begins to describe why exactly Tumblr is so favoured within the fandom community. She describes it as a place where people are free to remain anonymous and people are brought together through their interests and aesthetics rather than how they are as people in the offline environment. For a case study she brings in the BBC programme ‘Sherlock’ and uses this compared with two more television programmes, Supernatural and Doctor Who, to show how fans communicate with one another when the television show is no longer airing new episodes. She shows how communities come together within Tumblr to share experiences and interests within a show whilst they are not being aired at certain moments in time, thus providing evidence for how much fandoms have positive effects on people. This article will form the basis of my research within my Online Communities collaborative essay.

Wiki Book Project Exercise #4
Wikipedia is an online encyclopaedia platform in which people can produce work collaboratively and anyone is free to edit and make changes to. However, I will be focussing on the Wikibooks platform run by the same means as Wikipedia. Wikibooks is a side online platform associated with Wikipedia but it allows for people to create their own blogs and pages, rather than having to edit pre-existing pages. This means that people can work collaboratively on pages slightly more informally compared to that of Wikipedia itself. When working with Wikibooks, the software included for editing pages “made blogging more accessible beyond the community of system designers and techies” meaning the way in which you edit and code the pages is a lot easier than if you were to design a webpage yourself. This allows for a lot more inclusion within the Wikibooks community as practically anyone would be able to pick up and learn how to write and code the page.

Focussing more on the collaborative side and aspects of Wikibooks, the ways in which the platform allows for this extensive collaborative effort, is the use of the ‘discussion’ tab. Within the discussion tab on a Wikibook, everything that gets edited on that page does not show up within the final draft of the blog they are creating. This allows for people to add and reply to comments about what should be changed within the blog they are creating. There are added features within this tab which make for collaborative efforts. For example, the ‘reply’ function within the coding of the page allows for people to the notified of any changes or comments added to the discussion page within a Wikibook. In turn, this begins to foster a community as people are brought together through the topic and genre of the Wikibook page they are working on.



However, even though there are many positive features within working on the Wikibook platform, due to the nature of collaborative essay writing, there are drawbacks within this, for example, Greg Myers talks within his article about the idea of being “caught up in endless bureaucratic battles over edit wars, copyright images and administration selection, with accusations and counter-accusations”. This meaning that because anyone can edit a piece, there are potential risks of people being caught up in endless edit cycles because they believe their work on the page is more beneficial than that of another writer and editor within the page. As well as this, there are also administrators of Wikibooks and Wikipedia as a whole that one would have to deal within when making a page. Due to the strict guidelines of Wikipedia, what you talk about and what you edit within a page is heavily monitored. For example, when I was writing my collaborative essay on Online Communities, one member of our group had all their edits to the page undone as the admins believed she was vandalising the page rather than editing it.

In conclusion, I believe that Wikibooks is a great platform for individuals to come together to edit and work on a page and article, but I believe that due to the strict guidelines and administration expectations, it hardly allows for complete transparency when writing. Greg Myers explains that both admins and users “draw on certain expectations, but they also reinforce those expectations”. This means that Wikibooks promotes the idea of collaborative work, but there are expectations and limits to which you can edit and what you can add within a blog.

=Response= Hi Keren, I specifically sought out your discussion page to comment on for assignment number four. Within our Online Communities wikibook, your thoughts and additions never failed to intrigue me. Whether or not I agree with your thoughts, they all make sense, and have proof to back them up.

After reading through your response, I realized I had never thought about how the simplicity of the preexisting code within wikibooks makes the program itself even more inclusive. To be honest, even the wikibooks code was a bit of a challenge for me. I have little to no experience with code, so this entire project really taught me a lot. Anyway, without all the helpful tips and tricks that my group posted, I cannot imagine the struggle I would have had to go through. I managed to avoided quite a bit of frustration simply by checking everybody elses discussion pages. I was able to see how they were coding to make headings and formatting images and in turn figured out how to apply it to my own discussion page. With that being said, now that I know how difficult it is to code wikibooks I appreciate the contributors to not only wikibook, but all of thelWikipedia platforms even more. It makes me feel better about the people who are editing each page, because it is no easy task. I would argue that no sane person would put as much time and effort as we did, into a wiki page for no reason. People are putting work and time into editing wiki pages, which means they are highly dedicated and knowledgeable about whichever subject they are putting so much time into editing. This fact alone gives me more confidence in the people I edit with on wikibooks, and any connect I am reading on any Wikipedia platform.

I agree with you on how helpful communication can be within the discussion pages. And in fact, while I read your thoughts on that, a lightbulb above my head turned on. I wish wikibooks had some kind of notification system, where the user is alerted when a fellow contributor comments a suggestion, or replies to whatever you added to the group that particular day. I feel that this would help things get done more efficiently and effectively in a group. Instead of each member checking in on their page only once a day at different times of the day, everybody would be able to get back to one another right away.

You mentioned that one of wikibooks biggest faults is the potential it has for endless copywriter battles. While this surely is a drawback, it is the price that is paid for the fact that literally anybody can edit any of the pages. The community of wiki is dependent on the users. The users have the power to make or break the system. If copyrighter battles hinder the process to the point where things are getting erased as soon as they are being posted, the entire program will surely crumble. Luckily, wikibooks is currently still working, and it is going strong. Copywriter battles are certainly a problem that wiki should get ahead of and fix before it tears itself apart.

The main idea I got out of your final response is that while wikibooks is a fantastic system, it is certainly not a perfect one. The different Wikipedia platforms would not work without collaboration. Its aspect of collaboration is necessary to what it is at the very core. It is one of the only universal internet database that is literally dependent on different types of people coming together with different arrays of knowledge about the same subject. All of the Wikipedia platforms have done a lot of good for anybody who wants to learn, and all of its platforms, specifically wikibooks, has a lot of potential to impact the work even more. Ryleyfred (discuss • contribs) 09:35, 11 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:
 * Satisfactory. Among other things, satisfactory contributions 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) and will have little justification for ideas offered on Discussion Pages. The wiki markup formatting will need some 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:
 * some contribs through the period here, but unfortunately a little inconsistent. A couple of annotated bibliography additions that would be considered substantial really do help in this regard, and the quality is good. Also, a little late to the discussion and contrib to the essay page itself.

Engagement with and learning from the community on Discussion Pages
 * Evidence of peer-assisted learning and collaboration
 * Satisfactory


 * Evidence of reading, sharing, and application of research to the essay
 * Good
 * Evidence of peer-review of others’ work
 * Satisfactory

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

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) 15:41, 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:


 * 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.


 * The quality of the content of your work is really rather good, and you show real potential in the way you think and write. However, you do miss some vital details in relation to the brief requirements – in particular, you haven’t sunmitted any of the peer-review elements for Ex2 and 4. There’s clearly room for improvement here, Therefore. 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 – none undertaken. This would effectively halve your mark for those particular exercises.

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: fair use of wiki markup and organisational skills.

GregXenon01 (discuss • contribs) 16:35, 1 May 2019 (UTC)