Session 7 Part 1

Student: Thomas Harder
Instructor: Prof. Richard Gazan
Course: ICS 691 Social Networking
Assignment Session 7.1

Because I am not studying a particular site per se, it would be impossible to locate any governing documents. So, I choose to work with the governing documents for Second Life, as this is the social networking site with which I am most familiar.

There are four major documents mentioned in the paper by Justine Grimes for enacting governance in virtual worlds. These documents include Software Licenses, Terms of Service, Privacy Policies and Community Standards. While Mr. Grimes gives credit for Second Life for having two of these in fact it has all four. These documents are found in different locations. The software license is found while loading the software. The reader will have to try to install the Second Life software in order to read the whole license.
The privacy policy is found here - http://secondlife.com/corporate/privacy.php
The community standards are here - http://secondlife.com/corporate/cs.php

The TOS is here - http://secondlife.com/corporate/tos.php
These documents are quite different in terms of their language and length. The shortest and most readable documents are the Community Standards and the Privacy Policy. Both are approximately 2 pages and are written in concise English. The Terms of Service and the software license are both written in “Legalese”, the professional language of Lawyers. While the Community Standards are pretty clear, in some regions of Second Life there are additional standards applied by the community, such as the Gorean sections. These areas have additional standards that must be agreed to by the user prior to entry.
The interesting part of the documents is found in the Community Standards, in the Policies and Policing Section, recreated below. This is interesting because it spells out quite clearly some of the rogue actions and the results for such actions.
Policies and Policing
Global Standards, Local Ratings All areas of Second Life, including the www.secondlife.com website and the Second Life Forums, adhere to the same Community Standards. Locations within Second Life are noted as Safe or Unsafe and rated Mature (M) or non-Mature (PG), and behavior must conform to the local ratings. Any unrated area of Second Life or the Second Life website should be considered non-Mature (PG). Warning, Suspension, Banishment Second Life is a complex society, and it can take some time for new Residents to gain a full understanding of local customs and mores. Generally, violations of the Community Standards will first result in a Warning, followed by Suspension and eventual Banishment from Second Life. In-World Representatives, called Liaisons, may occasionally address disciplinary problems with a temporary removal from Second Life. Global Attacks Objects, scripts, or actions which broadly interfere with or disrupt the Second Life community, the Second Life servers or other systems related to Second Life will not be tolerated in any form. We will hold you responsible for any actions you take, or that are taken by objects or scripts that belong to you. Sandboxes are available for testing objects and scripts that have components that may be unmanageable or whose behavior you may not be able to predict. If you chose to use a script that substantially disrupts the operation of Second Life, disciplinary actions will result in a minimum two-week suspension, the possible loss of in-world inventory, and a review of your account for probable expulsion from Second Life. Alternate Accounts While Residents may choose to play Second Life with more than one account, specifically or consistently using an alternate account to harass other Residents or violate the Community Standards is not acceptable. Alternate accounts are generally treated as separate from a Resident's principal account, but misuse of alternate accounts can and will result in disciplinary action on the principal account. Buyer Beware Linden Lab does not exercise editorial control over the content of Second Life, and will make no specific efforts to review the textures, objects, sounds or other content created within Second Life. Additionally, Linden Lab does not certify or endorse the operation of in-world games, vending machines, or retail locations; refunds must be requested from the owners of these objects. Reporting Abuse Residents should report violations of the Community Standards using the Abuse Reporter tool located under the Help menu in the in-world tool bar. Every Abuse Report is individually investigated, and the identity of the reporter is kept strictly confidential

The Second Life site also includes a page dedicated to enforcement of the Community Standards. The Incident Report is neatly tucked away in the support section of the website http://secondlife.com/support/incidentreport.php. Here the users can read a very brief synopsis of incidents and the actions taken by the support personnel.
Finding three examples of breaking terms, with some explanation took a bit more searching.
The first article I found was a bit dated. This goes back to 2006 and seems fairly straight forward. An individual Marc Bragg was able to take advantage of an exploit that allowed him to assign a very low price to a piece of property and then buy it at that price. This exploit was viewed as a violation of the TOS and Linden Labs banned the offender. The offender was a lawyer, and took Linden Labs to court. After a 2.5 year battle the offender eventually won, and got his property and account back. I wonder however it was eventually worth it.
http://www.secondlifeinsider.com/2006/12/08/bragg-vs-linden-lab/
http://gameactivist.blogspot.com/2008/03/bragg-vs-linden.html
http://www.secondlifeherald.com/slh/2006/12/bragg_vs_linen_.html
This article does highlight the importance of the governing documents. Their essence is to spell out the binding agreements that are formed between a user and the software or service provider. Quite clearly it is very difficult to do this, and as this article shows, even too much protection can hurt the term writer. It also highlights how virtual worlds can impact the real world and vice versa, this was an issue mentioned in the article by Michael J. Madison.
The second article- Does Virtual Reality Need a Sheriff? http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/01/AR2007060102671.html. Again highlights the blurring of the real world with the virtual world. Although it does not name names, it does reveal the extent of the legal issues that a software provider such as Linden Labs has to be concerned with. In this case it is the laws surrounding child pornography, and the myriad of different laws written by different countries. The most interesting line is found at the end where the CEO is quoted as saying he would like the Second Life participants to form their own laws. I wonder if he would like his company to be subject to these laws. Or would he rather have Linden Labs subject to the Laws of the State of California? Is it possible that he hopes that the users would become self-aware as pointed out by Rich Gazan in the When Online Communities Become Self-Aware, or perhaps Second Life users have already knowingly reached that stage?
The last article was about a University site being deleted because of violations by University members. Some of the members of Woodbury University were known to belong to a grieffer group known as p/n.
http://binaryfootprint.blogspot.com/2007/07/on-saturday-woodbury-universitys-second.html
http://www.secondlifeherald.com/slh/2007/07/woodbury-univer.html
http://www.secondlifeherald.com/slh/2007/07/interview-with-.html
After Linden Labs notified the University of its impending doom, the University took steps to clean up its Second Life website. Because it was not contacted further by Linden Labs, the University assumed that its actions were acceptable and working. So, when Linden Labs deleted the Island, it came as quite a shock to the University.
This is an interesting article to find after reading the previous article about users being involved with developing the terms of service. It does raise the question of sincerity. But I think that until the TOS can be developed interactively, this is just Linden Labs being cautious.

References:
Madison, Michael J. (2006). Social Software, Groups, and Governance. Michigan State Law Review, Vol. 2006, p. 153. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=786404

Cosley, Dan, Dan Frankowski, Sara Kiesler, Loren Terveen, John Riedl (2005). How Oversight Improves Member-Maintained Communities. CHI 2005, April 2–7, 2005, Portland, Oregon.

Kollock, Peter and Marc Smith (1996). Managing the Virtual Commons: Cooperation and Conflict in Computer Communities. In: Susan Herring (ed.), Computer-Mediated Communication: Linguistic, Social, and Cross-Cultural Perspectives. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 109-128. http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/kollock/papers/vcommons.htm

Grimes, Justin, Paul Jaeger and Kenneth Fleischmann (2008). Obfuscatocracy: A stakeholder analysis of governing documents for virtual worlds. First Monday 13(9). http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2153/2029

Gazan, Rich (2009). When Online Communities Become Self-Aware. Proceedings of the 42nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Waikoloa, HI, 5-8 January 2009.

Gazan, Rich (2007). Understanding the Rogue User. In: Diane Nahl and Dania Bilal, eds. Information & Emotion: The Emergent Affective Paradigm in Information Behavior Research and Theory. Medford, New Jersey: Information Today, 177-185.

Dibbell, Julian (2008). Mutilated Furries, Flying Phalluses: Put the Blame on Griefers, the Sociopaths of the Virtual World. Wired 16.02. http://www.wired.com/gaming/virtualworlds/magazine/16-02/mf_goons?currentPage=all

Reed, Mike (no date). Flame Warriors. http://redwing.hutman.net/~mreed/index.htm

Session 6 Part 1.

Student: Thomas Harder

Instructor: Prof. Gazan

Introduction
Part of my project includes an overview of features of the more popular open source software packages available to create social networking sites. One of the most popular open source packages referenced in the popular literature is Elgg. Elgg is a Curverrider project. The project was started in 2004 and is now up to version 1.5. A variety of sites have adopted Elgg, and a small list is shown after this paper. As such this paper doesn’t adhere to the letter of the assignment, but I did try to make it adhere to the spirit.

Elgg has a variety of features that promote online identity. The two major aspects of online identity include the user profile and the avatar. Elgg provides both components in a standard modular form. Being modular allows the site developers to modify or replace the standard modular with a more customized version if desired. However, the standard modular should work nicely in most cases, with just a few tweaks. The standard Elgg profile is shown below.

As is shown there is a host of information that is made available about a user. This data is grouped into six categories, User profile details, current status, recent bookmarks, message board, friends and group membership. Again, Elgg allows for this plug-in to be modified or replaced by another plug-in by the site developer, thus creating a unique site identity. Please keep this in mind while browsing the sites powered by Elgg.

The other major software feature of an online profile is an avatar. With Elgg the avatar is more than just a picture representing the user. The avatar includes a context sensitive menu. This menu allows site visitors to perform actions on the user to whom the avatar belongs such as adding the user as a friend, sending an internal message to the user and more. Additional plug-ins can add to this context sensitive menu to expand functionality and developers can add unique features to their site. The example below, from Elgg’s site show an avatar with an image cropping feature.


User avatar cropping
So Elgg allows the site developers to provide tools necessary to allow the users to create their own unique online identities. It is possible to allow users to customize their profiles, addint and subtracting or editing widgets, to present their image “just so”.
For examples of use I choose to use the Elgg Community site as it is powered by Elgg. The site is dedicated to the use and development of Elgg software and sites, and so is more limited in the types of conversation then sites such as AnswerBag. A likely scenario is a developer coming to find information on themes in Elgg. The user could login and then enter a key word or phrase in the search textbox. Once the phrase has been entered the user will press the go button and a search will be made of the group and discussion topics for an appropriate discussion thread.

The user will then be presented with a list of documents found about themes on the Elgg site.

Themes are quite a popular issue on sites, as the theme helps create an identity. Elgg keeps themes in a separate menu in the menu bar. So the user could go to Tools->Plugins & Themes and the select a theme to apply. Some of the themes will show you what the end result may look like. From here the user can download and install the theme.


The goal of this community is straight forward and that is to aid in the development of Elgg powered web sites. The Community is pretty close knit and small. Users cannot rate comments or posted tools formally, but they can comment to comments. And there is also a page hit or post hit counter which could be used as a gauge of popularity. Users can feedback directly to a developer and these comments are the lack there of could be used to bolster community belonging.

Sites powered by Elgg
Budokin Uniting Martial Arts
TGV REZO
Fem Pallars Sobira
The Brighton Gallery The Brighton Gallery is a free, simple, user friendly online community for creative individuals in the Brighton area to show their work, blog their thoughts, network, promote exhibitions and events, chat and have fun!
eJump
Unionbook
http://community.brighton.ac.uk/ This site is running Elgg v0.8 and is home to 40,000 students.
UHI Communities This site is running v0.9 of Elgg.
Swatch the Club This is a heavily modified version of Elgg.
UnLtdWorld UnLtdWorld is a social network aimed at connecting social entrepreneurs, social innovators and socially-minded people.
Eduspaces The first and largest social networking site dedicated to education and educational technology. With over 20,000 active users, Eduspaces is promoting the importance of Education, worldwide. This site is powered by Elgg v0.9
Rucku Rucku is the web's largest social network dedicated to rugby. This site is a bespoke development powered by Elgg.
Snippr Snippr is a custom social networking site built on a heavily customised Elgg.
diveXit This community is for Skydivers or people interested in Skydiving.
Dogs24 Hier geht es um Hunde. Und deren Futterknechte, Kumpels, Freunde, Besitzer - also um Dich! Mach mit und tausche Dich mit anderen aus.
Socialtrak A social network that allows you to create mutiple profiles and access groups.
i-Bondage We created this website out of our clear passion for a united BDSM community, a place to educate and connect.
Schools in Middle East
Social eCommerce This is a place to collaborate, learn and share anything eCommerce.
Entre Pares
Addicted to kicks
EnterpriseAmbassadors The UK's national enterprise movement
My Life Thinking
A mort la malbouffe
Moopz
Oakpages
Facebook for kids
Tickerheads Share your stock, option, future, and currency trades with others and receive immediate feedback
Hedgehogs The space for the investment community.
Chukkest

References

Elgg Website

www.elgg.org

Twitter gets you fired article.

This was pretty interesting.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29796962/wid/11915829?GT1=40000

Session 5 Week 1

Student: Thomas Harder
Instructor: Prof. Gazan
Course: ICS 691 Social Computing
Assignment: Session 5 Week 1

Peer Production in online environments vs. in-person collaboration

Introduction
In this case Peer Production really means commons-based peer production. Wikipedia defines this as “a new model of economic production in which the creative energy of large numbers of people is coordinated (usually with the aid of the internet) into large, meaningful projects mostly without traditional hierarchical organization (and often, but not always, without or with decentralized financial compensation)(wikipedia - Commons-based peer production)” . There are differences between online and in-person peer production. And these differences can bring synergy to a project.

Peer Production in in-person collaboration
Peer production in in-person collaboration is quite common place, as it has been the major means of collaboration since before the Internet. In in-person collaboration two or more people collaborate on a project. This is commonly thought of as the individual scheduling a meeting at a central location; however video phones and conference lines are also a form of in-person collaboration (such as Saba Centra and Cisco’s Telepresence). While there is a little confusion over the definition, in-person collaboration typically means synchronous. Preparing the collaterals, that may be used at the meeting, and running copies. Traveling to the meeting site and once there they share their thoughts and ideas in real time, with all the give and take that accompanies this type of meeting. Interactions happen real-time, and the event typically requires some artificial or preplanned recording in order to capture the results of the meeting. With a big project there may be many smaller meetings as individuals and groups work towards building consensus on the production. The major advantage of these events is the interaction and team building that can be formed during the meetings. Individual get to know each other, can exchange information and learn whom they can trust and rely on. There are many disadvantages such as the meeting occurs in real time and the results need to be captured and relayed in some manner. Much time and resources are consumed in the preparation for the meeting, such as the development of collaterals and holding smaller meetings in order to persuade stack holders, traveling to the meeting and back and during the meeting.

Peer Production in online environments
Peer Production also occurs online. Online environments can be either synchronous or asynchronous. Some forms of peer production are real-time, or pseudo real-time, such as Instant Messenger and Second Life. Other forms of peer production, such as Wikipedia, are not. This flexibility is a major advantage for online systems. It gives the respondent greater flexibility in the length and depth of a reply. An individual can post something, for example a paper, and the reviewers can review the paper at their pace and in the space of their choosing. Online environments are typically self documenting. IM messages can be recorded and replayed in order to reread the communication. Wikipedia allows user to read the “conversation” about a page or to view the history of the page, much as viewing different versions of a document.
Although, the self documenting features must be built-in, such features typically are built into social computing software.

Comparison
In comparison, both in-person and on-line peer production have advantages and disadvantages. Both models have been used to generate Light and Heavyweight peer production, such as open source software, wiki’s etc. The advantages and disadvantages are sufficiently different that these types of peer production can be used simultaneously on projects to build synergy. The in-person collaboration is better suited to disseminating content to a limited number of targeted consumers and to building trust among varied and key stakeholders. Online collaboration is typically self-documenting and allows individuals to read and reply in a manner more convenient to their self. For example the question below was posed on LinkedIn. This question has been posed on several other sites and has finally received some useful answers on LinkedIn.

It also provides a mechanism for give and take questioning that can be reviewed by others when necessary. Second Life allows users to do group chat or IM, giving the users the ability to hold several simultaneous conversations. When these conversation are about creating objects within the 3D environment, the environment itself can be used to demonstrate the concepts concerned. Second Life has recently launched a set of business tools. It will be interesting to see if a 3D atmosphere can contribute additional benefits.

While both systems encourage decentralization, decentralization is encouraged more by online collaboration as it is not necessary for both parties to be present, which can be quite a problem if the organization is large or geographically dispersed. On a personal note, I had the pleasure of being on a team that tried to use AIM to form a team and design a database project. While this seems to be a worst case it could happen on other projects. One of the individuals appeared to be rather dictatorial about the project, and refused to compromise on just about every aspect of the project. Consequently and because of the lack of richness of the AIM media, everything was argued about and the conversation was slow and cumbersome. Issues that could have been resolved in 1 or 2 minutes in person took 10+ minutes to just describe. In one 2 hour session, just the main 4 roles were divided, and this had to be reevaluated after a complaint was lodged with the instructor. Then instead of creating proper meeting minutes, the team leader just submitted a post of the AIM converstation. This is poor procedure for several reasons. First, a team meeting can have comments that are embarrasing for individuals and no one wants their mistakes or flaws posted for everyone to read. Secondly, and more importantly, a verbatim recording of the conversation is not necessary or useful. It is the result of the converstation that are required.

Summary
In summary, both online and in-person collaboration can lead to quality rich or quality poor peer production. The issue is how the tools are used and the motivation of the people using the tools. Online and in-person collaboration have separate and overlapping advantages and disadvantages. But it is up to the users to pick the right tool for the right results.

References
Duguid, Paul (2006). Limits of Self-Organization: Peer Production and "Laws of Quality”. First Monday 11(10). http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1405/1323

Haythornthwaite, Caroline (2009). Crowds and Communities: Light and Heavyweight Models of Peer Production. Proceedings of the 42nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Waikoloa, HI, 5-8 January 2009.

Wikipedia
LinkedIn

Final Project Proposal

Student: Thomas HarderInstructor:
Prof. GazanSchool: Unit. of Hawaii
Assignment: Final Project Idea

Final Project
For my Final Project I would like to do a review of the different Off-the-shelf SNS implementations. The major question would be "How do these different types of systems implemement/support different type of user roles and interactions?.

Plan
Obtain a list of different systems.
Obtain and review the literature about these system and some of the clients.
Visit and review the clients networks analyzing them for different roles and interactions, and gathering empirical data.
Write Paper.

Session 4 Part 1. Report on Two Sites.

Student: Thomas Harder
Instructor: Prof. Rich Gazan
Course: ICS 691 Social Computing
Assignment: Session 4 Part 1:
Social Capital and Trust Mechanisms

Introduction
In this assignment the student was to compare the social capital and trust mechanisms of two sites. This needed to be two sites that the student had not blogged about or nor visited before. I choose LinkedIn and Slashdot. I also visited Kuro5in, but upon learning that they wanted 5 dollars to post, I changed my mind. Both of these sites are supposedly geared for more professional audiences then purely social networking or entertainment, such as Face book or MySpace.
LinkedIn is aimed at the professional business audience, such as Business, Legal, and Information Technology etc. The aim is allow individuals to keep in contact with their business acquaintances, and to build “Bridging Capital”. The site has four major sections; People, Jobs, Answers and Companies. The People, Jobs and Companies sections are like advanced search features, to find more information about People, Jobs and Companies. The Answers Section allows the user to ask questions about specific topics, and allows users to post answers, much akin to AnswerBag.com. The site allows the user to modify their profile, adding text and an avatar. The site allows a user to see their contacts, they don’t have friends at LinkedIn, and to be able to import and export their contact list. Additionally a user can invite people off of his/her email contact list, providing it is hotmail, to join LinkedIn. Also, users can see and peruse their contacts’ contacts.
Slashdot was originally a site for technology information for the more technology minded individual. Its byline is “News for Nerds”. It has started to develop into a more social website as they have started to add more categories that include none technology related information. This site allows you to ask and answer questions on a variety of news and technology related topics. As Slashdot was originally a pure news site, the profiles are more limited then the profiles at LinkedIn. However, you can have Friends, Foes, and Freaks in Slashdot, and you can see who the friends of your friends are and who the Foes of your Friends are.

Social Capital
Both LinkedIn and MSDN are sites aimed at the working professional. Therefore both sites more aligned to build Bridging Capital rather than bonding capital. The LinkedIn site is geared more for building relationships then the MSDN site. LinkedIn allows the user to see the number of contacts, and the number of contacts’ contacts, in “degrees”. The user is given statistics on how many contacts their contacts have and this forms the users “network”.

The Slashdot site is not geared to build a lot of social capital. The tools are extremely limited, both for creating a profile, managing and communicating with friends and contacts. You can build some “Bridging Capital”, by being able to see the friends of your friend. However, the site is clearly not even at the level of LinkedIn for building “Bonding Capital”. Slashdot does let users create groups, and others can join these groups. As can be seen in the above image, I have joined the .Net Developers group. Allowing users to create and join groups helps developed both Bonding and Bridging Social Capital.

Roles
Social roles are the key related behavioral regularities and distinctive positions that individuals play on a social networking site (Dmitri Williams). Neither LinkedIn nor Slashdot have a tremendous amount of Roles. In Slashdot users can be contributors, lurkers, or moderators. Slashdot has the most interesting moderator role as almost anyone can be a moderator. The Moderator role is assigned randomly to individuals logged into their accounts, browsing content without an account is allowed, and is granted the right to moderate for a brief period of time. This means that they can grant points or take away points during their session. On LinkedIn the roles are contributors and lurkers. There is no moderator role. However, any users can flag a post as being out of bounds, for any particular reason.

Trust Mechanisms
The term trust is used to define different types of relationships between two people (Paolo Massa). There are different types of trust relationships and different types of mechanisms to indicate trust in online social networks. Slashdot and LinkedIn fall into different types of online systems. Slashdot is more of a News site and LinkedIn is a Business and Job networking site. Both sites allow users to post comments and both sites allow users to create list of individual they consider friends and/or contacts. LinkedIn allows users to create a profile with comments about their work activity. Then the user’s contacts can make recommendations about their work efforts. The image below is a highlight from Jon Crump, a Microsoft employee.

Both sites allow users to make comments about answers. Slashdot has a scoring system and only moderators can add or subtract points to an answer. LinkedIn does not have a point scoring system, but the best answers get a star and this travels with the user who made the answer. I haven’t figured out how this is determined.

Both Slashdot and LinkedIn allow the user to avoid negative trust. Slashdot allows users to make anonymous postings. And LinkedIn does not tell users whom flagged their comments as objectionable.

Recommendations
Slashdot and LinkedIn are both very useful online communities. In terms of building social capital both sites are limited; Slashdot more so then LinkedIn. LinkedIn, by definition is a site that allows users to build primarily Bridging Capital. Both sites allow users to make recommendations about other users, and both provide users with the tools to view other users’ contacts and network of users. Slashdot scores answers; LinkedIn only allows for the Best Answer, all other answers are equal. Both sites could improve the quality of their trust mechanisms by allowing users to give points for the answers. These points could then be used to display answers in rank order rather than by time order. This would allow the best answers to “float to the top”. This feature would be very useful in a site where the best answer should be found quickly. Slashdot is a news site and not primarily built to aid in the development of social relations. Slashdot could improve their scoring mechanism making it easier to give points; the system is somewhat clunky, allowing only Moderators to give out points.

Summary
In summary for the assignment, I spent some time on Slashdot and on LinkedIn. Of the two sites, I preferred the LinkedIn site. LinkedIn had more user groups and even though Slashdot is supposed to be more technical, LinkedIn had more interesting technical postings. I was even able to get a question answered that I haven’t been able to get answered elsewhere. You may recognize it as I used it on Answerbag.
Both systems have elements that allow users to build trust. However, LinkedIn has more systems. Both systems have similar roles. Both systems have areas of improvement that could be made to the make the sites more useful in terms of building social capital and trust.

References
Gleave, Eric, Howard T. Welser, Thomas M. Lento and Marc A. Smith (2009). A Conceptual and Operational Definition of ‘Social Role’ in Online Community. Proceedings of the 42nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Waikoloa, HI, 5-8 January 2009.

Williams, D. (2006). On and Off the 'Net: Scales for Social Capital in an Online Era. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 11(2), article 11. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol11/issue2/williams.html

Massa, Paolo (2006). A Survey of Trust Use and Modeling in Current Real Systems. Trust in E-services: Technologies, Practices and Challenges. Idea Group.
http://www.gnuband.org/files/papers/survey_of_trust_use_and_modeling_in_current_real_systems_paolo_massa.pdf

Allen, Stuart M., Gualtiero Colombo, Roger M. Whitaker (2009). Forming Social Networks of Trust to Incentivize Cooperation. Proceedings of the 42nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Waikoloa, HI, 5-8 January 2009.

Eryilmaz, Evren, Mitch Cochran and Sumonta Kasemvilas (2009). Establishing Trust Management in an Open Source Collaborative Information Repository: An Emergency Response Information System Case Study. Proceedings of the 42nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Waikoloa, HI, 5-8 January 2009.

AnswerBag

This weeks activity did not go well for me. I was unable to accomplish any of the goals. I finished the reading last week and I started lurking and crafting my strategy. I determined that most of the highest ranking questions were emotional, controversial and opininated. These are questions like, what would you name a pet rock? Is Obama a nitwit? I also noticed that certain topics had larger numbers of comments. So I decided to post these types of questions. I also eliminated any questions that had already been asked to death (ie How much would could a wood chuck chuck if a wood chuck could chuck wood?). I didn't want to come across as a complete pratt so I limited the number of question instead of throwing every single question and the kitchen sink. So here are my results.

The questions below are in reverse order. So my first question is the bottom question. I tried a varity of topics, some in educational some in conversational. All with no luck.

Category Question Answer Count Date Submitted Status Pts
1. US economy 1.5 Trillion dollars / 303,824,606 Americans = 4,937.05 per american. Wouldn't it have been better if the US gov't just gave us the money? 0 Feb 16, 2009 Active 0
2. Art Why is modern art still called modern art? Isn't that a bit of a misnomer by now? 1 Feb 16, 2009 Active 8
3. Visual Basic Has anyone used the compiler object in VB 2005? 0 Feb 15, 2009 Active 0
4. Relationship basics Why can't women remember to put the toilet seat down? 1 Feb 15, 2009 Active 5
5. Smoking Another dead smoker, smoked for over 40 years, why are the tobacco companies to blame? Where is the personal responsiblity? 1 Feb 13, 2009 Active 7
6. Consumer prices Some say that you get the best value if you buy a car 2 years old. When is the best time to buy a car? 3 Feb 13, 2009 Active 10
7. Religions Another suicide bomber (female) blows up 60 women and children, how is this justified? Is this really religous or more about Worldly power? 3 Feb 13, 2009 Active 0
8. Operating systems What is the best version of Unix for home use? 1 Feb 13, 2009 Active 0
9. Software Have you used the Enterprise Arcitect plub in for Visual Studio 2005/2008 and how does it work? What are the advantages and disadvantages? Is there are better piece of software in your opinion? 0 Feb 12, 2009 Active 0
10. Enterprise resource planning What happened to LeCASE (the Computer Aided Software Enginerring) software? 0 Feb 11, 2009 Active 5
11. Internet What is the best why to try online dating? 1 Feb 11, 2009 Active 0
12. California law What is the real root cause of California's Budgets crisis? 1 Feb 10, 2009 Active 0

So I got two questions that got 3 answers, and the best point score I could get was 10 points. Questions 3 and 9 were not answered, and these were the ones I was hoping would get answered, for my own selfish reasons. My responses faired no better. This leads me to the conclusion that in order to do well you need to be constantly on this site, have a large base of friends, or be really witty. Since I do not have much time, I don't care to be in constant contact with large groups of people I care little for, and I am not extremely witty, I am not terribly surprised at my results, consequently, I probably won't be going to this site after this assignment.

In terms of construction the site was fairly easy to use. Pretty intuitive to learn how to give points and reinforce others answers. It was interesting to feel the impact of the points, and watch the bag change colors. For a brief period of time I was thrilled to get some points, but then I woke up. The closest I actually came to a conversation was with the guy who responded to question 11. But I couldn't really think of anything to ask as the question was more contrieved for response then whether I was really all that interested in dating online. I have also joined some forum groups at facebook and myspace. The results have been fantastically disappointing. The problem is I am more interested in technical stuff then engaging in meaningless conversation. If I wanted to do that I would have remained married.

But there are several things that tied in with the reading. In the reading it was mentioned that many people come to sites to make friends, and the questions that seemed to have the most answers appeared to have a large number of friends. If you followed the trails of people it became obvious that there are groups of people that know (of) each other and respond frequently to each other. The readings also mentioned that many people come to these sites for entertainment and some of the questions and answers were entertaining. Many people feel that they are getting useful information on these sites. I thought that was questionable. Who cares what I would name a pet rock? And why would anyone on this forum be qualified to say whether Obama is a nitwit? Just because someone has an opinion doesn't mean it should be heard or given credence. I had a strategy worked out to engage with people, but there was little chance to use it. I think that basically I failed because I couldn't come up with questions that interested people (ie What would you name a pet rock? and Is Obama a Nitwit?), and I didn't have a large body of friends.

In relation to last weeks reading, this was an example of a depressing Internet experience. But it was more depressing because my grade was tied to whether I could somehow provoke a bunch of people I neither know nor care about into responding to my questions and responses. And that just doesn't smell like computer science to me, more like sales and marketing. I have an MBA, I hate sales and marketing. However, I rate the experience positively it did reinforce why I hate sales, and why I like the technical.

Student: Thomas Harder
Instructor: Prof. Richard Gazan
Course: ICS 691 – Social Computing
Session 2: Assignment 1: Part 2

Introduction
All this talk about how people behave on websites really made me curious about why someone would actually spend so much time on them. And I wanted to know from an insider why people would participate in something like Second Life, and how a company like Second Life would handle antisocial behavior. So, I went online and asked. I joined Second Life and after several days, I made a contact with Beverly Montegomery.

The avatar to the right of me, in the green dress is Ms. Montgomery. I am the guy in the black shirt. Ms. Montegomery is a Second Life officer and a volunteer for the NCI organization. She gives classes for Newbies, mostly in the basiscs of how to modify the avatar and what to see and things to do with in Second Life. Her introduction to Second Life was from her son, who showed her how to login, helped her create an avatar, took her to an NCI starting place and then promptly left her there to find her own way. This was two years ago and she in now fully immersed in Second Life. Ms. Montegomery's take on the Second Life experience was that individuals come to Second Life to see what it is like and then stay for the friendships and for a feeling of importance.

Friends and a Feeling of Importance
I found this to be true with my experience, most of the people were friendly and very helpful, and I was able to make friends very quickly. I believe the feeling of importance aspect is created through 3 avenues 1) just the act of making friends 2)Volunteering to help newbies enjoy the game and become acclimatized, like Ms. Montegomery and 3)Creating Objects. The first 2 being obvoius I will focus a little on 3rd item Creating objects. Second Life promotes individuals creativity through the use of a monteary system, and by providing the tools to create and modify object in the world. Additionally there are free tutorials, on how to create these tools and how to sell them within Second Life. This has lead to the creation of many virtual cottage industries. This simple feature allows residents to become emotionally attached to the game, by creating, and seeing that others value the objects that they can create. Many of the individuals became involved in Photoshop and scripting just because of their involvement in Second Life.

My Cube! It says touch when I touch it. And Ouch wherever anyone collides with it.

Some of the Resident's Art!

Rules of Conduct
Second Life has had its share of antisocial behaviour. While they have a Terms of Service agreement, this contract is not always adhered to, and in these cases Second Life can ban users accounts. Ms. Montegomery admitted that there was little to stop such banned users form rejoining and personlly knew that several users had been banned 4 or more.In addition to the Conduct By Users of Second Life (see below) rules found in the TOS, an island or sim can impose additional conduct rules, which users must agree to prior to being able to access it.

Here is a small part of the TOS.

CONDUCT BY USERS OF SECOND LIFE
4.1 You agree to abide by certain rules of conduct, including the Community Standards and other rules prohibiting illegal and other practices that Linden Lab deems harmful.
You agree to read and comply with the Community Standards posted on the Websites, (for users 18 years of age and older, at http://secondlife.com/corporate/cs.php; and for users of the Teen Area, at http://teen.secondlife.com/footer/cs
In addition to abiding at all times by the Community Standards, you agree that you shall not: (i) take any action or upload, post, e-mail or otherwise transmit Content that infringes or violates any third party rights; (ii) impersonate any person or entity without their consent, including, but not limited to, a Linden Lab employee, or falsely state or otherwise misrepresent your affiliation with a person or entity; (iii) take any action or upload, post, e-mail or otherwise transmit Content that violates any law or regulation; (iv) take any action or upload, post, e-mail or otherwise transmit Content as determined by Linden Lab at its sole discretion that is harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, causes tort, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, invasive of another's privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable; (v) take any actions or upload, post, e-mail or otherwise transmit Content that contains any viruses, Trojan horses, worms, spyware, time bombs, cancelbots or other computer programming routines that are intended to damage, detrimentally interfere with, surreptitiously intercept or expropriate any system, data or personal information; (vi) take any action or upload, post, email or otherwise transmit any Content that would violate any right or duty under any law or under contractual or fiduciary relationships (such as inside information, proprietary and confidential information learned or disclosed as part of employment relationships or under nondisclosure agreements); (vii) upload, post, email or otherwise transmit any unsolicited or unauthorized advertising, or promotional materials, that are in the nature of "junk mail," "spam," "chain letters," "pyramid schemes," or any other form of solicitation that Linden Lab considers in its sole discretion to be of such nature; (viii) interfere with or disrupt the Service or servers or networks connected to the Service, or disobey any requirements, procedures, policies or regulations of networks connected to the Service; (ix) attempt to gain access to any other user's Account or password; or (x) "stalk", abuse or attempt to abuse, or otherwise harass another user. Any violation by you of the terms of the foregoing sentence may result in immediate and permanent suspension or cancellation of your Account. You agree that Linden Lab may take whatever steps it deems necessary to abridge, or prevent behavior of any sort on the Service in its sole discretion, without notice to you.

Tools and New Uses
What made my question session with Ms. Montgomery different is that she was carrying on several conversations at once. There was a group chat for the question and answer session, and she was carrying on an IM session just with me, and I am sure several other conversations too. This got me to thinking about how else these tools could be used in more "useful" ways. I decided that it would be quite possible to hold a business team meeting in Second Life. The program supports sound, and could support a normal conversation. There is the ability to have group chat and individual IM, for private side conversation. The software also has a blogging tool. And since it has its own scripting language it could be modified and extended for additional uses.

Summary
In summary Second Life is a fascinating, and different type of Social Networking Site then Facebook and MySpace. I found the content more appealing then Facebook and MySpace; where I very quickly became tired of staring at pictures and reading static text. I found it very easy to make friends, specifically because I was not starring at a person. Second Life is filled with conversation starters, imagine walking up to a 3D tiger avatar, that moves and growls, how did the person get it? Some of these are bought, but many things are created by players, and these people are interesting to talk to. For the more quiet types, the group chat allows you to lurk in the background, and doesn't interfere with the natural flow of conversation by the participants.
Check out the avatar on the left. I am still not sure what it is, but it looks fierce.

So, as nonacademic as it sounds, I think I found my SNS of choice. Now I have to go, I want to work on my cube. I want to make it make a whoopie cushion sound when I sit on it!

Sesson 2 Assignment 1 - 7 Articles and My Free Response

Student: Thomas Harder

Instructor: Prof. Richard Gazan

Course: ICS 691 – Social Computing

Session 2: Assignment 1:

1) A free-response section with your overall reactions to the readings. Not just "I thought this or that was interesting" (which I of course hope you do), but point out specific connections or mismatches between concepts in the readings, examples and/or counterexamples from your research or experience, and a question raised by the readings that for you remains unanswered.

7 Articles and My Free Response
These weeks the reading started to give a more in-depth look at how individuals use Internet SNS and asks the questions; Can SNS address the social interactivity needs of humans? How? To William Galston, in the paper “Does the Internet Strengthen Community?” (Galston 1999), the answer depends on how well the SNS balances the conflicting desires of autonomy and connection. To begin with Galston uses Thomas Bender’s definition of a community and then looks at how the SNS will support the four main characteristics of Limited Membership, Shared Norms, Affective Ties and Mutual Obligation. In conclusion Mr. Galston summarizes that online groups can help individuals but should not be allowed to replace true communities. While I mostly agree with the spirit of Mr. Galston’s article, I still dislike the position that choice and community are competitors and that an individual can only seek one at the expense of the other. I believe that the argument is in how you perceive the little village in Portugal. I believe that more of us in the industrialized world would stay in a little village, if we were ever given the chance. But nowdays, in the “global marketplace” who grows up in a little village?
The second article “Social responsibility and the Web: A Drama Unfolds” by Linton Weeks, highlights how the more things change the more man remains the same; incidentally this is also proof that evolution is unfounded. What amazed me was that for all everyone’s complaints they just didn’t seem flat out ask her if she was okay, or if the child was okay, or if there was anything anyone can do for her. Everyone would have saved themselves a lot of grief if they would have just done the sensible thing, actually cared about her and her child and just asked a simple question. And she should know better in this age of offensensitivity (Yes, I got this word from Bloom County, I hope you are old enough to remember this ), that she was going to get blasted for posting such an “off color” joke.
I didn’t really understand the level of effort that went into the third article. In summary, if you can’t do something it will stress you out, and this will lead to depression. I suppose this is obvious. But I have yet to hear of anyone killing themselves over the fact that they have a hard time finding something on the Internet. More than likely I think the level of stress the Internet causes is a blip on someone’s stress level. I don’t think the study did a real good job at removing life’s other stressors, which I think would have a greater impact on an individual. If one places ones ego on their ability to do everything well, they are very likely to be depressed.
I found that I could agree with the first sentence of the fourth article “Strategies for a Discontinuous Future” by Umair Hague (Hague 2006), that is “bloggers blog too much”. But the article took a turn to decipher the definitions of usefulness and creativity. The author state that “usefulness is the enemy of creativity” and this is flat out nonsense. The author gives no examples to prove his point and this, in my opinion, destroys the authors’ creditability immediately. I believe that usefulness and creativity if properly draw would be perpendicular.

This would give you 4 quadrants and is a more likely valid way of categorize things, into useful and creative items. There are many useful and highly creative things, and this leads me to believe that the author may be suffering from a stunted definition of creative.
The fifth article Albrechtslund, Anders “Online Social Networking as Participatory Surveillance.” ( Albercthslund 2008); highlighted the fact that whatever is put on the net, maybe on the net forever, and it might come back to haunt an individual. Because this information is “out there” it can be viewed by friends and family, or the government, snoops and criminals. I found this particularly true on all of the sites I viewed. Many sites have profiles that can be locked, but nevertheless this information is stored somewhere. Typically this type of data resides on in a database (Oracle or SQL Server) and this database could be hacked or mined. I posted another item that discusses a recent hacking of a database, and while the critical information was believed to be still secure, how could anyone believe that since the company was vulnerable to attack? Furthermore the company admitted that the information taken could be used in phishing attacks. Additionally the article stressed the concepts of hierarchical and lateral surveillance. The most interesting is lateral surveillance, that is peer-to-peer monitoring. People use this technique to “fit in”. The observe and mimic others speech and behavour in order to not appear to be the new guy.
“Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism” by Christine Rosen (Rosen 2007) was an interesting read. She used the d word, democratic. I am not sure I understand what is meant by calling this information democratized or democratic. In fact I looked up democratic and from the definitions I found no plausible interpretation. I strongly suggest that this word be dropped or better explained. I liked the major idea that connection has become big business, it has. And after spending 20 hours on Facebook, MySpace and Second Life, I liked her idea “of a conventional individuality, of distinctive sameness.” I found myself quickly bypassing anything that was, in my opinion, gaudy and overdone. It was exciting to see a simple or well crafted page, and I think this says a lot (positive) about the person who created it. I should point out that beauty is in the eye of the beholder so perhaps I was not the intended target of the gaudy and overdone. Ms. Rosen also stressed that the idea of a change in the meaning of the word “friendship”. This idea was pointed out in earlier articles, and Ms. Rosen takes a slightly different tack, however the message bears repeating that these new friendships are not likely to have the same depth as real life connections.
I didn’t get much out of Ryan Bigge’s article “The Cost of (Anti-) Social Networks: Identity, Agency and Neo-Luddites" (Bigge 2006). Perhaps it was written at too high a social science level, I am in Computer Science and have very little desire to change my profession. But I had a very hard time drawing a point to his article. The best I could come up with is that Mr. Biggie believes that SNS’s will evolve into haves and have not’s, that is you either have a site or you don’t, and that just seems so obvious to me, that it is barely worth mentioning.
Finally, I would like to know; what does Danah Boyd have against capital letters?

References
Galston, William A. (1999). Does the Internet Strengthen Community? In Elaine Ciulla Kamarck and Joseph S. Nye, Jr. (eds.), Democracy.com? Governance in a Networked World. Hollis, NH: Hollis Publishing Co.
http://www.puaf.umd.edu/IPPP/fall1999/internet_community.htm

Weeks, Linton (2009). Social Responsibility and the Web: A Drama Unfolds. 8 January 2009. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99094257

LaRose, R., M.S. Eastin and J. Gregg (2001). Reformulating the Internet Paradox: Social Cognitive Explanations of Internet Use and Depression. Journal of Online Behavior 1(2). http://www.behavior.net/JOB/v1n2/paradox.html

Hague, Umair (2006). Usefulness and The Banality of Business. (Bubblegeneration Strategy Lab blog post). http://www.bubblegeneration.com/2006/03/usefulness-and-banality-of-business.cfm

Albrechtslund, Anders (2008). Online Social Networking as Participatory Surveillance. First Monday 13(3). http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2142/1949

Rosen, Christine (2007). Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism. The New Atlantis 17, 15-31. http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/virtual-friendship-and-the-new-narcissism

Bigge, Ryan (2006). The Cost of (Anti-) Social Networks: Identity, Agency and Neo-Luddites" First Monday 11(12). http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1421/1339

Online Community Software

Yes, Ma'am and Yes Sir,

Now you can create your own online community!.

http://www.yourmembership.com/?s=ymyh

http://www.leveragesoftware.com/index.html

Regards, Tom

Do social websites use databases?

This is an interesting attack on the database of Monster. Com. Probably not the pinacle of social networking software, but it uses the same technologies.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090127/wl_uk_afp/britaincomputercrime;_ylt=AlgibDo0VZoXOPltwMeIVd5vaA8F

Notice while the information stole wasn't necessary critical, it could still be used for other types of attacks. The article reference phishing attacks. Which is a form of social engineering.

Reformulating the Internet Paradox.

Reformulating the Internet Paradox
Great paper to fall to sleep too. I needed to try to read it 3 times to get through it. I suppose the
summation is that the less you know about something the more stress it causes you and the more it will increase your chances of feeling depressed. This is probably an accurate statement. But I find it hard to believe that this is true in isolation about the internet, that is if there is only one thing causing you stress and that is the internet. I would find it more plausible if this was a review of first marriages, or first children. But internet use?

Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism.
I liked this article. I thought it was well written and distinctly sarcastic., but true. Unless you are using these sites to accomplish something, they have become the new TV. People while away the hours creating false and well marketed personalities to attract users they have no intention of ever meeting., trading real and fulfilling relationships for public friendship. Yes, this does sound like youth culture, I think I am getting a zitt just writing this. But I loved it when I found out Obama and Clinton had facebook's.

Random blogging
Best blog I have seen so far was one called Max's World. Just a father's pictures of his baby. Photo's were professional. Color and arrangement of photo's was superb. Just beautiful, best use of cyberspace, I have ever seen. I was tempted to post but didn't won't to ruin the sense of intimacy. If I can ever find it again I will let you all know.

1/22/09 Strgs for a discontinuous future.

I found this a less then brilliant article, its redeeming feature, was the posts that were attached, and only because the posts dramatize the author's main point, and the clear differences between the authors supporters and detractors.

The problem with the writers logic is that he equates utility and the ability to conceptualize and increase utility and productivity with a lack of creativity. I would suggest that being able to orchestrate utility and mass productivity is really a creativity in its own right. I disagree with a major premise "the notion that everything must be useful". First anyone who studies logic and human nature understands that it is not often when "everything" is ever any one thing. For example, pet rocks, and hiphop and basketball. How about this take, would the author of the article think that no creativity existed in the extremely useful light bulb? How about Einstein and Bell, anyone care to call them less then creative geniuses? How much creativity is found in the concept and ability to implement the production line (Thank You, Henry Ford, for bringing the car to the masses. I believe my quality of life was much improved, as well as the workers in the orginal factories.). I would bet if we could go back in time we would find many people who first ate a consistent quality meal, across an entire county at a fair price, who would think McDonalds was a stroke of creative genius as well as extremely useful. And how about Bill Gates "licencing software", absolutely creative genius, and IBM bought it! Much better then a Warhal painting, think how many people did Gates make wealthy on that? How many people were able to buy cars, fund retirements, send their kids to college, pay mortgages? How much GPD did he bring into a country hemorraging cash by buying cheap imports? I think that perhaps Umair needs to really reconsider his definition of creativity, he may find it somewhat narrow and lacking.

Interesting enough I could agree with the original premise that bloggers blog too much. Especially if they blog this type of ill thought out drivel. Perhaps they should spend more time reading and thinking, then posting.

1/21/09 - First Session 2 Articles

Well, in the first articles "Does the Internet Strengthen Community?", I think the appropriate answer is that it depends. I don't buy the notion that Choice and Community are inversely proportional. The decision by individuals to put their own needs above others is a choice, just as to put others before themselves is a choice. I think the breakdown in Community is directly proportional to the breakdown of traditional Christian values and the rise of a consumer culture that stresses (sells) putting oneself first. Please note I am not making judgements, I am not saying one set of values is better then other just that the traditional culture is breaking down and another is rising in its place.

I liked the article "Social Responsiblity And the Web: A Drama Unfolds". The article reminded me of a quote "Don't write down on paper what you wouldn't want to read in the paper". The same applies here. But this article does let me get "up on my soapbox" against "offended people". The problem is that it violates the rights of the offender, that is guilty until proven innocent. Anyone with an AS degree has learned about the "Barriers to Communication". So why do we immediately assume that when someone cries "They offended me", that this person has actually been offended, maybe they just don't understand what the offender said. Maybe, and I know this is a strech for most, the offended person misunderstood. And the easiest way to resolve this is to just ask - "Did you mean to offend me?". In this article we see that such simple logic eludes the masses. How many responded negatively? How many felt "offended"? How many called the police? But not one asked her how she felt. Not one asked her if she was joking, not one exercised (un)common sense. What does this say about the quality of internet "communication"? In fact was there really any communication (look up the definition of the word)? Well enough of my soapbox. TTFN

Session 1 Week 1 Assignment

Student: Thomas Harder
Instructor: Prof. Richard Gazan
Course: ICS 691 – Social Computing
Assignment 1:
The first sentence of the syllabus contains my thumbnail definition of social computing: Social computing is an umbrella term for technologies and virtual spaces that allow users to create, describe and share content, and for the communities that arise around them. Challenge this definition by making reference to the Session 1 readings. How does the term relate to others, such as social software, social networks, online community and Web 2.0? Conclude by crafting your own definition of social computing, and how it relates to topics you hope to explore in this course.

Introduction
The term Social Computing is a composite term that is created from two terms and should therefore have some characteristics of the original terms. A review of the Merriam-Webster’s dictionary online, social has several meanings that closely deal the interaction of an individual with other individuals or groups. The term computing is a transitive form of the word computer; thus computing has to do with using the computer. Therefore put together the term should have something to do with using the computer to enhance social activities. And indeed the given thumbnail definition of social computing has elements of both these terms however it also lacks something.

Social
The term Social has to do with people coming together with other people, making a connection. This connection can between one’s peers, friends and family or it can be with complete strangers or other types of acquaintances. Sites that provide this type of service are called social network sites or social networking sites. Sites that allow strangers to meet are typically thought of as social networking sites. Social network sites however, are typically used by friends and family to communicate with each other. Some social network sites include Facebook, Friendster, and MySpace. These relatively new online spaces offer several advantages such as allow the users to create and post text, pictures, movies, and other rich and new content, allowing the user to communicate with many people in one place, relatively fast and reliably with low cost. The new features provided by these sites indicate their embracement of the Web 2.0 concepts. The term Web 2.0 is used to describe the changes in the use of WWW technologies and design that aim to enhance the creativity, communications, secure information sharing, collaboration and functionality of the web (Wikipedia 2008). Originally, under Web 1.0, these types of sites used more simplistic pages designed to be static and read, and not responded to. Under the newer Web 2.0 the concepts these sites can be contributed to by the readers with posts, making them dynamic and making them collective contributions by the original author and his/her readers. Applications that allow users to interact and share data are also known collectively as social software. Thus purely relation based sites such as Facebook or more business oriented sites such as Amazon and eBay can both be categorized as social software.

Computing
The term “computing” implies the meaning that the interaction takes place using modern computer equipment, protocols and technologies. Common types of social software include weblogs, email, instant messaging, social network services, wikis, tagging and social bookmarking. Many of these social software applications use technologies, or similar technologies, existed in Web 1.0. But it is the integration of many of these technologies, often in the same application, that allows users to interact and create content that allows them to be called a Web 2.0 application in concept. Additionally, the Web 2.0 concepts allow the designers of an application to view the web as the interface to the application and therefore any type of hardware that could possibly connect to the application is likely to be used for accessing the application, and needs to be considered in the design of the software. This encourages the designers to think beyond the standard PC as the tool a consumer/producer may use.

Social Computing
Social Computing is therefore using computers, computer networks, software and the associated technology to interact with other users. So part of the given thumbnail definition is true. What is missing is the concept of the purpose of the site and how individuals should interact on a site. A purely social site allows users to interact with each other as they normally would. This means as friends, family, acquaintances, in a non business setting. Therefore while it is possible for users to post their thoughts, at Amazon about the quality of a 3rd party vendor, this posting would not be thought of as a social interaction. However, the action of the same user posting the same thought at his blog for his friends to read would be considered a social interaction. So, while the technology is the same, the purpose is different and the relationships between the poster and the reader are different. The need for and consequences of social interaction is highlighted in the case of Mr. Bungle. It was Mr. Bungles’ highly antisocial behavior which caused the LambdaMOO to create a form of regulation which prior to Mr. Bungles’ actions was unnecessary. The social interactions between individuals in the LambdaMOO had been self regulating and apparently friendly.
Summary
In conclusion it is obvious that there is no black and white definition of a Social Computing application or technology. There are elements of Social Computing in many web applications that are meant mainly for business and marketing; for example a posting or comment about a book. And there are elements of business and marketing in accepted Social Website such as a bands site on MySpace. The same in more obviously true of the hardware used for facilitate the social or business activities. Consequently, a new definition of Social Computing could be – “a term for a general area of computer science that has to do with the behavioral interactions between people in a computerized environment.”

References
Social Computing – Wikipedia (2008)

Boyd, D.M., and N.B. Ellison (2007). Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), article 11. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/boyd.ellison.html

Dibbell, Julian (1998; revised). A Rape in Cyberspace: How an Evil Clown, a Haitian Trickster Spirit, Two Wizards, and a Cast of Dozens Turned a Database Into a Society. The Village Voice, 23 December 1993. http://www.juliandibbell.com/texts/bungle.html

Beer, David and Roger Burrows (2007). Sociology and, of and in Web 2.0: Some Initial Considerations. Sociological Research Online 12(5). http://www.socresonline.org.uk/12/5/17.html

Tenopir, Carol (2007). Web 2.0: Our Cultural Downfall? Library Journal, 12/15/2007. http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6510681.html?industryid=47130

Nardi, Bonnie A., Diane Schiano and Michelle Gumbrecht (2004). Blogging as Social Activity, or, Would You Let 900 Million People Read Your Diary? CSCW’04, November 6–10, 2004, Chicago, Illinois.

Herring, Susan C., Lois Ann Scheidt, Sabrina Bonus and Elijah Wright (2004). Bridging the Gap: A Genre Analysis of Weblogs. Proceedings of the 37th Hawai'i International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-37).

1/15/09

Well, today I spent most of my study time reading. And figuring out how to get feeds to work. I am using MS IE so I somehow doubt I am using the most sophisticated tool, but it will get the job done.

I was able to read more of the "sociology" stuff. I thought the Web 2.0 Our Cultural Downfall? was an interesting read. The argument was well thought out and thought provoking.

I enrolled in Citizendium. I like the idea.

I really liked the Design Recommendations in the Blogging as Social Activity, etc. Having messed around with Blogger, I understood where these recommendations would be very handy and usefull.

My First Post

Well, this is my first Posting. During this session I spent most of my time figuring out how many of the tools worked. I added gadgets and subtracted gadgets. Played with fonts and colors. I will continue playing with this site.

The course reading was very interesting. I had never heard of MUDs, MOO's or mashups. I have been using Wikipedia but am very interested in Citizenpedia, although I found it more combersome. The mashups are quite interesting, I would like to play with ORC, but that will probably have to wait.

Well, must go get the dishes done.