Weeks 10 & 11: Building an Online Community

Of the examples of online communities we were asked to explore for this unit, only a couple piqued my interest enough to really pull me in.  Some of the appeal had much to do with content and my personal interests.  For example, I stopped clicking around long enough to read some reviews at  Television Without Pity because it looked hilarious...and, in fact, was.  But besides a personal preference for content, there were a few other factors that contributed to my interest in that and other sites.

One big factor was layout.  The sites that had a boring or confusing layout were harder to get into.  It was especially difficult to be interested in sites when I wasn't sure what the point of the site was.  For example, the purpose of Slashdot is not immediately apparent.  The layout of The Simplest was also a bit confusing, without any explanation of it's features or purpose on the main page.  Most of the other sites had interesting (or at least, not confusing) layouts, though in my opinion, The Java Ranch could use some updating, design-wise.

Simplicity of use is another big factor.  If I can't figure out how to use the site, how to sign up, and how to contribute to the community, it's pretty much useless. A site might have tons of features, but if I can't find them or figure them out, what's the point of having them?

My favorite sites overall are the ones that have simple but engaging layouts combined with subject matter that appeals to me.  TeenRC is probably my favorite of all of the sites, because: 1) It features teen fiction, which I adore, and 2) it's pretty. :)  The site also manages to stay easily navigable while being pretty, something that many sites forget how to do.  Another site that appealed to me was Duke City Fix.  I have never lived in Albuquerque or even visited, but the layout and features of the site appealed to me.  The layout was simple, it was easy to see the purpose of the site, and the content was updated and relevant.  I found myself wishing that my local area had something similar.

Week 8: Internal Collaboration

One of the technologies that I found the most promising was GoogleDocs.  One big reason I feel this way is because the technology belongs to Google, whose apps are already in wide use by many people.  Even if an organization does not use Google apps for other purposes, many, many people will still be familiar with the Google brand.

GoogleDocs also has the benefit of simplicity.  True, this means that it has fewer of the special features that many other collaboration programs possess.  But it also means that its learning curve is relatively small.  I have some personal experience working with GoogleDocs, and have found it very easy to learn and use.  It makes collaborative work on a document simple.  The doc can also be shared with anyone via a link, and editing permissions can be changed depending on who you want messing with the document.

One thing I feel could be improved upon in GoogleDocs is the final product.  GoogleDocs is great at making a space for collaborative work, but it's not so good at creating a final product. The content of the doc is usually transferred to another word processor for final formatting and editing for appearance.  Formatting applied in GoogleDocs doesn't transfer well to a program like Microsoft Word, so the text usually requires a little tweaking to come out right.

All in all though, GoogleDocs is a simple, easy-to-use collaborative tool for creating documents.  And since documents are the bulk of what most organizations produce, I feel that it is a promising tool for internal collaboration within those organizations.

Exercise 5: Internal Collaboration -- Using Delicious

For the most part (before this class), my interactions with the social bookmarking site Delicious have been minimal.  It always seemed like too much trouble to set up an account using my Yahoo! ID (which I rarely use for anything) just to put my bookmarks up on a website, especially since I already had a perfectly serviceable bookmark function in my browser.  I did set up an account for another class as part of an assignment, but as soon as the class was over, I never visited my Delicious bookmarks again.

Of course, I now realize that I was really only using one aspect of the service: saving my bookmarks.  What I wasn't utilizing was the thing that makes Delicious what it is: I wasn't sharing my bookmarks with anyone.  Nor was I using the social tagging feature to find good links posted by other users.

Now, after completing this exercise, Delicious seems less like a gimmick and more like a tool.  Not only can users browse around for interesting links with those tags, Delicious provides people with similar interests a way to share resources.  It can be especially useful for communities of users with similar interests who need online resources.  People like teachers, librarians, students, or any other community with research needs can combine, share, and organize the resources they've found online.  Just link-sharing with my classmates provided me with a ton of great new resources relevant to my studies.  And searching for tags like "socialbookmarking", "web2.0", and "socialmedia" produced even more great resources.

I can definitely see how using a service like Delicious can be helpful when looking for resources.  I might worry about inaccurate tags, though.  The lack of any standard tags could also be a problem.  For example, when looking up resources on social bookmarking, some links were tagged with "socialbookmarking," while others were tagged with "social" and "bookmarking."  Still others were tagged with "tagging," and "social" "tagging."  So in conclusion, Delicious can be a great resource, but users should be aware of possibly inaccurate tags or tags with multiple meanings.