Online comment can be informative or misleading, entertaining or maddening. Haters and manipulators often seem to monopolize the conversation. Some comments are off-topic, or even topic-less. In this ...book, Joseph Reagle urges us to read the comments. Conversations "on the bottom half of the Internet," he argues, can tell us much about human nature and social behavior. Reagle visits communities of Amazon reviewers, fan fiction authors, online learners, scammers, freethinkers and mean kids. He shows how comment can inform us (through reviews), improve us (through feedback), manipulate us (through fakery), alienate us (through hate), shape us (through social comparison) and perplex us. He finds pre-Internet historical antecedents of online comment in Michelin stars, professional criticism and the wisdom of crowds. He discusses the techniques of online fakery (distinguishing makers, fakers, and takers), describes the emotional work of receiving and giving feedback, and examines the culture of trolls and haters, bullying and misogyny. He considers the way comment — a nonstop stream of social quantification and ranking — affects our self-esteem and well-being. And he examines how comment is puzzling — short and asynchronous, these messages can be slap-dash, confusing, amusing, revealing and weird, shedding context in their passage through the Internet, prompting readers to comment in turn, "WTF?!?"
In an effort to keep up with a world of too much, life hackers sometimes risk going too far.
The open access edition of this book was made possible by generous funding from the MIT Libraries.
Life ...hackers track and analyze the food they eat, the hours they sleep, the money they spend, and how they're feeling on any given day. They share tips on the most efficient ways to tie shoelaces and load the dishwasher; they employ a tomato-shaped kitchen timer as a time-management tool.They see everything as a system composed of parts that can be decomposed and recomposed, with algorithmic rules that can be understood, optimized, and subverted. In Hacking Life, Joseph Reagle examines these attempts to systematize living and finds that they are the latest in a long series of self-improvement methods. Life hacking, he writes, is self-help for the digital age's creative class.
Reagle chronicles the history of life hacking, from Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanack through Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and Timothy Ferriss's The 4-Hour Workweek. He describes personal outsourcing, polyphasic sleep, the quantified self movement, and hacks for pickup artists. Life hacks can be useful, useless, and sometimes harmful (for example, if you treat others as cogs in your machine). Life hacks have strengths and weaknesses, which are sometimes like two sides of a coin: being efficient is not the same thing as being effective; being precious about minimalism does not mean you are living life unfettered; and compulsively checking your vital signs is its own sort of illness. With Hacking Life, Reagle sheds light on a question even non-hackers ponder: what does it mean to live a good life in the new millennium?
Wikipedia’s first twenty years: how what began as an experiment in collaboration became the world’s most popular reference work.
We have been looking things up in Wikipedia for twenty years. What ...began almost by accident—a wiki attached to a nascent online encyclopedia—has become the world’s most popular reference work. Regarded at first as the scholarly equivalent of a Big Mac, Wikipedia is now known for its reliable sourcing and as a bastion of (mostly) reasoned interaction. How has Wikipedia, built on a model of radical collaboration, remained true to its original mission of “free access to the sum of all human knowledge” when other tech phenomena have devolved into advertising platforms? In this book, scholars, activists, and volunteers reflect on Wikipedia’s first twenty years, revealing connections across disciplines and borders, languages and data, the professional and personal.
The contributors consider Wikipedia’s history, the richness of the connections that underpin it, and its founding vision. Their essays look at, among other things, the shift from bewilderment to respect in press coverage of Wikipedia; Wikipedia as “the most important laboratory for social scientific and computing research in history”; and the acknowledgment that “free access” includes not just access to the material but freedom to contribute—that the summation of all human knowledge is biased by who documents it.
Contributors
Phoebe Ayers, Omer Benjakob, Yochai Benkler, William Beutler, Siko Bouterse, Rebecca Thorndike-Breeze, Amy Carleton, Robert Cummings, LiAnna L. Davis, Siân Evans, Heather Ford, Stephen Harrison, Heather Hart, Benjamin Mako Hill, Dariusz Jemielniak, Brian Keegan, Jackie Koerner, Alexandria Lockett, Jacqueline Mabey, Katherine Maher, Michael Mandiberg, Stephane Coillet-Matillon, Cecelia A. Musselman, Eliza Myrie, Jake Orlowitz, Ian A. Ramjohn, Joseph Reagle, Anasuya Sengupta, Aaron Shaw, Melissa Tamani, Jina Valentine, Matthew Vetter, Adele Vrana, Denny Vrandečić
How Wikipedia collaboration addresses the challenges of openness, consensus, and leadership in a historical pursuit for a universal encyclopedia.
Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, is built by a ...community—a community of Wikipedians who are expected to “assume good faith” when interacting with one another. In Good Faith Collaboration, Joseph Reagle examines this unique collaborative culture.
Wikipedia, says Reagle, is not the first effort to create a freely shared, universal encyclopedia; its early twentieth-century ancestors include Paul Otlet's Universal Repository and H. G. Wells's proposal for a World Brain. Both these projects, like Wikipedia, were fuelled by new technology—which at the time included index cards and microfilm. What distinguishes Wikipedia from these and other more recent ventures is Wikipedia's good-faith collaborative culture, as seen not only in the writing and editing of articles but also in their discussion pages and edit histories. Keeping an open perspective on both knowledge claims and other contributors, Reagle argues, creates an extraordinary collaborative potential.
Wikipedia's style of collaborative production has been imitated, analyzed, and satirized. Despite the social unease over its implications for individual autonomy, institutional authority, and the character (and quality) of cultural products, Wikipedia's good-faith collaborative culture has brought us closer than ever to a realization of the century-old pursuit of a universal encyclopedia.
Concerned researchers of online forums might implement what Bruckman (
2002
) referred to as
disguise
. Heavy disguise, for example, elides usernames and rewords quoted prose so that sources are ...difficult to locate via search engines. This can protect users (who might be members of vulnerable populations, including minors) from additional harms (such as harassment or additional identification). But does disguise work? I analyze 22 Reddit research reports: 3 of light disguise, using verbatim quotes, and 19 of heavier disguise, using reworded phrases. I test if their sources can be located via three different search services (i.e., Reddit, Google, and RedditSearch). I also interview 10 of the reports’ authors about their sourcing practices, influences, and experiences. Disguising sources is effective only if done and tested rigorously; I was able to locate all of the verbatim sources (3/3) and many of the reworded sources (11/19). There is a lack of understanding, among users and researchers, about how online messages can be located, especially after deletion. Researchers should conduct similar site-specific investigations and develop practical guidelines and tools for improving the ethical use of online sources.
Concerned researchers of user-generated content might want to avoid using, citing, or quoting sensitive content likely to be deleted by their authors, even when pseudonymous or using one-time ...“throwaway” accounts. At Reddit, how many authors actually delete their submissions, why, and are they concerned if their deletion end up elsewhere? I analyze the three most popular sensitive-topic subreddits (r/Advice, r/AmItheAsshole, and r/relationship_advice) and show that deleting submissions is common. Roughly half of submissions are deleted by their users, most within the first day and week. Interviews with 30 Redditors reveal that their motives for deletion include ensuring the “Internet doesn’t see them,” especially those who might “see it on my Reddit profile,” deciding their issue was resolved, receiving unhelpful or aggressive comments, and concluding their submission was no longer relevant. Most interviewees were not overly concerned about deleted submissions persisting elsewhere (e.g., social media, archives, and datasets) as long as it is not easily connected to their other activity or identity.
Ethical researchers who want to quote public user-generated content without further exposing these sources have little guidance as to how to disguise quotes. Reagle (2021b) showed that researchers’ ...attempts to disguise phrases on Reddit are often haphazard and ineffective. Are there tools that can help? Automated word spinners, used to generate reams of ad-laden content, seem suited to the task. We select 10 quotations from fictional posts on r/AmItheButtface and “spin” them using Spin Rewriter and WordAi. We review the usability of the services and then (1) search for their spins on Google; and, (2) ask human subjects (N=19) to judge them for fidelity. Participants also disguise three of those phrases and these are assessed for efficacy and the tactics employed. We recommend that researchers disguise their prose by substituting novel words (i.e., swapping infrequently occurring words, such as “toxic” with “radioactive”) and rearranging elements of sentence structure. The practice of testing spins, however, remains essential even when using good tactics; a Python script is provided to facilitate such testing.
In addition to documenting and sharing information, geek culture has a complementary norm obliging others to educate themselves on rudimentary topics. This obligation to know is expressed by way of ...jargon-laden exhortations such as “check the FAQ” (frequently asked questions) and “RTFM” (read the fucking manual). Additionally, the geek lexicon includes designations of the stature of the knower and the extent of what he or she knows (e.g. alpha geek and newbie). Online feminists, especially geek feminists, are similarly beset by naive or disruptive questions and demonstrate and further their geekiness through the deployment of the obligation to know. However, in this community, the obligation reflects the increased likelihood of disruptive, or “derailing,” questions and a more complex and gendered relationship with stature, as seen in the notions of impostor syndrome, the Unicorn Law, and mansplaining.
Increasingly, geek culture is criticized as one that is biased; in particular, geek claims of meritocracy are thought to be naïve because they do not recognize the privilege (i.e., unseen advantages) ...of extant members. But some geeks are resistant to this critique. Why? Beyond the natural tendency to be defensive and the unproductive comparison of personal suffering, there is a geek-specific reason. Geek identity is informed by the trope of geek triumphalism: early insecurity is superseded by a sense of superiority. Geeks’ intelligence, unconventional enthusiasms (e.g., technology and fantasy), and idiosyncratic dress contributed to their marginalization, leading them to believe they would never do the same to others. And these same characteristics, later in life, become sources of success and pride, leading them to think they are more open-minded, objective, and beyond bias.
Increasingly, geek culture is criticized as one that is biased; in particular, geek claims of meritocracy are thought to be naïve because they do not recognize the privilege (i.e., unseen advantages) ...of extant members. But some geeks are resistant to this critique. Why? Beyond the natural tendency to be defensive and the unproductive comparison of personal suffering, there is a geek-specific reason. Geek identity is informed by the trope of geek triumphalism: early insecurity is superseded by a sense of superiority. Geeks’ intelligence, unconventional enthusiasms (e.g., technology and fantasy), and idiosyncratic dress contributed to their marginalization, leading them to believe they would never do the same to others. And these same characteristics, later in life, become sources of success and pride, leading them to think they are more open-minded, objective, and beyond bias.
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