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This is a page from BitTorrent.com's Idea Bank, a messageboard where people can post the ideas they would like to see adopted by BitTorrent's programmers. This page can be used as a text in the way that it demonstrates the user attitudes toward collaboration in bittorrent. The page shows conversation in fourteen posts. Firstly, we see something of the ideology of bittorrent, coming from the culture of Open Source software it actively invites the user's input into development. The conversation is interesting because it presents distinct 'for' and 'against' arguments on the inclusion of a 'thank you pop up'. The context of the page is salient, sitting at number two in popularity on the requests board, one realises that not being able to say thanks to peers is of concern to members of the swarm. The majority of commenters see the 'thank you pop up' as a good thing (nine 'for' comments to four 'against') stating sentiments of altruism, politeness and an intent to strengthen relationships within the bittorrent community. User Jp comments: "The world would certainly be a better place to live in, if only it's people would start to be kind toward those who share. To become more polite is a small step for man and a bigger one for humanity. I will surely pop one up (a thank you window) to the man who will spread the code for a better living." On the other hand the 'against' comments relate statements as to why a 'thank you pop up' is actually harmful to bittorrent community, Jimmy Hendrix posting: " I absolutely.......... absolutely do NOT want a feature to say thanks, chat, or get to know anybody that I'm downloading from. I want to stay as anonymous and impersonal as possible. Viren......you do know that this is still illegal? request/ban viren chocha." While the swarm is by nature anonymous, users do you yearn for a way to extend a warm hand to members they are collaborating with. Whilst the extralegal nature of bitorrent inhibits the devel

This suggestion combined with the much polarised reactions in the comments section is worth looking at and thinking about. Although the majority of the comments are positive and there are a significant amount of votes for this feature, five out of fourteen of the comments are either against it or express that they would not want to use it by bringing up issues like anonymity as well as legal issues. Unlike the interactions within the close social group looked at in the paper "BitTorrents and Family Guy: teenage peer group interactions around a peer-to-peer Internet download community", it seems that some of the users' who made comments about this suggestion do not want to make contact with other BitTorrent users, perhaps because the illegal nature of the exchange makes them feel uncomfortable. Their perspectives suggest that they just want to use BitTorrent for downloading and uploading, and not directly as a kind of community. I think they may have a point, and real life social groups as well as online communities seem to function fine without communication being possible directly within BitTorrent programs. It is interesting to think if file-sharing was less taboo, perhaps it would be more acceptable for social features like this to be directly integrated into the platforms.

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

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/

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