Overall, I feel that the Online Communities module has been a successful one. It has allowed me to look at online activity in a different perspective. Instead of me, normally, looking at blogs and thinking its a waste of time, I have been able to view them and actually understand what people are trying to say. Reflect if you will.
By having a task of joining new communities, it has allowed me to view the types of online communities that are actually available and take part in them. The research that has been required to actually write about online activity has enabled me to learn about different aspects that concern certain activities, such as addiction, annonymity and online identity.
I believe that there are still many problems that affect online communities, but also believe that it is up to us, onliners, to decide what is right from wrong, acceptable and unacceptable. In time, I believe that new rules will be made about online activity that will allow everyone to communicate online in an appropriate way that will not harm others as it has in the past.
I feel that online communities are an excellent resource for freedom of speech, personal expressions and onlne learning and feel that this will continue to grow with time.
For those who have read any of my posts, I thankyou for taking your time to do so and hope your online communication continues.

Ben Bishop

This week I will be posting a new 'Bales analysis for a discussion thread on the student web CT board.
This post was originally about changing the date and time on the blogging page, but seems to tail off a little.


Subject: You can indeed change the date and time....
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Message no. 767
Author: Helen Elizabeth Metcalfe (c1187753)
Date: Saturday, December 9, 2006 16:53
... of your post on Blogger. To prove it I've just changed the date on my last post to be
yesterday at 3.32 pm - which is about the same time as we were discussing it in the
tutorial.
Sorry Janet and Steve if this info means that anyone who reads this can make their posts
appear to have been posted earlier than they were. If you don't want it to be general
knowledge then you'll have to delete this - I'll understand :)

This post is giving suggestions on how to change the date and time of your blog. This would be classed as 6.2


Message no. 782
Author: Sundeep Kaur Rayan (c3068732)
Date: Sunday, December 10, 2006 22:35
hehehehe! great stuff! As Pete says I'm not going to change mine either Honesty is the
best Policy?! Haven't posted on my blog all weekend only just got back home today will
do one 2morro hopefully. Hope you all had a good weekend!

This post opens by showing tension release "hehehehe". This on its own would be (2). It then carries on to give personal information by stating that he hasn't posted on his blog all weekend. This would be (6.1)


Message no. 784
Author: Daljit Sehmi (c3108748)
Date: Monday, December 11, 2006 00:08
Hi Andy
I did HCI last year as a double module and I really enjoyed it, so don't die, but if
you need any help let me know.
Regards
Daljit

This post is short and sweet, but does seem to tail off by talking about HCI. It ends by showing solidarity and offers help if it is required. This would be (1).


Message no. 791
Author: Sundeep Kaur Rayan (c3068732)
Date: Monday, December 11, 2006 09:53
I failed HCI last year by 4% i'm not going to fail it this time! Come on guys you can do it!
If u need more time on it then hand it in before 8am on tuesday morning and it will be
classed as monday's work. I used that cheat a lot last year stayed at uni all night
because at home there are far too many distractions ie going to bed.
P.S. regarding the bus strike I thought they aren't running?

This post firstly gives personal information by talking about the 4% (6.1) and then continues by saying "Come on guys you can do it!". This shows solidarity and also impies motivation to other students. They finalise the post by askin confirmation about the bus strike (7)


Message no. 792
Author: Andrew Strachan (c3076117)
Date: Monday, December 11, 2006 10:19
I finally finished mine at about 7:10 this morning! Theres a limited bus service thank
goodness apparently its the managers taking them or something but no fare just optional
charity donations. Think that's my cue to go get one now...

The first sentance gives personal information (6.1) and then gives confirmation about the bus service (5).


Message no. 795
Author: Peter Edwin Slater (c3080030)
Date: Monday, December 11, 2006 11:17
I prefer the confort of my own home. Feel a lot safer. Only place I doi at the moment in
life.
I like that idea ... I was going to get home from work tonight and finish mine off ... I may
get up early (5am) and take it in then :D Thanks for that info ... if no one is there I have
caedmon on mobile :D lol!
Pete
PS: Congrats on getting yours done Andy ... I find it very difficult in believing you have
done an 'all nighter' :P

This gives personal information (6.1) and then finalises by giving congratulations to a fellow student (1).


Message no. 805
Author: Andrew Strachan (c3076117)
Date: Monday, December 11, 2006 16:55
Nope I was quite satisfied with what I did but now I feel a bit down. And that bus
strike 'service' was lousy and I ended up walking in from town to headingley and then all
the way home. I was happy that I'd done my HCI and then I thought of what I've to do
for research project and I just felt so depressed that I just walked for miles until I got
home. I don't know whether I can do it in time... Pretty lousy week so far...

This is mostly personal information but then says "I don't know whether I can do it in time...". Although he doesn't ask for it, you can sort of say that he is asking for some encouragement. (9)


Message no. 806
Author: Sundeep Kaur Rayan (c3068732)
Date: Monday, December 11, 2006 17:32
awwwww. u'll be fine, when the weeks over you will feel so much better because it will
have all been handed in. Then over christmas you can do your COOL work and revise for
HCI. Walking is good for clearing your head out so now you should be able to focus on ur
IP. Good Luck anyway.

This is probably the post that andrew was wanting. Sundeep shows solidarity and gives advice and opinion (5)


Message no. 815
Author: Daljit Sehmi (c3108748)
Date: Tuesday, December 12, 2006 00:40
Ahh poor Andrew,
All that walking just for HCI I think you deserve a first for just walking in and
hanidng it in. I'm sure all lot of people will be saying they couldn't get in because
of the bus strike.........
Anyway well done on doing it. I'm still working on my Research project : (
nearly finished methodology and have conclusion left to do.
I'm off to the British Library in Wetherby tomorrow morning after dropping kids
off at school, to check a few references that I used in my Lit. review. Dedication
or what !!!
Regards
Daljit

This gives solidarity and then gives personal information. (1) (6.1)



Message no. 832
Author: Peter Edwin Slater (c3080030)
Date: Friday, December 15, 2006 15:40
and bribes! LOL!
Man, I don't believe changing dates on your blog is a good thing. It shows guitiness of not
completing it on time :s
I am not well currently so may be on the forum much :( Come down with something that
no doubt you will all relate to my blog posting.
Pete

This starts by giving an opinion (5) and then finishes with giving personal information.

All in all, I would say that this thread was quite useful to the students as it gave information about a number of situations, although, it did tail off the original subject area a little at times.
Overall as a thread, I would class this as both social- emotional : positive and task-oriented.

I'd like to start by saying that I hope everyone, who celebrates it, had a great Christmas.

Throughout this semester, I've been writing about different types of communities that are available. These include geographic communities, comminities of practice, communities of interest, communities that support certain faiths and so on...
Along with these, I have also discussed anonymity, authority and the issues that surround them.

To clarify some terms about social communities, we first look at social networks.
A Social network is a network of any sort of relationships between people, whether this being a forum about vw beetles or a university discussion board.

Social software is software that supports online networks. This software is used for many applications such as instant messaging, internet forums, virtual worlds such as online gaming etc.

The question of whether social-networking sites are the future of the internet or just a passing fad is an interesting argument as hundreds of thousands of people are involved in social networking, although there have been many problems such as the story of people spending the majority of their time gaming and interacting online instead of actual human interaction.
It is argued that online interaction can cause people, who spend too much time interacting online, to become relcuse from the real world which includes human interaction.
In my opinion, it is up to the user to decide the amount of time that is appropriate to spend online, but it appears that some people don't know when to stop. I agree that this could very well be a problem.

Until next time.

Online identity is quite a stong subject that has been worried about for a number of years, especially when fraud is concerned. I read an article on the bbc website, which was posted on 2nd August 2006 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5238992.stm) which is about a new child online saftey card which allows parents to pay £10 per year for the privilege of having an online identity card for their children to use to enable them to safely chat and serf online. I feel that this would be a good idea as it will only allow children to speak to other children who have the safety card up and running. Although they only need a password and an email address to access the service, it will still probably cut down the number of adults trying to pose as a child. Because of that fact, I believe parents would be obligated to persue the card to give them the peace of mind they need to allow their children to access the internet without any worry.

Another subject that is in debate is anonymity. An article on the bbc website (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/4227578.stm) indicates that Ian Clarke, Founder and co-ordinator of Freenet, has been engaging in a project for the past 5 years to try and get complete online anonymity. His aim is to try and allow users to share information, no matter what the content, with complete anonymity. The way it would work, is that users would have to share their hard disk with everyone else in order to store all of the content. This content is not checked for anything illegal, so it means that paedophiles and other online abusers will be able to gain access to child pornography and other illegal content. Is this not just fueling their habbit? It seems to me like this would be a terrible mistake as the government are supposed to be trying to control all of the illegal online activity so its a safe environment to use by all.
The article states "What worries many, is that Freenet is a lawless area". I believe this is extremely true as users of freenet will be carrying unknown data on their hard drives. This could be some seriously nasty information and data. So where do we draw the line? Are laws not there for a reason? It just seems like people are trying to see how much they can get away with online as it is without the introduction of freenet causing some interesting issues.

Until next week

last week was a little hectic, so the blog has been put on hold untill today.

This week i've decided to treat this space as a sort of diary. Maybe just a thought log.

I broke up with my girlfriend about a month and a half ago. The relationship lasted about 5 months until then, and certain things have happened recently which has made me think whether I made the right choice by ending it.

Now, this relationship was probably the maturist relationship I've had with someone. We did the whole holiday thing in the summer, and we both met eachothers parents. I know what you're thinking, "scary", but it was actually quite a relief to find that Lizi's parents were great. Hopefully she felt the same about mine.
Anyway, it all ended because I felt that the relationship moved extremely fast in terms of practically living together and spending the majority of time with eachother. I can here all those who are married and are in long-term relationships saying "yes I remember those days" and "you need to have the appropriate time apart from eachother in order for it to work". Well thats what I've been told thus far anyway.
I felt that we needed more time apart in order for things to work, but I ask myself "Is it too late?". In some ways, I feel like I made the right choice by ending it, but as time goes on, and I look at my history of girlfriends, I see a little resemblence in pattern. An old friend of mine said to me "you always seem to end it". Now this scared me!
Why do I always end the relationship? Is there something wrong with me? I ask myself. Maybe its because I've been hurt in the past, or because I find myself getting bored. But looking at one of my best friends relationship, I've seen them both go through so much together. A break up, large arguements, the usual relationship antics in some cases.
It just seems like, looking back on it all, that I escaped at the second hurdle instead of fighting through to get past it.
Another factor in this equasion is that a mutual friend likes Lizi and has done for a while apparently. This is why I keep questioning myself when I think about it. "Am I just jealous, or have I finally realised what it is that I really want?". James is a decent bloke and at the end of the day I just want her to be happy, but a part of me inside wants to speak to her about how I'm feeling. Another part of me says "If I do, it could bring back alot of pain for her if I start all of this again and she's been doing great since the break-up".

I suppose if anyone reads this, the moral is 'Think about what you have before you throw it all away for what you think you are looking for.

Until next week

Now, this week our lecture was about "addiction".
When we think of addiction, straight away we think about the most obvious things such as smoking, gambling and drinking. Another type of addiction which was brought up in the lecture was internet addiction. One of the factors of this could be online gambling. Now there are millions of people out there that gamble, but online gambling has become extremely popular over the past couple of years with the introduction of new online poker sites and online casinos. I have had a few experiences with playing poker online, and I have to say that it can become very addictive. Especially at times where you have nothing to do and decide "I might aswell deposit ten pounds into be betting account and play for a couple of hours". Its as easy as it sounds. In some ways it can be thought as monopoly money as there isn't any real money actually leaving your hands going to a cashier. You can understand how this can become addictive.

From looking on the BBC news website, I came accross an article about a case of online gaming in South Korea last month. The website states "South Korea is one of the most wired societies in the world". Apparently there are over 25,000 cyber cafes in South Korea that are open 24 hours a day accross the country. This alone tells you that online activity is widely available all accross country. In fact, the number of broadband subscribers are exceeding 10 million.
What drew my attention to the article in the first place was the fact that a 24 year old named Kim Kyung-jae collapsed and died after a crazy 86 hours of continuous online gaming. Now my first thoughts about this let me in disbelieve as, personally, I cannot believe that someone could sit in front of a computer screen for 86 hours playing a game. This may be because I'm not one for online gaming and dont understand the obsession with it. I'm not saying it cant be done, because it blatently can as this has proved, but I still dont understand the obsession.
I can imagine that an addiction to the internet could leave your social skills depleeted, as with any addiction, but feel that help should be widely available for those who may have the problem, or for those that dont know they have the problem of addiction. If this help is not available, or the message is not put accross, we could be seeing alot more cases like Kim Kyung-jae.
Until next week.

note: my last blog was posted on the 18th october 2006 but was unable to be posted as an error occurred.

From analysing some of the messages posted on http://get-me.to/flatcapvw (as described in my last blog), I have copied a thread to introduce Bales Interactive Process Analysis.


King of ShatJoined: 26 May 2006Posts: 412Location: Cheesy peas Leeds
Posted: Fri Oct 27, 2006 1:19 pm Post subject: The thank god it's Friday thread....

Well, what are your plans for this weekend? I need some ideas hmmm....

I would class this as either 7.3 or a 9 as it is a blatent question, but seems like its on a personal level. The question has not been directed to anyone in particular, but has been left open as if to encourage anyone for an input.


Posted: Fri Oct 27, 2006 3:05 pm Post subject:

I'm celebrating! It's my birthday today (28) and i got promoted this morning too. Going to go out for a couple of beers tonight :-) then plumb in my bath and sink tomorrow :cry: T'other half is going to buy her wedding dress tomorrow :-D

This made me smile as soon as a read it. His first two words say it all really. "I'm celebrating". throughout this post, it includes emotional expressions such as ":-)" and ":cry:". Because of this, I would give this post a code 2 and also a 6.1 as it gives personal informtion about what he and his "t'other half"are planning.


Posted: Fri Oct 27, 2006 4:18 pm Post subject:

Skello wrote:
"I'm celebrating! It's my birthday today and i got promoted this morning too. T'other half is going to buy her wedding dress tomorrow"

Happy birthday and congratulations. That post will take some topping. Nothing special for me. A mate is up from London so might get my first visit to Wagamama's as he is mental for Japanese food. Oh yes, nearly forgot, Jake is having a test drive in the morning so there is a chance that he'll be home this weekend. Fingers crossed. Norm
PS Had to take your age out of the quote, it was coming up as 2 and a smiley

This post is both informative and social-emotional in my opinion. He firstly congratulates skello and then states "That post will take some topping" implying that he is impressed with the plans of skello. This on its own would be a code 3 in my opinion. The rest of the post is giving personal information as well as topic-related information. Because of this, I would give it a code 6.1 and 6.3.



Posted: Fri Oct 27, 2006 4:26 pm Post subject:

Both those are impossible to beat... birthdays.. test drives.... Im......... wait for it........................... Mr DIY again.... getting sorted now put some leds up the stairs and they look great as coincidence im fitting the bath and sink.... going to friends for a chilly tonight._________________ Pete


This post by Pete shows passive acceptance and he concurs that the plans for the weekend cant be beaten. For this, I would code it as 3. Once again, probably because its all a related topic, he gives personal information in the post. so because of this, its another 6.1.
Although grammer hasn't been used to the best standard, Pete's information is easily understood, from a readers point of view.

Until next week.