MAKING INTERNET REVOLUTIONARY IN FAVOR OF DEMOCRACY

“An amazing thing happened in the presidential contest of 2004: For the first time in my life, maybe the first time in history, a candidate lost but his campaign won.”

                  (Joe Trippi, The Revolution will not be Televised)

What Joe Trippi trying to say when he emphasizes Howard Dean’s Presidential campaign in 2003? “A candidate lost but his campaign won”.

The Dean’s campaign started with seven people in the campaign staff, $100.000 in the bank and four hundred thirty two supporters. At the end of 2003, almost in a year, Dean’s campaign ended with $50 million fundraising (from small donations $100 or less) and 640, 000 supporters. However it wasn’t enough for him to be the President of United States.

As Trippi says end of his book’s introduction one of the most essential results of this campaign is that it was the story how American people engage in real dialogue. Dislike other political campaigns in the past; this campaign stopped “selling” to them. This time the platform where the parties meet was different: Internet.

The aspects, interactivity and social networking have made internet a convenient place to give voice to voiceless, to share, to talk and to access information. It is not all about how much technology emerged in 21^st century. I believe that if you don’t use the internet primarily for public’s favor (not only being accessible but also being questionable), you will not be accomplishing anyway neither as a businessman nor a politician.  

TVs and radios haven’t given us a chance to show our reactions and express our opinions about what we’ve considered most. We were just listening and watching in the past but now we have been getting a part of the conversation. We have started to make our preferences on the internet easily and quickly.  For instance online buying, selling, searching, watching, networking, mailing, discussing, surveying, talking, reading…etc.

As we realize almost everything what we were doing manually before the internet came into our lives, has been getting ONLINE.

In this sense why we don’t think about “online democracy“?  As long as we maintain and encourage democracy on the internet we will be eligible to apply democracy among grassroots. The transformation from “TV society” to “Internet society” has been emerging increasingly. The internet will reach everyone in the world eventually. Thus why we don’t launch revolution on internet in favor of democracy?  

I think Howard Dean’s campaign was launched with this belief and has devoted itself to power of democracy. Alike Dean says: “To really use the Internet well, you have to build community, not just enable fundraising.”

In my opinion whoever adopts this mentality would be successful in the future like Howard Dean and Joe Trippi. 

WHAT IS YOUR POLITICAL LANGUAGE? “A monologue or a conversation”

“The very technology that has transformed the global economy has transformed the campaign process as well, so that the race will be run as much on the World Wide Web as in union halls and town squares and on television. ”

From the introduction of “The First Campaign” , Garrett Graff

This statement explains why we have been facing with the First Campaign. It is quite hard to make further comment on the book because  The First Campaign pictures whole journey how technological and political developments emerged synchronously in the last decade.

Today we have been watching political debates on TV where politicians were asked various and spontaneous questions by people because of YouTube. Today also people are invited to vote almost for everything.

As we have been examining during our class online media tools; blogs, social networking platforms, online campaigning and many other ways on World Wide Web are vital as new communication channels to say your word to people not only in your neighborhood but also to the world. This is the biggest consequences of globalization and technological revolution in today’s world. The thousand, millions of people are brought together to demonstrate their voices with only one SMS massage today.

The people are not voting only for political candidates’ appearances on TV but also they consider how much candidates response their crucial manners in their conversation and how much let people to make contributions to the conversation. As a result of that politicians have been realizing the power of the conversational communication with the society. Therefore they turn their head towards online fund-raising campaigns.

We all are aware how Howard Dean’s fund-raising campaign had been successfully accomplished. Dean’s campaign has raised $ 50 million and funds came largely in small donations over the Internet, the average overall donation size was under $100. Suchlike fund-raising has happened first time ever in political campaigning in the US history. This is an ultimate example of how much internet can be efficient in even political campaigning.

“The First Campaign” gives us the very interesting evidences about how the way of social and political communication and sharing was transformed by maximum usage of technology. On the other hand I agree that using of new technologies is not the only indicator to determine whether you’ll be successful or not. The question is how your tune is while you are reaching people through technology. Are you allowing people to join the conversation or wanting only their votes? What is your language in this sense? Monologue or conversation?

According to “The First Campaign”:

*In the fifth-season finale of Fox TV’s American Idol talent show, more people voted for singer Taylor Hicks than have ever voted for a presidential candidate in any U.S election.

*The candidates have profile on Facebook.com, the social-networking website targeted at collage students. A Facebook group for Barack Obama swelled to a quarter million people in less than a month, and when Hillary Clinton went onto Yahoo!

*By the end of May 2007, ABCPAC, the conservative fund-raising site equivalent to the left’s ActBlue, had raised only $385 for all GOP field. Meanwhile, ActBlue which draws upon the larger more organized and powerful progressive blogosphere, had raised more than $3 million for John Edwards alone, and total of some $22 million in online donations since its 2004 lunch.

REAL-TIME WARS

 The Persian Gulf War was my first televised war. In January 17, 1991, CNN launched reporting from the Gulf. Meanwhile I was 12 years old and first time in my life I was witnessing the term of “Live War”. Every single day we were watching Peter Arnett and Bernard Shaw as others in all around the world. It was quite influential war for my generation because we had never seen the war before this much transparently.

Nearly 10 years later I wrote my graduation thesis on “The War on Journalism“. How about that? I always think that this is most crucial and uneasy part of journalism. Besides difficulties to gather information under the war conditions you put your life at risk to cover the story. What motives encourage journalist for doing this?

In the collage during my journalism classes what I was thought that there is no particularly Journalist for “War” because Journalists can not be part of the war.

They can’t support wars in order to get more “FAME” or “RATING“. They just report what they have seen and witnessed. However it is always hard to determine fine line between “Doing your job” and “Helping wounded people”.

Reporting America at War is a documentary where we can find chronological development of war reporting and also how the way of reporting has changed in the years. Moreover we can remind what were the most essential rules and characteristics of journalism in the era of war. 

16 years after first heavily-televised war, how much media changed? A lot…Technology has emerged incredibly and now we are not satisfied with televised war anymore. We need to know more and more because we have a power to do that. Altough we have real-time reporting now it isn’t enough because this time we want to get different opinions from different sources. How about real-sources such as real Iraqis? What does it mean real Iraqis? Only Iraqis can pursue us what is really going on there. Isn’t that transformation of news to reality shows? Do we have any expectations like that? If answer is yes why we need a journalist? Did Journalists lose their credibilities?

Journalism essentially requires seeking truth and public enlightenment. In order to do that journalists have to keep neutrality, objectivity, newsworthiness, and minimize harm as much as possible.

If we assume that everything meets with these conditions listed above “Why War on the Web” is so controversial as a new reporting way. Kevin Sites and Blogging Controversy is a key case on that issue. He is long-time experienced veteran war correspondent but he was told to shut down his popular site because he was not legitimate enough.

If we want professional journalist in the field what disturbs us? I think this is not completely related with his journalism skills. The reason of controversy is BLOGGING. Blogging is still suspicious and illegitimate among the majority of journalists and journalism scholars. Paul Grabowicz, the new media program director of Graduate School of Journalism in Berkeley criticizes unedited war blogs and adds: “We are getting into some treacherous water here. If there is not an editor reading before it goes up, it is taking away a safeguard that’s sensible one in journalism-to make sure you get it right before it’s published”. MEDIA: Web logs offer stream of consciousness from the front

Moreover blogging on war not just done by experienced journalist but also students, soldiers, individuals (Iraqis, Americans) as a nature of blogging. You can find wide list of Iraq War Blogs here. Iraq Today

Some war bloggers says that “Only two things we need to have are laptop and satellite phone. We don’t need an editor”.  I think this is the point what we really need to consider it. That is why we can’t count on any bloggers as a journalist. Bloggers also tends to use more casual style of writing. How we can evaluate facts? Is this is a real story or just make up? 

In the sum of these conceptions the answer of “Is seeing and reading about war good thing or bad thing?” question would be “Good Thing” without any doubt. This is amazingly important for public enlightenment; encouraging freedom of speech and press. People can express their feelings and opinions as an opponent of war or supporter of war. We should not have any problem with this part of the contention.

On the other hand  if we are considering every-war related blogs like an example of journalism the answer will be big “NO”.  We do have already enough disinformation in today’s world. People can be deceived through propaganda channels, defemations and inaccurate information. I think how much we are reading or seeing on war is not critical issue at this point. On the contrary I believe we need to determine whether every writings or videos on war has a journalistic value.   

TRUTHINESS: RESPONDING JESSICA’S ARTICLE

What a girl…There are so many things in Jessica’s entries. Creative thinking, fair criticism, fun, life, sensation, nostalgia…I like her style because she writes like she talks and catches my attention easily. She is also persuasive because she provides the facts accurately and dauntlessly. I do completely agree with her comments about Wikipedia-Truhtiness dilemma, I’m fascinated with Jessica’s approach to the issue. Let’s remember what she wrote in her entry, The Trouble with Truthiness.

 ”My problem with Wikipedia’s devotion to truthiness is that it values heart over fact. It favors what one dream as oppose to what one sees. That’s dangerous because the heart is too abstract to qualify. It’s impulsive. Facts, on the other hand, are tangible and retraceable. “
I would like to extend the controversy. Thus heart is too abstract to qualify; we can’t prevent subjective and relative information that place in Wikipedia anyway. We have already seen that on Wikiscanner projects. Institutions, companies, people who have some affiliations with them do not hesitate to be supplier of TRUTHINESS.

I do not mean that we have to have kind of dictatorship or censorship to rule on every article we’ve entered or edited. Of course I do not. Wikipedia can remain as an alternate and easy way to reach at practical data-base but it can’t impose like an objective and neutral source.

Moreover this is why newspapers, encyclopedias exits. We need to trust them. Otherwise truthiness term will terminate everything we used to know before. This might seem as an exaggerated chaotic picture but if we do not support grassroots media as much as new media tools I have a sense that we will experience this in early future.

Ok understandable. The both new media tools and grassroots media have pros and cons. Technology has made new media tools more accessible and easier than others. This is not enough to answer my question. How about evaluation, confirmation, news worthiness? I am not talking about seeking truth because in this case it is not that much easy to find what the truth is.

Let’s go back to Jessica’s comment again.
“To say that George Washington did not own slaves is a blatant lie. Of course he did. An infinite number of American white men of means living during the 17th and 18th centuries owned slaves. No offense to wikiality (though that’s a really adorable nick name), but that was reality. It’s not a comfortable reality to recall, but it is reality nonetheless. In denying that, one denies American History as well. More, if facts about slavery can be erased, so can facts about the Holocaust, the Iraq War death toll and Janjaweed militia attacks. Everything becomes subject to web user whim and/or discomfort. That scares me. “

As she pointed out denying, refurbishing, imposing, propaganda were not easy that much before Wikipedia. Frankly we are forced to accept wikipedia as an ideal way to learn. I don’t have to applaud EVERYTHING that new media brings to our lives.

WHAT I LIKE ABOUT “PostGlobal”

 Due to my intense interest in international relations, reading about global issues is almost part of my ordinary life. Though newspapers such as The Washington Post and New York Times have very rich content on International developments, naturally they have limited space to publish every single coverage or article that is related to my interest area.

Besides it is hard to read my favorite writers every day in Washington Post because Post has only one page that reserved for the writers who write about International Relations. For instance Fareed Zakaria and David Ignatius are both my favorite writers. I used to read their writings in both Newsweek and Washington Post but their articles appear only once a week.

When I start to look at Washington Post’s blogs, I’ve found Post Global among them. 

“A CONVERSATION ON GLOBAL ISSUES”

This is what I was looking for:  “A Conversation on Global Issues with David Ignatius and Fareed Zakaria.” In the print edition of Washington Post’s Global Issues Section, you can find only couple of writers. However in Post Global there are 46 bloggers who write particularly on international issues. There are also 33 tags that represent particular regions. Once you click on each of tags you can get related news and entries instantly.

Zakaria and Ignatius, the creators and main bloggers of Post Global describe their blog:

“Post Global is and experiment in global, collaborative journalism, running discussions of important issues among dozens of the world’s best-known editors and writers. It aims to create truly global dialogue, drawing on independent journalists in the countries where news is happening-from China to Iran, from South Africa to Saudi Arabia, from Mexico to India.”

In the light of this aim I think it is very clear what global issues have to be handled journalistically. Many international journalists who work in overseas and columnists contribute to this blog and as a result there is a huge collaboration where various news, articles place on one platform. We do have a chance to see different perspectives and voices. There are very attractive applications such as Global Power Barometer, (GBP) tracks and analyzes thought and actions across the world and frequently catches sight of issues that will impact global politics.

There is also another section called as How the World Sees America contributed by Amar C. Bakshi. He reports from 11 different countries across the world including interviews and pod casts.

In Post Global, they also post questions twice a week and then gather responses from members of their network of experts on one particular issue. The readers of this blog are having a chance to get quick and professional comments on recently important developments in the world. 

This is a real conversation. For instance I’ve seen 259 comments on Amar Bakshi’s post what is titled as “Turkey to U.S.: Drop Your Orientalist Lens.”

 Moreover every single post is linky. If you don’t have background information about current issue you can follow the links that are already pasted to the post. It is like exploring the world. As prospective media leaders at least we need to know what is going on all around the world.  Thus gathering accurate, neutral and variety of information from the world we need to have professional help. I think Post Global is the right address to visit.

In the Post Global, tune, approach and coverage are completely different than Washington Post’s print edition. Unlike Washington Post’s limited pages, Post Global doesn’t have this problem. This reflects negatively on Post’s paper edition. As a result inadequate quantity of articles, lack of diversity and just reading writers’ opinions on one particular issue make me feel more unsatisfied.

I WAS TERRIBLY ALONE IN SECONDLIFE BUT YUPIIII!!!MY PACMAN STILL EXISTS

Let’s go back to my childhood for a while. Despite I’m not a huge fan of today’s gaming style, I have my own history with gaming:) As I remember, I have had my first gaming experience when I was about 6-7 years old. This incredible technology was named as Commodore 64.
We were changing cassettes once we finished Pacman ,we were playing another game and fighting about who is going to be  next. It was seemed to me like we were dealing with high-tech at the time. We were playing with Commodore 64 and It was huge deal in my childhood. Now, almost 3 decades later, Commodore became an ancient and games were first transformed to computer games and and finally to online ones. BUT THANK GOD THE PACMAN STILL EXIST!! Even I have Pacman application on my Facebook. Thus we can make that analogy : “Technologies can change but fun always stays in our hearts in same way”:))

After I have searched “Online Games” through Google, the result was unbelievable. The all blue links were saying FREE ONLINE GAMES entirely everywhere on the page. This is an incredible development in online gaming industry in last decade. What is the most attractive point playing game through online? As a result of online social networking and its magnet effect, Massively multiplayer online role-playing games such as SecondLife’s popularity have been growing every single day.

I have experienced SecondLife but I could not spend more than 3 hours to figure out what was goiong on. They are selling, buying, eating, flirting…etc. In short everything what we do in our real lives. At least Kristin Kalning, the Game Editor of MSNBC, describes like that. I have created an account in SecondLife, it took almost hour, and started to look around. Where I am going to go now? I felt terribly alone! I’ve tried to go more populated places but this time nobody accept me to settle there:((( I was getting tried by looking an Ireland for me and getting kicked out from where I wanted to settle each time. I didn’t even know how I could buy a house or private land to build my own place. I was desperate as a SecondLife Resident. Therefore I don’t have positive ideas about either 3D or Virtual World games because first you need to know how instructions work and what the rules are.

I am not in a regret. I insist that they are not welcoming games. I have a precious life and it is so real. Why am I supposed to spend my time to be part of an artificial life? Besides I’m not alone and I’m perfectly sociable person. I don’t want Agent Smith in my life.

However everyone is obsessed with these games. They emphasize themselves with characters who lives in the game. Maybe they can not get what they want in their real lives but their Avatars can do that instead. They can reach whatever they like in their Virtual Life. Isn’t that an Illusion? Indeed people do what they can’t do in their lives and somehow this game continuous. This kind of games can create asocial and character-disorder people.

While I was experiencing other games such as Persuasive Game’s “Points of Entry” Immigration Challenge, “The Arcade Wire” Airport Security, “Presidential Pong” I found them more realistic examples than surreal ones. At least they are part of our daily-base lives. I even felt that these games makes our lives more funnier.

ATTRIBUTION-NONCOMMERCIAL-NO DERIVATIVE WORKS 3.0 U.S LICENSE

These are the words well-describing my copyright license that I would like to have one for my blog.
First, I would like to declare that everyone would be free to share, copy, distribute, display and perform of my work. However they must ATTRIBUTE the work in the manner specified by me and I will not endorse them or their work in anyway. They were the good news so far. My license also requires NO DERIVATIVE WORKS rule. Therefore you may not alter, transform, or build upon my work. More importantly my works can not be used as COMMERCIAL purposes.
As you see my copyright license choose brings both restrictions and freedom of using my work.
I think I’m too conservative on this issue. I am not only the one thinking like that. My license is the most restrictive of six licenses of Creative Commons provides. “This license is often called the “free advertising” license because it allows others to download your works and share them with others as long as they mention you and link back to you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.”
Mercy! I have just dived into online media atmosphere and I have been hesitating to be copied:) I would like to remain as a unique blogger.
In all of a sudden I may pitch the story of my life and I would not want to share this with anyone. This is also same for  the picture I may take as a first photographer in the world. The rights on my work have to be my initiative. Therefore I do not allow the person who wants not only to use my work but also make changes or add something on my concept. By this way I can prevent the others who might wants to alter my work by changing format, style, colors, layout, size, shape or attempt to pass this off as his own work.
Also I don’t want my written or visual work to appear as a commercial material. You can not take an advantage through my efforts without my permission to earn a profit from the information that I have provided, directly or indirectly. In this way I can prohibit publishing my work to any commercial Web site.
On the other hand I do not have any problem distributing or making verbatim copies of my work by individuals for any purpose but commercial as long as they mention my link and my name.

WIKISCANNER REPORT ON FOX NEWS CHANELL

When I have started to search about Fox News on Wikipedia Scanner, I knew that I could find so many things worthy. Here are the topics what were edited by Fox News and most attracted to me. I think most of them can be taken as objectivity and Neutral Point of View (NPOV) causes. As one of the biggest news organization in the United States Fox News needs to foster objectivity and neutrality in media industry.
Before I started to list the topics I would like to make a summary in over all. My first observation is that Fox News doesn’t give a chance to any opposition or debates wherever its name takes place. They omit the whole controversial part and put how they believe instead.
In Fox News edits we can apparently see the words ‘Some Democrats’ and ‘Some Liberals’ have been substituted by ‘Democrats’ and ‘Liberals’.
They tend to use plural form of these words instead adding the word some. In fact “some” doesn’t exists in their format. Fox News has been editing these words promptly as the way they like. They have been targeting all democrats or liberals as components of the particular issue. Second, they tend to present Fox’s anchormans, reporters and their works as an admirable and unquestionable. However the other network’s anchors are presented as insignificant and unsuccessful. They omit the reports or critics by media organizations on their reporting such as Media Watchdog, Media Matters for America. They do some minor edits on grammar and proofreading but their quantity much less than contextual edits. Let’s examine some of the edits that I believe they are strongly attached to objectivity and NPOV issues.

Al Franken-Fox News Conflict

In this case National Public Radio intentionally and specifically wanted to be described as liberal and also Franken’s comment on Fox News was completely changed.The paragraph in older edit:
“The lawsuit focused a great deal of media attention upon Franken’s book and greatly enhanced its sales. Reflecting later on the lawsuit during an interview on the National Public Radio program ”Fresh Air” on September 3, 2003, Franken said that Fox’s case against him was “literally laughed out of court” and that “wholly (holy) without merit” is a good characterization of Fox News itself.Fox News has edited this paragraph like that:
“The lawsuit focused a great deal of media attention upon Franken’s book and greatly enhanced its sales. Reflecting later on the lawsuit during an interview on the liberal National Public Radio program Fresh Air on September 3, 2003, Franken said that Fox’s case against him was the best thing to happen to his book sales.

 Carl Cameron-Journalistic Fraud 

In the wikipedia article on Fox News’s correspondent Carl Cameron contains critics on his reporting and accusations being a both journalist and partisan Republican at the same time. In the first edition of article there have been also findings of Media Watchdog Report on Cameron but they were omitted by Fox News.
 

Chris Wallace-Bill Clinton Interview 

 Fox News has omitted the part that was containing critics on Chris Wallace’s statement during the former president Bill Clinton interview. Also Fox News has omitted the part of an e-mail campaign that was organized by Modern American Liberalism and Wallace has never taken in response.

Keith Olbermann-Return to Reporting

Keith Olbermann-Trivia Keith Olbermann-Smoking

Eeach articles about Olbermann,  has been edited by Fox News, he has described as a liberal commentator who criticized by conservatives. Fox News has been accusing him repeatedly for making story about himself the day after news veteran Peter Jennings passed away from lung cancer.

Pastor Dennis James Kennedys

He has been described as the most listened to Presbyterian minister in the world by Fox News edit. Isn’t that relative information that we may not agree?

DOES ITS AN UNDENIABLE POPULARITY MAKE WIKIPEDIA “ENCYCLOPEDIA”?

WAS THE WIKIPEDIA REALLY CREATED FOR CYCLOPEDIC MATTER?

If you are a journalist, academician or scientist you always need to have suspicious approach. We need to question facts. Otherwise the visible part of Iceberg’ may mislead our conclusion. The history of “Truths” or its opposite way “Truthless” lies down through the creation of human being. Describing the these two terms getting harder than ever in the condition of 21.century due to intensive Disinformation. In my opinion disinformation is translated to another word recently. As Steven Colbert describes, “Truhthiness”, the term defined as the quality of stating concepts one wishes or believes to be true, rather than the facts.

We are as a millennium society have witnessed the revolution of Information Technologies in last decade. The most essential part of this revolution is self constructed, instructed and controlled Online Media. Online media have brought wide alternatives. Moreover it has created substitutionary media environment due to an online newspapers, blogs, social networking sites etc. People have started to read online newspapers instead of reading hard copies, to chat online instead of talking on the phone, to talk online instead of meeting in somewhere, to search on Google or Wikipedia instead of giving an eye on encyclopedia.

“FREE ENCYCLOPEDIA”

Of course we praise for what Wikipedia provides us. In fact nobody has an full-objection for blessings and contributions of online media tools to our daily lives. However the case what we are discussing influences all the society due to its technological power and attractiveness. As an our case study, Wikipedia’s core aim is providing a free encyclopedia to every single person on the planet according to Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia. This is the magic word for all online media tools. FREE! He adds that Wikipedia is a lot more than a equal website also wants empowering people everywhere to have the information they need to make a good decision. It seems too idealistic isn’t it.

Let’s look the other features of Wikipedia?

According to All Headlines News, Wikipedia surpassed the 2-million article mark on September 9, as of October 8, 2007 Wikipedia’s English-language edition had over 2, 039, 985 articles. As of September 2007, Wikipedia had approximately 8.29 million articles in 253 language. Wikipedia’s articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world and the vast majority of them can be edited by anyone with access to the Internet. Due to Wikipedia’s open nature, critics have questioned its reliability and accuracy. But because it is constantly updated, Wikipedia is also a source for rumors, a target of vandalism and a hub fornews and other internet phenomenon, with 6.8 million registered users worldwide.

“CONTROVERSIES ON WIKIPEDIA”

There have been many controversy and criticisms on Wikipedia’s concept. It has been criticized for being open to editing by anyone, being usefulness as a reference, it’s anti-elitist approach, systemic bias in coverage, systemic bias in perspective, privacy concerns, prediction on failure, threat to traditional publishers, quality of writing, anonymous editing, copy write issues, difficulty of fact-checking, using a dubious sources, exposure vandals such as John Seigenthaler Sr. Wikipedia biography controversy.
Moreover there are many criticism also made by contributors such as common complain “Flame Wars”, view of editing, dominant liberal bias, censorship, administrator actions, level of debate, male dominations, lack of credential verification.

“WE DON’T TAKE A STAND IN CONTROVERSIAL ISSUES”

Jimmy Wales describes their control mechanism as: “We do not talk a lot about truth and objectivity the reason for this is if we say we are only gonna write the truth about some topics that does not do us better good figuring out what to write because I don’t agree with you about what is the truth. We have this jargon term of neutrality which has long history with community. Anytime there is a controversial issue wikipedia self should not take a stand on the issue. We should report what reputable parties have said about it.“

Wales adds that Wikipedia has diverse contributors in terms of political, religious, cultural backgrounds and aims to keep everyone on Wikipedia’s Neutral Policy. I think this is the most crucial point of the controversies. There are several cases where Wikipedia has failed and I think the quantity of failures will increase in the future. Here some examples:

Mercedes hunts for Wikipedia vandal

Japan Officials Warned Over Wikipedia

Qatar’s Contributions Curtailed at Wikipedia

“DOES ITS UNDENIABLE POPULARITY MAKE WIKIPEDIA “ENCYCLOPEDIA?”

For the conditions and controversies that I have listed above we can’t count on Wikipedia as an encyclopedia. If we are talking about public enlightenment through informations we have to stand for seeking truth and being an objective. Wikipedia can not reject that they are not one of the major media tools in today. If they think wikipedia has a suitability as an encyclopedia they need to have fundamental transformation from “everyone can edit” to “only experts can edit”. So I am answering the question: “We should trust expert-led encyclopedia no matter what Wikipedia provides easiest way to find an information.Due to Wikipedia should be open to just verified “experts”.

I might be a dinosaur because I am defending this idea but it seems the only way to enduring objectivity and preventing “Truthiness”.

 

 

 

The Pros and Cons of An Online Social Networking

Do we need a Bill of Rights for the social web?

There is no doubt everyone wants to feel comfortable when they are using social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Friendster etc. The social networking brings not only opportunities to conduct our own media and social network but also provides more challenging market in favor of consumers. As Scoble says there is no rule book for blogging and this is “Come as you are conversations”. The authenticity is the core value that makes blogging such a new and different way for business to communicate. As much as being real and accurate in blogging, both companies and individuals reach to”success”. There are many examples of blogging by companies and individuals but now they have been realizing the value of social networking. For instance, Cisco Systems, a Silicon Valley heavyweight, plans to announce one of its most unusual deals: it is buying the technology assets of Tribe.net, a mostly forgotten social networking site, according to people close to the companies’ discussions.

Opportunities, Challenges and Risks

Once we carry this issue through social networking platform we also need to think about risks and rights for users of the Social Web. Let’s question the attractiveness of Facebook and other networking sites. Why they are so popular and addictive? Why MySpace attracts 70 million users, why Facebook has 27 million uniques?

What is Facebook’s secret sauce?

Is an enthusiasm knowing more and more about others who might be our friends, associates, family or their network? Supposedly I know who are close friend of mine. I already know their interests, backgrounds and current activities. How about the person who I do not know him/her that much or do not see for a while or have any single clue about? Am I strongly interested in their identities? I think we need to make rigid description of “FRIENDSHIP” in this point.

First, I need to categorize my friends as how much intense and extent ties with me. We can aggregate them as “Top Friends” or classify in different place. According to Jeff Jarvis, Facebook is a confused social space for that because there are too many different facets of personality being exposed through social openness. I agree with that. Whatever I make any configuration or change on my profile it is accessible through newsfeed for not only my friends but everyone. This point needs to be managed.

“BEFRIEND”

Moreover people can get invitations from people who actually are not their friends anymore or never have been. How are they going to deal with that? If they are not able to make decision whether they would accept this invitation or not by themselves they will not feel secure and comfortable while using their network place. The only solution is befriending someone but this time it is look like a discriminating someone. If I do this publicly I could be punished to do that somehow. This creates many misconceptions.

“Are Identities under the risk of theft?”

The another risk is identity theft. Some users of Facebook and MySpace routinely place information such as their date of birth,relationship status, locale, workplace and work history or even their address,email and phone number, right in their profile without any restrictions about who sees it.”

I really liked the way of this description on social networking: “People don’t put a sign on their front yard or apartment door listing the dates they’ll be away on vacation and all of their personal data. But, “people are doing just that through the growing phenomenon of social networking Internet sites, where members post pictures and current information about themselves as a way of keeping in touch and sharing information with “real world” friends, business associates, family and classmates,” states Grant Thornton senior forensic manager David Malamed. http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/October2007/01/c6097.html

For all those purposes we strongly need to have an ownership of our own personal information such as own profile data, the list of people we are connected to and activity stream of content we create. Control of whether and how such personal information is shared with others; and Freedom to grant persistent access to their personal information to trusted external sites as they are the requirements of A Bill of Rights for Users of the Social Web.