Session 7 Management and conflict

Internet and related communications technologies support an emerging environment : “social software.” As M. Madison point out: "social software” specifically to describe a class of computer programs, environments, tools, and protocols that are designed to enhance individual productivity or sociability in group settings on the Internet or other computer networks. computing is about people, not merely about information. Computing builds connections, networks, and pathways for information and activity, channels that constrain the individual and that enable the group. It concerned freedom and sovereignty, and specifically how to conceptualize the relationship of the individual not to the individual machine. We face new challenges in appreciating the relationship between the law and groups.

One site I choose for my final project is Wikipedia. It is a sort of online encyclopedia that consists of content contributed to and edited by the user population itself. The quality of Wikipedia content appears to vary, depending on the depth and level of engagement of the relevant user population. As it is a well developed website, it has fully developed policy and guidelines as shown in screen shot one. We can category them into five main parts:

1. Behavioral: standards for behavior on Wikipedia to make it a pleasant experience for everyone.
   
2. Content and style: define which topics are welcome on Wikipedia, and provide quality and naming standards.
   
3. Deletion: the body of policies dealing with page deletion.
   
4. Enforcement: what actions editors can take to enforce other policies.
   
5. Legal and copyright: law-based rules about what material may be used here, and remedies for misuse.
   

Also the following links provides some useful information on its copyright policy, its administration and contributions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About#Trademarks_and_copyrights

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:FAQ/Administration


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:FAQ/Contributing




Three examples to break the rules:

Example 1: An open proxy

A proxy server that is accessible by any Internet user. It allows users within a network group to store and forward Internet services to reduce and control the bandwidth used by the group. With an open proxy, any user on the Internet is able to use this forwarding service. Open proxies may be blocked from editing for any period at any time to deal with editing abuse.

This is the problem of free-rider as explained in Peter Kollock and Marc Smith’s paper. A public good is a resource from which all may benefit, regardless of whether they have helped create the good. The temptation is to enjoy a public good without contributing to its production, but if all reach this decision, the good is never created and all suffer. Like in this open proxy example, the bandwidth used by the group is the public resource. If everyone try to use it without control. Then everyone is suffered. There is often a tension between individual and collective rationality. To avoid this situation, some rules have been proposed:

• Group boundaries are clearly defined.
• Rules governing the use of collective goods are well matched to local needs and conditions.
• Most individuals affected by these rules can participate in modifying the rules.
• The rights of community members to devise their own rules is respected by external authorities
• A system for monitoring member's behavior exists; this monitoring is undertaken by the community members themselves
• A graduated system of sanctions is used
• Community members have access to low-cost conflict resolution mechanisms
  

Here we can set a maximum limit for internet user to forbid the user to over use it and blocked for the user for any period at any time to deal with this abuse.

Example 2: Disruptive editors

They can be blocked from editing for short or long amounts of time. Extremely disruptive editors may be banned from Wikipedia. If you do not respect these bans, bait banned users, and help them out, you may be banned. Bans can be appealed to Jimbo Wales or the Arbitration Committee, depending on the nature of the ban.

When content restrictions were removed from a question answering community and social technologies were introduced, participants begin to focus less on topical content and more on one another. This increased site participation, social support and open normative debates, but it also increased conflict, rogue behaviors and factionalism. Sometimes the user may not respect the bans and help the banned user out. Severely punishing such a person might alienate him or her from the community, causing greater problems. Here we can use a graduated system of sanctions. The initial sanction for breaking a rule is very low, such as giving them a warning, blocking them for a short period, While sanctions could be as severe as banishment from the group.

Example 3: Uploading non-free images

avoid uploading non-free images; fully describe images' sources and copyright details on their description pages, and try to make images as useful and reusable as possible. They can be blocked from uploading images for short or long amounts of time.

“Social software” supports the creation and persistence of informal, dynamic groups of people, and it makes those groups visible and salient to a larger degree than they have been before. That salience should prompt law and policy to rethink historic skepticism of informal collectives, particularly in light of suggestions that the loose constraints that define informal groups may enable them to do a lot of good.

Session 6:Online identity and interaction

An online identity is a social identity that an Internet user establishes in online communities and websites. Although some people prefer to use their real names online, most Internet users prefer to be anonymous, identifying themselves by means of pseudonyms, which reveal varying amounts of personally identifiable information.

The online identity used in our Ics691 class on http://www.blogger.com/ is mostly on the following major aspects: the user's posts, the user's personal profile, and the user's account. It includes some aspects include: the user's selected username (some use their real name, others make up a name). The online identities presented on www.bloger.com can be viewed as screenshot. There are many login accounts.

2) Write two informal use scenarios based on your observations of existing users.Scenario 1: We want to post what we read in our assignments.
The first step we need to login, or if we don't have an existing blogger, create one in http://www.blogger.com/create-blog.g The user will choose a blogger title. (Ics 691 social computing.), the blog address: http://yili-ics691socialcomputing.blogspot.com/ and the word verification: filling the word in the images. If it is accepted, you can choose a template for your blog. Of course, you can always edit the template. Then the system will generate a personnel profile according to what you entered. You can post whatever you want in your blog.

Scenario 2: We want to comment to other posts.
The first step we need to login. Then press the comment option. We will have a text editable window to write comments. Select a profile (I use Google account.) and press Post Comment. After entering the word verification, your comments are post successfully.

Online interaction brings the possibility of mass interaction. Steve Whittaker, Loren Terveen, Will Hill and Lynn Cherny explore the demographics, conversational strategies and the interactivity of mass interaction by Usenet. They extend the common ground model into online mass interactions. Common ground is a key principle of face-to-face conversation, and refers to the fact that participants must establish a degree of mutual knowledge for their conversational contributions to be understood. To establish a common ground in huge set of conversational participants with potentially diverse, a strategy of moderation is employed and all interactions are filtered by a small set of moderators who are knowledgeable about the goals and history of the interactions. The mass interactions are explored in three areas:
(a) demographics - size, familiarity and moderation;
(b) conversation strategies - FAQ production, message length, and cross-posting;
(c) interactivity - the extent of conversational threading.

Whittaker etc analysis the affects of demographics and conversation strategies on interactivities. They predict that FAQ production decreased cross-posting and greater message length should all increase interactivity. They try to test their predictions in Usenet. I am very impressed that most of their predictions are disconfirmed. They find that shorter messages actually promoted interactivity although they predict that great message length should increase interactivity. It surprised me very much that they can always find a reason to explain all of these disconfirmed predictions.

Judith Donath introduced the signal theory for online identity. personal identity is not just on what you enter in the profiles, which are perceivable features, but also on the actions that indicate the presence of hidden qualities. Signaling theory models the relationship between signals and qualities. He point out that assessment signals is inherently reliable, because producing the signal requires possessing the indicated quality. The conventional signals are not inherently reliable. The self-descriptions in online profiles are mostly conventional signals. The stronger ties bring reliability to the profile, and a large set of weaker ties expands the scale and scope of the network. To increase the trust and reliability, several methods have been used. One is to increase the amount of knowledge about the others. Also costs may discourage deception but not be high enough to guarantee honesty.

In our ics691 class, we know that all of us are students in university of Hawaii, Manoa. We form small groups and have high reliability. Each of us has different blog template. Some are very fashion and some may be a little plain. I believe that the one has longer post spends much more time than the one has short post.