OK the whole discussion on whether or not wikipedia info is accurate or not made me want to see how fast 'mistakes' are corrected. Last night i decided i would post some extended truths on Wikipedia under Hamilton, New Zealand. I added that Hamilton also know as Hamihole is know throughout NZ to be abit of a dive and houses 80% percent of New Zealands 'emo' culture. Literally within 12 minutes this was deleted! I was sort of thinking it would last a few days until someone actually got offended and edited it. Just before i went on to the discussion pages of Hamilton and noticed that people are actually getting quite wound up and passionate about what information is put on the web page. I was wondering who are the people that are so specific about what gets added? Just everyday Hamilton citizens or is there a bigger force that is making sure Hamilton gets represented accurately and precisely the whole time? I am actually really curious about who is so passionately continually editing.
I personally really like the idea of wikipedia, it is not one sole authors opinion instead you get a bunch of different views from a range of people. As Thomas Chesney states, Wikipedia gets 60 million hits a day! that statistic has got to tell us something about how people rate wikipedia. Obviously Wikipedia hits problems with vandalism and people "publishing with an agenda" but generally i think it is a fairly good source.
I first discover wikipedia in 7th form when essay writing and i actually can remember using wikipedia as my only source because i thought it was more reliable then other web pages (not knowing it was a collaborative website that anyone could add info to). Last year i got a massive shock when i was told i WAS NOT to ever use Wikipedia as a resource, what else was i going to use??
Nowadays for Uni use i use Wikipedia as a starting point and then refine my search from there after i find out what the term generally means or is. For use other then Uni i automatically use Wikipedia when i want to quickly find out what something means or is. The info you get from Wikipedia seems to be written in a really easy to understand way and is easy to follow which suits me! The only mistakes that i have come across on Wikipedia are spelling ones, 13% of the articles contain mistake which i thought was quite high but that does include spelling which doesn't make it so bad!
Anyway i think you all get my drift on how i feel about wikipedia, feel free to comment!
Cya all 2mo :)
Monday, March 31, 2008
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Virtual Communities
Has anyone else had problems with signing into their blogs? For the past 4 days it has not been accepting my password and user name but now it finally worked. The whole topic on virtual communities was awhile ago but ill try freshen my memory....
What interested me the most was the questions we went over in class on Thursday. The definitions of community of interest and community of place were interesting i though, it sort of helped to define the notion of online community.
Just before i went onto my facebook and bebo and had a look at my 'friends' list, just to see who i actually had on there and i actually saw the about 80% of the people i have added are people that i would consider myself having weak ties with. Heaps were just people i have met through friends and people that you usually just give a quick hey to. The whole strong and weak tie thing refers to how much trust we have in these people and the 'emotional intensity' involved but everyone of these weak tie 'friends' can see all the same detailed info about me as much as my strong ties can. I thought just because my profile is private i assumed only the people i wanted to (strong ties) could see my pics and read my day to day going on's but no the weak ties who i barely know also can....i think I'm going to have to go through the process of editing this list so only the people i want can access my profiles.
The reading for this week was also really good as well, i like where he pinpoints about human association becoming abstract in society today. I personally don't agree, even though there is an obvious trend in online communities i don't think at any stage they will take over and be the leading source of communication. There is still an issue of trust when it comes to these communities, like we discussed in class and i think people will always be conscious of this. It became obvious in our group discussions that we all engage differently online then what we do face to face.
Anyway its a Sunday afternoon and i think this blog is proving that Sundays arnt the best day of the week to think....Hope you have all had a good w.e :) :)
What interested me the most was the questions we went over in class on Thursday. The definitions of community of interest and community of place were interesting i though, it sort of helped to define the notion of online community.
Just before i went onto my facebook and bebo and had a look at my 'friends' list, just to see who i actually had on there and i actually saw the about 80% of the people i have added are people that i would consider myself having weak ties with. Heaps were just people i have met through friends and people that you usually just give a quick hey to. The whole strong and weak tie thing refers to how much trust we have in these people and the 'emotional intensity' involved but everyone of these weak tie 'friends' can see all the same detailed info about me as much as my strong ties can. I thought just because my profile is private i assumed only the people i wanted to (strong ties) could see my pics and read my day to day going on's but no the weak ties who i barely know also can....i think I'm going to have to go through the process of editing this list so only the people i want can access my profiles.
The reading for this week was also really good as well, i like where he pinpoints about human association becoming abstract in society today. I personally don't agree, even though there is an obvious trend in online communities i don't think at any stage they will take over and be the leading source of communication. There is still an issue of trust when it comes to these communities, like we discussed in class and i think people will always be conscious of this. It became obvious in our group discussions that we all engage differently online then what we do face to face.
Anyway its a Sunday afternoon and i think this blog is proving that Sundays arnt the best day of the week to think....Hope you have all had a good w.e :) :)
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Hacking...again
OK finally did the Douglas Thomas reading and figured i should elaborate on my last entry as it wasn't quite up to scratch!
Overall i think the article was really interesting, best one yet i think. Getting back to where i was before in the last post...
Over the last week i have been thinking about the idea of hackers and who they actually are and the whole white/black hat thing and I've decided that the reason hacker are assumed to be white little boys is because of how they are portrayed in the media. Media representations of hackers have been shown through movies and television therefore limiting our views on who hackers are, Douglas Thomasa's view on this is very right on the mark i think. He states that media and press construct hackers as criminals even though the hackers themselves think differently of themselves. This then relates to 'The Hacker Manifesto' by Loyd Blankenship that Michaela has in her blog.
I do think that the laws and surveillance surrounding hacking need to be abit more defined in terms of punishments and what we can and cannot do online and maybe harsher punishments for bigger more serious hacks??? ( :s for lack of a better word) Any ideas?
Anyway enough blabbing :) Catchya
Overall i think the article was really interesting, best one yet i think. Getting back to where i was before in the last post...
Over the last week i have been thinking about the idea of hackers and who they actually are and the whole white/black hat thing and I've decided that the reason hacker are assumed to be white little boys is because of how they are portrayed in the media. Media representations of hackers have been shown through movies and television therefore limiting our views on who hackers are, Douglas Thomasa's view on this is very right on the mark i think. He states that media and press construct hackers as criminals even though the hackers themselves think differently of themselves. This then relates to 'The Hacker Manifesto' by Loyd Blankenship that Michaela has in her blog.
I do think that the laws and surveillance surrounding hacking need to be abit more defined in terms of punishments and what we can and cannot do online and maybe harsher punishments for bigger more serious hacks??? ( :s for lack of a better word) Any ideas?
Anyway enough blabbing :) Catchya
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Hacking...scary stuff
Todays class was interesting wasn't it? I had no idea there was such a thing as White hat hackers and Black hat hackers, i actually just assumed that all forms of hacking were bad! I think that it just comes from the generalization that all hackers sit in the dark in their bedrooms trying to create trouble (like the video showed).
Last year actually my 13 year old sister was trying to log onto her Bebo account and found it wouldn't accept her password. Since her profile wasn't private she was able to just type in her www address to see it and it turned out that someone had taken over her profile and changed the template to the little bebo sign having devil horns coming out of it and it saying "HAHAH your profile has been hacked, it serves you right for using Bebo!!" What was the point of this like actually what does the person that was doing this get out of it? They have just managed to ruin a 13 year olds Bebo, big accomplishment there!
Last year actually my 13 year old sister was trying to log onto her Bebo account and found it wouldn't accept her password. Since her profile wasn't private she was able to just type in her www address to see it and it turned out that someone had taken over her profile and changed the template to the little bebo sign having devil horns coming out of it and it saying "HAHAH your profile has been hacked, it serves you right for using Bebo!!" What was the point of this like actually what does the person that was doing this get out of it? They have just managed to ruin a 13 year olds Bebo, big accomplishment there!
The beggining of the Blog...
Hey guys, My names Lauren.
I come from Hamilton and am in my second year in Dunedin studying communications and marketing.
I am somewhat a bit nervous about this whole blog thing, doesn't really seem 'me' sitting here talking to a computer. This whole paper actually freaked me out abit at the start as i am really the most un-tech savvy person one could come across. I was always the kid that when EVERYBODY else got a cell phone and i was feeling highly left out of the loop i got a cellphone and when EVERYBODY else was sporting the ipod mini i got the ipod mini just because it was the 'thing to do'. I was never the one to grab on to technology and pray that Santa would treat me with the latest advances. Technology as a whole has never really phased me and has just always sort of been there doing its thing not holding my interest for particularly long. To me the internet has also always been just that, the internet. I have actually never put any thought into where it comes from, how it has evolved and how it actually works. So far this paper has actually really opened my mind as to how vast and extreme the net is. The thing that has really interested me so far is the topic focused on in our 3rd lec, Users, networks and Structures and the topic of community vs network.
I never considered myself to be labeled a 'virtual community member' but by being signed up to and having profiles with bebo, Facebook and Myspace i am exactly that. These community's let me talk and keep in contact with the goings on of friends that are back home or overseas. On these profiles i have never let on the details of my daily life but still have a few pictures up just to show what i am up to. Never once have i considered that some strange person that i don't know could be going through my details and pictures but whats stopping them from doing so? David Berry looks at the conception of "public" and "private" and discusses how everything on the internet is assumed to be public and there is actually a line between the two that often gets confused. Berry looks at the way the internet allows users to "post and read texts without restrictions, which lends itself to being conceptualized as a vast public sphere"
This leads onto the topic of communities vs networks that we had in groups in class. I think Communities should be viewed as "private" and networks as "public". I view communities online as your friends list that you have on bebo and facebook. These are the people that you generally personally know and have to actually go through the process of accepting them as your friends whereas networks is the larger group that you and your friends belong to where there is generally a larger number of members and you are not actually connected to everyone personally but more just by one thing such as where you live or what sport you play for example the Otago network on Facebook. It would be near impossible to know everybody that is a member of such a large network.
When using these virtual communities i have never been one to get hooked on them and spend hours at a time searching through peoples pages but there most definetly must be those kind of people out there spending there days on them flexing their true identity to suit the person they most want to be. As Kollock and Smith said " Online interaction makes certain kinds of interaction more difficult, but also provides room to play with one's identity". It is this idea of anonymity and that anybody can be anyone.
Anyway i think i have rambled on for long enough now! catch yall later :)
I come from Hamilton and am in my second year in Dunedin studying communications and marketing.
I am somewhat a bit nervous about this whole blog thing, doesn't really seem 'me' sitting here talking to a computer. This whole paper actually freaked me out abit at the start as i am really the most un-tech savvy person one could come across. I was always the kid that when EVERYBODY else got a cell phone and i was feeling highly left out of the loop i got a cellphone and when EVERYBODY else was sporting the ipod mini i got the ipod mini just because it was the 'thing to do'. I was never the one to grab on to technology and pray that Santa would treat me with the latest advances. Technology as a whole has never really phased me and has just always sort of been there doing its thing not holding my interest for particularly long. To me the internet has also always been just that, the internet. I have actually never put any thought into where it comes from, how it has evolved and how it actually works. So far this paper has actually really opened my mind as to how vast and extreme the net is. The thing that has really interested me so far is the topic focused on in our 3rd lec, Users, networks and Structures and the topic of community vs network.
I never considered myself to be labeled a 'virtual community member' but by being signed up to and having profiles with bebo, Facebook and Myspace i am exactly that. These community's let me talk and keep in contact with the goings on of friends that are back home or overseas. On these profiles i have never let on the details of my daily life but still have a few pictures up just to show what i am up to. Never once have i considered that some strange person that i don't know could be going through my details and pictures but whats stopping them from doing so? David Berry looks at the conception of "public" and "private" and discusses how everything on the internet is assumed to be public and there is actually a line between the two that often gets confused. Berry looks at the way the internet allows users to "post and read texts without restrictions, which lends itself to being conceptualized as a vast public sphere"
This leads onto the topic of communities vs networks that we had in groups in class. I think Communities should be viewed as "private" and networks as "public". I view communities online as your friends list that you have on bebo and facebook. These are the people that you generally personally know and have to actually go through the process of accepting them as your friends whereas networks is the larger group that you and your friends belong to where there is generally a larger number of members and you are not actually connected to everyone personally but more just by one thing such as where you live or what sport you play for example the Otago network on Facebook. It would be near impossible to know everybody that is a member of such a large network.
When using these virtual communities i have never been one to get hooked on them and spend hours at a time searching through peoples pages but there most definetly must be those kind of people out there spending there days on them flexing their true identity to suit the person they most want to be. As Kollock and Smith said " Online interaction makes certain kinds of interaction more difficult, but also provides room to play with one's identity". It is this idea of anonymity and that anybody can be anyone.
Anyway i think i have rambled on for long enough now! catch yall later :)
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