I've never posted anything to Wikipedia and was actually kind of excited to see my contribution published on the site. I've heard that a lot of what people post gets cross-checked by some collective of editors, for relevance to the topic, accuracy, and grammar. I'm not entirely sure what criteria they use, but I could see why thats necessary, especially if people are going to Wikipedia for accurate knowledge. I wonder how fast it takes for a Wikipedia editor to spot a new post, I'm sure there's some sort of indicator that lets them know where revisions have been made. But even when an editor finds something out of place how do they determine whether or not its accurate? Obviously there are revisions that are clearly inaccurate and are the results of trolls, but I'm curious as to what that the standard is, and how they apply that criteria to the revisions.
Regardless, here's what I added to the MiGente.com Wikipedia
"MiGente.com has aesthetics comparable to Facebook.com and utilizes many of the same networking tools Facebook.com does, like friend requests, chat, tagging, etc. However, a key difference between MiGente.com and Facebook.com is that MiGente.com allows for more customization when it comes to your profile page. Also, unless customized by the user, anything posted on MiGente.com is public and users are also allowed to comment on anyones post, unlike Facebook.com, which automatically requires you to be friends with the person whose post you are commenting on."
I think this is accurate, hopefully the editors do too.
So I've been frequenting the chat room for a couple days now. The rooms that are available are "Spanish Speakers", "Lesbian", "Latino Lounge", "Gay", "30 Somethings", and "20 Somethings". Like I said in my previous post the online the only chat room that had anybody in was the "30 Somethings", and it had about 9 people in it. I wrote about trolling in my paper, and highlighted how I had encountered a couple trolls in the comment section of a Youtube. I was always curious about trolling. Today I let my curiosity get the best of me. I don't plan on going on Migente after this, and every time I've been in the chat room I'm usually ignored because everyone else in there are regulars and have a specialized language. So I decided to try and get everyones attention by trolling in the chat room. It worked. Not only did I get immediate responses, but the conversation lasted well over 30 mins. Surprisingly though no one booted me from the group, in fact, they seemed to embrace me after awhile. All I really did to troll them was call them names and talk negatively about Migente, and soon they started make fun of each other and badmouth Migente along with me.
I found it interesting how it took vulgarity to get people to respond. This whole time I've been trying to communicate with people on these websites by asking questions like, "what do you think of Puerto Rican independence?", or "How do you feel about Latinos portrayal in the media?" All of the responses I received from those questions did not lead to any substantial conversations or any sort of connection with the members. I guess people don't really want to discuss those issues in chat rooms. However, I feel like I would need to do more research and a thorough ethnography to make claims like that.
As much as I don't really enjoy going to Migente as a social networking site I must say there are some pretty cool options when it comes to customization. You can add songs to your profiles, change up the layout, and even switch to different color schemes. For me I think the website has become this sort of post-Facebook relic of what social networking sites used to look like, i.e. Myspace. I feel like Facebook has now set the standard for social networking sites, and all the past SNS's are either shattered versions of themselves quietly dying in the far corners of cyberspace, or old relics that are relegated to mere novelties of a once thriving and diverse scene. Maybe it is a good thing to have one centralized website where everyone goes to get there social networking fix, it might make networking a lot easier.
But then again, sites like Migente cater to a different audience, one that embraces the quirky and sometimes tacky customizations that made Myspace so popular at one time. Danny made a reference in class about how Facebook is like the suburbs; nice, clean, and orderly, and Myspace is like the city, cluttered, noisy, and filled with people of color. Its no surprise that Migente, an obvious offshoot of Myspace, is full of latinos, obviously with a title like Migente thats what it was designed to be. It's a place where people who share common cultural, traditions, practices, and languages can get together, network with each other, connect, and customize their social networking site as an overt expression of themselves.
I will admit, Facebook has sterilized my tastes when it comes to SNS. Regardless, I feel like the reason I think these customizations are so cool is because I haven't seen or used them since Myspace. I would compare it to that feeling of nostalgia you get when you find your favorite toy from childhood. Although you don't really want to play with it because of the social backlash you might receive from society, its nevertheless something you used to enjoy, and it reminds you of your roots. Your SNS roots that is.
Here's a screenshot of one of the customization pages
I visited Migente.com again. I only really got the urge to go on after I got on Facebook. Sometimes it feels strange when I think about how a social networking site targets certain demographics, I think I feel this way because I've become so accustomed to Facebook. However, in hindsight the first social networking site I used was Myspace, and the only people I interacted with were Black and Latino, and sure you can go searching for people, but I didn't, and my social circle online was usually constant and quite small.
I haven't been on Brownplanet or Brownpride in awhile, and I'm not sure I'll be going back. Migente is just much more comprehensive when it comes to interacting with self-identifying Latinos(a). There are more options for communication in Migente then there are in the Brownplanet and Brownpride. The only real ways of interacting with members on the two previous sites is through forums, which when compared with Migentes chat services, seems as efficient as the postal service. Regardless I still don't feel comfortable saying that I know how Latino(a)s use the internet. How do I know that all the people I've interacted with have been Latino(a)? Identity can be easily manipulated online, and there was never a surefire way to determine if the person I was talking to (sometimes they had a profile picture) was Latino.
Here is a link to all three sites I mentioned earlier
I've been searching around for more websites where I can engage with fellow latinos. All that really requires is typing into Google, "Latinos", "Hispanics", "Puerto Rican", etc. Obviously if you want to get more specific you can, but I've found it more conducive and efficient to just type in the broadest term possible then go and sift through the results. One thing I have been noticing is that all of the social networking sites look relatively similar to one another. A part of me think that these are all generic, and more specialized forms of facebook, and while this may be true for some of them it can't be said for all. For instance, Migente.com has structural similarities to Facebook, i.e. add a friend, message a friend, chat, photos, tagging, likes, and status updates, but although there may be some similarities between many of these social networking sites with Facebook, that doesn't necessarily mean they were products of Facebook. Migente.com has been around since I was in Elementary school, which was give or take 12 years ago. This would mean that Migente.com has been around longer than Facebook, and is not a product of Mark Zuckerberg's brainchild. Migente.com probably copied some of their structural ideas from Facebook, but then again I feel like most social networking sites just borrow from whatever social networking site is the most popular at the time, just like the Facebook creators probably got some of there ideas or inspirations from Myspace.
Today I found a social networking site, Latinopeoplemeet.com. Talk about a web address that's to the point. I'm so used to the aesthetics and structural set up of Facebook that a lot of these other SNS's are just unappealing, boring, and hard to navigate. Not to mention that in order for you to use the services of Latinopeoplemeet.com like chat you have to pay! I didn't stay on for too long and felt that my money could be better spent on something else.
Here's a screen shot of the screen that asks you to pay a fee to use their services.
