In an effort to get us to contribute to the wikipedia project, our assignment for this weekend was to edit an entry on wikipedia. I’ve actually contributed a thing or two to the project before, but none the less this is a neat assignment wich I feel probably makes my fellow classmates feel like they can contribute to something important…rather than just being an end user on another website.
Lets get down to Brass tax, due to circumstances outside of my control, my edits have been removed due to mass vandalism by my classmates, but allas, the assignment was to post and edit and see if it stuck, so heres what I posted…
First, I edited some of the descriptions on the motocross page, if you log in now and read them they are rather, bland, I elaborated on them a little bit, knowing that each section did have its own page…
My other edit was to the socialism page, specifically the section on the United States, well, I put something in there about the Obama administration and…
Not only were all of my edits removed, the edit from Socialism was removed and there was not even a history record of it (that takes a pretty high level of administration to do). Apparently, the Wiki admin removed all wiki edits made by the class. A great exercise in using our online voices professor!
We have all heard of Wikipedia by now, the free online community driven encyclopedia? If not, climb out from under the rock you are under and go check it out.. wikipedia.org
Anyway, Wikipedia has an NPOV (Neutral Point of View) policy, which states that every post must be made from a nutral point of view, that is to say, the content should be posted without bias and represented fairly from both sides of the argument, if there is one.
For our EMAC 2321 assigment today, the Professor wants us to look at a controvercial article and see wiether or not the editors and writers of the article upheld the NPOV at all times…There are the same old controvercial topics such as Obama, Global warming, 9/11, ect but lets look at something a little less mainstream…Lets look at the G20 (Group 20) summit protests in Pittsburgh..Protests that got no coverage on the news, no coverage in the papers, and hardly any coverage, even on wikipedia.
The protest section is a rather minimal coverage over the three days of protests that took place during the summit.
The first section on the discussion page of the article happens to be Neutrality, and the first like on the page hits us with this quote:
As most articles that are about and created by the political Left, this article seems to be prone to bias. Please keep a neutral tone and remember that wikipedia is not a soap box
Which Ironically strikes me as being bias. However, lets evaluate how the editors approached a single aspect of the protest, one being the sources of information…
A user named “YardsGreen” comes forward and says:
the previous version included a distorted timeline and a curious insistence that the demonstration was peaceful
Then another user named “Dr. Cash” comes in and says:
what you put is NOT an accurate representation of what actually happened. ….. Stop trying to change this. I was there. I know what happened.
Another user “Blackngold29″ finally chimes in and says
Be careful though, personal experiences mean nothing if you can’t cite it to a reliable source
I believe these are good indications that civility and NPOV without bias is withheld in the article, any questionable material is reverted.
Although the wikipedia page is only a few paragraphs, have a look at these videos, they say much more than is said on the wikipage…
While I do not agree with the protesters anti-capitalism message, I respect their first amendment rights, and these videos are EXTREMELY harrowing, however I suppose that is another post…
Another EMAC 2321 assignment, The Professor wants us to find an article on a twitter which inplicitly suggests something…
So, take a look at this article from Tech Crunch on the Washington Post website regarding Twitter and link tracking.
Erick Schonfeld from TechCrunch.com tells us about how Twitter seemed to be implementing a sort of link click counting script witch he speculates is going to be used to tell where twitter is sending traffic. He goes onto say that although implemented in a fairly sloppy manner, such a link tracking tool could be useful, not only for them, but he says:
“All of this data would come in handy for Twitter’s planned analytics service it wants to roll out to business customers.”
This implies that he believes twitter will be mining personal data for demographic purposes being used in a new, more commercial twitter that we haven to quite seen yet. Schonfeld is implicitly saying that twitter will be collecting data on your browsing habits without your knowledge…
In our EMAC 2321 class we have been talking about Piracy on the internet, pros, cons, legal issues, all the normal conversation when the topic switches to piracy…But, I want to know how the artists or companies that are getting ripped off feel about it, who wins, who looses, why is it such a big issue?
Just an interesting note, before I begin, its very interesting to see how many of my classmates seem to have no concept of the business roll of the record or distribution company, many (admitted illigal downloaders) simply see these companies as being bad, out to take their money and nothing else. It’s a cut and dry issue for many of my generation.
To save me from having to write a book, and to save you from having to read a book, lets limit our discussion to the music industry. Both record labels, and artists.
First, lets look at the artist. The way the music industry is structured, the only real way for a band to become successful is to get signed to a major label, In order for a band to get signed to a major record label, they must sign over the rights for their music. The artist gets signed onto the label, the label compensates the artist for the rights to the music, plus whatever else is in the contract, then the label prepares and distributes the music into record stores and mp3 distribution services (like itunes) alike. Now, the artist only gets a sliver of the profits from the actual sale of music, after the physical cost of distribution, and the record label getting their cut, the artist only gets a very small fraction of each sale. Most artists will tell you they make their bread and butter on concerts and stuff like T-shirts and apparel, so they don’t feel the hit from piracy as much as the record labels do. Many are just happy their music is being heard!
Now, how do the record labels feel? They are really the ones suffering from this wave of piracy. Obviously they have issues with the fact people are downloading music instead of paying for it. Evidence of this is seen in the anti-piracy organizations seen all over the place, namely the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) an organization funded by the record labels themselves. Watch this MPAA comercial (could not find an RIAA comercial online, although I know they exist):
The record labels make their money directly from the sale of the music, so every time someone downloads music the label directly looses money…It’s important to reiterate that the artist does too, however they are not hit as badly as the label is…To bring things back into perspective, it is illigal to download music with out paying for it. Downloading music and not paying for it, say via torrents, its a bonified crime. Acknowledging that the action is a crime, we need to consider if the business models of the record labels are simply outdated, it may be completely possible that, with the advent of digital distribution, the role of the record label, besides that of playing the roll of the gatekeeper, has gone by the wayside. If people do not want to pay to physically listen to music, maybe its time for change? Maybe there is no place for the traditional record label anymore.
So now that we have established that when people download music illigally, the record labels and musicians loose. Now we have to ask: what are the effects of that loss?
It’s rather evident that the record labels loose profit, when that happens the employees don’t get compensated as well and company growth is stunted…Most say, big deal. Well, it is a big deal, new bands are not discovered and the “used-to-be” consumers loose easy access to mainstream music…Without the traditional record company there is no music defined as
“mainstream” music, its all just globed together in a sonic wave.
So whats is the big deal, and what happens next? Well, record companies play, or have in the past, a large role in our economy, if we simply choose to cut them out of the picture, there will be some fall out…From the folks in corprate to the people in the music stores, there is a long line of people that would get effected from such a big change. There are two main paths we can go down…We can continue to “Fight Piracy” and keep the record companies alive, or we can go to capital hill and change the system. We would need to get congress out of their pockets, but in therory we as a collective could legalize file sharing…
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That will never happen! What will? Who knows, but I do see the record companies dieing off in the future. I think the people need to become the gatekeeper…This is where I estimate sites like last.fm or Pandora Where new bands can be found, and trended to make popular. This means bands will have to change, too, by ditching the record companies, and taking on another buisness model, such as maybe what RadioHead did with their last albulm, and do a pay what you like, type of system. If they don’t make it, survival of the fittest. Smaller bands with niche markets may suffer without a label, however. Analyzing how this would effect society though, is an entirely new post!
I have not had a real break from work since Christmas....giving it all the finger and taking the weekend to reboot the creative juices....about 2 hours agofrom TweetDeck
Damnit! My xbox live gold annual deal just renewed, and its non-refundable, my xbox redringed last year. Anyone know a repair guy for them?about 8 hours agofrom TweetDeck
44 Minutes by Megadeth