Welcome.

Welcome to my first blog. It is being constructed for my ICS 691 course, which is an in depth look at Social Networking. I typically don't engage in this type of activity as I work, so it will be interesting learning about this stuff.

Monday, April 20, 2009

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

Monday, April 6, 2009

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