Imatge de l'autor
4 obres 160 Membres 2 Ressenyes

Sobre l'autor

Crèdit de la imatge: Joseph Michael Reagle, Jr. [credit: Northeastern University]

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Obres de Joseph M. Reagle, Jr.

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Wikimedia nahe Publikationen a Wikipedia-Bibliothek (abril 2012)

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A kind-of history of Wikipedia and kind-of philosophy of Wikipedia. Very academic and thus a dense read. Lots of philosophy, thinking, and citations. I wanted to read the Reagle edited volume on Wikipedia at age 20: Wikipedia @ 20: Stories of an Incomplete Revolution, but thought I should read this one first. Reagle tends to take a rather rosy view of Wikipedia and the collaboration process. I like Wikipedia too, but there is a problem with bias on Wikipedia and arcane "ownership" issues on articles. (I am a longtime editor and have faced the not cool bits of Wikipedia.) It's main bias problem is that its editor are overwhelmingly liberal/progressive in outlook, philosophy, and politics. (Thus liberal sources, like websites and magazines, are considered reliable sources whilst conservative ones are considered unreliable and verboten. It leads to lots of skewed articles and interpretations.) A slog of a read, but an important academic work on something that is important to our culture, society, and history.… (més)
½
 
Marcat
tuckerresearch | Apr 4, 2023 |
More than just about comments, this book explores online discussion in many different forms. From the beginning of the internet and the early days of flame wars on usenet, to today’s many, many ways to express our opinions – blog comments, product reviews, Facebook posts, tweets, etc – commentary on the web affects us every time we log on.

Because I’m an avid reviewer, not only of books but also products, I was quite interested in what the author had to say about us. He researched various sites such as Amazon, TripAdvisor, Angie’s List (does pay for membership system make it more reliable?), and Yelp to name a few, and discusses his findings in several chapters. He also touched on Goodreads and talked about the authors vs reviewers war a few years ago–I’m sure many of the book bloggers remember that.

I can’t say I was shocked to find out there are fake reviews, but I was surprised at the lengths people will go to to buy five-star reviews and manipulate the ratings. There is an entire industry set up around it. And there is good reason why. Research has found that people do read reviews and act on them, and the earlier reviews with more likes tend to have more weight.

The book is written in a text-book format (as I would expect from MIT Press, so no surprises there). Despite the style, I found it very interesting, informative, and able to hold my attention. I mention this because many books today aimed at a more general audience provide graphs, illustrations, sidebars, and fun facts and figures to keep the reader’s attention from wandering. The author does sprinkle a few of his favorite cartoons, many from xkcd.com, among the text in each chapter. But mostly this is a more scholarly book, although still very readable and occasionally even humorous.

At about 200 pages long, the book packs in a lot of well-researched and annotated information. It is sure to appeal to those who like detail, facts and figures, but still contains a lot of good information for general reader.
… (més)
1 vota
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UnderMyAppleTree | Jul 28, 2015 |

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Estadístiques

Obres
4
Membres
160
Popularitat
#131,702
Valoració
3.8
Ressenyes
2
ISBN
14

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