One phrase caught me in this paper: “knowledge brokers.” Of all things, I had never thought of blog users as people who brought to the table unique clusters of interests. I never really thought of blogs as much of a knowledge center either; most of the blogs I have experienced are opinion-based, and often not very well researched opinion.

The blogging realm has never appealed to me in an academic sense; trying to find sources and the ethos of blogging is much more work than the information’s worth, many times. I appreciate and admire the authors of this paper and their well-thought-out explanations on their new technical terms for blogging and information sharing on the internet, but they seem to be missing a completely different medium that fits the middle road between the blog and the mailing list: the message board.

If you really want to get something understood quickly within a specific topic, it is much easier to use a message board than a blog. On a message board, you’re bound to be heard at some point by someone with the same interests, and by signing onto the board itself, you already surround yourself with people at least interested with the topic at hand, if not particularly on your side of opinions. They are well-organized and allow the same types of postings and commenting, only usually more specific in range. But if I read the paper correctly, that’s what the authors wished, some little points of categorization which could easily be facilitated by different threads in a message board.

For collaboration purposes, I believe the message board will be more useful than the blog. Blogs in and of themselves are individual in nature, whereas a message board must be collaborative to exist. I do not know why the authors of the paper disregarded this particular internet form, but they have their reasons, I am sure.

–Katelyn Foley

Oh, come on, people; we’re not offing the author…

…We’re just adding new types of authorship.

I believe the Miller’s article on the subject of wiki authoring was a little scattered and underdeveloped. It felt more like an editorial than a scholarly essay. There was very little concrete information beyond reading a few articles and surfing Wikipedia for a few days.

The author type isn’t dying out. I’m sure that anyone who chooses to write, edit, or comment on a wiki page knows that they’re not getting anything out of it except, perhaps, popularity or respect from wiki-writing fans. They do not write the articles to reveal their name to the world; they write for the collaboration.

I believe this new phenomenon of writing for a combined purpose rather than for a solo magnum opus quite compelling and very telling in our society. I believe that certain groups in our generation are branching out of the Western “rugged individualist” model of the last many decades and moving towards something a little more collective. And I think the internet and such writing group sites as Wikipedia are fostering this new growth in community, at least on an electronic plane.

–K. Foley

((Revised for inclusion in ePortfolio Cognizance))

Honestly, I think collaboration on the web is an awesome idea.

It’s the people that are not so awesome.

In an ideal world, collaboration would have been introduced at the beginning of existence and have run through society at every step. Ideas would not be something to be “owned” but something to be shared, elaborated, and built upon.

However, the human race in general is not so altruistic. There will always be people who are making a profit (we do live with an economy where financial stability is key). Thus, we must own in order to identify ourselves in society and many times personally. So we have to have strictures on ideas and how to use them.

And honestly it is really angering to write something and then get no credit for it. Not cool, folks. Plagiarism is a festering wound on our society’s hide. And unfortunately we can’t seem to agree on its definition. It should simply be using someone else’s work without giving them the credit they deserve. But what is “deserve” and what is the form of “credit”?

All of the articles raise these issues, especially the journalism article; after researching for months on a subject and then finding my work printed by a site that claims its own staff wrote it, I would be beyond pissed off.

But the article on clouding was really great for me; I wish my group partners would do some Google docs on our projects; we might actually finish our work on time.

In truth, it all comes down to whether we are “ethical” enough to give credit where it is due and be responsible for what we write. I think our class will be perfectly fine with this idea of respect. I suppose it also depends on how the project is graded, whether we all get one grade or we all get a combined grade and an individual grade. That will change our mindsets into an all-for-one or a one-for-all thought process.

And as to the collaborative book idea: a few friends of mine and I who used to do message board RPG’s already started a fiction novel based on the happenings of the board. That was six or seven years ago we started that. The author’s a little “behind the times” in my book.

((Edited and refined for posting on Cognizance))

Message Board RPG How-To

World Immersion

Have fun!

Have fun!

“To Be What Is”

There is little to say other than it is a new take on a few of my former creative writing pieces.

Peace out and have fun!

The site has now slimmed down to a sleek interface of picture headers, drawing the viewer’s attention first to the dark blue heading banner with its bright golden eye and Laurie R King’s name in a simple yet bold serif font. From there, the viewer’s sight is filled with four large and colorful book covers of Laurie’s newest writings with small one-sentence descriptions of each story; clicking on an individual book will take you to the book’s webpage. Giving these book covers the main space on the main webpage emphasizes the importance of King’s printed works; if it were not for the books, the site would not exist. Her picture in the right hand column links to her press and contact page while a montage of her book covers leads to a link showing where the viewer can buy her books.

Now, however, the website contains a beautiful clean gray scale background with off-white boxes surrounding important information. The font is now a simple sans serif black with a good amount of space between lines. Instead of a left hand column menu, there is a handy universal drop down menu provided underneath the heading banner and a search bar on the right. The right hand column now holds only a few pieces of information via pictures, such as the author and a link to sign up for the newsletter . The viewer does not even have to scroll down to see all the contents on the right column, keeping the layout simple and to the point.