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Serious Games: Can Learning Be Hard Fun?

March 11, 2007, 11:30 CST

John Purdy, President/CEO, Red Knight Learning Systems

Lauren Davis, Liemandt Foundation, Hidden Agenda Games

Paul Medcalf, Senior Flash Game Developer, Blockdot Games

Melinda Jackson, Director of Instructional Design, Enspire Learning

Resources on serious games: seriousgames.org gamesforchange.org, elearningguild.org, seriousgamesmagazine.com, seriousgamessummit.com, seriousgamessource.com



book resource: Engaging Learning, Designing e-Learning Simulation Games

– Clark N. Quinn



“Can learning be hard fun?” – central question



You are challenged and it is difficult, but the fun is in that grappling to solve the difficult problem. Similar to a tough professor who made class fun and pushed you to learn more



Q: What are serious games?

A: learning games, educational games, games with non-entertainment purposes

If a picture is worth a thousand words, an animations is worth a thousand pictures. And to take that a step further, a game is worth a thousand animations. – Peter Raad, Executive Director, The Guildhall at SMU

Davis: working with Liemandt Foundation in Austin to develop middle school game on $25,000 (about 1/10 of what is needed). Worked with college students to create contest where the objectives are to design a game for middle school students to learn. Run through Hidden Agenda site. The games are free for students, teachers, parents.

Examples:

MeChem – robot battle game for middle school kids to play against each other. Have to build robots to fight against each other – requires physics knowledge and chemistry knowledge

ELEMENTAL – periodic table Tetris-like game. Have to build compounds to make shapes disappear

Waste of Space – Asteroids-like game where you are a space garbage man, but using real physics properties like velocity, thrust, etc

Algebra Arcage – Pacman-like game that teaches FOIL method. Takes a lot of practice to learn FOIL and this game does that.



Metcalf: from Blockdot games. Game programmer and game play designer. Formerly worked with Cisco to create games that teach. Developed game to teach about wireless networking. Objectives: teach components, teach security types, protocols. Want to make it fun, introduce an environment like outer space. They give different objectives like room sizes, layout, etc that require a wireless network be set up. They gradually introduce new concepts so that player doesn’t have to learn everything at once. Had to design all the levels so that they were fun and challenging without being too much in your face about the technical stuff.



Jackson: (enspire learning) Create interactive learning experiences for mostly corporations, but also some K-12 and universities like Harvard Business School. Learning is about “tell me, show me, let me.” School: a lot of telling, a little showing, not much letting. Games: a little telling, more showing but a lot of letting.



Purdy: Remission – a game developed for teenagers who have cancer (by HopeLab). To learn about their treatments, chemo, radiation and the importance of staying with their medications, etc. Also designed to get them to take care of their help. First person tutor type of game. Starts by getting you to learn how to move, then how to use your weapons, then to fight bacteria, etc. The price was fairly high to develop this game. Give the game away free to teens with cancer. They ask for a donation if you are not a teen with cancer. Young people who played the game showed higher adherence to therapy and meds.



Q to panel from Purdy: if the ultimate goal is to provide learning experience, should it be a 50/50 balance of learning and entertainment?



Davis: Hidden Agenda games are judged on 70% entertainment value and 30% educational value. If it is not fun they just won’t play it so you have to skew to entertainment side and then move education in later.



Medcalf: sometimes you have to compromise a little on entertainment to get in the education, but without fun the game isn’t worth building as people wont play.



Jackson: we have to make tradeoffs. Game designed might not think it is fun, but instructional designer has to force certain issues to be covered.



Jackson: Feedback is one of the most important teaching tools we have. Letting students know what they have done right, wrong, etc. Feedback should be more immediate.



Question from audience: how do you balance the pedagogical/content expert who is a teacher with the person making a game?



Medcalf: At Cisco, the holy trinity of educational game designing: subject matter expert, instructional designer, game designer all have to work together. There is an internal conflict, but it requires teamwork to balance their different expertise.



Question from audience: the “trick them into learning”, coercive rhetoric doesn’t come across well. Why is their a distinction between education and entertainment?



Davis: “Hidden Agenda” is tongue and cheek. Rather than hiding, the learning needs to be baked in or intrinsic to the game. We save 70/30 to get designers to think primarily about the game play and bake in the education. Bad games have “shoot the bad guy now do a math problem!” That just doesn’t make sense.



Question from audience: Are these games a one-time thing or an over and over experience for users?



Jackson: YVille is giving a lot of focus on game play and how much kids are using these programs.



Overall an interesting panel. My only problem (and I didn’t get to ask this) is that most games start with very few rules (Steven Johnson’s explanation). You know how to move the character, but you figure out all the rules as you play. How to get into the castle, how to get more gear, etc. But when you are teaching chemistry, so many of the rules need to be laid out. How does this jive?

technorati tags:games, serious games, learning, education, blockdot, John Purdy, Lauren Davis, Paul Medcalf, Melinda Jackson, NYCIST, sxsw, sxswi, Guildhall, Peter Raad, Liemandt Foundation, fun, mechem, elemental, algebra arcade, k-12, university, college, Hidden Agenda Games, Cisco, Remission

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If you don’t know me, I both love and hate e-mail. More accurate, I used to love e-mail, now I hate it. I think it is over. It is no longer effective, particularly in business/organizations. I think there are lots of new tools to do what e-mail might have done somewhat well. Too much to write on that now. Here are the notes from a good session.

I Can’t Believe You Sent That: E-mail Disasters, Large and Small and How to Avoid Them



Will Schwalbe Random House

David Shipley Random House/New York Times

Their new book/website, Think Before You Send



It is not a technological issues, but psychological, anthropological, sociolgocial.



We are not talking about stupid people. CEOs who are insider trading on e-mail; space shuttle pilots who carry on romantic conversation on e-mail,



They showed a video interviewing people about why the love and hate e-mail. Pretty well done. All people in the video showed people who valued email and didn’t want to live without it, but no one expressed confidence in how to use it.



Dominant form of electronic business information and major player in social communication.



Last year each of the speaker received about 50,000 emails and sent about 30,000 e-mails. They were having lunch and both had had bad days. Both realized that most of what happened had happened on e-mail.



E-mails are often too vague, too long, unnatural, or unnecessary.

Email can be an enormous time waster as it creates the illusion of forward progress.

Email is dangerous because it gives us a feeling of action even when nothing is happening – Bob Geldolf



Nothing serious happens in the delay, no people dying, etc (usually).



Causes of bad e-mail, the “why’s”:

1) curse of the new – new in human history. Once we get something new, we tend to use it too much. Using it for things that should be done in person – firing, breaking up, scolding

2) If you don’t insert tone specifically, tone gets inserted for you

3) E-mail is fast, often too fast to keep up with. Volume tone, content, spelling dozens of times a day under intense pressure. Speed encourages sloppiness and that causes problems because words have meaning.

4) In face to face (voice to voice) our emotional brains are constantly evaluating the responses of the other party – email does not have that ability, but lulls us into thinking it does.

E-mail puts people into a state of disinhibition (NY Science Times).

5) E-mail actually eggs us on – more duplicitous, less aware, encourages the lesser angels of our nature – combine with an easy-to-hit send key and you have a problem

6) What works in speech and letters comes out very differently in e-mail

example: “please” – common sense says adding please to an e-mail makes it more polite. A spoken please is considerate, an e-mail please conveys a sense of exhasperation.



Video showing worst things that have happened to people using e-mail. Great anecodote about how an e-mail was sent out accidentally to 38,000 e-mail with a joke when woman was testing e-mail blast software.



8 deadly sins of e-mail:

1) unbelievably vague e-mail – “where is Dave” (which Dave? where physically? when you sent this?) – send this to multiple people and many are confused.

2) email that insults you so bad you have to get up from your desk

3) email that is cowardly. (fire people, drop bombs all while safely shielded, and emoticons that don’t soften the blow; Friday afternoon email to avoid discussing it)

4) email that puts you in jail (“Never talk when you can nod, never write when you can talk. My only addendum is never put it in an e-mail” – Elliot Spitzer)

5) the thank you e-mail – then the thank you to the thank you…

6) sarcastic e-mails – people don’t recognize this. Cornell study shows that drippingly sarcastic e-mails only read properly 87% of time. Sarcasm comes for Greek word from ripping flesh with teeth

7) e-mail that is too casual (Billie, Billster, etc)

8) inappropriate e-mail (4% of Enron e-mails were racist, sexist, homophobic or otherwise offensive)



Lesser sins:

- subject lines

- personal spam

- wallpaper



What makes good e-mail?

- love exclamation points

- like emoticons

- like furious e-mails when justified

- short paragraphs

- requests clear at the top

- top posting, not bottom posting

- simple fonts

- let people know when no response is needed

- flag-free e-mails, we’ll decide what is important

- condolences or congrats when proper follow up is coming (good for quick delievery)



Whether e-mail sticks around: the less annoying we make e-mails, the more it will continue to stay in use



Cut each other some slack, evolving too rapidly for their to be style police. But let’s not cut ourselves too much slack, let’s be careful and thoughtful



Their final points:

Think before you send

Send e-mails you want to receive



I can’t believe they didn’t list this, but my pet peeve is trying to schedule meetings, pick a dinner location, etc with 10 people over e-mail. Yikes, it never works. My new lifeline for scheduling meetings is Doodle, a website that super-easily lets you schedule meetings. Use it, you’ll thank me.

technorati tags:e-mail, email, culture, kindness, research, book, Will Schwalbe, David Shipley, Random House, New York Times, schools, education, NYCIST, sxsw, sxswi, emoticons, Doodle, SEND

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Your registration to SXSW comes with a bag full of free stuff. It is mostly paper with magazines, flyers, coupons, etc. Some free stuff like pins, stickers and other little trinkets. With the thousands of registrants, putting these bags together must be a nightmare. When I went to pick mine up I snuck a peek behind the scenes: scary is the only way to describe it.

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The Rise of the Blogebrity



Kyle Bunch Co-Founder, Blogebrity

Amanda Congdon Co-Pres, ABC News/Oxmour Entertainment

Henry Copeland Founder, Blogads.com

Karina Longworth Editor, Netscape

Casey McKinnon Exec Producer, Galacticast

Nick Douglas Director, Look! Shiny!





Copeland: (on blog rankings) “Totally screwed popularity metrics”

Going to look at Forbes Web Celeb Top 25 and Technorati Top 100 – how they are screwed up



To be famous on Forbes, you do not need a lot of hits, you just need to know a reporter. Their #3 blogger only has 80,000 page views compared to those with millions surrounding him.



Technorati #60 has 400,000 impressions where one much lower have millions.



Trying to make it into the technorati top 100 is ridiculous – “it is a piece of crap”



Congdon: it is about where I see them about how often I see them – writing books? Quoted in newspapers? On TV? This his how I evaluate blogebrities.



Longworth: People who get a lot of traffic on their blogs because of who they were before they were bloggers – Arianna Huffington. Film blogs are different – the best film blogger is David Hudson



McKinnon: I only pay attention to video. Celeb video people: Ask a Ninja, Ze Frank. We are considering people celebs as soon as they are in the New York times. Sad because we are new media but we are relying on old media.



Douglas: I like bloggers who give me the stuff I am going to blog about. Just the one step cooler than me.



Video Killing the Blogging Star? Post YouTube is it the end of text-based bloggers?



Congdon: there are still books. TV and books live harmoniously. Most on the panel are video bloggers. Visual medium is more visible making us more recognizable.



Douglas: people come across text blogs by searching for words. Video blogs don’t work that way, but they do give you a public face (people stop you on the street).



Quantity vs. Quality:



Douglas: 600 people watch me. Quality is totally important



McKinnon: quality. Sound and picture quality is essential. We are not professional film makers, but trying to make the video bigger and better looking online is key.



Copeland: If we are just replicating TV we are in trouble. Good to subvery the traditional hierarchy and screw the networks, but the star culture may be harmful. Web 2.0 is about communities and making them better is the real importance.



As a blogger who is clearly not a “blogebrity” it is interesting to listen to these people who are literally famous on the Internet. The moderator is asking them if their celebrity status becomes too much to handle. Jeez, bloggers are that famous?!



Forbest Top 25 only had 3 women on their list. Will we see a bigger shift or is this just a flawed report?



Copeland: those methodologies are flawed. 75% of the celebs on this panel are women.



Right now blogebrities are based on flawed metrics, still using old-world celebrity making, word of mouth of powerful people and those connected to traditional media. Shouldn’t the Internet be able to tell us who is popular with simple metrics?



Ok, my liveblogging steam is wearing thing. I stopped liveblogging this session, but let me tell you the listening was somewhat interesting. I realize that I am not obsessed with blogebrities as a lot of the people in the room are. They are trying to figure out how to make money and how to be famous in the blogosphere – I’m glad I’m not in that position. Me and my three readers are good to go!



Time to go check out the evening events. I’m headed to the SXSW Web Awards Preparty after I drop my laptop back at the hotel.

technorati tags:blogebrity, Kyle Bunch, Amanda Congdon, Henry Copeland, Karina Longworth, Casey McKinnon, Nick Douglas, blogads.com, netscape, Galacticast, ” rel=”tag”>Look! Shiny!, ABC News, Oxnour Entertainment, blogging, celebrities, sxsw, sxswi

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The 4-Hour Workweek: Secrets of Doing More with Less in a Digital World

Bio: Timothy Ferriss

Book: The 4-Hour Workweek

His website

3-12-07

10:00am CST

How do decisions and priorities change if retirement is never an option?



Everyone in this room is probably too smart and way too easily bored to ever retire.



If you are growing in e-mail, calls, etc, is your business scalable, is your career scalable and is your lifestyle scalable?



Showed cartoon of a support group: “Hi, my name is Barry and I check e-mail 2-300 times a day”



“If you work faithfully 8 hours a day, one day you can be the boss and work 12 hours a day” – Robert Frost



3 currencies that you need to control:

- time

- income

- mobility



What you want to do, be and have (financial) needs to be defined to decide what you need to get there.



80/20 principle – 20% of your actions/inputs create 80% of desired results

20% of people created 80% of the output



Had very low spending customers taking up most of the time. Took those customers and put them into a holding pattern. Took the 5 most productive customers



and observed the commonalities with them farther.



You can apply this to customer base, suppliers and personal activities. You need to do a time audit – where do you spend time? Q1: What 20% of my activities



are producing the 80%. You need to ruthless eliminate everything else – some things eliminated may be somewhat important, but they are not important enough.



Q2: What 80% of my activities are producing only 20%? I fired the customers who were browbeating me (even though profitable) and it saved me social,



professional stress.



Parkinsons Law: from Ed Ciao (prof at Princeton, founder of Silicon Valley) – a task will swell in perceived perplexity and importance in direct correlation



to the time you allot it.



1. Limit the tasks to the important ones (80/20)

2. Limit the time (Parkinsons) spent on the tasks



Time management doesn’t work. There is an efficiency epidemic (especially technologists). More time spent on organizing than reducing.



Average American worker spend 24% of time between tasks switching tasks.



Batching: let similar tasks accumulate and then performing them at very limited times



Knowledge workers: 25% of time on e-mail. E-mail is the single biggest way to shave time. Set autoresponder on your e-mail. Dear Colleagues, thanks for your



e-mail, because of extremely high e-mails and workload, I will only be checking e-mail at 11am and 4pm. If an emergency, call my cell. If there is not a



question and only a confirmation, I will not respond, please don’t be offended.



I recommend e-mail checking twice a day. Checking e-mail first thing in the morning should not happen – scrambles the brain with unrelated e-mails, and



usually not too many responses.



You must manage expectations of people around you including your boss.



Focusing on the critical few and not that trivial new. Most things don’t matter at all, and a few things matter the most.



Quantify the value of your time: If you make $50,00 and work 40 hours a week and take 2 weeks of vacation – $25/hour. Outsource anything that can be done for



less than $15/hour. It removes the ability for you to create “crap” tasks for yourself.



From Tim’s website: outsourcing life. Read how an Esquire editor outsourced personal life stuff to India.



Create rules for yourself so not to be living in a response to urgency situation



Creating mobility (third currency of ideal lifestyle design):



Entrepreneurs: fear automation (don’t micromanage)

Employees: fear liberation (set rules that you expect people to obey)



You must not ask for permission or beg for forgiveness



If you are able to do this, you have a glut of time. You need to figure out what to do with all that time. A week on the beach is enough, then what?



Once you remove work as identity, it is quite a challenge to make productive use of that void.



I believe that the point of life is to enjoy it. Time, income, mobility are means to achieving that, not ends in themselves.



My ideal outcome: catalyze a movement against sever information overload.



Having people to wait for you is a symbol of power. You need to train them to do that.



Question from audience: How do you run meetings?

I use a virtual architecture, so don’t have many meetings. Here are my rules:

1) Shouldn’t have meeting to decide problem but to solve problem

3) No meetings longer than 30 minutes, define end time



No jumping on phone to hash things out – set agenda to do work ahead of time. Ask that person to send agenda and questions.



I call people when I have something important or interesting, not e-mail.



My Q to Tim: For those of us who work in traditional organizations, what should we do when we get back? Is the structure too locked in to change?



A: 1) increase your value to your employer 2) Ask for more things that you want



Wait until you are in a crunch time, then ask for the big things – 3 weeks off beacuse you are feeling unhappy. You are worth it to them.



Don’t underestimate your leverage. Make it harder to lose you than to give you what you want.



Homework: explore these two sites:

Your Man in India and Brickwork



by Wednesday send Tim an e-mail saying how you implemented his techniques – most dramatic story of implementation wins a free trip anywhere in the world



timferriss <at> gmail.com – feedback on the presentation. send physical address with feedback on the presentation and get free copy of the book



500 months in your working lifetime – slow down, take a look at what you’re doing, there is no rush



My notes: very cool presentation, worth listening to the podcast when it comes out. Tim is a good speaker and I chatted with him a bit yesterday. I am



definitely go to try out some of his techniques. I love efficiency and you know David Allen has been influencing me a lot lately. Maybe Tim Ferris is the new David Allen – I bet he hopes so.

technorati tags:Tim Ferriss, 4-hour Workweek, Brickwork, Your Man in India, 80/20, Parkinsons Principle, work, job, sxsw, sxswi, NYCIST, management, employee, GTD, David Allen, meetings, organization, lifestyle, knowledge worker

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Convergence Culture: A Conversation with Henry Jenkins

Henry’s bio

Henry’s website and blog

His new book

3-12-07

11:30 CST

Moderated by dana boyd (bio, website)



Holy heck, Henry Jenkins and dana boyd just blew my mind. If you listen to one podcast from South by Southwest Interactive, make sure it is this one when it comes out.



Henry has written 3 books in the last year and posts a blog essay daily



dana boyd: What is fandom?



Jenkins: I have always been a fan. My cousin had comic books, etc. In college I was a fanboy of things geeky, techie. Married a fangirl. Star Trek fans.



People’s willingness to think non-stop about what they like leads to sites like Fanfiction.



Academics did not respect fans. I wanted to set the record straight about fans and the passion that drives them – 20 years ago. My book 16 years ago was written at a time were fans were totally marginal, hiding in their parents basement.



New book, convergence culture: fans are central to culture. What everyone calls web 2.0 is fandom without stigma. Creating communities, shared knowledge, remixing content. People were doing this in the basement 20 years ago and now major companies are making money on this. Fandom is not essential to the economy.



Church activities, political activities are now modeling themselves after fan culture.



Q: What role has the Internet played in fandom?



A: More people find their way into fandom. Mimeographs didn’t make things highly visible. The web makes things like the half-million Harry Potter stories possible.



A2: Speedup. Within 5 minutes of a TV show starting discussions have become.



Leads to a world of collective intelligence.



Twin Peaks: Newspapers were complaining that it had become too complicated to follow. Internet communities were complaining that it has become too simple. What was happening? Online communities sharing info, needed more complexity to follow. People watching along couldn’t follow along.



Steven Johnson: schools are dumbing down and TV is ramping up. Pokemon expects you to remember 250 characters and their traits while schools are struggling to get students to remember a handful of Greek gods.



Q: Remix culture: Many creators are not embracing this. Fans are being sued. Where is this going?



A: basic premise: media companies have already lost control. We can take your content and do whatever we want (remix, resample, etc) and there is pretty much nothing you can do. Media needs to deal with that and create new ways of engaging. Media companies need to know that fans don’t detract from value but actually increase.



Prohibitionist attitude (cease and desist letters to 14 year old girls who write Harry Potter stories) moving to a enfranchising attitude where fans increase value of what companies are doing



Control over intellectual property is a battleground which will determine if we become a more participatory culture – caught in a vice between government regulation and Hollywood attitudes – both squashing this participatory culture



Are you going to give up your house, your kids’ college funds or are you going to take your story offline? No one is able to defend the rights that the courts would likely protect. Bullying is the technique and lawyers are at these companies’ disposal.



Q: Young peoples’ participation. What does that environment look like with DOPA and others that affect youth?



A: 57% of American teenagers are media producers. 30-some% are sharing media they produced with people they don’t know. What does it mean to turn these kids loose on a world where they have far reach, but don’t have a lot of guidance and assistance. (from Pew study)



DOPA strips schools of social networking and blogging technologies. For a decade we were closing the digital divide through schools and libraries. Now that we are almost there (reservations, rural areas withheld) we have libraries with: 10 minute rules, no storage space, slow connections and now rules on what you can use. This does not allow people to be successful in a networked world and participatory culture.



Liberals and conservatives are both in this together. This would not pass without the support of liberal democrats. Mark Foley was an author so it solved. Ted Stevens is not pushing it further (the Internet as pipes guy). The community needs to mobilize against this.



Even if we thought MySpace was crawling with predators (it is not) we need to know if it is safer to lock out MySpace and don’t train students or better to train teachers and librarians to work with kids on how to participate in this culture. It probably leaves kids more at risk than they ever were before.



Kids being hit with cease and desist letters and driven out of social networks when adults are around.



Time magazine names “You” person of the year but “you” are under fire.



Boyd: Connecticut Attorney General trying to pass legislation that says any under 18 folks need proper adult supervision to use any communications tool – how would this work? Keeping kids out of queer sites could be terrible



Jenkins: politics of fear is working. All politicians agree that kids should be muzzled. Gender issue: we are afraid of our sons and for our daughters. Men will be Columbine and women will be attacked and violated.



Until we release the fear mongering we won’t be able to move forward with reason. We must challenge the fear and the methods that are being used. We must look to the researchers who are finding out how kids are engaging in civic spaces.



The right to preserver the infrastructure of democracy particularly as it applies to young people is essential.

boyd: Where do you see participatory democracy going?

Jenkins: the language of politics is not eternal, it shifts over time. Fireside chats are different than the Kennedy- Nixon debates. Participator culture potentially gives young people a new language, remix of politics. (see blog post from last week’s MIT conference Beyond Brodcasting). Democracy needs to be lifestyle the way we live with popular culture.

We feel more comfortable being consumer than we do citizens. Washington disempowers us. American Idol taught us about our role in music and we need to think about role in politics.



Photoshop for democracy – photoshop collages responding about political issues almost in real time. The peoples’ editorial cartoon. Challenge is that it does not fit into paradigm of news coverage.



News: already racist images of Obama, sexist images of Hillary. Use of images will play a huge role. We need to think about the ethics for using images – media literacy is essential in this.



“With great power becomes great responsibility” – Spiderman. The language of fan culture will be a lot of how the next election will be run. Using Second Life, YouTube etc. trying to appeal to young people. We can’t tear each other apart with stuff, but need to find out how to work together using these resources.



boyd: What lessons can we learn from Wikipedia?



Jenkins: Gave talk about why Middlebury College is wrong for banning Wikipedia (link to video here). It is a monument of participatory culture that it is as good as it is. I would be teaching people to look at the debates/struggles about how historical entries on Wikipedia are made. I had so much more respect for Encyclopedia Brittannica until I was asked to write an entry. I could not possibly write an entry! Speaking with Jimmy Wales about international evens like wars – English Wikipedia is one of the few places in human history where both sides had to come together and decide on “truth.”



You could aruge that all concerns about Wikipedia from history departments could be countered by this discourse about truth rather than one-sided reporting on History.



Center for Deliberative Democracy – no political leaders but putting together citizens to read and learn about issues and come up with policy – often better and different than all the major platorms



boyd: user-generated content is being critiqued.

UNC breakup video – 3,000 gather to watch a guy breakup with his girlfriend for cheating. Uncomfortable video as you are not sure you should be watching it. It was a hoax – was a test to see how far things can get out on the web. People were upset with it. They want things to be real. What is real? How do we work through these issues?



Jenkins: “Humbug” – stuff that was presented to the public without a certainty of status. PT Barnum – the status of this is under dispute, come see for yourself (a mermaid). Australian scientists find a beaver-like thing with a duck bill and a poison stinger, trying to convince people it was real – duck bill platypus



The World of Networks – Binkler – we are trying to figure out the status of what all this content is. Knowing what it is on YouTube is evolving – grass roots media literacy movement is beginning as a result. We need to stop being angry about being faked out.



Politics of shame covered by mainstream news outlets. How can we tell what is fake when the breakup is fake but the tasering of the student is real? Theoretically that could be fake. How do we get people to discern reality through the mixed media we received today. Through McCarthur we are focused on media literacy and how people can view this media with a critical eye.



boyd: what are the critical issues with things like second life and MMORPG?



Jenkins: I love Second Life. Global Kids group in New York made my avatar for me. Second Life is a new center of that participatory culture. Compared it to a medieval carnival where men dresses as women, women as men and other transformations. Women would beat mean that one day a year where the roles were reversed, a small check on culture. Boston Tea Party took image of Native Americans to do something out of character for political gain.



As we enter an environment that parallels are own but allows us to try out new and different ideas – sexual identity, economics, politics – try it out and see what happens and then carry out energy out into the real world.



Brigadoon Island in SL for autistic kids to learn about social signs with avatars and then move out into the new world.



Another idea about Macedonia and what it should look like. What about a virtual Palestine online? What about talking across national borders and see what that will give us? We need to think about it as a social experiment. It is not about escapism but about the experiment that allows us to see what might work in the real world.



That is why I like Global Kids in New York as they are trying out what could work in Second Life and learning from it.



There are now people lining up to ask questions. As with most questions in these types of panels almost every single person is a man.



Q: How do we combat politics of fear? Money?

A: I don’t know who is going to invest in fighting the politics of fear. Like small movies that make it big, how do we get low-budget politics to get big results? We have creation power that people will pass along if it is not granola, not bitch-slapping. Civic media needs to be viral to make change.



On mashup culture: The Sistine Chapel is a mashup of the Bible and Shakespeare did Fanfiction of characters that he read about.



LOL was used by teenagers in the 1850’s. There are connections between early print press to ham radio to the Internet – we can trace language across these times/modes. Participatory culture has lost ground at times and gained at times.



Q: Isn’t all the fandom stuff reliant on mass media? Is this a problem?

A: The 21st century drove out folk culture for mass media culture so fandom is heavy reliant on mass media. We will get back to folk culture. People write fan fiction because it is the best way to get people to read it. If I write about my high school you probably wont read it, but if I write about Hogwarts you might. It is simply a language that we share and so we use it.



We will be somewhat dependent on large companies to fulfill our shared fantasies, but companies are more reliant on us than ever before.



Q: What is driving DOPA for politicians? What are they afraid that kids will do, meet, say, see?

A: Fear of the unknown. As a parent I do things that I swore I wouldn’t when I was a kid. Parents don’t know how to get on second life, how to read a MySpace page, so all it takes is a small trigger event like a school shooting, abduction. Politicians then say how do I get parents to vote for me. Clinton: sees a shooting in Native American reservation with history of alcoholism, gangs, violence, zombie comics and video games. So she blames it on comics and video games – the good liberal.



Definitely the loudest round of applause I have heard at all the talks I’ve been to at SXSW. Went on for a few minutes. Ok, time to give my fingers a rest and get some lunch. Planning to have Henry on 21st Century Learning, perhaps to talk about how parents should be educated on these issues. Stay tuned.

technorati tags:Henry Jenkins, MIT, danah boyd, media literacy, sxsw, sxswi, NYCIST, MySpace, social networking, history, culture, mashup, Hillary Clinton, Barck Obama, UNC, breakup, 21st Century Learning, freedom, copyright, politics of fear, GlobalKids, Second Life, The Wealth of Networks, Yochai Benkler, Center for Deliberative Democracy, Middlebury College, Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, Dopa, plagiarism, fandom, fan culture, Convergence Culture

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Dan Rather Keynote Interview

14:00 CST

3-12-2007

Moderated by: Jane Hamsher, Publisher, The Fire Dog Lake Company



Lots of paraphrasing here of course.



Q: What was it like when Richard Nixon dismissed you and you would not be dimissed?



A: (strange he needed the question repeated 3 times and then he went away from the question) We are going to talk about lots of important questions like tech, war, etc. Problems are the problems – the way we call attention to these in the news are important, but secondary. Reporters put themselves in harms way to cover this stuff.



“My role is to be an honest broker of information”



Have to keep up with the news so that people don’t have to. I never say myself as challenging President Nixon, I was just doing my job of finding out what was really going on instead of what they wanted the world to believe what was going on.



I wasn’t challenging the President, I respect that office more than anyone, but the President was involved in one of the largest conspiracies in our history – Watergate. The President said I was challenging him, but the facts are the facts and the President was not presenting the facts.



Q: Does the state of journalism today allow the same types of critiques of the administration



A: In the last 5-6 years (including me) American journalism has lost its guts. Journalists have adopted the go-along to get-along cliché. The access journalism game has degenerated the craft to a perilous state. We trade go-along get-along for access and having the boss feel good about you. The danger is real and present of being called “antipartriotic” and “not supporting the troops.” This is a very serious charge in America at a time of war. A patriotic journalist would be on their feet asking the hard questions. My role as member of the press is sometimes to question authority, keep checks and balances on power, follow up on these questions.



Q: Small group of journalists in DC are trying to protect themselves and their positions by not challenging with questions.



A: American journalism (including me) needs a spine transplant. The nexus between powerful journalists and corporate interest/other sources of power have become far too close. You get a little too cozy with your sources. You make agreements with them, stated or unstated. You take care of me, I’ll take care of you. This is very dangerous. Definitely in Washingtion, but other places as well, city hall, towns, etc. To get them on your newscast you negotiate (but don’t call it that) that you get so close, you become part of the problem. Powerful people do use journalists – they will until the journalists say whoah, too far. Journalists though also use sources. That is a given in most situations. Sources begin to think the reporter can be part of the time. Then the reporter thinks that they are part of the system and need to help, then the reporter has gone too far. Journalists need to rethink the relationship with sources.



If you have many sources, it will be had for your sources to seal you out. When the President sealed Rather out, we called the Pentagon, Congress, etc. So when you call for the 15th time you then tell the secretary that I am on the evening news with a not-so-flattering piece of information and if the President wants to rebut, call me before 5:45pm. It doesn’t work the first time or two, but then they start calling you back. It isn’t true that you can’t find out the info without the main source. It is harder, but you can use other sources to force the hand of the main source.



Q: Do you still think it is important to ask the follow up questions? Is journalism failing to act as a check on power?



A: Do we still believe that the best journalism is Independent? Do we still believe you should ask the hard question and follow up? If the Governor, President, etc does not answer the question, do we believe the next person should say that Mr. President, you didn’t answer her question? Barring national secrets, do we the people still own all the documents? Even a president, this person is not a descendent of a sun god, they are supposed to server we the people. You listen to a news conference, you record, you take notes: then you go out and check, you call, you research, then you report. Or now have we taken the position that journalists are conveyor belts, and our job is not to ask the right questions – “The President said today such and such.”



Increasingly journalists are trying to play it safe. Look at the copy, “I know this is true, but if I broadcast this I am going to pay a price for it” so maybe I should water it down, make it a little less powerful so me, the boss, the network doesn’t pay the price.



“I have never really liked the word investigative reporter because I consider it a redundancy.” All reporters investigate. Hard news with Independent news is an endangered species. Especially in those places with the most outlets, most listeners, most viewers, etc.



Q for Rather: When is the last time you saw a 1-hour investigative documentary on the big 6 networks? It has gone out of fashion. The corporatization of news – larger companies owning news networks – the people at the head of the company and the newsroom, huge distance between the two. The interests of the corporations (building aircraft, billboards, etc) have nothing to do with journalism and they would rather give up the news, except that they need legislation they need to help their business. The have regulations that they need eased or stopped. Television corporations want to own more markets, they need FCC regulation, they need products manufactured. The people at the top aren’t evil people per se, but their mindset is stockholder value and what is good for the corporation as a whole.



Investigative reporting by its definition is going to make somebody unhappy. Journalists are at odds with lobbyists who are trying to get legislation lifted or passed if they are investigating. Competition leads generally to better journalism. 4-5 major corporations control 80% of principal communication. They aren’t seeking more competition, they are seeking less.



The press has a very important role to play as a watchdog (not the only role). Not an attack dog which goes for the throat. What does a lapdog do? Crawl into a lap and someone says nice dog, nice dog. A good watchdog barks at everything that is suspicious. Who’s that over there? Why’s the happening? Not that they will always be right, but that they will always be barking. That role has been shrinking in my lifetime.



Q: People have been turning to the Internet to get news that isn’t too close. What are your thoughts on Internet news, democratization of news.



A: Internet is great for news, education, illumination (Edward Murrow), the potential is unlimited. The Internet is in the Beatles stage. Elvis was the early stage, the Beatles moved it forward. We are not in the Beatles stage, the potential is vast and I am excited about it.



So many people think of it just as the blogosphere. There is so much more. Whatever you think the Internet will be in 15 years, it probably will be in 3-5.



Are their irresponsible blogs? Of course. Are there good analysis blogs? Yes. Are there some who do reporting themselves, going to the places, making the calls, yes. I applaud responsible journalism. Journalism integrity is about finding truth. I have a problem with anonymity. You could get on the internet on an anonymous blog and cut up a competitor or your neighbor – these are problems to overcome. Given time, the marketplace will balance this. Sometimes this takes a long time and reputations/businesses can get ruined. Being anonymous and saying scurrilous and unscrupulous things is a problem.



Q: You have a small group of people who aren’t asking the right questions. The country has other questions. How does new media address that problem?



A: One way, stay on it, hold people accountable. If you feel the right questions aren’t being asked somewhere, a rather constant putting out of a list of questions that aren’t being asked can be effective. Holding the press core accountable. These are major truths that aren’t being told, we need to keep generating this. So many raindrops eventually make a dent on the rock. We need to move towards increasing accountability. This is a problem in every government. We had less, but it is more and more of a problem. We need to keep asking.



When someone lies, news reporters say, “this is what the governor says, this is what his critics say.” When is the last time someone said, “this is what the governor says, this is a lie.” When the facts clearly demonstrate, that type of direct language might be preferable to the type of sideways dance that is going on.



Q: Do you think journalism as a craft took a hit during the Libby trial? Journalists on the stand said they assume everything is off the record unless stated otherwise.



A: This goes back to getting close. “I am pretty big, I am part of the system, I am part of what helps the country go around and I know a lot of things that I can’t tell people because it wouldn’t be good for the country.” If that toxic gas gets into journalists, that is dangerous for journalism and the country as a whole.



Off the record used to be clearly defined, on background was defined, on deep background was defined. In your own head, you knew what the rules of the road were, they were agreed to. Call a source, start talking: incumbent on the source to say on what grounds are we talking? Assumed that everything talked about could be written about. The source could ask to be protected, but it wasn’t assumed. If the source asked to be off the record, you could say no, not on this topic. Then you negotiate what the terms are. If those aren’t the rules now, then what are the rules? How can we get info from sources who won’t put their names, don’t want to be traceable in any way, and keep our obligations to the readers?



Going to leave early to do a live update at EdTechTalk.com. Tune in to the podcast and live tomorrow at 2:15 pm EST/1:15pm CST.

technorati tags:Dan Rather, Jane Hamsher, The Fire Dog Lake Company, NPR, ABC, news, media, sxsw, sxswi, liveblog, media literacy, corporations, reporters, sources, NYCIST, journalism

Blogged with Flock

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/21apples/~3/102408403/sxswi-dan-rath

Dan Rather Keynote Interview

14:00 CST

3-12-2007

Moderated by: Jane Hamsher, Publisher, The Fire Dog Lake Company



Lots of paraphrasing here of course.



Q: What was it like when Richard Nixon dismissed you and you would not be dimissed?



A: (strange he needed the question repeated 3 times and then he went away from the question) We are going to talk about lots of important questions like tech, war, etc. Problems are the problems – the way we call attention to these in the news are important, but secondary. Reporters put themselves in harms way to cover this stuff.



“My role is to be an honest broker of information”



Have to keep up with the news so that people don’t have to. I never say myself as challenging President Nixon, I was just doing my job of finding out what was really going on instead of what they wanted the world to believe what was going on.



I wasn’t challenging the President, I respect that office more than anyone, but the President was involved in one of the largest conspiracies in our history – Watergate. The President said I was challenging him, but the facts are the facts and the President was not presenting the facts.



Q: Does the state of journalism today allow the same types of critiques of the administration



A: In the last 5-6 years (including me) American journalism has lost its guts. Journalists have adopted the go-along to get-along cliché. The access journalism game has degenerated the craft to a perilous state. We trade go-along get-along for access and having the boss feel good about you. The danger is real and present of being called “antipartriotic” and “not supporting the troops.” This is a very serious charge in America at a time of war. A patriotic journalist would be on their feet asking the hard questions. My role as member of the press is sometimes to question authority, keep checks and balances on power, follow up on these questions.



Q: Small group of journalists in DC are trying to protect themselves and their positions by not challenging with questions.



A: American journalism (including me) needs a spine transplant. The nexus between powerful journalists and corporate interest/other sources of power have become far too close. You get a little too cozy with your sources. You make agreements with them, stated or unstated. You take care of me, I’ll take care of you. This is very dangerous. Definitely in Washingtion, but other places as well, city hall, towns, etc. To get them on your newscast you negotiate (but don’t call it that) that you get so close, you become part of the problem. Powerful people do use journalists – they will until the journalists say whoah, too far. Journalists though also use sources. That is a given in most situations. Sources begin to think the reporter can be part of the time. Then the reporter thinks that they are part of the system and need to help, then the reporter has gone too far. Journalists need to rethink the relationship with sources.



If you have many sources, it will be had for your sources to seal you out. When the President sealed Rather out, we called the Pentagon, Congress, etc. So when you call for the 15th time you then tell the secretary that I am on the evening news with a not-so-flattering piece of information and if the President wants to rebut, call me before 5:45pm. It doesn’t work the first time or two, but then they start calling you back. It isn’t true that you can’t find out the info without the main source. It is harder, but you can use other sources to force the hand of the main source.



Q: Do you still think it is important to ask the follow up questions? Is journalism failing to act as a check on power?



A: Do we still believe that the best journalism is Independent? Do we still believe you should ask the hard question and follow up? If the Governor, President, etc does not answer the question, do we believe the next person should say that Mr. President, you didn’t answer her question? Barring national secrets, do we the people still own all the documents? Even a president, this person is not a descendent of a sun god, they are supposed to server we the people. You listen to a news conference, you record, you take notes: then you go out and check, you call, you research, then you report. Or now have we taken the position that journalists are conveyor belts, and our job is not to ask the right questions – “The President said today such and such.”



Increasingly journalists are trying to play it safe. Look at the copy, “I know this is true, but if I broadcast this I am going to pay a price for it” so maybe I should water it down, make it a little less powerful so me, the boss, the network doesn’t pay the price.



“I have never really liked the word investigative reporter because I consider it a redundancy.” All reporters investigate. Hard news with Independent news is an endangered species. Especially in those places with the most outlets, most listeners, most viewers, etc.



Q for Rather: When is the last time you saw a 1-hour investigative documentary on the big 6 networks? It has gone out of fashion. The corporatization of news – larger companies owning news networks – the people at the head of the company and the newsroom, huge distance between the two. The interests of the corporations (building aircraft, billboards, etc) have nothing to do with journalism and they would rather give up the news, except that they need legislation they need to help their business. The have regulations that they need eased or stopped. Television corporations want to own more markets, they need FCC regulation, they need products manufactured. The people at the top aren’t evil people per se, but their mindset is stockholder value and what is good for the corporation as a whole.



Investigative reporting by its definition is going to make somebody unhappy. Journalists are at odds with lobbyists who are trying to get legislation lifted or passed if they are investigating. Competition leads generally to better journalism. 4-5 major corporations control 80% of principal communication. They aren’t seeking more competition, they are seeking less.



The press has a very important role to play as a watchdog (not the only role). Not an attack dog which goes for the throat. What does a lapdog do? Crawl into a lap and someone says nice dog, nice dog. A good watchdog barks at everything that is suspicious. Who’s that over there? Why’s the happening? Not that they will always be right, but that they will always be barking. That role has been shrinking in my lifetime.



Q: People have been turning to the Internet to get news that isn’t too close. What are your thoughts on Internet news, democratization of news.



A: Internet is great for news, education, illumination (Edward Murrow), the potential is unlimited. The Internet is in the Beatles stage. Elvis was the early stage, the Beatles moved it forward. We are not in the Beatles stage, the potential is vast and I am excited about it.



So many people think of it just as the blogosphere. There is so much more. Whatever you think the Internet will be in 15 years, it probably will be in 3-5.



Are their irresponsible blogs? Of course. Are there good analysis blogs? Yes. Are there some who do reporting themselves, going to the places, making the calls, yes. I applaud responsible journalism. Journalism integrity is about finding truth. I have a problem with anonymity. You could get on the internet on an anonymous blog and cut up a competitor or your neighbor – these are problems to overcome. Given time, the marketplace will balance this. Sometimes this takes a long time and reputations/businesses can get ruined. Being anonymous and saying scurrilous and unscrupulous things is a problem.



Q: You have a small group of people who aren’t asking the right questions. The country has other questions. How does new media address that problem?



A: One way, stay on it, hold people accountable. If you feel the right questions aren’t being asked somewhere, a rather constant putting out of a list of questions that aren’t being asked can be effective. Holding the press core accountable. These are major truths that aren’t being told, we need to keep generating this. So many raindrops eventually make a dent on the rock. We need to move towards increasing accountability. This is a problem in every government. We had less, but it is more and more of a problem. We need to keep asking.



When someone lies, news reporters say, “this is what the governor says, this is what his critics say.” When is the last time someone said, “this is what the governor says, this is a lie.” When the facts clearly demonstrate, that type of direct language might be preferable to the type of sideways dance that is going on.



Q: Do you think journalism as a craft took a hit during the Libby trial? Journalists on the stand said they assume everything is off the record unless stated otherwise.



A: This goes back to getting close. “I am pretty big, I am part of the system, I am part of what helps the country go around and I know a lot of things that I can’t tell people because it wouldn’t be good for the country.” If that toxic gas gets into journalists, that is dangerous for journalism and the country as a whole.



Off the record used to be clearly defined, on background was defined, on deep background was defined. In your own head, you knew what the rules of the road were, they were agreed to. Call a source, start talking: incumbent on the source to say on what grounds are we talking? Assumed that everything talked about could be written about. The source could ask to be protected, but it wasn’t assumed. If the source asked to be off the record, you could say no, not on this topic. Then you negotiate what the terms are. If those aren’t the rules now, then what are the rules? How can we get info from sources who won’t put their names, don’t want to be traceable in any way, and keep our obligations to the readers?



Going to leave early to do a live update at EdTechTalk.com. Tune in to the podcast and live tomorrow at 2:15 pm EST/1:15pm CST.

technorati tags:Dan Rather, Jane Hamsher, The Fire Dog Lake Company, NPR, ABC, news, media, sxsw, sxswi, liveblog, media literacy, corporations, reporters, sources, NYCIST, journalism

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When Communities Attack

Presenter from Topix.net

15:30 CST

3-12-07



A session on the bad behaviors that happen in online communities.



Web 2.0 – it’s coming to your town, your parents town, and it’s not always nice.



Anonymity does enable certain bad behaviors. Someone says something nasty and a hundred people say “yeah”



Just like the playground, accusing someone of bad behavior. People trying to get opponents banned.



Number of people talking to themselves is phenomenal. Same person creates 50 accounts and comments to create credibility.



Small groups of very abusive people follow each other from site to site to fight.



What can you do?

- You can take it down – some news wikis LA, Washington felt they needed to shut it down

- Free speech vs. harboring hate & personal attacks

- you can take down a blog, but not the blogosphere – you’re not fixing anything by leaving

- you get taken down by the traffice



Abdicate: like MySpace, “hey man, it’s not our problem”

- Facebook lawyers have said they have societal responsibility to keep things in order

- hard to put on moderation later, do it at the start

Managing an moderating is probably the most responsible thing to do

1997	2007
moderators	meta-moderators – a group of people who are invested in the site and not invested in the arguments themselves
registration	captchas – help people from screwing with you
profanity filter	heat language analysis – looks at the entire post to see if something is full of hate or reasonable; you can get around profanity filters
logging	recent activity queue (Wikipedia does this well, look at the stream of new edits to keep tabs on bad things arising)
per post/user moderation	IP/domain moderation

The Ni-Chan Paradox – interesting social affect of the infrastructure

- Regisration keeps out good posters – don’t want to be bothered

- Registration lets in bad posters – children and Internet addicts tend to have free time to register, check e-mail for confirmation

- Registration attracts polls – in someone is interested in desotrying a forum, registration adds to the sense of challenge. They are not protecting their own registration, they are destroying others

- Anonymity counters vanity – you can’t get particular attention



What should you do?



- Security is policy. Have one

- make some decisions – if you let everyone bad in, won’t work. make it hard for good people, won’t work.

- optimize for growth

- get rid of the bottom 5-10%

- eliminate threaths, calls for violence, personal details, 100% harm – we allow rough stuff, but just wraith is not allowed



Paper: Clay Shirky – A Group is Its Own Worst Enemy



Real challenge: Identify the good stuff – what is your purpose?



This is a well understood problem. A lot of research has been done. There is caselaw for online communities, do the research.



Differences today are scale and impact: great when SXSW is using your product, but when everyone in the US is using it, that is different. There is an offline component to this. You have more of a responsibility when you’re large, this can lead to real-world issues.



Everybody learns the hard way – you won’t do the research, you will get smacked. Even if you’ve done it before, you’ll do it again.



The lessons I learned was to be precise, correct an error promptly and to let the nasty, sexist comments role off my back. They don’t upset me as much now. I’ve gotten used to the incivility. I don’t like it, but I don’t get as angry. – Deborah Howell responding to the craziness that followed her Washington Post article



A really nice summary about keeping online communities healthy and avoiding the acerbic stuff that can go down. I missed the person’s name, but he was from Topix.net

technorati tags:online, culture, NYCIST, community, Topix, safety, moderation, sxsw, sxswi, liveblog, portal, scale, Chris Tolines

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When Communities Attack

Presenter from Topix.net

15:30 CST

3-12-07



A session on the bad behaviors that happen in online communities.



Web 2.0 – it’s coming to your town, your parents town, and it’s not always nice.



Anonymity does enable certain bad behaviors. Someone says something nasty and a hundred people say “yeah”



Just like the playground, accusing someone of bad behavior. People trying to get opponents banned.



Number of people talking to themselves is phenomenal. Same person creates 50 accounts and comments to create credibility.



Small groups of very abusive people follow each other from site to site to fight.



What can you do?

- You can take it down – some news wikis LA, Washington felt they needed to shut it down

- Free speech vs. harboring hate & personal attacks

- you can take down a blog, but not the blogosphere – you’re not fixing anything by leaving

- you get taken down by the traffice



Abdicate: like MySpace, “hey man, it’s not our problem”

- Facebook lawyers have said they have societal responsibility to keep things in order

- hard to put on moderation later, do it at the start

Managing an moderating is probably the most responsible thing to do

1997	2007
moderators	meta-moderators – a group of people who are invested in the site and not invested in the arguments themselves
registration	captchas – help people from screwing with you
profanity filter	heat language analysis – looks at the entire post to see if something is full of hate or reasonable; you can get around profanity filters
logging	recent activity queue (Wikipedia does this well, look at the stream of new edits to keep tabs on bad things arising)
per post/user moderation	IP/domain moderation

The Ni-Chan Paradox – interesting social affect of the infrastructure

- Regisration keeps out good posters – don’t want to be bothered

- Registration lets in bad posters – children and Internet addicts tend to have free time to register, check e-mail for confirmation

- Registration attracts polls – in someone is interested in desotrying a forum, registration adds to the sense of challenge. They are not protecting their own registration, they are destroying others

- Anonymity counters vanity – you can’t get particular attention



What should you do?



- Security is policy. Have one

- make some decisions – if you let everyone bad in, won’t work. make it hard for good people, won’t work.

- optimize for growth

- get rid of the bottom 5-10%

- eliminate threaths, calls for violence, personal details, 100% harm – we allow rough stuff, but just wraith is not allowed



Paper: Clay Shirky – A Group is Its Own Worst Enemy



Real challenge: Identify the good stuff – what is your purpose?



This is a well understood problem. A lot of research has been done. There is caselaw for online communities, do the research.



Differences today are scale and impact: great when SXSW is using your product, but when everyone in the US is using it, that is different. There is an offline component to this. You have more of a responsibility when you’re large, this can lead to real-world issues.



Everybody learns the hard way – you won’t do the research, you will get smacked. Even if you’ve done it before, you’ll do it again.



The lessons I learned was to be precise, correct an error promptly and to let the nasty, sexist comments role off my back. They don’t upset me as much now. I’ve gotten used to the incivility. I don’t like it, but I don’t get as angry. – Deborah Howell responding to the craziness that followed her Washington Post article



A really nice summary about keeping online communities healthy and avoiding the acerbic stuff that can go down. I missed the person’s name, but he was from Topix.net

technorati tags:online, culture, NYCIST, community, Topix, safety, moderation, sxsw, sxswi, liveblog, portal, scale, Chris Tolines

Blogged with Flock

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/21apples/~3/101230984/sxswi-when-com

When Communities Attack

Presenter from Topix.net

15:30 CST

3-12-07



A session on the bad behaviors that happen in online communities.



Web 2.0 – it’s coming to your town, your parents town, and it’s not always nice.



Anonymity does enable certain bad behaviors. Someone says something nasty and a hundred people say “yeah”



Just like the playground, accusing someone of bad behavior. People trying to get opponents banned.



Number of people talking to themselves is phenomenal. Same person creates 50 accounts and comments to create credibility.



Small groups of very abusive people follow each other from site to site to fight.



What can you do?

- You can take it down – some news wikis LA, Washington felt they needed to shut it down

- Free speech vs. harboring hate & personal attacks

- you can take down a blog, but not the blogosphere – you’re not fixing anything by leaving

- you get taken down by the traffice



Abdicate: like MySpace, “hey man, it’s not our problem”

- Facebook lawyers have said they have societal responsibility to keep things in order

- hard to put on moderation later, do it at the start

Managing an moderating is probably the most responsible thing to do

1997	2007
moderators	meta-moderators – a group of people who are invested in the site and not invested in the arguments themselves
registration	captchas – help people from screwing with you
profanity filter	heat language analysis – looks at the entire post to see if something is full of hate or reasonable; you can get around profanity filters
logging	recent activity queue (Wikipedia does this well, look at the stream of new edits to keep tabs on bad things arising)
per post/user moderation	IP/domain moderation

The Ni-Chan Paradox – interesting social affect of the infrastructure

- Regisration keeps out good posters – don’t want to be bothered

- Registration lets in bad posters – children and Internet addicts tend to have free time to register, check e-mail for confirmation

- Registration attracts polls – in someone is interested in desotrying a forum, registration adds to the sense of challenge. They are not protecting their own registration, they are destroying others

- Anonymity counters vanity – you can’t get particular attention



What should you do?



- Security is policy. Have one

- make some decisions – if you let everyone bad in, won’t work. make it hard for good people, won’t work.

- optimize for growth

- get rid of the bottom 5-10%

- eliminate threaths, calls for violence, personal details, 100% harm – we allow rough stuff, but just wraith is not allowed



Paper: Clay Shirky – A Group is Its Own Worst Enemy



Real challenge: Identify the good stuff – what is your purpose?



This is a well understood problem. A lot of research has been done. There is caselaw for online communities, do the research.



Differences today are scale and impact: great when SXSW is using your product, but when everyone in the US is using it, that is different. There is an offline component to this. You have more of a responsibility when you’re large, this can lead to real-world issues.



Everybody learns the hard way – you won’t do the research, you will get smacked. Even if you’ve done it before, you’ll do it again.



The lessons I learned was to be precise, correct an error promptly and to let the nasty, sexist comments role off my back. They don’t upset me as much now. I’ve gotten used to the incivility. I don’t like it, but I don’t get as angry. – Deborah Howell responding to the craziness that followed her Washington Post article



A really nice summary about keeping online communities healthy and avoiding the acerbic stuff that can go down. I missed the person’s name, but he was from Topix.net

technorati tags:online, culture, NYCIST, community, Topix, safety, moderation, sxsw, sxswi, liveblog, portal, scale, Chris Tolines

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