Comment #3: Produsage, user-lead creations and gaming.

Comment number 3 goes to a blogger that seeks out the produsage concept of games in Produsage, user-lead creations and gaming. and here is my comment:

Hey Obsession101, as a video gamer myself I can understand why the success of games that employ the produsage concept encourages more participatory users to actively collaborative with one-another. As you previously discussed in regards to game ‘The Movies’, is that gamers are more willing to contribute their user-led content because they want to ‘show off their work’ along with other numerous reasons.

That is probably the most significant and prime reasons as to why users will distribute their work, as I outlined in my blog entry: Benefits of Produsage Communities, is that the contributors seek to be recognised and gain or increase their social capital as contributors. Contribution that can help gain social capital for users is the quality or usefulness of the contribution.

The particular individual reward as Bruns explains, is that it will prolong a further strong motivation for participation in produsage communities and projects.What you have outlined in your blog is a perfect example of how industries are utilising the produsage concept to gain capital. I find this article highly relevant for those seeking how produsage can apply in varied key domains – rather than social networking sites (myspace) and knowledge bases (Wikipedia).

Benefits of Produsage Communities

In the previous blog, I briefly discussed the definition of Produsage and the how the concept is illustrated in collaborative-shared online communities (eg. Wikipedia). But let’s take a quick look back to the definition of produsage as outlined by Bruns: produsage is based on the collaborative engagement of ideally large communities of participants in a shared project, where product + usage = production. In today’s blog, I would like to outline the factors of produsage, the benefits and disadvantages.

Benefits

Outlined in Produsage, user-led creations and gaming, is an argument that discusses how the produsage concept works well with gaming to benefit both the gaming industry and users worldwide. It explains in games such as The Sims and The Movies, there is a sharing community of ideas that are continually being improved – such as user-led content of created characters and items. These games encourage users to come together to share and upgrade each other’s content and ideas amongst each other. This is a prime example of how produsage is used, and illustrates why games that employ the community produsage concept are successful by utilising collaborative communities of active participants.
There are numerous reasons as to why participatory users will engage in these sorts of produsage communities. Firstly, produsage communities provide fast and frequent updates to content that already exists; there are as well fewer delays caused by approval processes. All this updated user-led content is freely accessible to all, which leads to great involvement of the community – which therefore means users of produsage communities will be able to locate problems and keep improving their shared content.
There are also individual rewards to be gained by participatory users in regards to their quality and usefulness of their contribution. In Produsage: Key Principles, Status gain (also known as social capital) is one common reward, where popularity and credibility of users will sore based on the level of contributor’s user-led content. In the produsage on gaming industries, people will strive to gain some renown in the virtual communities. There are often cases of tangible rewards as well, usually on employment outcomes of producers with a positive track record of contribution.

Disadvantages

It is not surprising that Produsage communities also bring forth many potential disadvantages, generally because community knowledge may be limited in its diverse opinion. As Bruns explains, produsage communities need to avoid the ‘group-think’ situation, where all members think alike and do not recognise their own faults due to lack of individuality. A very direct example could be a KKK community website which shares a same particular fault - (well, it shouldn’t even exist!), Or here’s a more subtle example: where 10-year old students of the same math class post blogs on a collaborative website based on what they’ve learned from a teacher’s flunked understanding of trigonometry – who will be there to correct them in this community if all members are the students of the same class?

Comment #2: Those Who Can Teach, Those Who Teach Do

This is my comment to Exploding Breaker's blog, check the user's blog at Those Who Can Teach, Those Who Teach Do and here is my comment:

Hey, I found your blog to be particularly interesting, asking what constitues 'knowledge'. This is my overall view on how 'experts' are identified.Burns explains that in the collaborative online communities, ‘experts’ or roles as ‘leaders’ are ultimately decided by the quality of active content from participants, regardless of their role in the academic hierarchy. The ability regarding online users to be assessed of importance based on their personal user-led content is I think the most appropriate way of discovering an ‘expert’ in a certain field of knowledge. Isn’t this how ‘experts’ are identified? Not by their qualifications or level in the academic hierarchy; but their skills, knowledge and ideas that are exemplified in their user-led content. The produsage community is becoming more increasingly popular and relevant towards academic research. Researchers seeking proper knowledge for a subject no longer search by looking up experts, but by users whose academic profession and credentials are frequently never shown. And as part of the online collaborative community, the content that could possibly be faulty can always be judged, edited and commented on by other users (much like what I am doing to your blog). As Axel Burn refers to in one of his readings, that outcomes of users will always remain unfinished and continually under development-that this is sharing of knowledge and ideas. However that does not mean that users who provide quality user-led content on the web2.0 may be creditable, I am just saying in the collaborative online community, we all have the ability to set what is right.

I do not want to hear 'Production'

As Burns explains, the term ‘production’ is no longer accurate to be the definitive word based on the creation of collaborative content of user-led spaces in the World Wide Web. ‘Production’ is no longer suitable, terms such as ‘customer-made’ or ‘user-led production’ would seem to be the superior choices. This is due to the fact that collaborative user-led spaces such as Wikipedia do not follow simple content production methodology. As Burn explains, User-led content ‘production’ is instead built on iterative, evolutionary development models in which often very large communities of anticipants make a number of usually very small, incremental changes to the established knowledge base, thereby enabling a gradual improvement in quality which under the right conditions can outpace the speed of product development n the conventional and industrial model. The description of this new form of simultaneous production and usage of user-led content can be known as produsage, a model describing today’s emerging user-led content creation environments and the significant removal of a role between a consumer and producer of user-led content.

Burns states that user-led content creation takes place in a variety of environments- ranging from the widely distributed networks (such as the blogosphere) to more centralised sites (such as wikipedia). Coincidentally, the produsage concepts exists within technological and technosocial frameworks of social, technological and economic environments. For Produsage to work, the need for software with functionality beyond what is offered is needed: open source software. Open source software as Burns explains, is built on the principle of the free and open availability code which enables users to switch from the roles of content creators to coordinators. The software ultimately removes the physical limitations that are based on social behaviour such as language, geography, background, etc. The software also allows for environments of distributed tool-sets that pull ends results out of human social and collaborative behaviour, meaning that significant filtering and evaluating of collaborative processes and content will provide harnessing the most successful teams and content contributions.

Snurb explains that the enabling of easily made contribution and usage of the user-led content allows for a great sharing of content, contributions and tasks throughout the networked community, which develops towards the process of collaboration. In which therefore the produsage concept can be seen in a number of key domains that drive the development of user-led online environments. Where the produsage concept is illustrated in the world of social networking, which uses open source software to employ networking tools such as book-marking or publishing blogs. More importantly in my view, knowledge management is another key domain that identifies the produsage concept. Wikipedia, for example, a knowledge management domain, allows for users to act as both consumers and producers of shared knowledge bases; and at the same time, a shared user-led content creation environment is constantly being developed.

Comment #1: Social Communities will not Fail

I've just commeneted on Spike's Blog, 'Why Social Communities will Fail'. Here is the URL:

http://brainsonfire.com/blog/2008/04/15/why-social-communities-will-fail/#comment-160243

and this is my comment:

Hey Spike, you prove an interesting point about that the whole offline vs. online community theory, suggesting that ‘community’ is surely based on physical interactivity between individuals. I do agree that the whole face-to-face and shaking hands concept has much more of a social feeling rather than communicating to people behind a computer screen. Offline communities are more traditional and are definitely more active (due to physical interactivity). However, why is it that people will continue to actively engage in connecting in the online community? The answer is simple Spike, humans can overcome physical challenges in the online world. The online community does not have any physical challenges, people can actively engage with one-another despite the long range of distance or the significant difference in demographics. For example, people can easily discuss reviews of movies in the comfort zone of their own chair, rather than having to deal with driving to a certain place, interacting with people that may find them social unacceptable and having to deal with basic human needs (e.g. food). And what does this mean in the long run? More users of who participate in online communities will surely increase the accumulated knowledge of certain topics thanks to more shared understandings.

Introduction to Online Communities: The Impacts

Recently in our KCB201 tutorial class, we discussed and researched towards the concept of online communities. It was discovered that online communities have significant potential towards providing benefits for community identities and power. Most importantly, Flew outlines that ‘virtual communities’ of niche particular interests are constantly developing thanks to online networks; which means that for us, we are colleting information and developing more shared understandings of numerous topics. Flew suggests that within offline networks, to gather communities, we are bound and restrained due to people’s physical factors. These include demographic (age and gender), distance, cost, human needs, etc. Coincidentally, forming new friendships and relationships can be perceived as difficult for people wanting to join a community. Online communities however are entirely different, due to the power of masking each user’s identity and destroying the problem of physical restraints such as distance or age/gender difference. This means that the barriers between cultural and social participation of communities through online networks have been significantly lowered. Flew also suggests that one of the main reasons why users engage in online networks is because of the ability for those who are marginalised or persecuted by society to express views and disseminate opinions. Hence, more communities are continually being developed and increased with more participatory users engaging ultimately resulting in collaborating, building and organising more and more various knowledge bases.

I myself engage more towards online communities rather than the offline. I believe that I am more comfortable learning and engaging in information whilst sitting down in my own comfort zone. For example, I am a member of www.deviantart.com, a social networking website for uploading your own art and observing other user’s art. I do engage in this rather than attending art communities such as clubs, galleries and lessons because of the easy useability to engage in art, the ability to not have to converse with other people and eliminating problems such as cost of travel/ attending community events. I also am not comfortable of engaging with other people about my particular methods of art. These are all examples of problematic issues that may arise of offline communities, particularly with people of niche interests.

It is also important to realise that online community power does not only impact the knowledge bases. For media industries as well is highly effected, this includes citizen journalism providing a connective to mainstream news or setting up alternative distribution frameworks for music and movies. Also economic factors, certain communities that gather online provide valuable information of user criticism of new products; this information influences the success or failure of these new products for marketers. There is also political involvement impact, where users of certain political communities can possibly plan for protests, strikes, etc.

Yeah that's sexy

Yeah like, how sexy is this blog man,

"I'd rather read Adam's blogs that read those playboy magazines" people would say. And then I would reply: "wait dear fellows! I have a confession" they paused for the alerting annoucement... I stood up and took a deep breath "This blog unfortuantly is the core location of all neccessary information"

The audience seemed confused. "what the hell ye ole fool!" "what's thet sipossed to mean!" they cried with anger.

I could tell they were just looking for that FHM, playboish sort of material. But I had to make my stand.

"I AM THE student of KCB201!" and then they egged me. But I will still continue to strive for exellence in all my work! "You will all see!"