Session 7

“find the official rules governing the site you're studying for your final project”
I located a variety of “official” that are implemented to govern the sites I am studying (http://sejarahkita.blogspot.com/; http://www.polarhome.com/pipermail/nasional-a/2002-October/000051.html). The sheer amount of the documents was overwhelming and many of them were difficult to digest, which echoes what Grimes et al call the “obfuscated code.” By looking at the documents “in totality,” as Grimes et al do in their study of social games and role-playing games, it is possible to identify two broad patterns of administrative mechanism, as Grimes et al illustrate in their study. According to Grimes et al, “[t]he first mechanism for governance is through the use of source code, or the actual software itself. In the physical world, we are bound by certain laws of physics and nature. These types of laws cannot be changed or challenged; they simply exist.” One example of “source code” from polarhome.com may be a document entitled “GNU General Public License” (http://www.polarhome.com/service/COPYING.html). It outlines terms and conditions for software use, specifically concerning copying, distribution and modification. An example of source code from blooger.com could be “Blogger Feature” (http://www.blogger.com/features), which lists and describes technological features at users’ disposal.

The second mechanism of official rules, as Grimes et al suggest, falls into a broad notion of “civil code.” The authors note that “[i]n virtual worlds, civil code is determined by an elaborate mosaic of legal documents and policies. . . . These individual governing documents contain all of the written codified laws for a virtual world. The corpus of all of the governing documents for each particular virtual world creates the contractual framework for governance of that virtual world.” There are several examples of civil code that I have found. For instance, “Netiquette” on polarhome.com is basically a (situational) code of conduct for users to abide by when they have one-to-one communication and/or one-to-many communication (http://www.polarhome.com/service/netiquette.html). Another example of civil code might be versions of privacy statement that I found on both sites (http://www.polarhome.com/service/privacy.html; http://www.blogger.com/privacy). These documents provide a rough framework as to how the sites monitor personal information and clarify why the sites ask users to provide certain personal information (for authorization purposes).

Here are some other official rules I have looked at:
Legal notices http://www.polarhome.com/service/legal.html
Polarhome.com policy http://www.polarhome.com/service/policy.html
Sponsors http://www.polarhome.com/sponsor.php
FAQs http://www.polarhome.com/faq/cache/1.html
Blogger Feature http://www.blogger.com/features
Blogger: About Us http://www.blogger.com/about
Blogger Terms of Service http://www.blogger.com/terms.g
Blogger Content Policy http://www.blogger.com/content.g
What is the “Flag” button? http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=42517
Digital Millennium Copyright Act: http://www.google.com/blogger_dmca.html

“Find three examples on the site where one or more rules have been broken, specifically in the form of interpersonal conflict (i.e. not just spam posts).”
I found this part of the exercise quite challenging. One reason for the difficulty I encountered might be that the sites (and content) I am studying for final project do not necessarily revolve around (or provoke) interpersonal conflict. My final project examines aspects of knowledge production in three social network site and how that compares to traditional (and peer-reviewed) equivalent in print. So far I have not observed any offensive behaviors to an extent that they might be equated with emotionally distressed “rogue users” in Gazan’s study or a violent “sociopath” in Dibbell’s study.

Madison identifies seven broad features of social software. I believe the sites I selected encompass at least three of such characteristics: open-source software (polarhome.com); weblog (blogger.com); and collaborative authoring technologies (Wikipedia). [Madison 161] For this part of the exercise, I decided to focus mainly on the weblog site. I did not choose polar.com because it primarily functions as a listserv thus does not always generate unless users decide to respond to one another through their postings (I have not come across any of such examples so far). I focused on blogger.com because out of the three, the site is most interactive in a sense that there are a number of comments threads generated by users of the blog.

The Kollock and Smith article points out “conflict” sometimes arises rather subtly (i.e. “freerider problems”) thus does not become as apparent as such an instance as the shooting debacle Dibbell discusses. I have come across a few instances that may reflect the subtle “violation” of the official rules on blogger.com, especially concerning content policy. Blogger.com’s Content policy reads:
IMPERSONATION: We do not allow impersonation of others through our services in a manner that is intended to or does mislead or confuse others [http://www.blogger.com/content.g; italics are mine]. What follows are examples of comments that I personally found confusing and misleading. The first example is a comment posted by a mysterious user, Donny Wijaya (https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=23220868&postID=5243843385212201672). His “comment” consists of a list of web links whose content does not seem to reflect that of the post he is responding to. The post excerpts passages from a 2005 commentary that talks about the significance of a political pamphlet from the 1940s in Indonesian nationalism written by a prominent intellectual at the time. Moreover, he does not offer any explanation as to why he posted the links to these sites. Another example of a puzzling comment comes from a user by the name of “the” (https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=23220868&postID=2954424863626470003). Similarly, “the” encourages the author of the blog to visit his/her blogs which have no bearing of the post she/he is commenting on. Lastly, there is a comment by “barb michelen” (https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=23220868&postID=7484466398330664858), who in response to an essay about a brief history of the Siliwangi unit of the Indonesian Army, brings up a topic of dieting and again provides a link to a site that helps users find work at home jobs (yourtypingbiz.info). Given my limited experience with social computing, I am not certain what the site administrators or software developers could do to monitor the posting of confusing and misleading information, although further refinement of the software might help scan or identify such information. At this level of interaction, it is probably up to the self-awareness of individual users as to what is considered respectable behavior. And perhaps confusing and misleading behavior is inevitable in interpersonal communication because, as Kollock and Smith suggest, there is an inherent tension, online or offline, between “individual and collective rationality” thus what an individual considers suitable may turn out odd and out of context in a group setting.

I wasn’t quite sure how to approach this assignment but here I go. I made my best attempt to observe online identity of a site that I also plan to discuss in more detail in my final project. The site I selected is a blog entitled “Our History” (or Sejarah Kita in Indonesian original: http://sejarahkita.blogspot.com/2006_03_01_archive.html. This is a blog by an Indonesian historian, Rushdy Hoesein and further detail on his profile is available at: http://www.blogger.com/profile/11665498893483341677. [screenshot]

The site has been up since March 2006 and been updated fairly consistently, 1-3 times a month. The meat of the site is essays on selected topics on Indonesian history. Most essays are written by Rushdy himself (or if not written originally by him, at least compiled by him). I found this site when I worked on the previous assignment because one of the essays posted on the site concerns an event in Indonesian history whose knowledge production online and offline I intend to examine in my final project.

In observing online identity of the Blogger post, “Our History,” I tried my best to address the focus questions for this assignment: How do we know online identity when we see it?; How are online identities shaped and expressed through online interactions in this community? In doing so, I figured reading comments would be a starting point. I was pleasantly surprised to see the frequency of comments posted by readers (users), and in a few occasions, the author himself wrote responses. It seemed that close to 70% of the posted essays triggered comments of one form or another. To the best of my knowledge, I did not see any repeaters who left comments more than once.

One salient feature of the comments posted on the site is casual and informal conversations responses to the blog posts. The interactions falling into this category commonly start off by thanking the author for making information available and uncovering previously unknown episodes in their national history. Some users were drawn to the images and were quite amused by unseen images of historical figures and landscape (https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=23220868&postID=6657710124209854077). After reading through comments and looking at user profiles, I came to notice two broad patterns in the demographics of the uses. The first group posted by general (casual) readers, and as far as I could see in their profile, they do not identify themselves as historians, researchers, or academics. [screenshot]

Another common thread of the interactions on the site were initiated by what might be called “professional” users, who identity themselves as researchers, scholars, and graduate students. [screenshots of a user profile and her blog tell us about her academic background]

As for user scenarios, I am still not sure how to go about after observing the interactions on the selected site and reading the sample scenarios (http://www.infodesign.com.au/usabilityresources/scenarios). But from what I observed, I could point to a possibly relevant situation in which a user might be drawn to the site (which may have missed the mark) but in any case, these situations would be: a) a lurker and/or blogger who is interested in reading about Indonesian history; b) a grade school student who is interested in history but does not always find lectures at school useful; b) a researchers/scholars/grad student who actively utilizes online resources for their projects.

One course reading that I could relate my observations to is perhaps the Whittaker article, “The dynamics of mass interaction.” Although the article focuses on a different type of online community with much heavier interaction (the largest newsgroup site, Usenet), I found their approach to the study of online interactivity particularly interesting. Two factors they studied in some depth are “conversational strategies” (e.g. how long is a typical message) and interactivity (e.g. how deep is a typical conversational thread, and how often are attempts to initiative conversation successful)? I believe my observations of communication patterns in the blog, “Our History,” may have touched on a fringe of these two factors.

On the question of “online identity,” one conclusion I could draw from this brief exercise is that “identity” can take many different forms. One characteristic of the blog, “Our History,” is its accessibility in a sense that it presents a poplar history of Indonesia and where traditional academic boundaries were taken off and users from various backgrounds visit and learn something about Indonesian history.