Practicum 8 - Kasi

Over the course of the semester, I was definitely more of a consumer of information about Glee rather than a participant on Wikia. I think my findings would have been a lot different had I chosen to focus on a wiki that didn’t have such a dedicated, overwhelming fan base. Had I chosen a topic that was not covered yet, or not as meticulously detailed, I may have felt more of an inclination to participate. Although I did not add much new information to the wiki, I was able to particpate through blog posts as well as commenting on other people’s comments. It seemed like a handful of people dominated the website, and it was a hobby for them to be exceptionally involved. 


It was interesting to see how different Wikia was from Wikipedia throughout my fifteen hours of research. Wikia was much more interactive and Web 2.0 oriented than Wikipedia through its incorporation of Facebook, Twitter, customizable user profiles, and its overall interface and style. Most members on the Glee wiki used the site as a form of entertainment and an outlet to express their fandom. In the future, I will be more likely to use Wikipedia to find information on something I am unfamiliar with because it has a more neutral philosophy. 

Practicum 7 - Kasi

Although Wikia is not a social networking site in itself, it does allow users to construct a public profile and list connections with other users by tagging their friends’ usernames into their home page. Related to my last practicum post, many of these users seemed to know each other in their real lives offline, and the Glee wiki seemed to be a way to maintain connections with established friend groups for some users. I think a natural next step for the site would be allowing users to “friend” others, and having a separate box on their profile listing these connections. The sense of an already established community may have deterred my desire to participate because I felt like an outsider most of the time. The wiki was extremely structured by the administrators, and they were more argumentative and critical than other users. 

Practicum 6 - Kasi

A blog post I came across this week was particularly interesting in relation to Rheingold's definition of virtual communities. User Ms. Artie Abrams posted about her hypothetical wedding to Glee cast member Artie, taking the time to go into extreme detail about her attire (since she's goth, the wedding will be "quite odd, scary, and black"), the setting, her wedding party, and their musical lineup at the reception. The wedding party consisted of other Wiki members, which she tagged. I was curious to know if some/most of those people are her friends from "real life" or if she met people through talking with them on the wiki. She calls her maid of honor, Glee+kurt+me=love, her best friend, so it seems like they probably knew each other before. Either way, there is a sense of community that creates human feeling between users, and there are "webs of personal relationships" that develop through public discussion. She was not the first contributor to  post a wedding blog, and many of these people have received criticism from the rest of the community citing that they are unnecessary, immature, weird, and they make some people "feel like outsiders." Since Ms. Artie Abrams is an admin, however, she seems to have more of a voice and wasn't directly criticized like some of the others who did the same thing.

Practicum 5 - Kasi

A major theme of this season of Glee has been bullying and how openly gay character Kurt Hummel deals with harassment from his peers because of his sexuality. (SPOILER ALERT!) Last week's episode ("Furt") ended with Kurt stating his intent to transfer schools because he couldn't take the constant abuse anymore. I decided to check out the comments section of the wiki page on this episode to see how people reacted to the story line taking this direction.

Kurt is a character that many young people can relate to, at least partially. I wasn't surprised to see that people took Kurt's situation very literally, and it launched a lot of conversation within the community. However, I was kind of shocked that so many of the comments expressed anger that Kurt was taking up too much screen time. Others were mad that he would be competing against his old team at regionals.

Although people seem to perceive the show very realistically in general, there seems to be a disconnect in how issues brought up in the show relate to real life issues and experiences. One would think that the community would commend Glee for taking the time to acknowledge and open up a discussion about bullying, especially after the recent teenage suicides. Unfortunately, most of the posts were dedicated to bashing the story line or the character. I responded to a user's post that respected Kurt's decision in hopes of sparking more positive, and potentially more meaningful, discussion.

Practicum 4 - Kasi

For this practicum post, I decided to learn more about the blog feature of the Glee wiki, and see what types of things people were talking about. Wikia describes blogging as a great way to share news, opinions, and creative pieces with the community. The first blog post I found was from Dark Lady who expressed how grateful she was for having a place to discuss Glee since none of her friends were into the show. Although this user used to have one friend who watched it, the friend stopped watching, leaving her with no one to share her thoughts with. In this sense, the Wikia community became a new venue for her to join that could connect her with thousands of other people who also share her love for the show. 


The next couple posts I found weren't as positive as the first, and many of the administrators of the site took time to let everyone know how annoyed/upset they were about users contributing the wiki anonymously (as "A Wikia Contributor") to make rude comments and "mess up" the wiki. One user went as far as saying that people were using their "anonymity to berate and belittle some of our most dedicated and talented editors." I was surprised that many of the users seemed to band together and stuck up for each other like people would do for their best friend. This type of ranting and raving within posts generated a lot more comments than more neutral posts. Ms. Artie Abrams, a 13-year-old user, proclaimed that she might even leave the site altogether because she was so frustrated (see her post below). 

Practicum #3: Questions

I'm presenting with Ben Steffes on forms of collective intelligence. My questions for the class are:
1) Have you ever added new information or made edits to a page on a "wiki" site, like Wikia or Wikipedia, or do you just look at the information other people have already posted?
2) What gives people the incentive to actively engage in a collective intelligence site vs. being a passive consumer of information?

Practicum 2 - Kasi

Since my first blog post about a week ago, I haven’t made any contributions or edits to the wiki, but I’ve spent a couple hours looking at the different features and capabilities of Wikia. I started out by connecting my wiki activity to my Facebook. Like other apps, it requested for permission to access my basic information and to post to my wall. I also become a fan of the Glee wiki on Facebook. It was interesting to see that the wiki had its own page, athough it had a much smaller following than the main Glee fan page (approximately 900 followers compared to almost 8 million).

While browsing through the various tabs and pages, I started to notice a pattern in the names of contributors, including many self-labeled “gleeks” and other names that included references to characters on the show. I looked at a couple of these user profiles to see what wikis they had contributed to, and not surprisingly, they had only participated in the Glee wiki.

SappsterGleek          Artieandtinaforeva          Gleeluv4ever

Justanothergleek      Glee+me+Kurt=love      Ms. Artie Abrams

LilaHummel               Gleekquinn

Wikia has a cool feature that involves earning badges for your participation on a specific wiki. For setting up a profile, I earned points, and it gave me a corresponding ranking. This is an interesting way to be rewarded for becoming involved in the community and to encourage some friendly competition. I’m sure many users strive to be the #1 fan! Members who made references to Glee in their user name tended to be positioned higher in the rankings. Under your ranking, it also showed what you could do to earn more badges. This feature seems helpful in giving some direction to new users on how to get started.

Practicum 1 - Kasi

It took me a while to figure out which wiki I wanted to read and contribute to throughout the semester, but in my search I discovered a cool website called Wikia (formerly Wikicities until the name changed in 2006). Wikia is similar to Wikipedia in that it is a type of free online encyclopedia, but it is a offers a lot more detail on the topics it covers and is much more interactive than Wikipedia. Additionally, Wikia allows its wikis to have a point of view, rather than the neutral view that Wikipedia strives for. Being the Glee fanatic that I am, I decided to concentrate my efforts on the Glee wiki. You can check it out at http://glee.wikia.com/wiki/Glee_TV_Show_Wiki

I thought this would be a fun way to focus in and really understand how a wiki works rather than just contributing to many random articles on Wikipedia. A cool feature that I found so far was that you can connect your wiki activity to Facebook, so your friends can see what new information you are posting and what edits you are making. You can also set pages to follow, like Twitter, that show up on your profile for easy access each time you log in. Overall, the website is very comprehensive and customizable, so I look forward to spending more time on it and seeing everything Wikia has to offer.