Closer To The Ideal

Jim Stogdill writes:

The question of data privacy and ownership comes up over and over in our Yammer discussions. The last time it came up the thread ran for nearly 100 responses. Even though the typical post is something like “Who is using Grails?” or “Is the X application slow for everyone today or just for me?” data privacy is simply one of the biggest concerns going for a lot of companies these days. The mere suggestion that our data isn’t under our control is a big deal.

This point was demonstrated to me in a personal and compelling way during my first week on Yammer. I mentioned a client meeting so that I could share a few tidbits with colleagues. Hours later I was surprised and dismayed when a Google search revealed that my comments had been re-posted to the friendfeed of someone I didn’t even know. Someone on our network had written a quick and dirty app to follow his Yammer RSS feed and re-post everything to friendfeed. Then for good measure he followed everyone in our network. When I “politely suggested” he take it down he equally politely explained to me that I just didn’t get Web 2.0.

I think about this in relation to WP Questions. We haven’t yet offered truly private uses of the software, but I suspect that is something we will need to offer soon, if we are going to capture all the niches to which such software can be used.

At some point I’d like to work on one of the dating sites. They seem to often make huge money. Lots of people meet their mates online nowadays. It is clearly one of the main things that people use the Internet for. And some really interesting sociology data comes out of it.

The interesting thing on the OK Cupid site was that the non-normalized responses from men looked as if they’d been normalized into a bell curve – the men thought most women were of average looks, a few women were rated good looking, and a few were rated ugly. Meanwhile the women rated 80% of the men as below average in attractiveness.

Also, GirlsAskGuys is an interesting example of crowd-sourcing brought to the dating world – got a question about the other gender? Ask the crowd.

Community sites tend to develop enforcers who limit what is considered acceptable speach on the site. The enforcers tend to be among the most ardent users of the site. These enforcers do 2 things: they keep the site focused on whatever the enforcers consider to be core to the site, and they limit the potential of the site. In this regard, this conversation about what is appropriate, and what is not appropriate, on Stack Overflow, is fascinating to me:

I don’t get it. Why do people ask so simple questions? Boredom? It can’t be lazyness since it would have been easier to find the answer with google then putting it up here. Spam. – Caffeine Mar 1 at 18:15

For some the question is not simple, and he is asking for a detailed explanation about the operator, as you can see by the answer he accepted. – Ólafur Waage Mar 1 at 18:19

@Olafur – the & operator is fairly simple. He doesn’t want a detailed explanation, he wants AN explanation, because he’s been using it without knowing what exactly it does. While I admire his willingness to admit that he doesn’t know it and desire to learn it, it’s still more of a Google question. – Chris Lutz Mar 1 at 18:39

It’s not about wether the answer is simple, but if posting it here means simply copying it from somewhere else. This is redundant. It feels to me, that some people are really using SO to kill spare time. Maybe I’m a bit biased, but I like SO for puzzles and not for chat-like questions. – Caffeine Mar 1 at 18:41

Wouldn’t it be good if you could find an answer for any programming question on SO? The only way this would ever happen is if “simple” questions get asked as well as “puzzle” ones. On that basis, methinks this a valid question. – da5id Mar 1 at 22:41

danah boyd on classroms, meeting, back channels and the generation gap:

My frustration at the anti-computer attitude goes beyond the generational gap of an academic conference. I’ve found that this same attitude tends to be present in many workplace environments. Blackberries and laptops are often frowned upon as distraction devices. As a result, few of my colleagues are in the habit of creating backchannels in business meetings. This drives me absolutely bonkers, especially when we’re talking about conference calls. I desperately, desperately want my colleagues to be on IM or IRC or some channel of real-time conversation during meetings. While I will fully admit that there are times when the only thing I have to contribute to such dialogue is snark, there are many more times when I really want clarifications, a quick question answered, or the ability to ask someone in the room to put the mic closer to the speaker without interrupting the speaker in the process.

I have become a “bad student.” I can no longer wander an art museum without asking a bazillion questions that the docent doesn’t know or won’t answer or desperately wanting access to information that goes beyond what’s on the brochure (like did you know that Rafael died from having too much sex!?!?!). I can’t pay attention in a lecture without looking up relevant content. And, in my world, every meeting and talk is enhanced through a backchannel of communication.

This isn’t simply a generational issue. In some ways, it’s a matter of approach. Every Wednesday, MSR New England has a guest speaker (if you wanna be notified of the talks, drop me an email). None of my colleagues brings a laptop. I do. And occasionally my interns do (although they often feel like they’re misbehaving when they do so they often don’t… I’m more stubborn than they are). My colleagues interrupt the talk with questions. (One admits that he asks questions because he’s more interested in talking to the speaker than listening… he also asks questions to stay awake.) I find the interruptions to the speaker to be weirdly inappropriate. I much much prefer to ask questions to Twitter, Wikipedia, and IRC/IM. Let the speaker do her/his thing… let me talk with the audience who is present and those who are not but might have thoughtful feedback. When I’m inspired, I ask questions. When I’m not, I zone out, computer or not.

My colleagues aren’t that much older than me but they come from a different set of traditions. They aren’t used to speaking to a room full of blue-glow faces. And they think it’s utterly fascinating that I poll my twitterverse about constructs of fairness while hearing a speaker talk about game theory. Am I learning what the speaker wants me to learn? Perhaps not. But I am learning and thinking and engaging.

I’m 31 years old. I’ve been online since I was a teen. I’ve grown up with this medium and I embrace each new device that brings me closer to being a cyborg. I want information at my fingertips now and always.

A very interesting conversation about the failures of crowd-sourcing (they are discussing the way images from the Library Of Congress (LOC) were tagged by users of Flickr):

This blog post caught my eye (hattip to george!):
“Lick This”: LOC, Flickr, and the Limits of Crowd Sourcing

The author argues that finding good content in the user-generated comments, tags, and notes is like finding a needle in a haystack. Using an LOC photo, the author explains,

There are 20-30 notes on the photograph and not one contains useful historical information to give context or help us understand the photograph. Most are throw-away jokes or comments, “I love this fabric!” and “Lick this” (referring to the woman’s forehead!). Most of the rest of the notes refer to the woman’s appearance or the composition of the picture. Almost useful is a little nested debate about the authenticity of the photograph–how staged was it?–but the discussion is hard to floow, involving hovering the mouse over each box to see the comment.

The author, Larry Cebula. a Public Historian at Eastern Washington University and Assistant Digital Archivist at the Washington State Digital Archives, argues,

The notes are mostly smart-ass remarks, the comments are empty, the tags are idiosyncratic. The frustrating thing is that there really is some crowdsourced gold withing the flood of junk, such as the transcriptions of hand-lettered signs in the windows of the Brockton Enterprise newspaper office in this photo.

There follows a good discussion in the comments, so go check it out if this subject interests you.

I looked on the comments on some of the images, and I agree that there is a lot of waste. Some photos have 20 or more people who simply posted (on the photo itself) “Cool pix!”

For my part, I am a big believer in the potential of crowd sourcing, but I don’t see many sites capturing that potential. I think crowd sourcing works best when the crowd can be offered some kind of incentive, perhaps with a raffle, or a prize, or something free, or an outright offer of money. Some kind of incentive would, I think, raise the average quality of the responses.