Group items tagged

Manjoo, F. (2009, September 28). Is Wikipedia a Victim of Its Own Success? Time Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.time.com/time/magazine Is Wikipedia a Victim of Its Own Success? is an article which suggests Wikipedia's achievement level has reached its peak and eventually will see its downfall. The article looks in depth at the potential causes for Wikipedia's slowing growth and how these elements could possibly lead to the community's eventual failure. It suggests one reason for Wikipedia's decelerating growth rate is simply that "the site has hit the natural limit of knowledge expansion" and the only possible remaining contributions are obscure topics and "janitorial" editing job such as formatting and fixing grammar. The article claims "Wikipedia's natural resource is emotion" and editors are motivated by the "rush of joy" they receive when contributing their unique wisdom to an audience of 300 million people. What this means is that as the need for significant edits diminishes, so too does participation enthusiasm. Additionally, as Wikipedia has grown, so too has the bureaucracy and complex laws of Wikipedia, resulting in a community that has become unwelcoming to novice Wikipedians. The article discusses how Wikipedia editors are made up of a narrow class of participants dominated by young males from wealthy countries and academic backgrounds. The Wikipedia author-base is not as broad and diverse as first thought and it seems "the encyclopedia is missing the voices of people in developing countries, women and experts in various specialties that have traditionally been divorced from tech". This too is given as a reason for Wikipedia's imminent downfall.

This article brings up a very interesting idea: the concept of an endpoint for Web 2.0 communities. As the author relates it, this would occur as a Malthusian collapse. Whilst at first glance this seems unfeasible given the infinite expanse of virtual pastures, the article makes some interesting points for consideration: the number of contributors on Wikipedia is dropping and it seems the we have run out of topics to write. It is interesting to compare the Wikipedia community to that of Bittorrent which has found renewed growth, and purpose, in the context of its struggle against copyright laws. Wikipedia has been hailed as a revolutionary form of knowledge democratisation, it is hard to imagine that wikipedians don't share a sense of purpose in their collaboration, and, perhaps even harder to imagine that we are running out of things to write about. Whilst this article is from a highly reputable source, its bias might be considered in following that of the conservative media toward copyleft, this is highlighted by phrases like 'Wikipedia's joyride' which suggests the growth of the site as frivolous. Considering the data it presents, the article is certainly very relevant to an understanding of online collaboration and thought provoking. I cannot help but think that there are still multitudes of topics to be written about, how many contributors, for example, have penned a page for themselves? Whilst ostensibly trivial, this might be the kind of interaction that sees renewed interest in the site and attracts the minority demographics which Gardner says the site needs to make its community richer (p.2). Perhaps the flagging interest in the site comes from the reason that the site is moving too close to the status quo, that as the BitTorrent community has seen, it needs to reminded of its position in an ideological shift.

This article starts with a brief summary of Wikipedia's start. Wikipedia started its work in 2001 and allowed Wikipedia's to contribute and share their articles with others through it. Wikipedia increased its article slowly, in 2008 there were about 2200 articles being added to the Wikipedia every day and in 2009 Wikipedia had about 3 million articles in English. So, Wikipedia broken the record held by Chinese Yongle encyclopedia, which was the famous encyclopedia (Manjoo, 2009). According to my own studies, Wikipedia has different level of articles; they divided to low-, medium- and high quality and different people must play different roles, such as linking, editing and writing. For example, cleaning up other editor's mistake is a very important part, because some people do not add valuable information and some editors must come to increase articles quality and maybe the article needs another editor to correct the article again and this process may need to continue many times to increase quality of that article. However, that does not mean casual users work is not worthy, because, they can absorb more well-rounded contributors to make more valuable articles. To help contributors, University of Arizona suggested Wiki software, which guides contributors to know what should they do, for example, they will aware the article needs more link, references or it needs more editing and writing (Conger, 2010). Conger, C. (2010). Who writes Wikipedia articles? Retrieved from http://news.discovery.com/human/wikipedia-community-articles.html

This is an extremely interesting article as it focuses on the ways in which wikis have excelled in enticing people into contributing and exciting them about making contributions. Businesses and organizations can learn a lot from this article as it also illustrates ways in which a wiki can be used to increase the rate, amount and quality of contribution. The precise nature of Wikipedia is one of the greatest advantages it has over other information sources. People looking for information find their topic and the information provided is in a formatted style that is maintained throughout the site. The limited security measures on Wikipedia allow people to contribute what they wish with minimal restrictions. The question is however can a wiki such as Wikipedia be used effectively to add value and increase collaboration within a business environment? Wikipedia does allow users to contribute information and remove the barriers and restrictions of both geographic and social status. This can allow bias or ill-informed information to be present in articles. Within a business structure there is little to no chance of purposely misleading information being presented to the articles. This does remove one of the major problems that Wikipedia faces as the integrity of information is assured. So with this in mind does a wiki remain a great resource for collaboration within a business environment?

Overall, this article provides a nice summary of how businesses and corporations can employ wikis in their knowledge production, highlighting some of the advantages and disadvantages and discussing some troubleshooting problems. Yeo (2010) notes that an added benefit of using wikis in businesses is that multiple people can work on a document at once, allowing multiple editors to work on different sections of the wiki at the same time. However where companies may struggle is with the layout and formatting of the page. Hasan and Pfaff (2006) note that IBM, the Disney Corporation, and British Telecommunications are just some of the major corporations that have successfully implemented the use of wikis into their business structure. The Shell Corporation is yet another business that has successfully employed the use of wikis in their organisation (Hendrix & Johannsen, 2008). Similarly, the revision history and ability to track editing changes made to pages is a common advantage running across all of these studies. Although this article offers a nice description of how wikis can be used in businesses, it does not delve into the world of knowledge management and using wikis as a knowledge sharing platform, as discussed by Hasan and Pfatt (2006). They also fail to provide strategies to motivate employees to make use of the wiki and participate in knowledge contribution, as mentioned by Hendrix and Johannsen (2008). Nevertheless, the article makes us aware about wikis and how they can be incorporated in businesses, noting some of the advantages and limitations. Additional References: Hasan, H., & Pfaff, C.C. (2006). The wiki: an environment to revolutionise employees' interaction with corporate knowledge. OZCHI. 11(24-26). Pp377-380. Retrieved 19th March 2012 from http://www.ozchi.org/proceedings/2006/sessions/short-papers/social/hasan-p377.pdf Hendrix, D., & Johannsen, G. (May 16th, 2008). A knowledge sharing and collaboration platform. Inside Knowledg

This article related to my topic discussed about how Wikipedia as one of the popular online collaborative encyclopedias allows everyone to write and read its article for free and there are large numbers of businesses all around the world who edit and publish its articles (Yeo, 2010). According to my own studies, Wikipedia will be good for small businesses? Wikipedia as a popular online community can help small businesses to have an article there. Of course, everyone can make a page in Wikipedia, but, having a page for businesses can bring more customers for them, for example, Zip's Drive-In has article in Wikipedia which gives information to people about its fast foods. Tekserve, sales Apple products in New York, has a Wikipedia article to gives beneficial information about their new products and absorb them on their own blog. Or even "Hollywood-based Roscoe's House of Chicken and Waffles" has article in Wikipedia (Mcgee, 2009). But why businesses want to have an article in Wikipedia? They can have great exposure of their new products: when a company has article in Wikipedia that means more people all over the world can read their information that brings them more exposure. They can manage their information and their through Wikipedia and people know Wikipedia as a trustable resource. Moreover, Wikipedia gives permission to businesses to update their articles, and with the help of Talk page they can read customers wishes and suggestion (Mcgee, 2009). However, businesses must aware there in Wikipedia there will be some angry customers and they may edit their articles, so, businesses should aware to correct any untruthful information which added by others and it is a truth that monitoring can be very time-consuming for them (Mcgee, 2009). Mcgee, M. (17 september 2009). Should a small business have a Wikipedia article? Available online at: http://www.smallbusinesssem.com/should-small-business-have-wikipedia-article/2311/

In the article, Collaboration in context: Comparing article evolution among subject disciplines in Wikipedia, the writers Katherine Ehmann, Andrew Large and Jamshid Beheshti, compare a small selection of articles - some newly created, and some well-established - from three subject disciplines - the hard sciences, soft sciences and humanities - in order to examine the article quality, how it differs from discipline to discipline and if it changes over time (Ehmann, Large & Beheshti, 2008). One of the most interesting findings that was published in this article was that, contrary to previous research (Brandle, 2005; Dondio, et al., 2006; Lig, 2004; Stvilia, et al., 2005a, 2008; Wilkinson and Huberman, 2007), the articles used that had a greater number of edits than the others, were not the articles of the highest quality (Ehmann, Large & Beheshti, 2008). Wikipedia articles on average retained 90.3 percent of their original text and in general, only small edits were made over time (Ehmann, Large & Beheshti, 2008). I believe these new findings still support, 'the wisdom of crowds' theory though (Surowiecki, 2004, p. 5). Even though a large portion of the text remains from the original contributor, the small edits by other contributors over time, still help to fine-tune the article's meaning and readability. The authors' exploration into Wikipedia Talk pages is also of interest, especially how these places aided the collaboration and coordination process and how this in turn contributed to the quality of articles in Wikipedia (Ehmann, Large & Beheshti, 2008). While Ehmann, Large and Beheshti only studied a small number of articles, and another study is required which examines a larger number of articles, in order to make more conclusive findings, I think this article is still a useful resource (Ehmann, Large & Beheshti, 2008). It is constructive to compare this article's findings to the findings in the Rosenzweig article (Rosenzweig, 2006).

I think this article is interesting and pointed wisdom of crowd cannot bring high quality for Wikipedia's article. Talk pages are playing important role in Wikipedia, editors post their suggestion there and other active editors come and follow them or put other suggestion to make a more credible article (in Talk pages the most request belonged to the suggestion for editing and completeness had the less request followed by accuracy and accessibility) (Beheshti, Ehmann & Large, 2088). According to my own research, one of the important things, which mentions in talk pages is about sources of articles which can take a place as print resources, deep web resources external links and inexact references. Disagreement about content of articles is another important subject in Wikipedia and before an article edited, editors discuss in talk pages about adding controversial material or removing content, and then they get a decision to how edit the article. Talk pages may use to notify other users to know this article had recent edit or editors ask their questions there from other or they request for help. However, the author mentioned participation of contributors on different topics is different. There are many articles which have only one comment on their talk page and there is large number of articles who has various comment and suggestions on their talk page (Breslin, Passant & Schneider, 2010). Breslin, J, G., A, Passant. & Schneider, J. (2010). A content analysis: How Wikipedia talk pages are used. 7. Retrieved from http://journal.webscience.org/373/2/websci10_submission_80.pdf

Collaboration in Context takes an in-depth view at the collaboration which produces Wikipedia pages. I was attracted to this resource in that I imagined it would assist me in understanding how users interacted in a organised context - ie. the mindsets of users collaborating on a specific, and, in the case of many Wikipedia pages, complex, task. Whilst the paper examines the development of pages from a 'contributor's' point of view, it does this through statistical interpretation of a set of data the authors assembled on page edits. The result is that the paper doesn't so much uncover the nuances of collaboration in an organisational setting, as relate the nuts and bolts of page editing. Perhaps, the mores of collaboration might be inferred from this reading of Wikipedia's collaborative process, though I found it difficult to see this in numbers rather than testimony from wikipedians themselves. What this paper does do is highlight the efficacy of 'talk pages' in the process of building of 'rich' Wikipedia entries. These forums provide the engine of collaboration on Wikipedia - users able to get together as a group to uncover the most efficient ways to combine their work - the paper concluding, "Talk pages - in addition to article edits themselves - provide wikipedians with a powerful means of shaping the presentation of knowledge. (chap.8)" This information is useful to me in the way I will be able to compare it to the, say, simpler, and more spontaneous collaboration of strangers in bittorrent which does not require a 'talk page'. What I would have liked to have known is how the 'talk' on these pages allowed networks of 'equal' users to perfect articles on complex topics, and what the users themselves thought of the arrangement.

Ball, P. (2007, February 27). The more, the wikier. Nature: International weekly journal of Science. Retrieved from http://www.nature.com The More, The Wikier is an article published on Nature: International Weekly Journal of Science, which explores the secret behind the quality of Wikipedia entries when anyone, anywhere has the ability to write and edit content. The article looks at three groups of researchers who "claim to have untangled the process by which many Wikipedia entries achieve their impressive accuracy". Wikipedia is an organisation in which users collaborate their knowledge to create an encyclopedia of information. "The percentage of edits made by the Wikipedia 'élite' of administrators" is steadily declining and "Wikipedia is now dominated by users who are much more numerous than the elite but individually less active." "The wisdom of the crowds" principle suggests that the combined knowledge of a large and diverse group is superior to the knowledge of a few experts. Ball explains that content accuracy and quality of Wikipedia articles is related to a high number of edits by a large number of users. For example, articles that deal with very topical issues receive a higher level of attention from a large and diverse audience and therefore are of higher quality than articles that are not as topical and thus do not attract the same attention. The three research groups referenced in the article are: Dennis Wilkinson and Bernardo Huberman of Hewlett Packard's research laboratories who studied how a high number of edits by a large number of users create the 'best' Wikipedia articles, Aniket Kittur of the University of California, and co-workers who explored how the Wiki community has evolved from a small governing group to a democracy, and Ofer Arazy and colleagues at the University of Alberta who discuss the importance of this diversification of Wikipedia contributors to the overall success of its articles.

This article takes a look at the crowd sourcing idea that Wikipedia thrives on. 'Lots of edits by lots of people'. Crowd sourcing makes use of the knowledge of crowds. The more people you have contributing information to an article the more information the article will contain. This is however affected when fewer people begin to contribute to the writing and collaboration process. A person contributing to the Wikipedia page may only be making a change as small as a simple grammatical correction but it means quite a lot to the overall aesthetic of the page. People are far less likely to believe the information presented by an article filled with errors and punctuation problems. It might seem like a small issue but this is how many hands make light work. Wikipedia's reliability comes from its ability to be edited by many people with small alterations. It is strange however that in your other article regarding Wikipedia being its own worst enemy you have points made there of why Wikipedia is leaning towards extinction. These mainly are concerned with the decreasing number of people editing. So is Wikipedia going to stay strong or will it slowly become just another encyclopedia?

Ball's article highlights the successful nature of Wikipedia's open source network and how quality of information is achieved. He suggests that the 'secret' to Wikipedia's credibility is the increasing number of contributors and the 'diversification' it brings to the platform through collective knowledge (Ball, 2007). I can relate Ball's article to Surowiecki's (2004) article Wisdom of the Crowds because it reinforces the notion that people must be unrelated, independent, and have diversity of mind from one another to form good opinions. The architecture of the collaborative platform Wikipedia harnesses the 'power of the crowds' in such a way that encourages diverse participation, as opposed to a group-think scenario, and thus produces 'wisdom' through quality information (Surowiecki, 2004, p5). Ball observes that Wikipedia's structure allows for an above average quality of information on more topical articles. This occurs because popular topics create more traffic, which in turn enables more contributors to edit an article and therefore creating more 'diverse' and 'reliable' information (Ball, 2007). This reinforces the quality of an article through diversification and mass collaboration. This notion of 'quality' can be applied to the Kony 2012 campaign page on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kony_2012), which has been edited over 500 times and has been viewed 1,227,982 times since 6 March 2012, when the Kony 2012 campaign was first launched (Wikipedia Article Page Statistics, 2012). However, it is at this point that the similarities between Ball and Surowiecki cease. According to Ball, the Kony 2012 Wikipedia article is a prime example of a topical issue. The statistics reinforce his observations about Wikipedia's crowds and how they are able to create credible and reliable information due to diversification brought into the article by 1,227,98

Kittur, A., & Kraut, R. (2008). Harnessing the Wisdom of Crowds in Wikipedia: Quality Through Coordination. Carnegie Mellon University. Retrieved 2012, March 19th from http://kraut.hciresearch.org/sites/kraut.hciresearch.org/files/articles/Kittur08-WikipediaWisdomOfCrowds_CSCWsubmitted.pdf Harnessing the Wisdom of Crowds in Wikipedia: Quality Through Coordination is a study that looks into "the critical importance of coordination in effectively harnessing the "wisdom of the crowds" in online production environments". The article suggests that Wikipedia's success is reliant on significant and varied coordination from its users and not just determined by a large and diverse author-base as proposed in other studies (Arazy, Morgan, Ofer, Patterson, Raymond & Wayne, 2006). Elements such as editor(s) coordination methods, article lifecycle, and task interdependence determine whether a large author-base will be effective or counteractive in achieving high Wikipedia entry quality. The study found that unspoken expectations and a shared understanding (implicit coordination) between authors encouraged positive results when collaborating with a large author-base however more editors promoted a negative effect on article quality when using direct communication and verbal planning (explicit coordination). During the early stages of article development, both implicit and explicit coordination tend to promote content quality because author(s) need to establish structure, direction and scope of the article. For these high-coordination tasks, the study found it was more beneficial to have a small or core group of editors to set direction and as the article became more established, value can be maximized by distributing low-coordination tasks, such as fixing grammar, correcting vandalism and creating links, to a larger author-base.

This paper discusses the how online community can increase the size and quality of Wikipedia's article. In Wikipedia 40% of edits have done with the help of discussion page, which they focus on development of policies and procedures, communication and consensus building. Most of the editors read discussion page to know how they can increase the quality of the articles (Kittur & Kraut, n.d). According to my own studies, the most exiting research on Wikipedia belongs on how many times an article needs to have the highest quality? And why some articles have high level of quality and others not? Some contributors like to read and edit articles with similar subject and they do not edit other articles. So, Wikipedia, needs some soft wares to ask contributors' the duties they should do. For example, one article needs more reference link and another one needs more grammar correcting and of course, there are some people who their interest is finding relevant links or there are some others who like to correct grammatical mistake and they just need to know which article needs their help, so, these kind of soft wares can assert to contributors needs of articles and help of contributors Wikipedia can have equal level of quality for its articles (Ram, 2010). Ram, S. (2010). Who does what on Wikipedia? Available on http://www.redorbit.com/news/technology/1832403/who_does_what_on_wikipedia/

In this article there are real world examples of how mobile technologies are being used within the four walls of a bricks and mortar retail store. The article interviews two different people and investigates their use of Smartphone technologies while shopping for retail goods. It proves valuable not only because of its direct reference to mobile technologies in the hands of consumers, but for the first time we can begin to see the evolution in mobile device information sourcing. Although both the consumer and producer are slowly realizing these capabilities, it is fair to say that the ongoing process of experimentation reflects mobile device adolescence. There are connections between reoccurring themes such as changing business models, changing consumer behavior and the evolving development of mobile applications that are best understood when put into practice. More specifically just how could information be used and integrated into the everyday conditioning of mobile devices? One example as illustrated in the main focus of this article, are applications that are used in store by Smartphone owners in order to compare prices on stocked items. However depending on Smartphone user location settings retailers can push additional information to shoppers already sourcing product information from competitive brands. This reference to retailers also utilizing mobile technologies and information distribution is equally as valuable and shows a shift in business practice that surpasses traditional discount models. Bustillo, M., Zimmerman, A.(2010, December 15) Phone-Wielding Shoppers Strike Fear Into Retailers. [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://www.retailgeeks.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/2010_1215_Phone-WieldingShoppersStrikeFearIntoRetailers.pdf

Yeah a good article pointing to a great opportunity for retailers. The big insightful learning from e commerce prior to this trend was that you did not have to be the lowest priced or the best quality. You just had to be most accessible with a good website, good shopping process, and let people pay. The early adopters were willing to sacrifice price and quality to get convenience. With the trend in this paper pointing towards the vast majority joining the automated shopping process now retailers will be able to more easily offload all their dead stock and the need for genuine end of season sales will be reduced. The retailers with good sales skills will make bigger profits. I see a trend here were businesses that do not keep up with online opportunities will go out of business. Is it possible for the immigrant bakery that has a competitive advantaged based on good quality and hard work to survive? With no website and a cultural belief that hard work wins business possibly they can survive when there is a local community that does not consult a phone to make a choice. Right now supermarket price dumping on bread is doing more damage to private bakeries than any social media app. When other varaiables come in that add to a drain on cash flow like increased rent, more mouths to feed, increased competition, etc then I see this brings increasing reasons to force people to start using social media to seek more business. Just like domain names. You buy one or two you will use for your business and then you buy 5 or 10 for defensive reasons. The last thing you want is to put a great effort in to developing your online position to then have someone buy a similar domain name and pour money at SEO and capture your market. www.carlislebakery.com.au as a prime web address could be undermined by www.carlisebakery.com if you do not buy them both. So the same is with social media. You might not be motivated to get more business but you are forced to the table to protect y

This article isn't about the common definition of mobile crowd-sourcing where data from crowds is aggregated. Instead, Bustillo and Zimmerman describe how mobile technology has brought about a shift in the consumer-retailer relationship which is "threatening to upend the business models of the biggest store chains in America." The article describes how in the past, American retailers (and I'll be bold enough to say retailers in other developed nations as well) could get away with selling items at inflated prices because consumers had no easy way to determine whether those prices were reasonable. Now, the article explains, the ability to compare prices with a smartphone has ushered in a "new era of price transparency". The article paints a bleak picture for the future of retailers who can't or won't make their prices more competitive. Articles like this highlight the fact that our increasing use of smartphones is heralding some fundamental changes in the way we live. And despite not fitting the normal discussion on mobile crowd-sourcing, changes in market dynamics like those described in this article are entirely due to the behaviour of crowds. After all, retailers depend on a crowd of consumers to buy their products, so when technology enables that crowd to shop smarter, it's no surprise the retailers feel a little anxious. The article doesn't mention any effort on the part of the retailers to aggregate data from online consumers in order to better market their products, however with web analysis software this is easy enough to do, and I suspect it's happening. So the transparency works both ways: the consumer has newfound clarity on prices, whilst the retailer gains clarity on consumer behaviour. This article, along with the Wisdom of Crowds Wikipedia article, has me considering mobile crowd-sourcing as a powerful means of market regulation. This could be a theme of my essay for module two.

Lotan, G., Graeff, E., Ananny, M., Gaffney, D., Pearce, I., & boyd, d. (2011). The Revolutions Were Tweeted: Information Flows during the 2011 Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions. International Journal of Communications, 5, 1375-1405. Retrieved March 24, 2012, from http://ijoc.org/ojs/index.php/ijoc/article/view/1246/643 This article investigates how information was disseminated via Twitter during the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions. It is clear that there were advantages in relying upon Twitter and social media during this time, because these sites provided real-time updates that mainstream media could not convey, due to the limitations of the platform, or censorship (Grossman, 2009; p.1399). The use of hashtags or key words assisted in the organisation of information, such as #sidibouzid and #Tunisia (p. 1376; p. 1395). However, the constant and rapid flow of content made it difficult to determine what is false and what is legitimate information - Twitter's strength and weakness in this situation. It is essential to understand how information can be organised and filtered through the positions of 'actor types' (classification of users in this study), making this article valuable to the study of political protests. There were many different actors mentioned but the most important contributors to the dissemination of content were journalists, bloggers, and activists. These actors had a tendency to retweet information from the same actor type or amongst the three aforementioned categories, to essentially create a sense of reliable organisation to the Twitter chaos (p. 1393). The study also concluded that individuals, rather than organisations, were considered more reliable during the uprising (p. 1398). This appears to demonstrate the scepticism associated with mainstream media in a society that no longer wishes to be talked 'at', but rather invo

This article relates my topic in its discussion of Twitter usage in online activism. The online activist group Anonymous (my topic of choice) also performed activist activities surrounding Egypt and Tunisia. Much of Anonymous' activities were organised through the use of Twitter making this article quite relevant. As suggested in the article, Anonymous did appear to have certain high powered actors who highlighted information of particular relevance to the operations, affecting the flow of information through the Twitter network. The article is published in a peer-reviewed journal making it a highly reliable source. It is also quite recent, written in 2011, which is a huge asset given the rate at which social networking technology progresses. The article is also perfectly relevant to the discussion of Twitter usage in political protests. The way that information flows and is determined critical or irrelevant through various actors' retweets is an important topic. I found the article quite useful as the topic is closely related to the online activism performed by the Anonymous group. This article contributes a great deal of value to this collaborative resource development project on a whole, as it is a reliable source, is very recent and it is highly relevant, dealing with Twitter as a collaboration and organisation tool.

This article, recently published by security firm Imperva, investigates how an Anonymous attack is mounted. A Particularly interesting point is that this article makes no mention of IRC channels, instead painting Facebook, Twitter and Youtube channels as the main methods of communication for Anonymous. Also interesting is that such communication is referred to as recruitment, recruitment of technically savvy hackers and not so technically savvy activists who are willing to participate in the attack. Particular attention should be paid to pages 6-8 which outline the recruitment activities over Facebook, Youtube and Twitter. Imperva outline the technical methods used to stage the attack, mentioning that there are 10 -15 'Anons' working to analyse the victim website for security vulnerabilities. These are more experienced hackers who are searching for a vulnerability that might allow them to retrieve private data from the victim (p.6). Although not mentioned in this article, perhaps these experienced hackers collaborate using Internet Relay Chat. When no vulnerability was found, Imperva notes that Anonymous instead tries a DDoS attack, but instead of employing the LOIC, a web based version is used for ease of participation (p.13). This way, users of any device can be recruited (through social media) into participate in the attack with minimum of barriers to entry. Although this article focusses heavily on the technical aspect of the attack, a significant portion of the article deals with the recruitment of participant through social media, alongside discussion of the online variant of the LOIC collaborative Denial of Service tool. Anatomy of an Anonymous Attack. 2012. Imperva. http://www.imperva.com/docs/HII_The_Anatomy_of_an_Anonymous_Attack.pdf

This document may prove to be quite a significant additional reference to my focus of my chosen topic of the Anonymous movement and hacktivism. This article discusses precisely what Mansfield-Devine (2011) neglected to note; that within the Anonymous movement, there are a number of individuals with significant hacking skills who are able to retrieve valuable data from the targets of Anonymous attacks. The article quite thoroughly deconstructs the order in which Anonymous attacks typically occur, the differences between the two major types of individuals who participate, and circumstances under which Anonymous attacks are generally able to be successfully performed (2012). Of particular interest, is the emphasis placed on the importance of acknowledging the fact that Anonymous attacks are not always as harmless as they may appear. Another interesting note is found within the conclusion of the report. The report suggests that targeted, small-scale data retrieval attacks are the preferred means of attack for the Anonymous movement and that "DDoS is the hacker's last resort" (Anatomy of an Anonymous Attack, 2012). This would suggest that unlike many sources of information regarding Anonymous hacktivism attacks, Imperva has identified the serious nature of many incidents involving the Anonymous movement, which do not necessarily receive as much immediate attention as a simple DDoS attack may. Anatomy of an Anonymous Attack. (2012). Imperva. Retrieved from http://www.imperva.com/docs/HII_The_Anatomy_of_an_Anonymous_Attack.pdf Mansfield-Devine, S. (2011). Anonymous: Serious threat or mere annoyance? Network Security 1: 4-10. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au/science/article/pii/S1353485811700046

Petray, T.L. (2011). Protest 2.0: Online Interactions and Aboriginal Activists. Media, Culture and Society, 33(6), 923-940. Retrieved March 25, 2012, from Sage Journals Database. http://mcs.sagepub.com.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au/content/33/6/923.full.pdf+html This article conveys, that while it is necessary to utilize the tools made available by the digital age, they "should be used to enhance offline activism, rather than to replace it" (p.936). The author has studied an Aboriginal community in Townsville, and the difficulties that activists have faced in gaining momentum in a digital space. Unlike the young tech-savvy protestors in the Arab uprising, or the destructive youths in the London riots, the participants in this community are older and not comfortable with new technology. In this remote community, emails have been favoured when conveying information and organizing meetings online (p.927). However, this has caused difficulties in the disjointed fragmentation of messages, as well as, interfering with a culture that values visual storytelling over the written word (p.930; 927). Similar to, Climate Camp in the UK, the community may have benefited from using some Internet tools, however, face-to-face meetings were found to be more effective when collaborating and organising events. To further their presence online, the group created a Facebook page, allowing people to donate money and support them. However, the lack of success in gaining political momentum is linked to the participants and the current nature of online activism. Whilst the page can facilitate collaboration and organisation, it lost its momentum in the lack of group activity and recent updates (p.933). Due to the current nature of online activism, people can simply 'like' a page or sign a petition to show their support towards a cause, with little to no effort (p

Whilst I totally agreed with the concluding points of this article I found it very hard to identify just which topic this article had the greatest relevance to. It is a reliable source as it is associated with the James Cook University and the author has positioned themselves within the community they are researching. I could draw similarities with one of my articles, Public Radio's Social Media Experiments: Risk, Opportunity, Challenge, (Levenshus, 2007) in that they both reference a resistance to social media opportunities. The reasons for this 'resistance' in both articles could be put down to a lack of knowledge, resource allocation and institutional culture or 'cultural explainations' (Petray, 2011, p. 927). The understanding that 'push-button activism' was more of a feeling of evolvement rather than the translation of any 'real participation', supports the articles offer of a resolution. Any negative ideals about cyber-activism are squashed by the simple resolution of combining offline infrastructures with the online and not just relying on either one. Overall I thought this article was a breath of fresh air. Whilst I realise that 'cyber-activism' has been in the spotlight a lot lately due to the Kony 2012 campaign, I was delighted to read an article that turns its attention to local activism. Aboriginal cultures have always maintained my interest and just recently I viewed the 'Tall Man' exhibition that dealt with the Palm Island death in custody referred to in the article. It had a profound affect on me. I also appreciate that preserving oral histories and the rite to communicate in ones own language has deeply embedded social issues within Australia. This is another reason why this articles direct referencing of Aboriginal activism is refreshing and of great value. Equal access to social technologies is so very important in closing the digital divide both globally and locally. As the article points out only '25%' of the globe have such access (P

Reference: Levenshus, A. 2007. Public Radios Social Media Experiments: Risk, Opportunity, Challenge. Retrieved from http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/sites/default/files/public_radio_report3.pdf

Steve Mansfield-Devine, editor of Network Security, analyses the threat of the Anonymous activist hacking group. In doing so he discusses the collaborative tools used to organise the members of Anonymous into a focussed effort. The tools discussed include the Low Orbit Ion Cannnon (LOIC) and various spinoffs, Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and Twitter. Mansfield-Devine's discusses the Anonymous group's usage of the LOIC as a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) weapon. Mansfield-Devine makes a clear point that only with enough users is the LOIC effective, making the effective usage of the LOIC a collaborative operation. The more users collaborating with the tool, the more effective it becomes. Mansfield-Devine discusses how Anonymous members are coerced into participating in an LOIC attack, specifying IRC and Twitter as the main forms of mobilisation of members. His discussion highlights IRC as a primary form of organisation, with Twitter being taking a more secondary role in directing potential participants into IRC channels. Mansfield-Devine does note that Twitter became an integral part of Anonymous organisation when their domain names were taken offline by authorities during Anonymous operations. Tweets were sent out to redirect the Anonymous participants into new IRC chat rooms to continue the attack. Overall, this article concisely covers IRC, Twitter and LOIC based aspects of Anonymous collaboration and organisation. Mansfield-Devine, Steve. 2011. "Anonymous: Serious threat or mere annoyance?" Network Security 1: 4-10. http://dx.doi.org.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au/10.1016/S1353-4858(11)70004-6

In this article Mansfield-Devine explores the threat of the organisation Anonymous and the collaborative tools they use to organise the group. In relation to this, he specifies that Anonymous uses "Low Orbit Ion Cannnon (LOIC) and various versions, Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and Twitter" as his key tools for facilitating organised attacks on institutions (Mansfield-Devine, 2011, p. 4). This article links to the article 'Kony 2012: The Template for Effective Crowdsourcing?' by Olubunmi Emenanjo, on more than one level, they are both about outside organisations against institutions, and they both undeniably rely on social media and the power of the crowds for the mobilization and facilitation of their actions and recruitment (Emenanjo, 2012). The success of the Kony 2012 campaign and Anonymous's attacks can be pin-pointed to how the organisations are aimed at a particular audience, reinforced by social media platforms, and most importantly how they harnessed networking tools to deliver their messages. However a major difference between the two groups is that the Kony 2012 organisation has a consistent online identity, while Anonymous has anonymity. Little is known about the organisation itself but the tools they utilise (LOIC, IRC, and Twitter) lead us so assume that their audiences engage with the organisation. References Emenanjo, O. (2012). Kony 2012: The Template for Effective Crowdsourcing? Communia. Retrieved from http://stipcommunia.wordpress.com/2012/03/13/kony-2012-the-template-for-effective-crowdsourcing/ Mansfield-Devine. (2011). Anonymous: Serious threat or mere annoyance?. Network Security, 1, 4-10. http://dx.doi.org.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au/10.1016/S13534858(11)70004-6

Although much of this article is not particularly useful to my focus on Anonymous, this article still raises some interesting notes. The way in which the author plays down the impact of Anonymous' actions towards the end of this article is of particular interest. The author often refers to the disorganized nature of the Anonymous movement, and suggests frequently that although a number of individuals may be involved, automated 'botnets' are often more effective than Anonymous members (Mansfield-Devine, 2011). For my focus, this is the most important part of the article because of the way in which the author neglects to take note of Anonymous members who do more than simply use LOIC and other DDoS attacks. Although it may be true that Anonymous DDoS attacks may not result in significant, long term damage to their targets, the disruption caused by such attacks can often provide enough distraction for Anonymous hacktivists to retrieve data from said targets. With hacktivist groups within movements such as Anonymous being responsible for the largest amount of stolen data in 2011 (AFP, 2012), Anonymous DDoS attacks could pave the way for much more damage to be done to websites than the temporary service disruptions noted by the author of this article. Mansfield-Devine, S. (2011). Anonymous: Serious threat or mere annoyance? Network Security 1: 4-10. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au/science/article/pii/S1353485811700046 AFP. (2012). 'Hacktivists' biggest data thieves in 2011: Verizon. Retrieved from http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/world/13242086/hacktivists-biggest-data-thieves-in-2011-verizon/

Catone, J. (2012). Relax: Twitter's New Censorship Policy Is Actually Good for Activists. Mashable. Retrieved March 23, 2012 from http://mashable.com/2012/01/27/twitter-censorship-activism/ This news article from the online news site Mashable takes a look at the announcement that Twitter will now censor tweets on a country-by-country basis, and argues that this is actually a good thing for online activists. This is contrary to the widespread backlash that has been made against Twitter with users pledging to boycott the service over its new censorship rules. The author points out that Twitter has always been subject to takedown requests, and that this was on a global scale so that if a tweet or user was removed it had to be done for everyone in the world. The author believes it is a lot better that "now, Twitter can remove that tweet in that country, but allow the world to see it". His rationale is that everyone outside of the offending country can still see the tweets, and that if Twitter were to refuse a takedown notice from an oppressive regime it could have its service totally blocked for all users in that country. The fact that Twitter has pledged to increase its transparency in dealing with takedown notices strengthens his argument. I agree with the author on this and find this an especially useful resource as it provides links to circumvent Twitter's technology in an effort to get around censors, and arguments that this new change could even allow the message of censored activists to be more powerful.

This article is of relevance to my chosen topic (the Anonymous online activism group) as it deals with Twitter and the way oppressive governments seek to deal with it's collaborative and organisational power. Mansfield-Devine (2011) discusses how Anonymous use Twitter heavily as a method of collaboration during their activism operations. Though the article says otherwise, if Twitter's censorship were to inhibit this kind of collaboration this could affect the way in which Anonymous organises itself. The reliability of the source is reasonable. Mashable may be a somewhat sensationalist online news website at times, but this article in particular has many links within allowing one to see the sources behind various claims. The article is of considerable relevance to the topic of online movements as it deals with threats to online activism. Twitter itself is subject to pressure to silence of voices of dissension in certain rendering Twitter less useful for activism purposes. I found the article somewhat useful. It highlights that Twitter impervious to control and censorship. It also highlights that Twitter is a powerful tool for organising uprisings and political movements. This article is quite valuable to the overall collaborative resource development project as it is reasonably reliable, deals with the collaborative potential of Twitter and highlights some of the threats to online movements. Mansfield-Devine, Steve. 2011. "Anonymous: Serious threat or mere annoyance?" Network Security 1: 4-10. http://dx.doi.org.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au/10.1016/S1353-4858(11)70004-6

Prior to reading this article, I had not been aware of Twitter's new censorship policy related to each individual country. After reading the title of the article, I failed to see how censorship on Twitter could possibly be considered to be a good thing for activists so I was interested to see the writer's arguments. I definitely agree that Twitter's opting to censor certain tweets is the more desirable outcome than a whole country be denied access to the site. Twitter's approach to censorship, something that they don't seem to be able to avoid on some level, has been handled in the best way possible given the circumstances. I believe that transparency of the 'take down requests' has real potential to alleviate some of the frustration users may feel when they notice that something that was there yesterday is suddenly gone today. This method of publically displaying the reason why something has been removed seems to work well for YouTube in similar censorship cases, particularly in relation to copyright cease and desist claims.

Jaap van den Herik, H., Postma, E., & Spek, S. (2006). Wikipedia: organisation from a bottom-up approach. Maastricht University. Retrieved 2012, March 19th from http://arxiv.org/pdf/cs/0611068v2.pdf The article Wikipedia: organisation from a bottom-up approach is a study into Wikipedia as a successful self-managing team via the analysis of the Dutch Wikipedia. The study explores how Wikipedia successfully creates a cohesive and logical data structure through bottom-up organisation in which labour division is autonomous. The article suggests that this bottom-up structure, with many contributors working towards a common goal, enables greater speed and efficiency subsequently allowing Wikipedia to update new developments faster than other encyclopedias. Additionally this structure, coupled with the online nature of the information network, encourages more communication and cooperation between divisions, increased enthusiasm in participants, and decreased managerial overheads. In terms of Wikipedia's content organisation, a sample study of Wikipedia articles demonstrated article clustering, scale-freeness, and potentially even small-worldliness indicating that Wikipedia's content is itself an organised network. Finally the article looks into the varying Wikipedia pieces and author types and analyzes their relationship. The study found that articles which receive a low average of edits per author (average of edits = number of edits on an article divided by the number of unique authors on the same article) in general "deal with topic areas that most people have at least some expertise in, or topic areas that everyone claims to know about". Contrastingly articles with a high average of edits per author were generally more specialized topics. What this means is that articles, which cover mainstream topics, attract a larger and more diverse crowd of authors (