Final Post – Where do I go from here?

Well then, final post for this module. I’m not too sure on what to put so we shall see how I go.

Before starting the module I was already an active member on the internet, I now know, that I seem to be addicted from my result which I got when we did the ‘Internet Addiction’ test (I didn’t mention in my blogs but other students have done). Though from recent life experiences and events I think I will continue to be this way for a while, maybe even my entire lifetime?

One question I know can be asked to myself is, will I continue to blog? So far from browsing other student’s profiles I have noticed that the majority will not continue in blogging. I, on the other hand will. This sense of online journal has changed my views of what the internet is, whether that was the intentions of my tutors forcing me upon the changes over the years, I personally don’t know. However I thank them for it as it has most defiantly being my personally favourite module for the first semester of my final year. I am sad to leave it as the seminars we had were great fun, and somehow it bought my confidence up. Sadly though my confidence went straight back down due to personal reasons of which are mentioned within my posts below.

The things we have learnt: from how to become millionaires by blogging, swapping general things and ending up with a house for a pen (it’s a great one, I’ll make sure I post it in my future blogs) to advertising yourself to potential employers through the aid of posting a blog which is actually your CV. On thing I have enjoyed is meeting the new people I would not have met on the discussion forum for COOL. I find myself now every time when reading posts or threads on forums everywhere that I keep referencing it to the Bails analysis we did. Though I don’t consider that a bad thing at all. Means it sunk in, which is what life is about … learning new things.

How to finish? Don’t like endings so I’m going to state this … in conclusion … an online community to me means a lot. I help run one, I join them and will continue to join them. Web2 even though experts don’t like it due to the significance to the .com boost in the early 90’s; I do. It’s a new way of life, let’s hope it continues it success because there are more good points than bad ones. As long as we have our own choice of what we view and do on the internet then we are the ones in control; not some business. Though we already have discussed that in one of my earlier posts, so thank you the readers and messengers that have left replies.

I would say something like... goodbye BUT because I’m going to start a new blog later on this month, I will give you an insight into what it will be based upon. I will be basing it on my life, the people that have helped me to get where I am today, as well as my experiences online and through university. Though I will be careful about the things that I post; now that I am aware of this ‘black hole’ that seems to learch around this virtual world. What a day to end as well on my birthday (even if this is late - sorry for that btw)

Related Web Sites & Online Activities

Well then, part of the criteria that I thought I would struggle with might not be so bad after all. Related web sites I will leave till last as I want to cover one main subject that I am personally involved with, and many other users. How many? How does over 1 billion internet users world wide sound? A lot huh!

Online gaming! Ever since the dawn of the internet, we had speeds which were extremely slow compared with today’s connections. With technology revolutionising every year, computers becoming an everyday use; both within the office at work and at home during leisure time, it wouldn’t be a surprise that you would expect such big numbers of users being involved in such a wide range and complex social network.

From strategy games, to first person shooters, every second of the day a few users across the world will be involved in an online game of some sort. I personally am hooked to two games. One being www.americasarmy.com and the other being my Virtual Airline activities (Flight Simulator, of which is a simulation game). Onwards from this, they can then create more communities online.

Using the examples above, the game Americas Army allowed for a new type of community; clans! What is a clan? Simple answer, it is a group of users who play a similar game who join together as a group to play that game. Some even get involved in competitions (making it a real world event at the same time as still being online). With Flight Simulator members came together on a social network called VATSIM. This allowed flight simulator enthusiasts to come together and fly like real plots do in the real world. It is solely based around trying to make it as real as real life; but you carry this experience out in virtual worlds with the aid of the game and other software. I have personally experiecenced this, if you wish to read how I got on then you can find it here.

Web sites I would relate to the module are the following:

http://www.eurolinkva.co.nr > this is my virtual airline community.

http://news.bbc.co.uk > BBC News has blogs on uploaded articles.

http://www.technewsworld.com > News about how the world of Web2

http://forum.justflight.com/forum > A forum I am a part of (active full time)

One more I came across recently which surprised me was the channel 4 forums for ER. I recently looked at this forum to find out when the new series was to start. When I joined I realised that there was only two men including myself (might be more), and the rest were all female. It would seem there are communities out there which only have one dominant sex; in this case the dominant sex would be female. This isn’t such a surprise to me but evidence that it is on the internet (kind of like groups forming). You can find the ER forum here:

http://community.channel4.com/6/ubb.x?a=frm&s=162603557&f=9086031851

I will try and get my link for my post, but it was a while ago and may be archived. If you wish to search for it my name will be either ‘tall_guy_pete’ or ‘tallguypete’.

Online Privacy – A Reply!

I was going to put this as two parts but decided to keep it as one post so that it would flow.

After looking at certain contexts within the module scope, I thought I would go away and look at a fellow blogger’s post. I looked mainly at comments on my blogs and found that ‘Adrian’ made a post about ‘Online Privacy’.

He started off by linking us to an article on HEXUS by a Professor Nigel Smart. I found it an interesting read, and I found myself actually agreeing to about 85% of the article. I agreed with what he said regarding the matter of social networks (e.g. MySpace and FaceBook are the examples he gives). I wasn’t personally scared about this as with myself I am careful about what I put on my profiles and make sure that only my ‘added friends’ can view what I have put. One thing that caught my eye was when reading about the fact that potential employers could use the profiles to their advantage. In a sense there are many good and bad points, though for people like me who don’t know anyone in industry could be able to use this ‘power’ to their advantage and show off themselves (possibly even advertise themselves for future jobs that may interest them). This we did also discuss in one our tutorials and I remember the story that our tutor, Janet Finley. It was about a person who had put their CV on their blogs and they were contacted by a potential employer, the person ended up getting the job; proving that it can work.

Other places on the web which I believe use this context in a good sense, are dating services and web sites such as www.friendsreunited.co.uk . Here the members that sign up are providing information for all the right reasons, i.e. they want to meet someone with similar interests; or get in touch with people who have lost touch with them from childhood (schools and clubs).

What did scare me though was the section named ‘Irreversible damage’. Within this sub-section the sentence “Within minutes, chances are a search engine will crawl it …” (Kerrison, 2006). I as a member of social networks was unaware of search engines picking up this sort of information. I have never seen on any forum or web site state that this within their rules (or terms and conditions). The fact that I am unaware of this surely indicates that many other users; especially vulnerable users such as children are no doubt also unaware of this fact. The only piece of international law that I am aware of that would protect secure data (information stored about a member) would be the Data Protection Act (Crown, 1998). I only know this because when in the process of setting up our Virtual Airline, we had to oblige to certain legislation, by which members had to be above the age of 12 years old to join. We have considered lower age but refused the idea because of legal requirements stated internationally. You can find this here on my web site.

Onwards from the HEXUS article he also incorporated a YouTube video ‘Pedophile Alert … What are the DANGERS?’ (Renetto, 2006). This video intrigued me when I watched it. The title of the video seemed ambiguous and a little concerning, but it turned out to be based around the fact that members of YouTube had commented towards this guy releasing his private life on YouTube. My personal view on the matter is done through a comment on his post which can be viewed here (was unable to printout due to moderation and my timing of typing this post).

Crown (1998) Data Protection Act 1998 [Internet], Queen's Printer of Acts of Parliament. Available from: [Accessed 2nd January 2007].
Kerrison, S (2006) Social network users have ruined their privacy, forever [Internet], HEXUS. Available from: [Accessed 2nd January 2007].Renetto (2006) Pedophile Alert... What are the DANGERS? [Internet], YouTube. Available from: [Accessed 2nd January 2007].

Why are ground rules essential to any type of online community?

We have as a year group being discussing this in detail over the entire first semester at Leeds Met. During the discussions we have given our own views into what rules we thought to be most important and why they should exist.

For example in my virtual airline we lay down a MIS (management info structure) which helps set up a communication chain between different levels. We also provide rules to fellow members for them to follow. If any member does not understand a rule or all of them, then they are instructed to ask their ‘carer’ (in this context, it would be their hub manager).

In the flight simulator community that I am a part of (full time you could say) we also have rules which are to be followed by each member that joins. These can be found here:

http://forum.justflight.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=15849

On the COOL forum we had a major discussion. We were asked:

Which rules do you think are most important for our community?
Are there any not covered that could usefully be added?
What, if any, sanctions might be taken if people don't adhere to the guidelines?

Here is how I responded:

Message no. 277
Author: Peter
Date: Friday,
October 6, 2006 23:28
I personally think that all rules listed so far are
equally high importance to the success of a community that is controlled by
these. I think as long as everyone understands them clearly, then I doubt that
there will be problems or worse, consultations between fellow
students.

If I was to choose one that I found to be the most
important one overall, I would choose ‘Be Active’. This is because without being
active on the forum then by logic the other rules are not relevant. At least
that is my personal view. Anyways I’ll have to cut short there as I need to get
other posts done before this deadline … I’m not the one to be ‘late’ in handing
in assignments or other work which has time limits. :( So I will appologise here
now for being late on these.

Net Neutrality - Part Two - The Future of Choice !

Hopefully in the future net neutrality will continue to exist and be thought for. If the content was to be decided by companies rather than the end users I think it would have great impacts. This would have the same effect as supermarkets did on the small high street shops. It would force small web sites which offer similar services to the bigger competitors, to have fewer visitors. In turn this could cause them to lose business and be forced to shut down.

An example could be with a web site such as Google, and say a less know search engine such as Snap. If all ISP’s (Internet Service Providers) forced their consumers to use Google, and also at the same time blocked the Snap search engine, then Snap would lose out on potential users of the service that it provided. If I found myself within this scenario, and I was shown a page describing that I was not able to view the Snap search engine I would be asking myself, “well why not? I should be able to choose which search engine I want to use”. As a consumer I would expect to be changing ISP’s only to find out that other ISP’s were also doing the same, I would be annoyed and would have to ‘do as I was told’ by visiting the other search engine Google. Not that I have anything against Google. In fact I use Google as my primary search engine currently, and choose to use the smaller search engines when doing specific content searches. So in the scenario if I wanted to do a particular search on a specific content and wanted to use this lower end search engine which provided a better service for my needs as a user, I wouldn’t get the results from the forced service as it would not be specific to what I would want. So hopefully in the future we as users will still have that choice and not be forced to do without.

Net Neutrality - Part One :)

In the past few weeks I have been reading around the module. Something which I have come across on several forums and mainly videos on YouTube is ‘Net Neutrality’. It is a vast subject and is mainly a major concern in the US. Even though it is more of a concern in the US, it does actually affect the entire world users of the internet.

First thing to do was find out what is net neutrality. I found two main sources to help me understand what it is. One source was at Google (http://www.google.com/help/netneutrality.html) and also a video from YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9jHOn0EW8U).

I have understood it as who chooses what content you are allowed to view on the internet. I would personally prefer myself to be choosing which services I use; so I would be considered to be pro net neutrality.
What does this have to do with online communities? The subject itself has started off video messages on YouTube, of which have produced links to web sites which ask for the visitor to sign a partition to show their support. I personally have visited these web sites and signed the partitions.

Getting involved in other communities ...

One community I have found myself getting involved in more now that I have started this module is within www.youtube.com I have always been into developing videos (some of which you can find on my web site – www.tallguypete.co.uk) . Though I never thought I would share some within this community. I am glad I joined it as I have contributed to it, and that to me feels like an achievement within the community.

To receive replies on my videos is a sense of recognition within the community and allows me to find out what other people of different backgrounds think of the work that I have produced.

I have had both positive and negative experiences within this community. An example of a positive experience would be the responses that I have received from fellow members about my work that I have produced. You can find the comments here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSK-T8VM1mI

My negative experiences involve that I have had negative comments on one of my videos. When uploading videos I always make sure that I am able to approve or disallow a comment from being published in public view. One time I had a comment which involved a fellow member trying to post a comment which was leaving some unrelated material of an adult nature on my video page. Lucky enough I was able to delete the post and disallow this comment to be in a public viewed domain and am glad that I choose to control my contributes. My main reason for doing this is the content of my videos is viewed by all ages (including children aged as low as 8).

One contribution I may consider adding to this community in the future is of my musical talents. Throughout the massive database of YouTube you can find videos where by people have recorded themselves playing a certain song or tune to which they believe they are good at; (whether this be their own compositions or songs that exist already). I would love to provide my own compositions to the public and see what comments would be made. If I was to do this I would still moderate the comments being posted but would allow negative comments to be posted as long as they were relevant to the context of my video (playing my own compositions on my keyboard). You can find an example of Classical Gas (original artist is Mason Williams) being performed by a guitarist:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lP0lUAJ7-7c

Online Exeperiences So Far ...

So why the late blogging posts? Well I am going to be honest this year has been probably my worst year yet. Physical life itself is testing more than ever with me finding it extremely hard to cope with working two part time jobs on top of university work; as well as other life problems. With these certain experiences I have found myself becoming more involved in being ‘online’ rather than going out.

I am normally a person who is very shy and not confident in real life, and find myself able to be more a confident person online. An example of how my recent life experience has affected me to become more online than ever before can be found here:

http://forum.justflight.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=19864

Why did I choose to post online? Well in short I have, what I consider to be, close friends on that forum of which I trust and turn to for comfort when my family or friends cannot. I have been a part of the above forum for several years mainly helping out in providing technical support but have also found myself being involved in meeting up with certain members in real life.

Currently to date I still provide my technical expertise but also help run a virtual airline of which I have already mentioned in my last blog.

My personal view is that you can be yourself more online than you can in reality. Even though you miss out on physical interaction, from my own experience in this case I found myself feeling a lot better.

Introductory Blog :D

Welcome all to my blog :)

Now in my final year at university I have chosen an elective module where by we have to create a blog (online journal as I seem to understand it). I have never really contributed to the internet in such a way as this; so I will find it an uphill learning curve. I am already involved in online communities online. Examples include: being involved mainly within the Flight Simming community. I help out in a technical support area of http://www.justflight.com/ (their forum which can be found here: http://forum.justflight.com/forum my member name is Tall_Guy_Pete)

I have become famous through developing my own software for Flight Simulator over the past year and still continue to support many users within this ever growing community. I also help run a virtual airline, which I and some friends have started up this year. You may have a look and learn more about this community by going to our web site located at http://www.eurolinkva.co.nr/. You can learn more about my software developments by visiting my own web site found here: www.geocities.com/slater_peter/

I will in the next coming weeks be touching on subjects that I wish to discuss with other people, as well as joining other communities other than my interests in civil aviation.

I hope to improve the structure of each blog each week so that I can prove that I am engaging regularly but also proving that I am able to produce some good work towards my degree. I learn currently from such sites as http://www.technewsworld.com/ http://news.bbc.co.uk/ but plan to find other sources that are relative to my community’s online module which this blog is based towards.