Building A Better Wiki Part 2: TFWiki

Even though it covers a much smaller part of the Internet than Wikipedia or TV Tropes, TFWiki is a unique resource worth studying. It compiles every known facet of the Transformers toy franchise in a humorous manner that does not interfere with the delivery of information. With "nerd culture" on the rise, there are hundreds of wikis covering franchises from the obvious (like Star Wars' Wookieepedia) to the obscure (like the Robotech Wiki and the Macross Wiki, which actually cover the same Japanese anime in different formats).

What sets TFWiki apart is the comedy. Pictures on wiki pages are usually captioned with puns, while a tone of sarcasm often creeps into pages about negatively-regarded pieces of media. You would never see another wiki cover "B.O.T.", the worst episode of the original Transformers show, with such snark and vitriol. This is possible due to the strength of the Transformers brand and fanbase; the toys have been in production consistently since 1984 and generations of children grew up with it, with annual conventions starting in 1994. Some of the fans who attended and organized those conventions went on to start and own TFWiki, and their personal irreverence guided the site's formation.

The growth of the Transformers fan community forced the wiki runners to maintain strong standards as the blockbuster films brought more and more newcomers to the fanbase. Because the moderators are always on guard for vandals, misinformation and bad jokes, the overall lighter tone reduces the feeling that they are too oversensitive about the wiki. If you're designing a wiki as an informal tool and not an official source to be cited, taking this approach to writing the articles might reduce users' pressure and make the interface more pleasurable to use.

Building A Better Wiki Part 1: TV Tropes

Wikipedia and wikis in general are a topic for this week, and while Wikipedia is the gold standard of the social media, it has several drawbacks. Apart from the editing and reliability issues, Wikipedia is also insistent on maintaining a dry, purely informative tone. There are a couple of very successful wikis on the net that are able to more engagingly present information through humor or at least a relaxed atmosphere.

TV Tropes is one of the fastest-growing and most commonly-cited wikis. It catalogs tropes--repeating themes and concepts across media--and applies tropes to everything from movies to role-playing video games to real life. I've contributed a lot to TV Tropes over the years; one page that I started is called "Gender Equals Breed", in which the children of couples tend to be identical to one of their parents.

One of TV Tropes' best features is something called "You Know, That Thing Where...", a crowdsourcing process which is required to be used before starting a new trope page. Once the initial trope idea is proposed, other commenters provide examples or point out that it might be too close or identical to a current trope. My initial examples when starting the "Gender Equals Breed" page were from "Little Shop of Horrors" and more strongly "The Muppet Christmas Carol", wherein all the male children of Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy were frogs and all the female children were pigs.

This quickly snowballed as more users added examples, like the King's family from Burger King commercials and the puppies at the end of "Lady and the Tramp" despite that not making any genetic sense. By their nature, tropes are patterns, so new examples are added frequently and links are made to similar concepts, expanding and interlinking different parts of the wiki. It's a well-known saying on the Internet that "TV Tropes will ruin your life" because once you start reading an article, you'll end up going from page to page for hours.

Responding to Charles Crook

While I was reading through Charles Crook's "The 'Digital Native' in Context", I had a thought about what seems to be a mischaracterization of the adoption of technology by youth. Crook narrows the situation down to "digital native" versus "digital immigrant" which is indeed part of the issue. But he fails to mention socio-economic factors in the disparity in Web 2.0 adoption.

This might be a function of the British perspective. Computer use is far more assured in the United Kingdom, with one study from 2014 explaining that "tablets are now being used... in 68% of primary and 69% of secondary schools" (Coughlan, BBC News*). With less than a quarter of the population of the United States and with a stronger school system in place, the UK can bypass many of the issues faced by poor school districts and mismanaged state education systems in the United States. Some students simply don't have to time or resources to adapt to Web 2.0 learning unless the school mandates it, making adoption of these tools contingent on better funding.









*http://www.bbc.com/news/education-30216408

There Is Virtually No Research Involved

It was a pleasant surprise to see Nathan Rabin, a movie reviewer and contributor to the Onion AV Club, had written an article for Cracked yesterday. Even better, it ties into this week's discussions about anonymity on the Internet and the importance of context.

"How To Make Money Using Inaccurate Pop Culture Reviews" begins with Rabin pointing out various recent "scandals" that were caused by writers not actually doing any research. He points to a critic who bashed comedian Amy Schumer based on tiny excerpts of her stand-up and a scathing review of the animated film "Inside Out" that was written based entirely on the film's character designs and trailers. What's telling about both of these articles is that, when called on their lack of research, both critics claimed that further research wasn't needed and that they stood by their methods.

Rabin goes on to write four very funny (and occasionally NSFW because of language) reviews for recent movies, coming up with ridiculous claims on the flimsiest of evidence. I'll have to rewatch "Ant-Man" now that Nathan pointed out the Neo-Nazi connections I apparently overlooked. While I don't think any of them could be mistaken for real, accurate reviews, the tone is completely accurate; I have the feeling that Rabin has wanted to do a spoof piece like this for a long time.

Make sure to read the comments as well; Cracked's commenters like to play along with joking articles like this and the spoof continues with them.

A Blip On The Radar

It's one thing to watch a social media tool slowly decline into irrelevance; it's quite another to see one crash and burn as spectacularly as Blip. For five years, Blip was one of the top hosts for video content, and it provided a place for video reviews and lessons to be posted without triggering Youtube's time limits and overzealous copyright claims.

The source of Blip's downfall isn't hard to spot. They were bought by a company called Maker, which in turn angled for a buyout from Disney. A drive for profits forced many users to include distracting ads in the middle. This in turn led to a collective use of crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter, Indiegogo and especially Patreon, which allows for micro-crowdfunding at the price of only a few dollars per video. This crash also affected the overall community of Blip users, with major video producer networks imploding after years of problems.

Blip's shutdown is a reminder that there's never certainty about a social media tool's longevity. Many producers are stuck uploading hundreds of videos and altering even more links. It's important to have back-ups, and even more important to keep tabs on your hosting sites to avert difficulty in an emergency.

My Curated Links Collection

For the Knowledge Sharing project, I decided to curate and annotate several links that I use for writing research. I'll share the link here as part of the effort to get the collection out onto the net.

https://www.diigo.com/user/dougglassman

Many of my novel and script ideas involve Jewish mysticism in different aspects. I was able to use tags within Diigo to point out which resources are useful for these tasks. A few are marked with specific story tags, like "Golem" and "Astrakhan". Some are collections of ancient texts; others are concordances, which identify the usage of words in a text. Because I don't speak Hebrew fluently, I've come up with a way to cheat by using the concordances with a few dictionary sites to create the phrasing I need.

What's Yours Is Mine, What's Mine is Mine

Being both a member of Internet communities and a content creator, the rules and norms about appropriation and agency discussed in the Reyman article held strong interest for me. I do my best to cite my sources and, if I do make changes, inform the original creator of the new work. "Agency" is a term that has come into the zeitgeist over the last few years. Because so many voices can be heard all at once, those voices need the ability to exert their rights and opinions. I doubt that these disparate opinions can find a way to coexist peacefully for very long, and it remains to be seen if these issues can be corrected without outside interference.

Acknowledge Them, Learn and Move On

This week's quote comes from Robert Zoellick, former president of the World Bank: "All of us make mistakes. The key is to acknowledge them, learn, and move on. The real sin is ignoring mistakes, or worse, seeking to hide them." I bring this up because this week I heard about one of the most deviously brilliant Web 2.0 tools ever developed: Echochamber.js. 

This Dailydot article goes into the details, but Echochamber.js is basically a piece of code that can be added to any Javascript formula. It allows a blog's readers to comment on an article... except that the comments have not actually been enabled. As a result, the comment stays visible on the computer of the commenter, but the writer of the blog sees nothing at all. This was developed as a tool against trolls and bullies to keep their harmful content away from bloggers without having to publicly disable comment sections. It's also a very useful anti-spam tool as spambots will be able to post all over a blog to their delight without making said blog look unprofessional in the process. 

I'll be honest: I don't think Echochamber.js has any particular application in the field of Web 2.0 learning. It is, however, a sign of the degradation of modern Internet culture that such a piece of code was created. 

Addressing The Forum

The observation period on the Community Paper is winding down, and I ended up picking an interesting pair of writing forums to monitor. This is especially true when it comes to actively participating on the SFF forum, since they're much friendlier than the people on WD. It's odd but a little unsurprising that a small, fan-based community works together better than a large, corporate one.

The main reason I picked a set of forums for this paper is familiarity; they're the main way I've participated online since I first started using the Internet. Twitter is faster and blogs have more detail in their posts, but forums provide a more reliable structure for conversations. Of course they also foster social problems while uniting a community, and I've watched from afar as boards have melted down and spun off from each other in the wake of controversies and fights. Still, I don't see forums and message boards vanishing, not while so many users are comfortable with them (and as long as the basic software is cheap or even free).

By Saying "To You", He Implies "But Not To Himself"

There's one question every student has that they know they can never (or at least shouldn't) ask their teacher: "But how does this help me?"

It's a topic I've considered while working on my application to the graduate program. I've been more interested in the corporate sector than the educational field when it comes to possible internships or careers, and at the very least this idea has steered my course selection. Web 2.0 Learning was a key choice since companies are constantly looking for better training and feedback procedures, leading to growing interest in the kinds of technologies we're exploring. 

I'm not sure how far I can manage this path as the degree requirements pile on, but it's something to keep in the back of my mind when considering the class material.

Got A Short Little Span Of Attention, The Rest Of My Life Is So Long...

"You Can Call Me Al" is probably my second favorite Paul Simon song ("Kodachrome" just barely beats it) and I've listened to it enough that this lyric stuck out for the quote of the week. What brought it to mind was Vanessa's paper about the use of Twitter at conferences. Once I read the abstract I made the prediction that Twitter would only be a distraction, and the paper does reach that conclusion at least partially. 

I agree with Vanessa that backchannel communication is important during a conference so that colleagues can discuss the proceedings in an informal context. The flaw in using Twitter for this purpose is the ready availability. Conference-goers end up Tweeting while learning, thus splitting their attention, versus writing notes for sharing later in a chat room or forum. I was especially intrigued by the research supporting a lack of actual communication between Tweeters which brings the use of Twitter as a backchannel resource further into question.

On the plus side, now I know that Twapperkeeper exists. I just love typing Twapperkeeper.

Working With Diigo

As per Vanessa's advice, I installed Diigo on my Chrome browser this weekend. I haven't found as useful a note-taking program since I started using OneNote a few years back. Here are a few of the reactions I've had to the software:

1. The convenience--because it's part of the browser, I don't have to remember to open Diigo separately or worry about cutting and pasting. My favorite feature so far is the ability to open WordPad-style note sections directly on to the page so that I don't have to worry about where to save my notes in Word.

2. The functions--various readers can highlight the text, but Diigo goes further with multiple note-taking options. However you want to construct your note-taking process, whether through inline notes, highlighting or saving individual pages.

3. The possibilities--I'm intrigued by the focused research functions at the premium levels. It tags various pages as if all of the Internet has become one big blog that you can search. I might invest in it when creating my final graduate project.

PLNs, Interconnectivity and Comic Con

This will all make sense in a moment, I promise.

The biggest annual event in modern media, San Diego Comic Con, has begun, and with it comes the scramble for information. SDCC was huge before the modern age of comic book movies began; today it's close to collapsing under its own weight. Movie studios, television channels and action figure companies jockey for the attention of attendees so heavily that much of the actual comic book news has shifted over to smaller conventions like New York Comic Con.

This is a time when major entertainment news sites shut down due to an excessive amount of page views. It's a situation rarely faced in education, but it illustrates how interconnected the modern Internet is and how emergencies can reveal the various paths of communication. Let's say that a site like Nerdist.com is covering the "Batman v Superman" trailer presentation. Here's a potential timeline of what happens next.

*The blogger from Nerdist.com live-blogs the trailer on Twitter since filming isn't allowed.

*The blogger tweets "OMG! Aquaman just punched Superman in the face!"

*Fans following the twitter feed flock to the website to follow the live-tweeting, causing Nerdist.com to crash.

*Tweets go out that the site is down, causing other readers to flock to smaller sites in the hopes of following the news.

*Simultaneously, news of the trailer's events hit Nerdist.com's pages on Facebook, Tumblr and other social network and blogging sites.

*Readers on those networks and blogs start to seek out news on smaller sites while Nerdist.com works to start up again.

From one tweet, entire sections of the Internet are lit up from fans wanting to keep up with an ongoing event thousands of miles away. Anyone reading the initial site can tap into their PLN resources to find a secondary or tertiary source, giving the smaller sites views even if they were edged out of live coverage. It illustrates why multiple pathways are key when developing a PLN.

New Media Gets Serious Thanks To MLA

This link showed up in my Facebook feed earlier today: "How Do You Cite A Tweet In An Academic Paper?"

It's a question that I had never considered asking, but it's true that every new format has required a citation guide from the MLA, even media that would normally be deemed disposable. The format is fairly simple; the methods of citing Internet pages seemed to change at random so hopefully they can keep tweets straight this time around.

The article made me think about what kind of academic papers would require tweets. What immediately came to mind were papers on social justice and activism, citing live-tweet sessions of controversial events to map out the progression of an issue at hand. Tweets can also strip away the neutrality that most papers enforce by revealing the writer's true emotions. One angry tweet from a Senator could do more damage in a review of a policy than three dull reports full of data.

I don't expect Twitter to replace e-mail, Facebook or blogs as a primary source of scholarly quotes online, but I like that they're planning ahead just in case. It might also force users to consider what handle they're using lest "BeerBonger29" end up being quoted in their dissertation.

Picking My Websites

After quite a bit of searching for the right forums, I've decided to go with Writer's Digest and SFF Chronicles for the Community Observation paper. Writing is still somewhere between a hobby and a passion and I'm hoping that interaction with these sites will help me get past some of the writer's block I've been having recently.

Writer's Digest will be the observed forum due to its size. There's a lot to explore in their forums and I feel like I would be a minute cog in the system if I became a full member. Conversely, SFF has a smaller membership and a forum with better divisions. I can concentrate on the Aspiring Writers forum, which has  half a dozen different sections to diversify my experience.

Writer's Digest Forum

Science Fiction and Fantasy Chronicles

From here, I need to decide what my project will be for presentation at SFF. I like being able to multi-task and use my education pursuits to improve my writing skills.

... Out Of "You" And "Umption"

Samuel L. Jackson gets to be this week's Quote of the Week; I didn't even realize that this line came from "The Long Kiss Goodnight", I thought it was just a colloquialism. I bring this up because of a line from the Bruns article this week.

"In many domains, the collaboratively compiled knowledge of users is now (or is at least believed to be) virtually on par with that of expert scholars..."

It's an unfortunate truth that Sturgeon's Law, which claims that "ninety percent of everything is crud", applies to scholastic communities as much as to science fiction novels and Youtube commenters. Gaps in knowledge are unavoidable, so in my view it's a mistake to count on other contributors to cover the missing material. The exact problem areas are usually hard to pinpoint; this unfortunately means that it might seem paranoid, but you can't assume that collective intelligence can solve the world's problems.

The Fall (and Resurrection?) of RSS Feeds

Of the three videos posted in the Week 1 folder, the one that surprised me most was the one about RSS feeds. They were the height of aggregation technology for years, but they have been rendered outdated by new forms of Web 2.0 media. There is a strong ironic streak when you realize that what killed the RSS might be the web content it worked to assemble.

At their height, RSS feeds were important because they gathered documents and traced their passage from writer to reader, from reader to reader, from media to reader, and so forth. This was key when web content was posted to typical websites--MSNBC for instance--that otherwise did not have a major Web 2.0 presence. Today, an MSNBC article always comes with Twitter, Facebook and other direct links to faster and more personalized data streams. The Facebook "trending news" sidebar has taken the place of the RSS feed when it comes to delivering major trends and stories.

RSS feeds do offer better customization options. It's much easier to tailor a feed to your interests than it is to narrow down a Facebook news stream. This, along with the lower popularity, might make an RSS feed a useful tool for a specific research project without clogging numerous Web 2.0 media at the same time with identical links.

On Web 2.0 and "Open Source" Media

The webinar today got me thinking about the various kinds of web 2.0 media and how much they can be changed by the instructor and/or the learner. When the learner can edit their comments, they can alter what the instructor perceives to be their skill level. It's important that the program used will be able to record edits either publicly or privately.

More dangerously, learners might alter the instructional materials accidentally or maliciously. Most mediums come with protection against this (passwords and user alerts, for instance), but I've seen Google Docs ruined by users who make a simple mistake in a shared Excel spreadsheet. Material hosted by a larger server or company has to be protected as well lest a Facebook crash delete all of your work.