- Air-L - lists.aoir.org

Trusted Wikipedia, blessed versions
by SJ Klein 22 Sep '06

22 Sep '06

Alex : lovely idea. confusing name, though. 99.9% of wikipedia is trusted by *someone*, after all... Better to do a small project as you suggest, with a topic specific name, and see how it works out. The Chemistry WikiProject is currently doing that kind of expert peer review on chem articles; they have 15+ phds and professors who have split up the major articles and are shepherding them to high information density, well-referenced 'feature' quality. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Chemistry On a personal level, I think it is unbearably charming that there is a 'chemicals trophy box' maintained by proud coeditors in the "chemicals" subproject of this chemistry project, which informs me that Caffeine is the latest article on a chemical to gain 'featured' status. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:CHEM I am an advocate for what you propose, which I have called a 'blessed versions' approach to stability and peer review. It has not yet been implemented by anyone; you would be the first. Please update this page as the project progresses: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Blessings Best wishes, SJ

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Happy OneWebDay
by Jeremy Hunsinger 22 Sep '06

22 Sep '06

about: http://www.onewebday.org/ Welcome to join the OneWebDay celebration at any of the dozens of cities listed here: http://www.onewebday.org/wiki/index.php/In-person_Events jeremy hunsinger Assistant Professor Pratt Institute www.cddc.vt.edu wiki.tmttlt.com www.tmttlt.com () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments http://www.stswiki.org/ sts wiki http://cfp.learning-inquiry.info/ Learning Inquiry-the journal http://transdisciplinarystudies.tmttlt.com/ Transdisciplinary Studies:the book series

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Trusted Wikipedia
by Alex Halavais 22 Sep '06

22 Sep '06

Many people dismiss Wikipedia out of hand as a trusted source, precisely because it is written and edited by "anybody." This differs, they suggest, from a newspaper, which is "fact checked," or from an academic paper, which is "peer reviewed." Over the last two years, I have chatted with a number of people about the possibility of peer reviewing Wikipedia "from the outside." At Wikimania, a number of proposals were made--some of which are already under way--to make Wikipedia both a more credible and a more accurate source of information. The two, while complementary, are not necessarily identical. What I would like to do is assemble an editorial board of recognized experts in Internet Studies, Computer-Mediated Communication, and Human-Computer Interaction who would go through the process of finding appropriate peer reviewers and certifying particular versions of Wikipedia articles as being peer-reviewed. This would provide the reader with an additional indication that the work is of high quality and accurate. To do this, we need to assemble a group of people who have some level of recognition in the field, and who are willing to devote a small amount of time to helping to select a core set of articles and oversee the review process. While we will be looking at a number of ways to make this process more technologically easy, the key issue here is to find a group of people willing to invest a little time and their reputations in an effort to make Wikipedia a more trusted source. If you are interested in chatting a bit more about the project, drop me a note. If you will be in Brisbane for the Internet Research, perhaps we can discuss the possibilities over lunch on Thursday. -- // // This email is // [X] assumed public and may be blogged / forwarded. // [ ] assumed to be private, please ask before redistributing. // // Alexander C. Halavais // Social Architect // http://alex.halavais.net //

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Air-l] Untrusted Web Sources
by John Monberg 21 Sep '06

21 Sep '06

One of the fascinating things about the Wikipedia is that it has become a more significant source of information for large numbers of people, the mechanisms through which content is vetted have become much more elaborated. Understanding this process is helpful in breaking down the print knowledge is good, web knowledge is bad dichotomy, which reinforces the dichotomy between facts and opinions that is drummed into the minds of high school students. Because of the self-documenting nature of the internet, there are a lot of articles about the problems that emerge on Wikipedia and the corresponding efforts at crafting new solutions. Social norms, new genres, institutional mechanisms that act as gatekeepers for the production of knowledge exist in every society, but these processes are often opaque and invisible. Wikipedia can reveal the need for these processes and the consequences of different alternatives. John Monberg

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will there be podcasts of conference?
by Andy Sternberg 21 Sep '06

21 Sep '06

I'm brand new to both this list and only recently discovered AOIR. and am very interested in many of the programs taking place at next week's conference. Will any audio/video be published via podcast or otherwise? I look forward to reading and hopefully listening to more from Brisbane! -- Andy Sternberg Candidate for an M.A. in Online Journalism Annenberg School for Communication Universitiy of Southern California email: asternbe(a)usc.edu webmaster: http://uscpublicdiplomacy.com blog: http://netzoo.net

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CFP: Obscenity: An Obermann Center Humanities Symposium
by Karla-Tonella＠uiowa.edu 21 Sep '06

21 Sep '06

Call for Papers Obscenity: An Obermann Center Humanities Symposium The University of Iowa March 1-4, 2007 In 1966, anthropologist Mary Douglas published her groundbreaking study, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concept of Pollution and Taboo, asserting that "dirt" is a "universal theme across human societies." Douglas issued her book during a period of massive liberalization of censorship practices in English-speaking societies that led lawyer Charles Rembar to declare "the end of obscenity." Where Douglas saw a universal cultural theme, Rembar saw a concept that had lost its cultural significance. The proximity of these claims indicates a persistent paradox: while the category of obscenity would appear to be "universal," its meaning is so vague and variable that it is almost impossible to pin down in what this universality consists. The opening of the 21st century is a felicitous time to interrogate the "universality" of obscenity in terms of the globalization of culture and postmodern skepticism in the human sciences. This symposium is intended to enable an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural dialogue that will analyze this notoriously vague yet apparently perennial concept in an historical and global context. Possible topics will include, but will not be limited to, the following: - How do definitions of obscenity vary across cultures and historical periods? - How do identity categories of race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, and disability inflect or inform issues of obscenity? - What is the relation between verbal and visual instances of obscenity? - To what degree is religion implicated in definitions of obscenity? - How is obscenity inflected or informed by family structures and practices? - How do issues of obscenity vary across institutional locations? - In what ways are attacks on obscenity related to media ownership and the development of new media? - How is obscenity related to cognate concepts such as indecency, pornography, and profanity? Speakers include Nadine Strossen (New York University), Michael Taussig (Columbia University), John D. Peters (University of Iowa), Laura Kipnis (Northwestern University), Linda Williams (UC Berkeley), Judith Krug (American Library Association), William Mazzarella (University of Chicago), and Lamia Karim (University of Oregon). Please submit 300-word abstracts online at <http://www.uiowa.edu/obermann/obscenity> by December 1, 2006. Address any questions to Loren Glass at obscenity(a)uiowa.edu

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Open access social science publishing - coming to the UK
by David Brake 21 Sep '06

21 Sep '06

As Alex Halavais suggested recently if the NSF insisted that projects it funded publish online it would make a big difference I thought I would point out that in the UK recently the ESRC (a very large UK funder of social science research) among others has announced something close to this, to take effect in a few weeks. http://www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk/ESRCInfoCentre/Support/access/ It would definitely be worthwhile for readers of this list to check out http://www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk/ from time to time. As an aside the British Academy has just come out with a report critical of the way copyright is enforced in the UK (at least insofar as it interferes with academic work). http://groupblog.workasone.net/archives/2006/09/the-british-academy- joins-the-copyright-wars/ --- David Brake, Doctoral Student in Media and Communications, London School of Economics & Political Science <http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/media@lse/study/ mPhilPhDMediaAndCommunications.htm> Also see http://davidbrake.org/ (home page), http://blog.org/ (personal weblog) and http://get.to/lseblog (academic groupblog) Author of Dealing With E-Mail - <http://davidbrake.org/ dealingwithemail/> callto://DavidBrake (Skype.com's Instant Messenger and net phone)

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Re: [Air-l] Taxonomy of Content on the Internet
by William Bain 21 Sep '06

21 Sep '06

I just ran across this quote which I thought encapsulated the issue nicely: "As Hirsch and Silverstone (1992) argue, information technology poses unique challenges because it is both a set of artifacts to be consumed as well as a medium within which social relations are conducted." (from Nafus and Tracey "Mobile Phone and Concepts of Personhood" in Katz & Aarkhus Perpetual Contact, p.208) Thanks, that helps a good deal, Nancy. For me at least. The artifact concept seems to me to go a long way in addressing the process-like nature and the entity-like nature of IT. Is this extendable to meta-artifacts? I think it has to be, though undoubtedly theres a constant or relatively constant merging of the meta form with the non-meta form. And then, are there meta-media? Are social studies meta-social relations? Something on the meta-media idea at http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue2_9/aigrain/ I hope Im not just rambling into infinite regress. Or is infinite regress part of the nature of the construct............ Best regards, William William Bain PhD Student Comparative Literature Department of Spanish Philology Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona --------------------------------- All-new Yahoo! Mail - Fire up a more powerful email and get things done faster.

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Fwd: I/S: Call for Proposed Papers on Cybersecurity and Public Policy
by burkx006＠umn.edu 21 Sep '06

21 Sep '06

Of possible interest. DLB -- Dan L. Burk Oppenheimer, Wolff & Donnelly Professor University of Minnesota Law School 229 19th Avenue South Minneapolis, MN 55455 ********************************** voice: 612-626-8726 fax: 612-625-2011 ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Subject: I/S: Call for Proposed Papers on Cybersecurity and Public Policy Call for Proposed Papers on Cybersecurity and Public Policy: Manuscripts Due November 1, 2006 I/S: A Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society, published jointly by the Center for Interdisciplinary Law and Policy Studies of the Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law and the Institute for the Study of Information Technology and Society (InSITeS) at Carnegie Mellon University's H. John Heinz III School for Public Policy and Management, is planning its second annual special issue on cybersecurity and public policy. Professor L. Jean Camp will again be guest editor. Authors are invited to submit manuscripts by November 1, 2006 for consideration. Please forward papers (and any inquiries) to Sol Bermann, Managing Editor of I/S, at bermann.1(a)osu.edu. For information on our hot-off-the-press Spring/Summer 2006 Cybersecurity Policy issue, see www.is-journal.org. Because you may not have dealt previously with law journals or, if you have, you may have dealt with law journals edited entirely by students, some information about our publication process may be helpful. First, initial manuscripts will be submitted to at least one peer reviewer, whose comments we will expect authors to take into account in refining their work. Actual text editing, however, will be handled by law students. Second, our authors retain the copyrights to their work. You would be giving us a free, perpetual, nonexclusive license to publish your work, but we would not control your right to disseminate it in other forums in the future. For more information about I/S, see http://www.is-journal.org. Please feel free to re-circulate this notice to other potentially interested parties. Please do not "Reply" to this message. For further information, please contact Peter M. Shane, Joseph S. Platt - Porter, Wright, Morris & Arthur Professor of Law and Director, Center for Interdisciplinary Law and Policy Studies, Ohio State University at shane.29(a)osu.edu

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Re: [Air-l] Taxonomy of Content on the Internet
by Sal Humphreys 21 Sep '06

21 Sep '06

>Nancy Baym wrote: > >Matthew Allen wrote: > > >I wonder if the problem is the word content itself (which has too many, > >contested uses). > > > >Firstly, on a technological basis might I suggest we separate "channel > >media" (print, radio, TV, film, videos, nonnetworked games) vs > >"environmental media" (telephone, CB radio). >... > >I just ran across this quote which I thought encapsulated the issue nicely: > >"As Hirsch and Silverstone (1992) argue, information technology poses >unique challenges because it is both a set of artifacts to be >consumed as well as a medium within which social relations are >conducted." (from Nafus and Tracey "Mobile Phone and Concepts of >Personhood" in Katz & Aarkhus Perpetual Contact, p.208) > I think Matthew and Nancy are raising some very interesting issues about content here. I think redefining content to include both texts (of whatever form) AND social relations is crucial to an adequate understanding of the internet and its applications. I see this task as requiring an interdisciplinary approach that brings the social scientists among us into a more direct conversation with textual analysts and others focused on media content, such as legal scholars involved with issues of IP and copyright. There's a lot of great work by social scientists on networked relations and online sociability, and equally, a lot of great work on content - its form and it's production and consumption in these new networked environments. But there's a lot less work that examines and adequately theorises the relationship between content and social relations - the affective and immaterial elements of content that is also textual, creative, aesthetic (in whatever way). Thinking this stuff together, redefining what content is, will mean reorganising large institutional practices like copyright, media content regulations regimes, and so on. Establishing metrics will be even more complex than it already is. Sal Dr Sal Humphreys Post Doctoral Fellow Faculty of Creative Industries Queensland University of Technology Brisbane, Australia Mob. 0414 456 078

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