Social Software

What's in a blog?

I've had blog paralysis lately, not feeling like I know what to write about. Nothing very interesting happening professionally, or at least nothing I can write about... just yet. Besides which, the beginning 'understanding' phases of a project are high on making plans and asking questions. Not a great deal of interesting insight to write about.

Anyway, it got me thinking about what this blog is for anyway... So, I had a look around at blogs and you've got all manner of them out there. Work only blogs, personal only blogs, blogs that are just links, blogs that are just photos, blogs that are diaries, blogs that are written to four times a day, blogs that are written to less than four times a year. So what's this blog supposed to be about? I'm asking myself. What's missing from my blog experience that has me constipated? Why don't I feel like writing?

So far I've focussed my blogging on work stuff, feeling like if this thing ever gets an audience, I don't think they'd be interested in my little old life. I also have a problem with writing about myself in a self-congratulatory, or what I feel like is an egotistical way. Rarely do my entries contain my interpretations of events, but more factual stuff, links and references that I'd find interesting to look back on. So what's the ultimate goal? Why did I start blogging? Was it to try and assert some kind of territory in the 'blogsphere'? Am I a slave to a trend? Was I trying to open a channel with the new-media boffin in me? Was this designed to try and promote myself as a user experience designer? What? This conflict is has been present from the start of this blog's life and is evident in the title.

On a fundamental level the question really is: Am I writing for me or others?

The very fact that a weblog is all connected to other people and publicly accessible makes it hard explain away as an entirely private endeavour. But it is for personal use. As such it is a list of bookmarks that I can use to support my appalling memory. But its also for public use, or should I say publicity. The work insights I try to put in The Vanity Experiment are supposed to prove that I'm thinking, pushing myself to learn new things. Expressing the things I learn is a way to capture this process, but also to illustrate that I know them. Should a potential employer look on this space, maybe they'll look more favourably on me for having some idea about me or at least what I profess to know.

So there's little of me in this space. Perhaps that's what's missing from the experience? Life isn't all about work, and my life's been too full of other good things recently to have time to write about my profession. So, starting with this entry, The Vanity Experiment is going to have a little more of me in it because life's too short to be so damn professional.

Hello world!

Media Lab Europe Human Connectedness research group

Media Lab Europe Human Connectedness research group has a plethora of interesting things going on the Social Software front.

Thanks to Matt Webb for passing this nugget on his blog.

Links a plenty

DigID

Ooer! Wired article "The SenSay cellular phone, still in prototype stage, keeps tabs on e-mails sent, phone calls made and the user's location. The phone also adapts to the user's environment."

RFID more privacy and identity issues here... Radio Frequency Identification - tag items with a radio chip the size of a pin head.

IA, ID & Graphic Design

Useful IA and Design Resources for sorting out work practices and process.

Deciding which usability test method to use. Nice overview of different usability methods

Found Gold on colour theory and international interpretations of it in design. Colour Matters, Symbolism of Color in different cultures. Also, Colorcom colour consultants.

"Create-ivity"

The trouble with out of the Box thinking article on Ubiquity magazine site.

Random

Grays Anatomy Online. I always loved the book, now it's online.

MSN Chat withdrawal

MSN shutting down their chatrooms is not, I suspect, because of some virtuous sense of guilt about paedophiles and children. When EVER, did you hear of Microsoft closing down a business venture for anything other than purely selfish motives?

It's my guess that there are two factors at play here. One lesser one is that running as large a chat network as MSNs, for free, is not cost effective in any way, shape or form. Users aren't moving around their site, increasing chances of a sale for an advertiser or Microsoft, when they're in a chatroom for an hour. Supporting a chat network technically, has also got to be eating a hole in their pocket... for what audience? Mostly teenagers and children who aren't going to be spending any money with Microsoft or advertisers.

Then, you've got the whole legal side. I would say, should any guardian of a paedophile victim, decide that it is the fault of the provider of the environment where grooming took place, any legal defense of that provider would be tenuous at best. Regardless of disclaimers, waivers and other legalese, a good lawyer would probably be able to successfully prosecute.

Finally and the most probable reason I can spot for this withdrawal, is to do with maintaining Microsoft's brand image. Microsoft needs to appeal to the family market as one of their fastest growing group of customers. A news report directly linking an attack on a child, with MSN's chatrooms, which were known by MSN to be used by paedophiles, would be a disasterous breach of the trust that the Microsoft brand must purvey.

It is my view that shutting down chatrooms means three things for Microsoft. 1) Less overheads. 2) Far lower risk of litigation. 3) Insurance against brand damage. Yes, I think the shut down is based on paedophiles using the MSN chat service... but not because Microsoft "care for the kids", but because as usual, they care for Microsoft.

Attribution & Blog Currency

I want to document an interesting pheonomenon. When Person A 'blogs' an idea, the reader automatically assumes it is Person A's idea. This doesn't seem strange until you observe the same phenomenon when Person A attributes the idea to Person B. The reader still, even if only subconsciouly associates where they picked up that thought (or 'memes') with Person A's blog.

Case in point: These ideas that I'm presenting here in this post, are not mine. I am now attributing these ideas to both Alice Taylor and Paula le Dieu with whom I work. I have picked it up in conversations from them and am now blogging it. But, from now on when you the reader, recall this idea (if you ever do), I suggest that you will associate it with this blog (if not attribute it to it's author as well).

Furthermore, as Paula points out, if the originator of the idea's name(s) is not hyperlinked, then the impact of stating them is significantly less because they don't have a web presence. This holds true particularly in the case where the readers are more often that not, other bloggers.

I work in the web development industry, which happens to be the same place from where many bloggers and therefore readers of blogs come. The ideas presented on this blog are in large part aimed at an audience of my peers, with whom I work now, or may work with in the future. I am more likely to be known within the web community because of this blog. Therefore ideas on here are of some value, forming a currency within the circles of those readers who might visit this page.

Surely, this means that those in my industry without blogs, are at a disadvantage to those who do. Is this fair? Does that matter if nothing will change? Scholars have been doing this for eons (not to suggest that I or my peers are particularly scholarly). If an idea is not from a 'noteworthy' (literally meaning worthy of observation or notice) source who is known within the circle of alumni peers of the author, then no attribution to the conciever of an idea is usually made within a paper or publication.

This is also a child of its parent phenomenon, the 'digital divide' between the information rich and information poor and between the blogs and blog-nots.

Alice and Paula conceived this idea and pretty well all the other thoughts presented within this post after noticing that some of their ideas were being presented on blogs, by other members of their professional peer group. They don't have blogs or websites, so there's no hyperlink to more about them. Will you remember their names, or this blog?

Impartial Rating

Moderation and hosting of bulletin boards is arguably what makes for a good online community. Without it, whether managed by the owner of the service or by the community itself, conversations easily degenerate into spam-fests or flame wars. It is the host, with their carrot that prompts conversations and gently fans the embers of discussion. The Moderator holds the stick and smacks those who behave in an antisocial manner through either a warning or a ban from the system. Whether it's a good model or not is a different debate. If searching for ammunition on such a discussion I recommend this article on H2G2 about the politics of online discussion.

I work for a large corporation that has many, many message boards and 'communities'. They're in a position where they editorially cannot affort to have 'nasty' people being 'nasty' in their public space as this is supposedly a place for all to enjoy. The problem with having good hosting and lots of boards is that you have to pay moderators to trawl through near all the messages to ensure there isn't any 'nastyness' either before or shortly after posts are published to the board (this is known as either 'pre moderated' or 'post moderated').

That is, unless you emply a system such as Slashdot's where, as Clay Shirky eloquently puts it ... [the] core principle, for example, is "No censorship"; anyone should be able to comment in any way on any article. Slashdot's constitution (though it is not called that) specifies only three mechanisms for handling the tension between individual freedom to post irrelevant or offensive material, and the group's desire to be able to find the interesting comments. The first is moderation, a way of convening a jury pool of members in good standing, whose function is to rank those posts by quality. The second is meta-moderation, a way of checking those moderators for bias, as a solution to the "Who will watch the watchers?" problem. And the third is karma, a way of defining who is a member in good standing. These three political concepts, lightweight as they are, allow Slashdot to grow without becoming unusable

However, there are pitfalls to the self moderating system of collaborative filtering. I can't remember who wrote about this, I wish I did so I could link to a far more erudite explaination of the self-fulfilling prophecy syndrome that befalls a self-moderated online discussion. In short, it goes something like this:

Where we have a system that allows a me to view only content that appeals to me (i.e. that other people that I 'rate' have rated said content highly) I will only ever see what I want to see, which is a self fulfilling prophecy. Now, this may seem like a good idea when thinking about filtering out spam and trolls, except when it comes to a situation where a balanced view of the world's take on an issue may be advantageous. If I'm always reading opinions that I agree with, where's the balance in that?

The Corporation cannot afford to keep plunging money into more and more moderators. Especially not when the message boards are becoming more and more popular. So, reactive moderation (a system in which posts are not checked by moderators unless a complaint is made) is phased in on certain boards where the community can be trusted. Moderation costs fall - Hooray!

But, there are still some boards where we can't rely on this system, e.g. in Kid-Safe areas, or where it is considered too legally or editorially risky to have anything defamatory on a space sponsored by The Corporation (regardless of who wrote it), even for a minute. The News site is one of these sites. It is also one of the most popular sites on the web. How do you allow discussion on a site where you can't afford to pre or post moderate? Self moderation and Collaborative filtering are the popular models talked about at the moment. But then you have to think about whether this is healthy in context to the issues raised above. Especially when we're talking about a News division that prides itself on impartiality. Surely, if I don't like someone's viewpoint, I'll rate it poorly and so will people like me. Then I'll see their comments which I agree with... and I'll be happy in my bubble thinking that the world's people all agree with me. Can you have a self moderating system that doesn't fall into this trap? I don't know. I'll let you know if we think of something.