Online Interest Group Practicum 7

It took a little while to find the right wikipedia page to add additional information or create. After much research and looking, it seemed the best Wikipedia that fit my "Online Interest Group" topic was the "Internet Forum" wikipedia. I chose this for a few reasons. Posting about interest groups under the game itself didn't fit at all, as the whole page talked about the game mechanics. Making an "Online Interest Group" Wiki page seemed too broad and specific at the same time (broad in the sense that it can include forums, chatrooms, websites, etc; specific in the sense that it doesn't encapsulate the topic well enough). Therefore, since most of my posts and interactions were within internet forums, I decided I would contribute to that.

However, before I go on, I must explain, that the Wikipedia page I wanted to edit was a partially protected page, therefore, I, as a regular user with no credentials on Wikipedia, could not edit the page. I had a few things I wanted to add on to it too, so I am going to explain them here:

Under the "Other Forum Features" section, I want to add that along with the inclusion of social media connectivity, there has been things borrowed and taken from social media sites and integrated into these forums. Likes and shares have been added to individual posts and threads. Sometimes, more prominently liked items gets talked about more, similar to many social networking sites. Along with this, I want to add that now it is accepted and not frowned upon to add images, videos, and other media outlets directly in posts. No longer do you have to PM people the videos, you can directly embed these videos directly in your public post.

I want to add a section specifically to talk about the culture of gaming forums, and the prominence of these forums. Not only are they useful, it helps developers connect and communicate with the community of players. This interaction is crucial for a well established game. They have a picture of a game forum and how it says internet forums are used in conjunction, but it really wasn't elaborated at all.

Overall, I think the internet forum article is very detailed already and not much needs to be added. It seemed to be pretty up to date.

Online Interest Group Practicum 6

A few weeks ago, I realized, that of all this semester, I have yet to post a video in my online interest group. I have been so enveloped in just replying to people and making my own threads that I never posted any media; no photos, videos, external links of any sort. Therefore, a few days ago, I posted a video on some problems I was having, and boy did I have a response. It seems that videos and other various types of media more easily grabs others' attention in these forums and interest groups than just plain text. I instantly got 10+ replies to my video post alone within the next couple days. It's very satisfying when the content you post gets talked about so much by other members of the forum. It really makes me feel the community aspect of the online interest groups.

I do wonder though, if I posted more videos, if it would be an overload of video links, and the response might become negative because of too much media. After all, it is a forum for messaging. If I had realized this earlier in the year, I might have gotten the chance to try out my hypothesis. However, just from the past few days, the overwhelming love for my video was enough to make me a happy camper.

Online Interest Group Practicum 5

As I was doing my posts on the MW3 forums today, I noticed that the moderators created a new thread similar to the one I was posting in, but that became the featured one and the current one no longer was a featured thread. Confusingly to say the least, the forum members asked one of the head moderators what's going on, and believe it or not, but there has been so much activity in this single thread that their backend was starting to overflood and couldn't handle the number of posts in it. Therefore, they had to make a new thread to continue it and branch off from the current one.
That shows 2 things right there that I learned. first, an official forum with dedicated fans is truly different experience than my other forum that I go to, where traffic is sparse. Second, I found a real sense of community when I found out about this. Mainly because during our readings, we read how a community wasn't quite a community because no one had an "obligation" to post and contribute to the online groups. But this completely shattered that belief for me. Not only is there a lot of activity and contributions and posts, but people have posted so much that they had to create another thread to continue the community sharing and postings. That right there made me proud to be part of this community.

Computerized Items In One Evening

I've always knew that I depended on the use of technology in many of my everyday activities. However, after this participation, I have really just realized how useless I would become if I didn't have these technologies.

To start out this evening, I was using my iPhone to communicate to my project partners where to meet and stuff to bring. I used my computer to watch a movie on my TV, played through my laptop, connected with a HDMI cable. I used my Xbox to play some video games and talk to my friends online. Later, I used my iPhone to listen to music while I walked to the union. I used an elevator to go to my meeting room, and used my iPad to read articles off of it and to take notes. I then used my iPhone to map out how to get to my friends house using the bus system. At my friend's house, I continued to use my iPad to play some games while we waited for our food. I then used my iPad to search for some online prices for things I needed to buy, and also used my iPhone to find the next bus route to go home on. After I got home, I used my car and drove to the library in the pouring rain and hopped on a computer to type papers and do homework.

Overall, my day has been focused on mainly my phone and iPad, with some other electronics dispersed throughout my day and evening. This is a pretty average night of computerized items usage. It's crazy how much I depend on my iPhone to complete tasks. That's the one computerized item I would really have a hard time living without. It's crazy to think that just a few years ago, there was no such thing as a "smartphone". Technology is moving so fast. I'm excited to see what the near future will bring to computerized items that will be integral in our everyday lives.

Online Interest Group Practicum 4

My last post focused on the influence of moderators and the differences in each site and forum for Call of Duty. This time, I will be focusing on the impact of new developments on fans and its community on online interest groups. In the last few days, there has been some rumors and leaks and teasers on the next Call of Duty title. This of course greatly effected the participation and traffic in the interest group sites. I have started posting more and more about these rumors, as most people have been too. From what will be different, to storylines, to new multi-player modes and graphic improvements, everything that can be talked about, is being talked about.

I find this quite interesting, considering the ONLY thing officially posted is a graphical poster of a date for a global announcement trailer of the game. Only now have I really realized the true affect of this game on the community and the interest groups. From a simple pic with a date, it has blown up the forums with leaks, rumors, and fan wishes on the new game. We don't even know what the next game is even called! This really has opened up a new dimension to community online. Facebook posts have been booming with comments and likes. The official forum has hundreds of new threads pertaining to the new game being announced. Fan engagement is close to an all time high in these online forums. Even the small site that I picked is picking up more and more hits daily with new forum topics pertaining to the reveal. This is a prime example of the power, dedication, and engagement of a true community. In the beginning of the semester, I really didn't see the community too much, as much discussion were either troll-like or not helpful or engaging other participants. Now, I truly see the power of this interest group's  community and praise its strength.

Blog Post 6 - Youtube vs Hulu

I decided to watch a recent 30 Rock episode on Hulu, and compared it to trying to find clips from the episode on Youtube. Of course, like most people know, on Hulu, I could get the whole show, but often get interrupted by commercials. On Youtube, I could only find clips of the show, or even just commercials related to the episode, but the commercial time was little to none. Also, unlike Youtube, on Hulu, you can't really comment on the show you watched, whereas Youtube has a full comment, like, share feature. Both do have full 1080p HD for their streaming video capabilities, so technologically, both are equal. I did watch both on my iPad so the experiences might have differed a little than if I watched them on my PC.

From this compare contrast, you can really tell the different uses of both video websites. Hulu is focused on full TV show streaming and Youtube is focused on clips and short segments of video. Both are heavily commercialized and monetized, and both are technologically up to date.

Online Interest Group Practicum update - Post 3

Last time I posted, I talked about starting my own threads and getting used to replying to very asynchronous posts and replies. This time, I will be focusing more on the power and influence of a moderator and the differences it makes in the different interest group websites I am participating in.

First off, I have noticed in the past few weeks that for threads that have more moderator participation and influence, the threads are hotter and more talked about. There tends to be more posts, more interaction, more of a "community" feel to it. I don't know if it is because it just gets to the top of the list more often, or if the presence of the moderator really contributes to tying the asynchronous communication together. I have realized this especially on the call of duty official forum. For a long time, the moderator there GHANDI, has been very active, and there were over 300 pages of posts. Suddenly, he disappeared for about a week. The amount of posts by anonymous users suddenly declined rapidly. It went from about 3-4 pages of posts per day to about 1-2 per day. Discussion weren't as engaging, and overall, the sense of community and interaction dissipated. As soon as he came back however, interactions and posts boosted right back up. It was quite interesting to see this fluctuation in the post activity. I compared this to my other site, where there were no moderators at all. That website definitely didn't get as much of a community sense, since post threads easily died out, and participation were limited to few of the senior members. Finally, linking this to Facebook page, where everything was moderated, it seemed that there were many more hits and likes and comments.

From this, I can only conclude that with the presence of a moderator, it seems that it gets the community overall more engaged and want to have members participate more.

Online Interest Group Practicum update - Post 2

Last time, I just got started on the blog project, and was introduced to how the community worked as a whole and really just tried to fit in. This post I focused on starting my own thread on the game's official forum and seeing how that worked out for me.

First off, there are so many forum topics and new threads each day, many of which are combined or closed by moderators to save space and condense similar topics to one thread. Fortunately, my thread did not get closed, and I got a decent amount of people that replied to it. From the picture, you can tell from the little box in the middle right page that there were 20 replies to my post, which I thought isn't bad, considering the amount of threads and other bigger sized posts and threads. It felt nice to see people reply to something I started, and I felted connected to them. To me, this brought in a sense of "community", although I know none of them had the obligation to post on my thread.

This type of replying is very asynchronous and every so often, I get a new reply here and there. Unlike chatrooms, I sometimes wait a few days in between posts and replies. That's something that makes me feel disconnected with this forum and community. It's also very hard to track to see who replied to who, which adds to the disconnectivity of the website and forum.

Overall though, I'm glad my new thread got some footing, maybe the next new thread I post, it will be multiple pages of replies. It all depends on the material and topic you bring up, while making sure I don't repeat or make my topic to similar to previous threads.

Special Interest Group 1

As my first post for my practicum, I will be laying out what exactly I am doing and what I am participating in. My interest group is the video game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. I chose 3 different websites to contribute to; The official CoD forum website, a fan-run game-specific website, and the official Facebook page for the game. I chose this topic mainly because I had a little bit of prior engagement with this online community and wanted to participate more. What better time to do it than now, for school and research purposes.

Like many official forums, there are many subtopics. I chose to focus on a specific discussion post topic to narrow my subject of interest. Also because it is one that I know is the most busy in regards to posts and updates. I chose to do the updates discussion board for the topic to focus my attention on. In the past 2 weeks, I have created an account and posted my experiences on current issues at work. Also, just reading through some posts to catch up on what the current issues and talks are so I can be in-sync with everyone posting.

On the smaller fan-run website, things are a bit different. Unlike the official forums, where there are thousands of people going through the website and reading and contributing, the smaller website has a much smaller discussion board and forum topics. So on this one, I started to contribute to more topics and posts. I also don't see as much new posts in this one either.

On the Facebook page, it is another completely different interaction experience. First, it is less of a "forum" than a place to state your comment. Official posts are made by the page owner, and it ranges from videos, pictures, questions, news, and even surveys. It's a completely different style of community and interaction than the other two sites.

Throughout the semester, I will be making more posts capturing my experience in these communities and what I got out of it and what I observed.

For my practicum presentation tomorrow, this is the question I pose to everyone:

—What do you think are the defining aspects of a “community”? And do you think the one you are currently in is considered one? Why or why not?