User talk:Olivier skinnylegend

This is a personal User Discussion Page for use in the 'Digital Media and Culture' module

Wiki Exercise #1: Online Visibility and Footprint
Being on the internet requires your device to access a network and so, from the very outset, there is a form of online visibility and footprint being left as you go. Personally, I engage with several forms of online platforms, like social networks that go a lot further than simply recognising I am online through the device, but websites and networks that require more information to be used. A large portion of the social networks I use have a lot of my information made available to them, such as my date of birth, my current address, my relationship status etc. Where possible, however, I try to keep sensitive information that I provide these networks private to my eyes only, i.e. no other users are aware of my current address.

What cannot be controlled by me is where the information I provide goes beyond my immediate social circles and usage of it. Social networks, like Facebook, have been known to sell users' personal information to advertising companies to keep their own company running, but have done so against the knowledge and often without the consent of the user. I have no doubt that any of the information I provided Facebook with could have been sold to advertisers and used against me, as with personal targeted ads.

Despite this, I am not opposed to social networks and continue to use them frequently. I rarely go a day without using them, even with the knowledge that my information could be sold and used against me. I do not actively post, I am more passive user and tend more to view than create. When I do write a post, I will do so thinking about my footprint and the fact that what I write will always be available on the internet, as it continues to exist.

Instructor 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 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 at the lower end of this grade band, so there’s clearly room for improvement here. 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. Less instrumentally, and more in relation to this particular post, it’s really quite good, but both the post and your comments on others were a little late. Try to get these in on time in future to avoid unnecessary loss of marks.


 * 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 have made a considerable difference.

GregXenon01 (discuss • contribs) 11:47, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

Wiki Exercise #2: To what extent are my online and offline identities aligned?
I have been an internet user for many years and it is clear that my identities online, and offline, have changed. As a child, I would use the internet to play games and watch cartoons. Nowadays, my engagement extends to using social media platforms to stay connected with my friends and meet new people. But the new people I meet online may not know me in person. In the current digital era, it is important to consider both online and offline when assessing a person's identity and what it means to be that person. For myself, I do present myself differently when in person and when online, so a friend made first either offline or online may know me differently. Where in person I may be loud and obtuse in social situations, on a social network like Facebook I am reserved and refrain from posting as there is degrees of control available to me to do so.

Important influences on my online identity are the profiles of others, both people I know and people I do not. Ibrahim suggests that "the gaze of others has an important bearing on how we perceive ourselves in this digital culture." (Ibrahim, 2018: 41). Ibrahim suggests that we compose ourselves in a way that we want others to think is the truth. Largely, for myself, I look like I do both online and in person, my photos are representative of what I look like, but I pick and choose which I upload to ensure that people do not view me as being unattractive or unappealing.

A social media platform where this idea of being attractive online is important, and sometimes culturally viewed as necessary, is Tinder. I try harder to present myself as sincere and genuine but in a very niche light. This is because if I would like to date someone I would be best presenting myself close to my real-life counterpart but at the best I can be. But social networks like Tinder can create problems wherein a person presents themselves falsely. In a chapter about online disinhibition, a "force that contributes to the acceleration and amplification of social processes in cyberspace" (Suler, 2015: 96), Suler talks about people who use online anonymity to behave in devious ways that would not affect their real identities. These people could use a platform like Tinder to bring harm to other users and feel no remorse because of their anonymity. Suler's suggestion of people using false identities is an issue not limited to the digital age but made easier by the screen in between the interfacing users. A popular, but not harmful, example of this is Channel 4's The Circle.

With access to different platforms and different levels of either anonymity or truth, online and offline identities have a clear flexibility that we, the user, can control and therefore manifest in whatever way we like. I do, however, try my best to remain kind and transparent in both entities to ensure a healthy relationship with the internet.

-Olivier skinnylegend (discuss • contribs) 21:45, 14 March 2019 (UTC)


 * The use of tinder is a fantastic way to show how people present themselves online, perfectly showcases how many social media sites revolve around the ideas of being attractive and appealing to other people, this in turn helps to show perhaps even the reason why people show themselves in a very selective fashion on these websites. Saying that you try to be "transparent" online also shows a degree of self awareness in your writing which helps to show your rounded knowledge of the subject. Writing about television shows using this idea of online identities also helps to describe how perhaps the worlds idea of identity has changed with the advent of web 2.0 JackLeslie1999 (discuss • contribs) 13:09, 17 March 2019 (UTC).


 * Good evening! I think that the differences between your on- and offline identity show the influence the context has over our actions. The awareness of our online visibility definitely plays an important role in our online inhibitions, which along with the control we as users have in the management of our profiles permit to carefully design a desired image of ourselves. The examples you mention are highly useful in the understanding of the discussion's complexity. I had never heard of The Circle, so reading about it has also been really interesting! Overall, I find your arguments to clearly illustrate the different aspects that make the topic of on- and offline identities so complex. Nice work!--Lucia.notifications5 (discuss • contribs) 18:50, 17 March 2019 (UTC)


 * As I started to read your piece, there was one word I was waiting for. Influence. And it's right at the beginning of the second paragraph. I think you found the best way to describe social media. Yes, people want to share only their happy moments, their success (obviously), but doing so, everything on Facebook is false (okay, maybe it can be true, but still). I really liked that paragraph, the reference was good, too. Tinder is an interesting topic. As you said, 'being attractive online is important'. I believe the majority of the users of the app share edited photos or a picture that is far from the truth (like a massive amount of makeup, etc). In my eyes, Tinder is absolutely a false world and as you mentioned, if someone presents him/herself falsely, it can cause problems. Your last sentence was the winner sentence. That was a great final word. Overall, it was good to read this piece, I like your ideas and the references. RichardwikiB (discuss • contribs) 10:42, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

Wiki Exercise #3: Annotated Bibliography Exercise (Part B)
'''Valtysson, B. (2010, May 25). "Access Culture: Web 2.0 and Cultural Participation". International Journal of Cultural Policy, 16(2), 200-214.'''

Article Link

In this article, Valtysson applies the work of several influential media scholars, including Manual Castells's theory of the 'network society', to explore further what it means to be a consumer, producer and creator of media in the new digital age. He references many other writers such as Habermas, Manovich and Lessig, and cites their contributions to work on digital culture. He also makes specific reference to the first open-source digitally animated short film Elephants Dream (Kurdali, 2006), which he suggests is an important landmark in the digital prosumer age because of its copyright laws and the 'remixability' of it. 'Remixability', is a term he details in the section 'Prosumers and remixed culture', which is important for research into participatory culture because it looks at the new ways a common web user can become a media creator. With the use of Web 2.0 websites and relevant social media, such as YouTube and Facebook, many users can remix, or reproduce with their own additions, already existing digital property that can be found online (he also discusses the new legal issues that are apparent as a result, e.g. Creative Commons). Limitations of the article include the fact that many readers, including myself, may have not previously heard of or seen the key example of remixable digital media, Elephants Dream, or any of the remixes that Valtysson makes reference too. However, this is made less of an issue by the fact the short film is available online and accessible for free (YouTube Link). To conclude, the article will make a useful addition to research being conducted on Web 2.0 because it provides a new look at the way in which media on the internet is created and shared, as well as an extensive look at Creative Commons and the legality of producing remixed content online. - Olivier skinnylegend (discuss • contribs) 16:19, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

Wiki Exercise #4: Collaborative Essay Critical Evaluation – What ARE Wikis?
Wikis, as I understand them, are powerful online databases of information. However, until recently, I did not know the extent to which a wiki, such as Wikipedia, could be interacted with at the level of a common web user. Murugesan, discussing Web 2.0, provides a definition of a ‘Wiki’ and exemplifies what they are. He calls a wiki a “simple yet powerful Web-based collaborative-authoring system for creating…content” (Murugesan, 2007: 35). I have spent the past few weeks contributing to an original piece of research on Wikibooks, a shift compared to my previous level of engagement with wikis. Before the project, it was largely passive consumption of the information, similar to physical encyclopedias of the past. I have been exploring the ‘Talk’ pages attached to articles and learning how to format text correctly in my own work, through observing peer contributors and using Wiki Teahouse.

Another interesting take on wikis is Myers’ assertion of a wiki becoming a genre, a distinct kind of writing. He gives the way a Wikipedia article is written its own genre, calling the format “…a series of statements of facts, …with no direct expression of stance” (Myers, 2010: 19). Myers’ way of giving wikis a genre helps provide newcomers with a basic understanding of what to expect. As for myself, whenever I think about a representation of a wiki, I can describe how most Wikipedia articles look because of their highly consistent formatting and style. Adapting to this style has been interesting because of the forethought needed in placing certain code in your edits so that they are styled in accordance with the pages.

A defining difference of wikis compared with other online writing spaces, as Murugesan asserted, is their ‘collaborative-authoring’ nature. The project I contributed to was comprised of 12 people, only 3 of whom I had met in person, and this allowed me to experience working with stranger’s whose online identities formed through their contributions alone. The number of active users to respective edits on Wikipedia, however, is often unbalanced. Quoted in Lund, Swartz states that Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, saw that in 2006 80% of edits were made by only 20% of active users, like a form of elite editing community (Swartz, 2006 IN Lund, 2017: 54). This statistic I can still see being true because of the fear of having one’s edits revoked or amended. In my recent project, I saw a trend of some contributing users always active and others hardly ever, helping the case of the statistic.

In conclusion, having done more work with them and learning more about their nature, I understand wikis to be an important part of our current, and past, online culture and society. As if moving the thousands of physical information databases scattered over the glob onto the internet was not challenge enough, it has largely been done on one website and by the common web user. An excellent showcase of the growth the internet has given our way of life.

- Olivier skinnylegend (discuss • contribs) 21:34, 4 April 2019 (UTC)


 * Great to see you understand wiki more after doing the wikibook project and this exercise. Nice to relate it to your own learning, observation and experience in engaging in collaborative project here. It is also shocking to know that 80% of the edits were actually made by 20% of the users. It is an interesting point to include:) Cantthinkofanyname (discuss • contribs) 20:30, 6 April 2019 (UTC)


 * Hi, great piece! I found the fact about uneven user contribution to the site especially interesting and I feel like this could have been delved more deeply into. Since Wikipedia and associated sister sites work on completely voluntary basis, I think the big question to ask is why would anyone dedicate their time to it? In my essay I relate this to the ideas of excess free time, cognitive surplus and sense of community. I suppose these could explain the uneven contributions but simply stating: “Some people have more free time than others”, but I would argue the issue is more complex than that. Most importantly, as you as well seemed to briefly indicate in your essay, this statistic is quite worrying. Wiki*edia projects started out as a way to grant everyone access to share and gain knowledge and its reliability really lies on the active community verifying each other’s information. If most articles are edited by an elite group, a lot of false information might accidently pass by since no one is fact checking them. Not to mention this also hurts the easy integration of newcomers. Works on Wiki*edia are meant to be neutral and disregard writer’s own opinions, as stated by the five pillars. Leaving building Wikipedia to a dedicated few raises the risk of breaking this principle. Even if contributors are not deliberately spreading their own opinions, the articles might accidently become too one-sided, leaving important perspectives unexplored.


 * You mentioned that this imbalance could be seen in your own group project as well. I also found a similar pattern of contribution among my own group, where specific people were constantly online and some contributors seemed to rarely voice their opinion. This could be an example of the problem at hand or perhaps it just shows the distribution between the hardworking and the less invested students, since everyone else on Wikibooks is contributing voluntarily.


 * Somewhat related, by Googling this issue quickly I found that there is also a geographical imbalance when it comes to contributions. This seems easy enough to explain by unequal technological advancements in different regions and the availability of Internet. However, an article by Graham M. et al. shows that even wealthy countries like United Arab Emirates are not making many contributions. They explain that population size, already existing contributions and cultural attitudes affect this as well. Extensive amount of already curated content seems to promote creating more articles, so countries where Wikipedia has not taken a foothold yet are not contributing at the same rate as others. Not all cultures are equally receptive to open-source information platforms like Wikipedia as others. While this might be easier to explain, both statistics are quite troubling and come with the risks of limited or skewed information.

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:
 * Good. Among other things, good contributions 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 formatting, 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, discussing this in a transparent way with fellow researchers on the Discussion Pages. The wiki markup formatting will be very clear.

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 substantial contribs throughout the period of the project, and a small number of significant contribs to discussion – consistent engagement in evidence here. Very good.

Engagement with and learning from the community on Discussion Pages
 * Evidence of peer-assisted learning and collaboration
 * Good
 * Evidence of reading, sharing, and application of research to the essay
 * Outstanding
 * 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
 * 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.
 * Excellent

GregXenon01 (discuss • contribs) 15:17, 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.


 * Re: responses to other people’s posts – these are especially good, and you have really taken on board the value of peer-review and collaboration as this work clearly shows. However, the final peer-review element (Ex4) is missing, which is a shame as it has affected your overall grade for the portfolio.

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


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


 * Presentation: excellent use of wiki markup and organisational skills generally.

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