User talk:RossWithTheShirts

Hi all. I am Ross and I am part of an educational class project at the University of Stirling in which I shall be exploring and unlocking the potential of WikiBooks. RossWithTheShirts (discuss • contribs) 18:06, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Wiki Exercise #1: What Makes a Good Wiki?
For this particular task I have been asked to write about my own experiences with online collaboration for group projects in social media. There have in fact been many times in which I have had opportunities to do such things, which displays the effects that social media has had on my working life. One such experience in which I personally have attempted to collaborate in a group project on social media was in my first year at the University of Stirling, in which I was presented with the task of creating a group presentation for a history module. The module was Scottish history and the project was about the Scottish monks in the 15th Century. It was through the Facebook group chat feature that the three other members of that group and I were able to relate vital information and opinions towards each other. Because of the power of this media we had to meet up far less than would have been needed possibly even ten years earlier and we were also able to share online sources with each other through this website. Specifically the struggle that I overcame through the use of social media to collaborate was the very findings of the essay question that I personally had to tackle in the group as part of the larger project. The question was buried deep within the many documents on the history departments segment of the Succeed sight. It was vital that I find this question on the first day of research and before the group met up so that I could be prepared and contribute in our meeting. Therefore, thanks to this social media outlet I was able to use the help of my peers to accelerate the progress of my own research and in turn the progress of the group project. However it has to be said that I did come across many obstacles in collaboration through social media that I put down to the very nature of the medium itself. Without the time constraints of a face to face meeting a far more laid back approach was taken by the group, particularly in the middle of the forming of the project. By this I mean that people felt so confident in the fact that the group was going to succeed due to the power we had to pass information to each other that they opted instead to pull back their efforts and even use the Facebook chat as a means of flippantly commenting about the module; ridiculing it and claiming it to be redundant. Due to this draw back and lack of effort from some in the group it made it very hard to actually pass on information and organise the final project. This was frustrating, and I feel like the nature of social media and its facelessness is to blame. Therefore overall my experience with online collaboration for group projects on social media has been an experience. There were definitely times in which I felt like I would be powerless without the instant access to other people’s knowledge that this gave me, but equally I felt that the impersonal nature of social media left the group disorientated and directionless at times. RossWithTheShirts (discuss • contribs) 11:59, 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.


 * Good. (With caveats!) 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 post is in the middle of this grade band, 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, it's a bit text-heavy and clunky. It would be really useful to make more creative use of the platform to help break the text up a little. 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. In addition, you have not fully engaged the brief for this exercise. I realise that you've not had much experience with the wiki yet, but in drawing from relevant reading and research you have undertaken so far ont he module, there is enough there to critically engage with some of the underlying issues.


 * Re: responses to other people’s posts – these are especially good. I like that you have framed some of your responses as questions to solicit discussion (this is, arguably, what discussion pages are all about!) and also that you have engaged in discussion in an open and critical way (that is to say, you've responded to what other people are saying and are contributing meaningfully to discussion - arguably the civic element of wiki that you ought to be thinking about, which you clearly are). You are also being clear about copyediting on other people's pages - this is a good thing! There is a function for this, in the edit summary box, just below the text edit box. Writie edit notes in here like the one I've written for this entry ("assessment response"). Keep this up!

GregXenon01 (discuss • contribs) 10:32, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Comments on Wiki Exercise #1
 *corrected the spelling of help* -- From my experience with group projects using Facebook I have had some similar experiences. I have however found it is also useful in showing you who has and hasn't read messages. Do you think maybe that a Facebook Group Page would improve or prevent people's reduced interest? That maybe an interactive page would avoid the casual conversational problems that occur? Ailsamaloney12 (discuss • contribs) 15:59, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

This is an interesting though. I do agree that the more laid back nature of social media can make group tasks seem less serious due to the fact that anybody can contact any member of the group at any point in time. I wonder if this is why businesses still perform important meetings face to face at a physical desk as opposed to via social media which would cost less money to perform. I think to truly solve the issue, there would need to be a divide between personal social media where the main goal is to chat with friends, and productivity social media where the main goal is to get work done. Jon-Blackcoat (discuss • contribs) 11:30, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Wikibooks Excercise 2: visibility and Data Trails
For this specific task I am to write about my own personal online visibility and then how that relates to Wikibooks and the work that I am doing through this platform. When inspecting just how visible I am on the internet I find that I keep a mostly anonymous or private presence. For me it is clear that the social media platform through which I am most visible is in fact Facebook. Due to my very limited privacy setting my posts can in fact almost all be viewed and liked by the general public, as can my personal information. The reason that I have taken such measure is that feel that reaching a large audience and gaining respect from people whom I do not necessarily know on Facebook shows a stronger online presence and could be expanded in the future if I were ever to peruse some type of media career. Despite the fact that there is possibly too much of my own information shared publically on Facebook I believe that the fact that I have complete control over how much information is put out there and what information is put out there justifies this. There are certain posts that I have made on Facebook, such as a link to my slightly dark and edgy cartoon creation, that I have hidden from the public and certain friends in order for my online image not to be damaged in any way. In YouTube my channel has my own first and last name, and my likelihood in a few public videos. Other than the videos are mostly private and there is no further information given about me. It is very much the same story with my Tumblr account. In fact arguably I am far less visible on this website due to the fact that I essentially run a blog that has nothing to do with myself. The blog specialises on classic Hollywood films and legendary guitarist Jimi Hendrix. It is through the Tumblr platform that I post information, pictures, and links to these subjects. In ways it is this Tumblr account that shares the most similarity for me in terms of my online visibility to that of mine in Wikibooks. On both platforms the case is that I and other users, rather than sharing vast amounts of information about themselves are using the platform as a melting pot of ideas, facts and discussions in order to generate articles and special items of interest that provide relevant and accurate information on numerous subjects. Therefore it can be said that there is all the possibility that my current online presence stretches out far more than I had anticipated or that I am actually in control of. However in Wikibooks this may not be the case, as although what s posted onto my own discussion is not completely controlled by me, my own private details and ideas are not displayed. RossWithTheShirts (discuss • contribs) 11:54, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Comments on Wiki Exercise #2
This is an interesting read. Despite having most of your personal information viewable to the general public on Facebook, you still state that you feel as if you are in full control of how visible you are. However, I do wonder if that would remain the case if you ever do reach a larger audience and decide to remove some of this information. In this day and age, once something is posted to the internet, it is very hard to get rid of. Websites like 'The Wayback Machine' and 'Google Cache' often store backups of pages that can still be accessed by anyone even if the page has been deleted. It may sound extreme, but I might argue that one can never be in control of the information they have already made available to others online. At least, not in this day and age of the internet. Jon-Blackcoat (discuss • contribs)

I found what you've written incredibly interesting, as it appears that you've given an example in the differing "I" and "Me". From what I've understood of this, I believe that you're claiming you use Facebook to create an online image of yourself that is one that you want put across for future prospects, but not necessarily one that represents you most accurately. You reference your tumblr and claim that it is a blog that has nothing to do with yourself, but I would disagree as even though it doesn't have your name and contact details strapped to it, it is an accurate representation of where your interests lie. You have noted an almost self-censoring you uphold on your Facebook, and I wonder if you'd agree that you've achieved an online visibility, but possibly not a visibility of yourself? (This entry has been edited to remove the previous signing and provide a new one, as I had accidentally made this comment while logged off.) LydiaWithTheFringe (discuss • contribs) 09:45, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

This is a very interesting read, however I am curious as to whether or not you're aware that you are not really in complete control over what information is available about you online. Have you heard of the Draft Communications Data Bill? It was introduced by now-prime minister Theresa May, and essentially gives internet service providers and mobile phone companies the power to retain and store your calls, messages, online activity etc for 12 months. Do you think this is a privacy issue, and do you think users should be more careful with what information they share online (even over messages or calls)? Or do you think that this is fair because users agree to allow this storing of 'private' data when they agree to the terms and conditions of a site or app? You also mentioned that you use social media as a way of potentially gaining an audience for future career ventures, would you say that the self you present online greatly differs from your 'real-life' self? KerryFromThePub-Round2 (discuss • contribs) 19:05, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Wiki Exercise #3
People deal with the abundance of information available on the internet in different ways. Personally I feel that the access that the internet gives me to relevant reading and texts probably outweighs its ways of distracting me in terms of my own studies. As a history student it is of upmost importance for my assessments that I have the right information and a vast amount of d8ifferening opinions and sources of evidence from various authors and historians. It would be time consuming, strenuous and possibly even costly to attain all of this through physical books alone, and therefore I am extremely privileged to have an array of knowledge at my feet due to the reading list and set of online resources that the internet offers. However it is indeed true that the internet also provides a great deal of distractions and unneeded entertainment that have in the past prevented me from completing important assessments due to my natural inability to focus. At times I in fact prefer to have a solid text book or sheet of information to work from on paper. It was this approach that I think best benefitted me in school, as I managed learn about vast passages of ancient poetry without distraction for higher and advanced higher Latin simply by copying them by hand on paper. I believe that I have had to adapt to dealing with more online information in the years following advanced higher Latin as university has provided me with many more opportunities to use online resources. It was through this need to adapt that I became more susceptible to learning through the use of information on the internet. It can indeed be strenuous to deal with the abundance of information on the internet, and there indeed needs to be ways people can filter this information. Personally I find that using websites such as Oxford Dictionary of National Biography for information, as it is a sight with many articles about all sorts of subjects that can only be educated by expert professionals. However that is only if the contributing factor for me dealing with the great amount of web information is that the information I need to get is for a history essay and therefore must be sourced validly and evidence based. Interestingly enough, there is a theory that if you click on the first word in a Wikipedia article and then do the same for the next open that comes up several times you will always eventually land on the page for psychology. I have indeed tested this out by using Liberal Democrat Leader Tim Farron’s page as a case study and I was actually surprised to find how little time it took me to get to the page for psychology. Therefore it can be said that the profusion of information on the web can be seen as a good thing and bad one, as the constant flow of information that is generated from the internet can indefinitely be explored through various detours and ventures across wik*pedia articles spanning a wide array of topics and genres until one has either found the all-important information that they are seeking or until they find out that they have wasted their time. RossWithTheShirts (discuss • contribs) 04:05, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Wikibooks Project Report
Throughout the process of creating the Wikibooks page for the digital media and culture module there were a great deal of tasks and procedures that had to be dealt with in order to deliver the final product. The first task that we were faced with was deciding which areas and topics could be tackled in our group. Since our topic was News, Evidence, and Memory in Online Communications we decide that it would be best for at least two people to focus on an aspect of each of the topics involved. From this we then focused in on more specific topics and used social media in the form of Facebook and through the Wikibooks page itself to share information with each other. I myself focused primarily on the “Evidence” side of the topic, by researching and then creating a chapter about the American government and how they are able to tap into phones and trace IP addresses. The majority of my personal research was done online, but it was in the laboratory session that a classmate brought up the idea for me and gave me ideas about the direction I could take the concept. Following this I was provided with a solid starting point as that classmate gave me information via social media about how the government in America can trace people’s phone calls. What was also useful for the sake of the project was my group’s engagement with the task and the way in which they kept our planning page readily updated, with new information on their topic being added every day, followed by a few drafts of their chapter and then a final one before the deadline. Our group made sure that we kept engaged with the themes of the module through constant reference to the reading and to the relevant lecture that discussed the way that evidence is used by the government and is obtained through the tapping of phones and though the surveillance of online activity. The topic from this module that was most relevant to my own research and contribution to the Wikibooks page was the Information Society topic. My research about the way that major companies with monopolies on the phone industry are used by the government to spy on people links to the way that companies that offer communication have taken over markets to become some of the most successful in the world. By this I mean that the way that society has progressed has led to this growing excess of communications consumption and as a result the general public are far more connected and are more easily exploited for this as a result. Therefore this can be seen as an examination of how technology and communications media can be used to exploit people, which strongly goes against the concept of critical theory. As well as being relevant to the topics in this way I was also able to make my research and contribution to the Wikibooks project I also find that the topics covered by my group and by myself appeal greatly to a wider audience and have enhanced my skills for writing publically viewable material. The idea behind making content that would appeal to the public as a Wikipedia page would be to give new information about a subject that does not yet have enough coverage on Wikipedia, but with relevant, accurate and traceable referencing. This is exactly what I have learned to do and was able to showcase through this exercise, as the information that I presented is not widely available through Wikipedia, but could easily be referenced back to reports and laws made by the US Government. RossWithTheShirts (discuss • contribs) 23:26, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

Content (weighted 20%)
The Introduction to this chapter is rather odd – it includes user signatures which do not belong on the book page. A couple of sentences as contribs from different users, with very different styles, and this creates a jarring, almost Brechtian feel to the start of the chapter – I can’t imagine that this is deliberate, but I may be incorrect about this. There is little evidence to suggest that this effect serves a critical function for the remainder of the chapter.

Very unusual way of citing sources in-text. However, there is something really useful about including live links to actual reading – it engages the reader in proper hypertext reading, and arguably makes a lot of the platform, its functionality, and how it can be used as a knowledge-building peer-assisted learning platform. This seems deliberate, and works!

Some problems with links that appear red (i.e. not live) and one or two typos dotted throughout.

The section “Evidence and the Unreliability of Online Sources” is a little text-heavy. It’s a fairly heavy-going section to read. Use of wiki commons images to illustrate the argument would help to not only break up the text, but to make more of the platform’s functionality. The following section on “Evidence Available Online and in Social Media” is problematic – there are a few assertions that do not make anything of available conceptual frameworks to build an argument, and entire paragraphs drawing from a source (Mayfield) that go to a dead link. Additionally, whole chucks of text seem superfluous to the overall drive of the chapter, or seem anecdotal or conversational, rather than forming a critically-engaged argument. Finally, in this section, there seems to be an overreliance on a superficial pros vs. cons presentation – this is rarely if ever a good idea because such structures fail to engage the very tensions at the heart of the conceptual framework (in this case – notions of security, and age appropriate context).

Some very useful sections on photojournalism and citizen journalism. There is some repetition of work found in other chapters – a more deliberative, joined-up approach would have enabled you to add interwiki links to a number of relevant places in the wikibook, thereby considerably improving the book overall (e.g. the subsection on “theories” mentions Habermas – where critical theory, the Frankfurt School, and aspects of public sphere are discussed at length in other parts of the book).

The glossary is rather short! The reference list is worryingly so. Some very useful reading and research in evidence, but at this level, and with this number of students working on the project over a period of 3+ weeks, one would expect more.


 * Very Poor. Your contribution to the book page gives a deficient brief overview of the subject under discussion in your chosen themed chapter. There is a qualified familiarity with concepts associated with your subject, and the grasp of conceptual, factual and analytical issues tends to be limited and insecure. The primary and secondary sources you found about the chapter’s themes lack a secure basis.

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


 * Posts of this standard do not address the assignment requirements. They offer little to no engagement with the concerns of the module. They are poorly written and comments are often extremely brief or missing. Entries of this grade may have been subject to admin warnings or take-down notices for copyright infringement. The wiki markup formatting will be more or less non-existent.


 * Reading and research:
 * appreciably deficient evidence of critical engagement with set materials;
 * lack of independent reading of appropriate academic and peer-reviewed material
 * Argument and analysis:
 * poor articulation and lack of support in argument;
 * lack of evidence of critical thinking (you tended to not taking a position in relation to key ideas from the module, nor did you support this position in discussion);
 * lack of evidence of relational thinking (you tended to not make connections between key ideas from the module and wider literature, nor did you support these connections in discussion);
 * lack of 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