User talk:Spedlow

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Social Visibility
Social media is a powerful tool for anybody. Within the 21st century, we are only one click away from the wider social world with the technological advancements within the last decade. In today's society; if you ask a person do they have Facebook, as an example, more often than not they will say yes! http://www.statisticbrain.com/social-networking-statistics/ The link above shows exactly how many people use Facebook but also and what reason they use it for. Social media has it's good, bad but also ugly side as http://www.seochat.com/c/a/social/social-media-and-society-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/ outlines. People use is to keep in contact with family and friends where as people use it to get noticed within the wider community.

Instagram is a very useful way of getting noticed by the wider community. For myself personally, I use Instagram as a way to document my journey through life and also I am into photography, which i can get my photos seen. I take photos regularly as a hobby and take photos that I like. It is nice to see other people liking the pictures that are put up and if somebody gets in touch about it then that's a bonus!

Obviously there are people within the social media world that use social media for other reasons, such as advertising a company or an idea, people use Instagram as again a way to get noticed. Take skateboarding as an example, companies back in tat day would go out with up and coming skaters to see what they are like whereas in this technological era, Instagram is a social hub for skaters getting noticed. With the good of social, there is also the bad side where people would post status's and share photos to, could you say "Troll" an individual and publicly shame someone which isn't nice but more often than not people are using social media for the right reasons and not for, again trolling people!

Spedlow (discuss • contribs) 14:18, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Marker’s Comment

 * some interesting observations here, but you need to move a little further beyond mere description and towards critical engagement. It would have been useful to try to feed this into the themes and concerns of the module though, and you haven’t really engaged with this part of the brief at all (always, always, pay close attention to what the brief is asking you to do e.g. you could have discussed this in the context of cultural determinism i.e. the need for a state of availability and connectivity, for various reasons as outlined by some of the scholarship encountered on the module. Some strange things happening with the markup here too - but at least there is a concerted effort to experiment and find ways to express your ideas - which is encouraging.

RE: Comments on others’ work

 * These are absent. You have not adhered to the brief. Remember that your comments on other people's work is weighted as heavily as your own post when it comes to grades. Not completing this part of the exercise means that, effectively you are halving your mark. GregXenon01 (discuss • contribs) 16:45, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

Wiki exercise #2- Comment
Hey, this really does highlight a great idea about people using sites like instagram to get their creative pieces out there. it is no longer the case of sending off your photos to competitions or to potential buyers in the slim chance of getting noticed. Its using hashtags to get people to find your work. However of course this has its drawbacks. it is still just as hard to get noticed due to how easy it is to get your pictures online. This means that only the best get noticed which means the quality is higher and it encourages people to be more innovative.

Also the Point about ‘Trolling’ is a valid one which seems to be becoming a bigger issue every day. Online trolling has now became a crime which people can go to jail for. However with the advancement of technology it is becoming incredibly hard to find these anonymous people. Internet trolling will be around for a long time and will only become bigger with the increased advancements of technology. Great post, it’s good to see some fresh ideas on the positives and negatives of social media. RyanMurray96 (discuss • contribs) 14:47, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

I found this a really good read, I too believe that Instagram is a great application to be using to document different aspects of life and also share it with others. I like how you have touched upon how social media is used for different things with advertising etc, which is found a lot currently on Facebook. A small typing mistake that I found in your document was "Take skateboarding as an example, companies back in tat day would go out with...". Really enjoyed reading this and look forward to your future posts!Conrhyss (discuss • contribs) 03:06, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Good Article. With so many advances in social media and technology it is interesting to see how it affects people. It will be crazy to see how far it will go and how the mediums will evolve. I think things like Instagram will become even more popular and be something of a "necessity" as Facebook is nowadays. Trolling is another funny phenomenon, though traditionally it means harmless instigating, there have been instances of what is called "SWATting" where a hacker essentially calls the police on an unsuspecting gamer. I think that is when it changes from trolling to more like cyberbullying. Nice job on the excercise. High Five lmao Stafoya (discuss • contribs) 09:16, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

I definitely agree with you that social media can be used on the one hand in a way of trolling and on the other hand in that way you use it. Especially for young people who make their first experiences with social networks it is a threat that there are people using it for trolling. They might take it personal and have a problem in their social life. But as you already mentioned, most people use it for sharing their life with friends they might not see that often. For that case it is a great opportunity to stay in touch with each other. I liked your reference to that statistic about the number of Facebook users as it builds a great base for your argument. What I think can be critical is that people are waiting for likes and that it could replace social interaction or it makes people sad if they don't get such a good response in real-life. What Do you think about that? SimonBrinkmann (discuss • contribs) 12:13, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Sweet article! The power of social media shows how easily accessible content is but also how powerful of a broadcasting power we have in our hands. Some even take advantage of that ability with their participation in the 'trolling' culture. Although being 'one click' away isn't in some instances the greatest thing ever, it isn't at all a bad thing, many people have found great use of it, to think that we could or are in contact with people that are vastly distant to us physically, is astonishing, social media in theory, revolutionized our ways of communicating and interaction, in both positive and negative ways. Robert Di Hero (discuss • contribs) 17:15, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Information Overload!
Information is all around us. From what we hear from other people to what we search on our smart phones and tablets, this technological era gives us everything in the palm of our hands. We use search engines again on out smart phones and tablets to get the majority of our information on a daily basis but can we trust it to be true or relevant? When we search for something on Google; take football as a simple and a very generalized example, typing football into google gave, within half a second is gave me 1,220,000,000 results within that extremely short period of time. Say if I was wanting to look for something very specific and try to search for it just by typing football into the search engine would take forever to search through what was relevant and what wasn't. Wikipedia is a good way to find out information about pretty much anything but there is always the underlining factor, is the information always reliable? The main problem with Wikipedia is that anyone can change what is mentioned under any topic, wither it be relevant or complete balderdash. Even with local and global media it's hard to believe some of the things you would hear because you are only hearing on side to every story and more often than not, they are biased towards one side. Media bias comes in many forms,for example, to sway the information for an election to gain more voters to one side than creating fair play but more simply when hearing a story about someone or something it the media would take out specific and sometimes important information to create a different picture or differ the opinion from the original. As said before there is more ways that one that you can find out about anything. People have a willingness to take in everything that is being said wither it be true or not and others choose to take in the relevant over the untrue. Your e-mail account is a prime example where useless pieces of information arrives in your inbox on the daily. It is very handy to be able to filter all the unwanted, useless emails into the junk folder so that you don't have too look at it whereas all the important and useful emails can be kept by flagging them up so that they are not deleted with any unwanted emails.

What is all comes down to really is that what we consider to be relevant and that to be useless or untrue.

Spedlow (discuss • contribs) 19:54, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

Comment Section!
If you have any comments on my last post please put them here. Cheers folks!

Hi there, this was a very interesting read and I believe you have touched upon some very good points regarding Information Overload. Your example with typing in football fitted in very well! I find this myself when trying to search for specific items and there is billions of results to choose from makes matters very confusing! I completely agree with you on Wikipedia being biased and can see the link between information overload, it's a good example of why different sites are packed with information, but not always valid, reliable or even usable. Filtering e-mails, and even search results is definitely a good way to try and cope with the information overload! This was a good read, thankyou! Conrhyss (discuss • contribs) 02:07, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

Wiki Exercise #4: Wikibook Project Reflective Account
The wikibook project was a great insight to, on the whole, a collaborative assignment. It was a very good way to assess each individual’s contribution to the book. From the start of the assessment it seemed to be very daunting, as the task required a lot of work in that a lot of research was needed to answer each part of the overall topic choice. With what our group had been assigned to write about was very interesting and I have gained more knowledge about the topic but also a better understanding overall. At the very start of the project, my contributions were very minimal because I didn’t know too much around the topic but once I had a better understanding of the overall topic my contributions became more frequent, adding more information to the book every day; may not large contributions but relevant to the topic. Again when I wasn’t understanding something I was always asking people in my group about how to do something, or if they didn’t know I would either use the tea room or reading room for help. With the collaborative nature of the assignment, at the start again I had noticed that there were very few people actually contributing to the task which made it very stressful to know which person was doing which part of the overall project. Another person in my group and myself had taken it upon ourselves to sort out topic areas to work on but to also make sure that everyone had an option to choose which part of the wikibook we were going to do. Whilst progressing though our topic slowly but surely, other people who were also doing the same part of the book were starting to contribute which eased the pressure and everything started to become more fluent and organized because everyone knew which part of the topic they were working on but also helping out wherever possible. Whilst being more organized, the book started to come together with our chapter of the book actually being filled out and not blank anymore which again reduced stress levels and made everything a lot easier. The table that was made within our discussion page made it clear to see who exactly was contributing to which specific part of the chapter and was helpful to see that everyone was had something to work one rather than one or two people doing everything. Overall I think the project was a success in that there was plenty of content, outlining the main points and issues with the topic. It was also a good way to show off our communication but also delegation skills to make sure that everyone within the group was doing their part and not letting one or two people do all of the work. Spedlow (discuss • contribs) 17:22, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

Comment Section!
Hi Spedlow! I fully agree with your statement that it was difficult to find out who is working on which topic at first and that it became more fluent in the end. That was also promoted by the fact that people started to understand how the Wikibook works and how markup can be used. Although I liked the fact that there were always people to ask if problems had to been solved. In our lecture on collective intelligence James	Howison and Kevin Crowston were quoted with "Many successful (...) projects work by users working on discrete chunks in isolation rather than more interactive collaboration." Do you agree with that? In my opinion that was a successful project just because there was so much interaction between groups and group members. SimonBrinkmann (discuss • contribs) 15:37, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

Hey there Spedlow, good work reflecting on the Wikibooks project, I do agree with a lot of what you said, especially concerning the difficulties at the start and knowing who is doing what work etc. Like SimonBrinkmann on the his previous comment, I think the success of a project such as this has a lot to do with the fact that there were always people to ask if problems had to been solved. The beauty of my experience was that all contributors appeared to be at different levels. Some were familiar with Wikibooks, some not so much, some were quicker workers and others better at research, yet on many levels I found this be nothing but a positive factor because it led to more cooperation and, crucially, the creation of help and comments section by those in the know. TheDoctor1888 (discuss • contribs) 10:35, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

Spedlow This was a very good honest reflection on the Assignment, being part of your team I also agree with the slight difficulty of the start of the project, but once things got started it went very well! The communication between the entire group members worked well in the last few days before the assignment was due too. I believe that the assignment was an overall success as well, considering there was so much information that we could of covered and not personally knowing everyone in the group, after the first few set backs, I think that it was a insight into collective intelligence. Conrhyss (discuss • contribs) 03:59, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

Hello Spedlow I couldn't have agreed more! Working on the assignment was fun, being honest in my opinion, but it was difficult to see who was working on what, regardless of how amazing the communication, half the time it was hard to see who was really working on what throughout the assignment. However perhaps we all experienced it differently as some appeared more confident than others and took charge while some perhaps didn't as much and worked silently, which in the end is not bad, we got the work done, but it just shows how vital communication is in group work. I'd have to say I was mostly impressed with the collaboration and interaction within the group, as students we are familiar with how 'down under' groups can go when people don't do their part. Robert Di Hero (discuss • contribs) 11:01, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

Marker’s Feedback on Wikibook Project Work
You appear to be the main contributor to the material on hacking culture and ethic on the book chapter. This proved to be pivotal in the development of the chapter as a whole, supported as your contributions were, through reading and research. Your contribs developed in quality and skill towards the end of the project period, clearly reflecting something of a learning curve.

Wiki Exercises


 * 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.

Content (weighted 20%)

 * Your contribution to the book page gives a good brief overview of the subject under discussion in your chosen themed chapter. There is a good range of concepts associated with your subject, and the effort to deliver critical definitions, drawing from relevant literature and scholarship, and your own critical voice in the building of a robust argument is very much in evidence. The primary and secondary sources you found about the chapter’s themes cover a good range and depth of subject matter.

Understanding (weighted 30%)

 * Reading and research:
 * evidence of critical engagement with set materials, clearly grounded on close familiarity with concepts and ideas encountered on the module
 * evidence of independent reading of appropriate academic and peer-reviewed material through evidence of close familiarity with a wide range of evidence
 * Argument and analysis:
 * well-articulated and well-supported argument featuring appreciable depth of understanding
 * good level of critical thinking (through taking a position in relation to key ideas from the module, and supporting this position in discussion);
 * good level 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 appreciable independent critical ability

Engagement (weighted 50%)

 * Evidence from contributions to both editing and discussion of content to a variable standard (i.e. volume and breadth of activity as evidenced through contribs)
 * Satisfactory engagement with and learning from other Wikipedians about the task of writing/editing content for a Wikibook
 * Reflexive, creative and fairly well-managed use of discussion pages using deployment of somewhat limited judgement relating to key issues, concepts or procedures

Overall Mark % available on Succeed

FMSU9A4marker (discuss • contribs) 15:07, 3 May 2016 (UTC)