Session 7 Rules in the cyberspace

I am studying the Wikipedia community. This website has clear rules elaborating what the site is about, how to make the best use of it, how to contribute to Wikipedia, and how to give feedback and questions. The link is as follows: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About. In brief, Wikipedia welcomes everyone’s contribution. Even if the contributor is not an expert of a topic, she/he still can express her/his own opinions without being afraid of making a mistake. Contributors are instructed to express neutral viewpoints and respect their fellow Wikipedians’ viewpoints. If there is a need for negotiation, Wikipedia provides the talk page and asks for the following of dispute resolution.

When examining the talk page of the topic: cheesecake, I found three examples of interpersonal conflicts and how users resolve them:

Example 1

User Leopardmon blanked the page due to vandalism. User Seaphoto mentioned there is no need to blank it because the page can be reverted to the latest unvandalized version. User Seaphoto even took a further action to call for page protection for the article.

Example 2

User 68.244.206.14 expressed his/her disagreement with User Seaphoto and thought that Wikipedia violated its’ policy of neutral viewpoints. User Seaphoto did not discuss with User 68.244.206.14 on the policy of neutral viewpoints; instead, User Seaphoto said he/she was reverting the talk page because User 68.244.206.14 did not discuss about the subject but Wikipedia, which is irrelevant to the subject.

Example 3

User League X explained the reason he/she added some information to the Wikipedia page. User Seaphoto pointed out the problem of the way League X added information and suggested the alternative.

The three examples in Wikipedia illustrate the salient benefits of member maintenance:

1.      Peer oversight is proved to be an effective way to improve the quality of the posts (Cosley, 2005)

2.      The policies as guidelines influence the Wikipedian community and sustain it (Madison, 2006).

3.      The indoctrination of newbies by senior community members can increase site participation and social support (Gazan, 2009) since the reduction of low-quality content may more successfully keep valuable members and make contributors believe that their effort and contributions can lead to a better performance, representing part of the community’s performance (Cosley, 2005).

4.      The community’s self-awareness can intimidate potential roguish behaviors. If the number of rogues increases in a community, the overall participation in Wikipedia will very likely to fall (Gazan, 2007).

Example 1 and 3 show the sunny day of the users, who got the answers after interacting with other community users. Example 2 shows that the user 68.244.206.14 wanted to discuss one of Wikipedia’s policies, but it turned out to be non-negotiable. If I were the administrator of Wikipedia, I would open a space for people like 68.244.206.14 to discuss his/her thought about neutrality of viewpoints. I understand that for Wikipedia, it is easy to ask its members to follow the pre-set rules. However, according to Gazan (2009), open debate on normative standards can have positive effects on the community. So far, I do not find any unwritten rules because of the clear rules and well-functioning member maintenance of this website.

Session 6 Online identity

Take Facebook for example, people using the SNS mainly want to get to know new friends, keep in touch with their friends, and being kept in contact with their friends, too. Therefore, the Facebook online identity can be the maintenance of one’s friendship. This working definition goes well with Hudkinson (2006)’s definition that the friend list serves to enhance the communication with one another, which can be the extension from one’s offline friendship or influence the offline friendship from the online friendship. Also, the maintenance of one’s friendship in Facebook speaks to the importance of what a friend is for—material assistance and support (Donath, 2007). However, my definition of online identity based on Facebook may not obviously explain Liu (2007)’s viewpoint that one’s friend connection reveals his identity because some Facebook users tend to include as many and diverse friends as possible in their friend list; thus, it is hard to contour one’s identity by only looking at his friend connection. If looking into this SNS in terms of Wellman’s networked individualism (2003), I think Facebook has several characteristics:

1.      The categorization of one’s friends in the friend list makes him manage his friendships much easier than the use of the paper rolodex.

2.      The ubiquitous Internet connectivity reinforces the possibility to maintain one’s friendship without the limitation of time and space.

3.      The mode of forming a community shifts from many people gathering to form a community to a person developing his own, unique community by incorporating other people into that community.

Scenario 1

A 25-year old man wanted to make breakfast for his girlfriend. The man went to a cooking website, typing the key word “chicken Caesar wrap”, and getting a whole bunch of recipes and some people’s comments. He clicked the first link because it was put at the top of the long recipe list. He quickly looked at the content. The recipe describes the ingredients in detail and how to make it. He thought it provided enough information, so decided to continue reading it. There were other online users’ ratings and reviews. He quickly reviewed what the rating people gave to this recipe and found most people gave four to five stars on a scale of five. He randomly chose one five-rating comment and one four-rating comment to read. These reviewers provided their opinions after following the recipe and their suggestions. Therefore, the man was happy with the online search.  

Scenario 2

A 20-something girl was looking for a way to make her eyes look bigger. So, she logged onto a beauty website and keyed in “eyes, bigger” and found there were thousands of ways, such as doing surgery, using mascara, using an eyeliner, etc. She decided not to have surgery, so she wanted to make a decision between using mascara and an eyeliner. She quickly reviewed other people’s comments and found that comments were more on mascara than on eyeliners, so she decided to look into how to use mascara. When reading the comments, she found people referred to a couple of the brands of mascara. Among the brands, one brand was mentioned more often than others. Therefore, she searched online other people’s comments on this specific brand. After reading more reviews on the specific brand, she decided to buy one and follow the ways of using this mascara as suggested on the beauty website.

Scenario 3

A 40-year old single woman joined an online blind date website. She decided to read the personal profiles under the category of swimming because she likes swimming. She continued reading those guys’ profiles, which consist of photos, occupations, interests, hobbies, self-introduction, and the type of females they’re interested in. She found that not all profiles include all the information wanted. For example, some people did not have photos, so she didn’t have a clue that what the guys look like. Because the information provided by each profile was not enough for her, she had a hard time deciding with whom she wanted to make a friend. Thus, she logged out the website without any gains.

Online identity is shaped according to how you want yourself to be presented. No matter in facebook or the hypothetical blind date website, individuals have the freedom to shape their personal image and present it to other people. The way to present one’s personal image is through cultural interests, such as preferences. As Liu (2007) described, one’s social network profile is like an everyday performance. People can change their profiles at anytime, so in this sense online identity is always being reshaped. However, according to Donath (2007), the self-description of online profiles may or may not be reliable. Take the online blind date for example, if a person says he is 170 centimeter tall, it is hard to tell whether it is true or not even if the person posts his photo on the profile. 

This photo shows the individual changeed her photo 9 hours ago. People decide what kind of self-image to show at will.