Commenting on Group Members Blogs

Here are links to the comments I made on my group members' blogs.

Kristen McNamee: Scrapblogging
Kristen McNamee:Slashdot post

Theresa Bartley: You Tube Stars
Theresa Barley: Google's New Search

Kristen Mastrola:Post on a Teammate's Blog
Kristen Mastrola: Vanity Search

Jig Saw Puzzle | Final Post

Over the length of time that I was an editor for Wikipedia, the jig saw puzzle article did not experience much change. Considering the article consisted of lots of interesting, high quality, cited content when I first encountered it, this wasn't a suprise to me. With the exception of a couple other editors who made a few, small additions, I was the only person who added information. I created a section, and that is where I inserted some of the new information. I am under the impression that this article was monitored pretty closely, since whenever vandalism or misinformation occured(or appeared) it was quickly removed whereas other articles I've seen would contain spam for months before anything would be done about it.

I am slightly dissapointed with the response( or lack there of) I recieved. The only edits that were made to my work were grammer corrections, I was hoping people would add to or improve on the content I added to the section I created(first edit back in the beginning of march). but nobody ever did.

Links to posts discussing my edits

Edit one

Edit two

Edit three

Comparison of most recent version of wikipedia article with the version existing right after I made my first edit.

Comparison

In Class Learning | Resonance Partnership Blog

Sometime shortly after the tragic events at Virginia Tech occurred our class read the following article:Virginia Tech: Social Media in Crisis Planning. This article discusses a CDC panel topic on public health care blogging in a social media world in which information is disseminated real time during a crisis. This panel discussion took place a day after the terrible tragedy at Virginia Tech. This crisis highlighted the need for officials to use social media tools as part of their crisis management plan. If the social media were viewed as a tool for enhancing communication it would be more widely recognized and its use would be more widespread. As the Virginia Tech tragedy was unfolding although school officials did not make use of these tools students used mobile phones, digital cameras, social networks such as Flickr, Facebook and MySpace, blogs and video to communicate with each other and to document the tragedy in real time. The question people were asking was why weren't the instant tools: Text and voice messages used by the university to notify students? Since almost all students are wired....this is the best way to communicate with them. Certainly during the Virginia Tech tragedy it could have saved lives by for example telling students not to go to class and to stay in their dorm rooms with the doors locked. In fact it would be advisable for every organization, business, schools and universities ( and even families) to use these tools as part of their crisis planning.

This article was a real "eye opener" in that it made me more conscious of the fact that today, people can be instantly connected to one another electronically though text messaging, IM, cell phones, and e-mails. And it is critical that our society take full advantage of these modes of instant communication especially during an emergency. Therefore, an integral part of any crisis management must include developing a social media strategy to enhance communication that disseminates vital information in real time especially during an emergency.

In Class learning | DIGGS.com

A week ago our class read and discussed an article titled, How Dig.com is democratizing the news. The subject of this article is the Intenet site Digg.com. This site was founded in 2004 by Kevin Rose and today has more than 180,000 registered users and serves up 6 million pages every day. Digg is a user driven social content website. What this means is that everything on Digg is submitted by its community of users which are its registered users. After a user submits an article a video or any other content, other people read and view ths submission and Digg what they like best. If the story becomes popular and receives enough Diggs (user endorsement), it is promoted to the front page for the millions of visitors to see. Each registered user who supplies the content to the site determines what news, videos and podcasts will appear on the site. The site refers to itself as a digital media democracy. The concept of Digg is not original. Rose admits that his site was inspired by and is a combination of such sites as Slashdot, MySpace, and Del.icio.us. These are are all community-driven website however unlike these Dig.com allows users to view all the submitted stories. Dig gives complete control to the community. If a story or video has many Digs -they are then elevated to the homepage.

I found the concept of this site very interesting so I decided to explore it further on my own by visiting the site its self and reading about it on wikipedia. It is obvious by the fact that it has a very large user base and that there are rumors that Yahoo wants to buy it that this site is extremely popular. I was a little disappointed to learn that the one story that catapulted this site to "stardom" was when Paris Hilton's cell phone was hacked, someone close to the perpetrator posted a blog item about it to Digg, and the story quickly hit the homepage. The next morning, Digg was the No. 1 result in both Yahoo and Google. This episode would make Digg appear to be no more than a tabloid. The Digg content is however much broader and wide ranging. It contains articles on science, technology, current news, politics and entertainment. Moreover, its content is ever expanding and is really limitless. Many criticisms have been directed at Diggs. Some feel that users have too much control over content, allowing things to be blown out of proportion and misinformation to flourish. The site has also allowed stories to appear on its site that companies paid for. Another criticism that I find particularly disturbing is that faulty or misleading articles can reach many users quickly, blowing out of proportion the unsupported claims or accusations. I guess this type of criticism can be aimed at the whole internet. It has also been reported that the top 100 Digg users controlled 56% of Digg's frontpage content, and that a small group of just twenty individuals had submitted 25% of the frontpage content.

Final Post | Trigeminal Neuralgia

The wikipedia article for Trigeminal Neuralgia was very well written and had an extensive collection of information . It took me a while to come up with new information to add. Because it had such a thorough collection of information when I first encountered it, it hasn't really changed much since then. For each of my three edits, I added new information, which still appears on Wikipedia.

Here are links to my edits:

Edit 1

Edit 2

Edit 3

Job Interview | Final Post

Compared with the other articles I monitored throughout the course of this project (beginning mid February), the job interview entry experienced the least amount of activity, with at least a week seperating some edits and only 40 edits (including the ones I did) between my first edit and the most recent version of the article. Durring this time I was the only person to add new information (although a few external links were added, but were quickly erased). Edits made by others fell into the following three categorie: 1. Vandalism; 2. Removal of vandalism;
3. Grammar corrections (the majority of which were made to information that I added). Overall I was dissapointed with the progression of the article, it didnt change much since the beggining of the project. I consider the article to be well written, of high quality and relevant content. However, there is a tremendous amount of information that could be added as well as more high quality external links. Also many more citations are needed (curently there is only one citation which I added) before this article can be considered up to encyclopedic standards.

Summary of my contributions
My first edit consisted of creating a new section which I called Preparation to which I added a paragraph of information. I aslo added information to an already existing section titled, Process. For my second edit I contributed more information to the Process section. Finally, for my third edit, I corrected a grammar error, and also inserted a citation (to information I had added during my second edit) in response to a negative reaction I had recieved. The only changes made by others to my edits were grammar corrections which I felt enhanced what I had written. As mentioned earlier in this post, I did receive a negative response on the discussion page of the Job Interview article, related to the following information which I had added during my second edit.

"A candidate should follow up the interview with a thank you letter expressing their appreciation for the opportunity of meeting with the company representative."

And here is the response I recieved
"Should? According to whom? Is this an encyclopedia or a self help book? It could be equally argued that the company should write a thank you letter to express appreciation for meeting such a wonderful candidate. And by the way, WTF still writes letters these days? "Klafubra
19:02, 9 May 2007 (UTC)"

To which I immediately wrote out the following response expressing how I felt. However after I finished writing it I was able to restrain from posting it on wikipedia.
"Your lack of any substancial comments is apparently why you had to resort to using curse words. Being courteous, considerate and appreciative are still very much accepted behaviors and the skill of letter writing is alive and well and practiced by literate and intelligent people. And by the way who said an e-mail and a "letter" are mutually exclusive? Finally, nowhere do I preclude the possibility of the company also writing to the candidate. "
Links to my blog post where I originally discussed each edit
Edit 1
Edit 2
Edit 3

Wilmington, Delaware | Final Post

First Impressions of this Wikipedia article, and disccusion of my contributions

When I first encountered the Wikipedia article for my home town (March 22), I was very impressed since, it contained an extensive and accurate collection of information. I even learned a little about the place I've called home for almost my entire life. When I browsed the history logs I was amazed by how often the article was edited (at least one edit a day). For my first two edits I was unable to come up with any relevant information to contribute to the already existing sections, so I created new ones. Each time I created a section I inserted subsections and added one or two facts to each . For my third edit I was finally able to come up with information to add to an existing section that was created by someone other than my self.

The following is a more detailed description(than given above) of my first two edits.

EDIT ONE: Section Title- Media, Subsection Titles- Radio, Television, Newspaper

EDIT TWO: Section Title-Shopping, Subsection Title- Malls

Below are links to my previous posts discussing the edits I made:

Edit One

Edit Two

Edit Three

Community's Reaction to my contributions:

Over the course of this project, only my first edit was altered, the other two were left untouched.

Details of alterations made to first edit:

The section heading was not changed. The Radio and Television subsection was merged into one with a new title- Radio, Television, and Film. The information I added to Radio and Television and Film was included in the newly designated subsection with no additional information added by others. Also, the Newspaper section was renamed, Publications, and contained only the facts I had contributed, with no new facts added. Finally, a third subsection was created titled Portrayal in the Media, and numerous facts were added some of which were taken from a section titled Trivia, which was then deleted.

My Interpretation of Community Reaction

At first it struck me as odd that the titles of my subsection were broadened (Newspaper changed) without any additional information included, which would have warranted broadening the titles. For example, no magazines were added to the new Publications section, but then I recalled that this was one of the beneficial characteristics of Wikis, which was to have other people expand on your ideas. By not removing my contributions, but instead either leaving them untouched or building on them suggests that the community felt they were worthwhile and enhanced the quality of the article. Overall I was satisfied with the changes that were made to my additions and felt they improved what I had written.

Article Progression
The activity of the article remained at the same high level throughout the entire length of this project. And the quality of the paper improved over time. The edits made by other people (with the exception of those made to my additions) fell under the following four categories:
1. Vandalism (curse words); 2. Removing of vandalism ( which usually occurred within minutes suggesting the article was monitored very closely); 3. Grammar improvements (made up the majority of edits); 4. Addition of facts (all interesting, accurate and insightful).
Below is a link to a page comparing the article as it was at the start of this project with the most recent version.
Comparison