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In thinking about the Wayback Machine and archiving webpages, this new tool brings to light archival possibilities for social media.

Wow, great article! This really complements the ideas we have been talking about this week regarding digital preservation. I've been thinking a lot about the idea of preserving and accessing closed social networks of the past this week, and didn't even think to make the connection to this weeks' readings until now. I actually introduced my roommate to the Wayback Machine this week and together we were able to find her tacky old Lord of the Rings themed archived geocities website (and it was even worse that I could have imagined! hilarity ensued.) Of course, we were able to access something like geocities because it's a website that's open and available to the public. But what about a social network that requires a username and password? I recently tried to see if I could access my old myspace profile, and was shocked to find that myspace has transformed itself into a music-sharing site with none of the old social networking features it used to have. The information that used to be contained -- and the interactivity that went along with it -- are gone! Not to mention that, if it were searchable via a tool like the Wayback Machine, one would need to remember the *exact* URL to find it (for this sad, sad, reason, I have not been able to find my tacky old geocities website from way back when). This is a great idea and I look forward to seeing how the project evolves. Thanks for sharing!

Emotional expression and linguistic style in online collaboration differ substantially depending on the contributors' gender and status, and on the communication network. This should be taken into account when analyzing collaborative success, and may prove insightful to communities facing gender gap and stagnation in contributor acquisition and participation levels.

lubajong and taylor_cole thank you for your comments. From my part I will add a critical evaluation of this resource as well. The talk pages of Wikipedia provide a rich source for researchers to study communication patterns. On Wikipedia talk pages they have found signals for status differences between groups of participants, notably between admins and ordinary contributors. Those findings support in general the theories of the researchers about status differences and communication style differences between managers and employees in firms. They have also found differences in communication style bases on gender, which also support their general theories about gender (which is a social construct). What I - as a Wikipedian insider - finds missing in the article is the selection bias. Wikipedia admins aren't appointed by Jimmy Wales or some other body. Admins are community selected. The exact process differs per language version. On the English Wikipedia admin selection is by a community consensus process. Future admins are selected who show the preferred communication style of admins by other contributors including existing admins. For me, the patterns in communication style do not explain the gender gap on Wikipedia. There is a gender gap in many language versions of Wikipedia, but not in all. The Armenian language version of Wikipedia is a notable exception, showing a gender balance in the conbtributor base. An explanation of that exemption requires further research. What taylor_cole notes about neutrality and bias is a valid point. People volunteer to write for Wikipedia, and volunteer in topic choice. My guess is that in general people will opt to write about something they like, care about, know about. A lack of diversity in contributors will naturally reflect in lack of diversity of topics. For example nerdy males will write about things male nerds like. In general females tend to be interested in other topics than nerdy males. A lack of topics covered in Wikipe

Levels of participation influences emotional expression and phrasing? has the function of sex and status of the taxpayer. 4 strands to study and find a result! Interesting!

Many interesting charts and data of the global internet use, access, and contributions

Atlas, publications, charts and tables of global information and internet geographies and impacts on information access, information production and information distribution, done over a four year period by Oxford Information Institute. Findings, data, and publication will be published in Open Access formats and platforms. The website is simple but contains lots of information relevant to the topics in Stanford. There are links to external related publications about information geography, access, distribution and production. Very good website. Some limitations include: bias from the two developers and producers as well as institution itself, unknown (not identified) contributors and sponsors.

A very valuable collection demonstrating how economic, political, cultural and linguistic ties impact the flow of knowledge is and information. Of course, such charts do little to explain, why this happens and where a more even distribution of knowledge is desirable. Also, the data that lies behind the visualisations is not always open. Especially vauable are the links to the data collections that are accessible.

The key functions of the Open Access Button are finding free research, making more research available and also advocacy. Have not tried yet, but seems interesting.