Group items tagged

"It's like Craigslist -- hugely simple and highly useful," says David Weinberger, a fellow at Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. 4chan's utility is its ability to gather millions of people in conversation in a single place and create a "meme-rich" environment, says Mr. Weinberger.

Mr. Poole originally just wanted a place to share his fascination with Japanese comics and television shows. He was a fan of the popular Japanese image Web site 2chan and wanted to create a version for American audiences. With his mother's approval, he used her credit card to purchase server space and started 4chan.org.

"They get rowdy -- it's like a bar without alcohol," says Willard Ling, a moderator and long-time user of the site. "It's like that psychological concept of deinvidualization -- when groups of people become less aware of their own responsibility." Mr. Poole and his team of moderators have handed out 70,000 bans over the last three years, but preventing long-term abuse can be difficult. 4chan's "Wild West" reputation has created a dilemma for Mr. Poole. While it's brought him Internet fame, albeit through his alter ego, and created enviable traffic, he has trouble selling ads to more cautious companies who don't want their ads appearing next to potentially graphic content. He's attempted to quarantine sexual material on a set of adult boards, but that doesn't stop pornography or other adult content from appearing elsewhere.

Media literacy is the capacity to access, analyze, evaluate, and communicate messages in a wide variety of forms.

Like literacy in general, media literacy is applied in a wide variety of contexts—when watching television or reading newspapers, for example, or when posting commentary to a blog. Indeed, media literacy is implicated everywhere one encounters information and entertainment content.

The foundation of effective media analysis is the recognition that: • all media messages are constructed • each medium has different characteristics and strengths and a unique language of construction • media messages are produced for particular purposes • all media messages contain embedded values and points of view • people use their individual skills, beliefs, and experiences to construct their own meanings from media messages • media and media messages can influence beliefs, attitudes, values, behaviors, and the democratic process Making media and sharing it with listeners, readers, and viewers is essential to the development of critical thinking and communication skills. Feedback deepens reflection on one’s own editorial and creative choices and helps students grasp the power of communication.

Knols will include strong community tools. People will be able to submit comments, questions, edits, additional content, and so on. Anyone will be able to rate a knol or write a review of it. Knols will also include references and links to additional information. At the discretion of the author, a knol may include ads. If an author chooses to include ads, Google will provide the author with substantial revenue share from the proceeds of those ads.

A knol on a particular topic is meant to be the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read. The goal is for knols to cover all topics, from scientific concepts, to medical information, from geographical and historical, to entertainment, from product information, to how-to-fix-it instructions. Google will not serve as an editor in any way, and will not bless any content. All editorial responsibilities and control will rest with the authors. We hope that knols will include the opinions and points of view of the authors who will put their reputation on the line. Anyone will be free to write. For many topics, there will likely be competing knols on the same subject. Competition of ideas is a good thing.

When the folks at Britannica conducted a forensic analysis of the failure, they learned something shocking: the site had crashed because, within its first hours, it had attracted nearly fifty million visitors.

Wikipedia was the modern birth of “crowdsourcing”, the idea that vast numbers of anonymous individuals can labor together (at a distance) on a common project.

There’s a new logic operating: the more something is shared, the more valuable it becomes.

The public world has since become less urgent, more remote, and more tainted.

face-to-face civic activity has dropped as groups with local chapters have given way to groups that count as members everyone who sends in a check in response to a direct-mail appeal.

The important question is the share of income that Americans devote to charity; and by that measure, charitable giving has dropped sharply

In a cruel twist to the case, a Brooklyn retiree who shares a last name with Cherry is getting threats after someone mistakenly listed her number on a Web posting about the cat slaying. "They're all saying, 'You'll burn in hell,' 'Who the hell do you think you are?'" Bernadette Cherry, 72, said of the 75 calls from cat lovers.

Tim O'Reilly's concept of "web 2.0" was first promoted at a 2004 conference of key industry leaders and later spread via his "What is Web 2.0" essay.

There is an urgent need for serious reflection on the core models of cultural production, distribution, ownership, and participation underlying "web 2.0."

those of us who have long advocated for a more "participatory culture" need to better define our ideals and identify and confront those forces that threaten the achievement of those ideals