Reflection on Wiki&Blogging&Researching

I've been so busy with editing the wiki and researching that I almost forgot the blog! but I will make it up now.

Okay, I will start with the technical stuff.....I've been editing the group wiki for a while now and sometimes I get really annoyed because it just does not want to do what I want!!:(( I know we should be happy that we don't need use Dreamweaver because that would take a long time for us..but sometimes I find the wiki too 'elementary': for ex. I can just write a text next to an image if I put both of them into a table...I mean I am getting better now but it takes much more time to design as I thought it would be..That's the BAD thing!

The GOOD thing is that the group project goes really well, we already have loads of things on our wiki, we just need to make it more user friendly: get some more pics also get some more theory but I think we are over the hardest bit as we have the basic structure of the site and now we know how we will realize our plan:))

BUT I am bit worried about the referencing!

• For example if I use a pic, that I found on yahoo, but I just use as an icon, to link to another wiki page do I need to include that in the bibliography??
  
• Should we put a separate bibliography in the end of each page (I did it that way) or should we have a bibliography in a separate page where we list all the books, pics etc. we used on the site??( I think the last year they did it like that)

Theoretical part of the wiki: My main problem is that I want to include everything:)..and as I am doing more and more research I have more and more material (so I need to stop now) and it's really hard not to get carried away and talk about things that are really interesting but actually does not fit into the 'online identity' theme. For example when I was doing the case study for the online vs. offline identity I found a really good article: a sex offender who has a Myspace page. The article (Jenn Shreve 2006) compared what he says about himself on his Myspace page and what is written on the Californian state sex offender list.

This case study not just raises the question of online/online identity but also:

• What rights criminals/sex offenders have?
  
• Do they have a right to have a Myspace page??
  

Jenn Shreve (2006) investigates these issues: I added the full article to the related links. It is called: MySpace Faces a Perp Problem if you want to read it.

But the main point is that it is not against to be on the site itself! According to Myspace terms the only people who can’t have a Myspace account: are people under the age of 14, those who provide false information or fail to maintain the accuracy of their profile, or people who use the service unlawfully. (Jenn Shreve 2006)
Of course it's not just sex offenders who gave fake details, but the Networking sites cannot oblige people to identify themselves for ex. with credit card numbers because it would make it difficult for bands, teenagers to use the site.

So it's not against the law if a sex offender is on the site, but it is against the law if the sex offender is using the site to 'paedophilic', ‘sex offending’ purposes. Anyways, check out the article if you want to get more info.

My other worry is coming from the credibility of the online sources! We talked about this issue at the New Technology class with Chris Sams when we had seminars on News online:the blogs and the ‘democratising tendency of the internet’ (what a big worldJ) that how nowadays all kind of people write all kind of stuff on the internet. and now I can really feel how hard is to filter out which are the reliable ones. Personally before I only relied on sites like: economist.com, guardian.co.uk but the problem is that there are not many articles about online identity on these sites..

Finally, Yes, it's a good thing to have this blog!! as the wiki and the blog complement each other..what we can't put on the wiki we can put it here!! It also gives us a space where we can write about our own experience, worries during the class and the group project and if we look back in our blog we can refresh what we have learned during the class.

Good&Bad Website

I chose the imdb website (The Internet Movie Database) as a good and ryanair’s, an airline, as an example of bad website.

I think everyone is familiar with the imdb website. I use this website quite frequently, if I want to find it about a film, an actor, director etc.

• Navigation: The navigation of the site is really good. If you want to find out the name of an actor who played on a particular movie you just need to search on the movie and there is a list with name and the picture of the actors, then you just need to click on the name and there you can get the short bibliography of that actor and list of the films he played. This works vice versa: find out the title of the movie trough an actor etc.

• Information: There is also loads of information about the films, actors, directors. You can find the ‘professional’ information: who, when, where directed/acted in a movie, and movies he directed/played in. Also you can find ‘personal’ information: the actor, director’s bibliography and also some interesting things: height, favorite food etc and some personal quotes. You can also find loads of picture on imdb and people can comment and rate movies at the bottom of the page. We can get some useful information from the comments as well.

• Relevance: On the front page we can find out about the upcoming movies, DVD s. The website is constantly updated and we can find out things about movies that are currently filmed.
  

As a bad website I chose ryanair.com. This is a website of an airline. The design of the website is really poor: it looks that it was made 20 years ago by an 8 years old. It’s too flashy and colorful, it’s tasteless. I think there is also too much useless information, too many navigation icons on the main page: so it looks all over the place. Also the useful information comes in the end: when you think you have booked you flight then you realize that you need to pay extra for this and that (baggage etc). I think it would really important for an airline to have a quite easily navigable, transparent and professional looking website as people will judge the airline also by its website.

While I was writing this I thought about our wiki page and how should look like as people( Nigel:)) will "judge" us by it.. So we should have a well designed and structured (we already have it I think..) easily navigable, ‘clean’ structured website. Also I should be relevant: so people who’re reading it can learn from it, not just repeating something they’re already known!! So hopefully it will be like this, but it’s not easy!!!!!

Online Communities, Online Identity and Social Networking Cites

Last we were talking about communities (online and offline) and tried to find the right definition but we COULDN”T because there was no one definition for it. Obviously people sharing some common interest (music, sport, religion), living in the same town, coming from the same ethnic background can form a community. BUT of you have something in common with other people it does not automatically mean that you are part of their community. (For ex. You can live in Salisbury and love Madonna but not be the part of the Salisbury Madonna fan club, if there is any)
So this is why it’s hard to define what community is. But now I will rather focus on online communities, identities and the networking cites. As I was doing research for our online identity group project I found that there are differences between Myspace users and Facebook users.
But first I want to quickly write down who we are going on with the group project. Now we decided who will do what. We started to edit the wiki, put our pictures up. To be honest I have troubles with editing the wiki but hopefully I will get used to that as well:P
I will have a look at different social network sites and try to find out the success of these sites, who they aim, why people joining these sites etc. I will also try to find some differences between networking sites (like Facebook and Myspace) and why people choose to use one specific site and what this choice tells about their identity. I will have a look at case studies (if I find) when online identity played a key role is changing someone’s life.

So far I can say that people who are using Myspace are more likely to put on 'online identities'. As usually people go on Myspace to create new friendships so they 'glorify' they profiles so people visiting their sites will add them. While Facebook users usually have their offline community, identity that is usually the same as their online one. They bring their already existing communities online so they can talk, share picture after school, when they are not together. Of course there are exceptions!! And I will also have a look at different case studies.