Practicum 7 - Wrapping Things Up

I figured I would use this final practicum post to kind of summarize some of the experiences I had on Kongregate.  Over the course of the semester, I participated in various parts of the Kongregate forums, as well as some attempts to interact with the Kongregate chat rooms.  On the forums, I posted just under 300 posts over the course of the semester (20-25 a week).  I also spent time on the chat rooms, although I had almost no success in making networks with the chat rooms.

On the forums, it took a solid month of posts before I was acknowledged with any amount of seriousness.  The Kongregate community niches, at least the few that I participated in, seemed to be resistant to new comers.  But, through persistence, I was able to carve out my spot and my answers began to fit in the persona that the other users came to expect.  This is the first time I spend a continued amount of time on one forum (usually a bounce around 5-8 different ones without ever being a regular contributor).  I hadn't expected to have to put in so much time to gain acceptance into the community.

I would imagine part of the community's hesitance comes from two main reasons.  First, the community as a whole seems to be pretty young, probably 13-17 for the most part.  I would imagine that the people who were posting in 'Serious Discussion' where I spent most of my time would be hesitant to take somebody who had a grand total of zero posts before I started this project seriously right away.  Second, many people on the forums seem to, at the very least, try to troll.  There are a ridiculous amount of troll alts on this site among the forums, I would imagine when people saw me roll in, that they thought I was just another troll alt.

In short, I was only really able to make a real connection with one other person on the forums.  Generally when posting I tried to be confrontational which didn't foster many friendly connections among the other members.  But, it was interesting to see some of the theories that Danny discussed in lecture play out within the Kongregate community.

Practicum 6 - The Cliques of Kongregate

Over the past couple of weeks, I tried to diversify my Kongregate experience by engaging in some of the more casual social areas of the site.  I choose two different parts and encountered similar difficulties.

The first was their chat rooms.  As I've mentioned, they are terribly designed.  None of the chatrooms are for a specific interest that can bring people together (such as a chatroom for people who want to talk about movies).  Another problem is that, while there are probably over 200 English speaking chatrooms, most of them have very little, if any, chatter going on in them.  After much searching, I found three different chatrooms that had some conversations going on.  In each of the three, it seemed like there was a small group of regulars who were doing the talking.  Anytime I tried jumping in with something to say, my comments were basically ignored.  It's seems to be difficult for new people to join in the chat communities if they are all as closed off as the few that I interacted with.

I then tried to contribute to the Off Topic forums.  The problem here is that no real conversations or communities are ever really cultivated.  Also, so many different people make new threads on what seems to be an hourly basis, that threads routinely get shoveled to the the 3rd or 4th page of the forum.  Also, this particular part of the forums is rampant with trolls, so anytime a topic that I'm interested in at the OT forums emerges, it either cycles to the bottom or is trolled to oblivion.  Overall, the past two weeks have been a fruitless venture for me in terms of the more casual social elements of Kongregate.

Evening Computer Use

My computer use last night isn't terribly interesting since I was at work for most of the night.  But while at work, most of what I did (working the front desk at a hotel) relied almost solely on the computer.  When I got into start my shift, it was clear just how reliant the hotel is on computers when the servers went down for about a half hour, leaving us unable to make a room key.  Outside of that, while at work, I used the computer in the massive Xerox machine, a calculator as well as on my cell phone and iPod that kept me occupied on my break.

When I was driving home, I fired up my car, which has, at least to some extent, a computer in it and turned on my satellite radio receiver.  On the way home, I made a quick stop at an ATM to grab some quick cash before heading home.  When I got home, I fired up my computer and TV to check and email and vegetate for a little before going to bed.

I've never really realized how reliant I am on computers on a daily basis, especially since my computer broke down last week and I was computerless.  It's amazing how ubiquitous this technology is, how prevalent it is, and in how many devices it has been integrated.  It's crazy to think how far technology has come in just five years, and it leaves me fascinated to think where we may go in the next 5-10 years as well.

Practicum 5 - Wikipedia Post

While trying (and so far being unsuccessful) at making contacts in the more social regions of Kongregate, I took some time to contribute to their Wikipedia page.  I have never contributed to a Wikipedia page in a way that was meant to be a real contribution.  When I first visited Kongregate's Wikipedia page, I was taken aback by how short and simple it was based on the amount of traffic that I am assuming it generates on a daily or monthly basis.

Because I have never had much experience editing on Wikipedia and not knowing the proper community standards, I did a really limited posting.  My contribution was the second paragraph under "Developers Community."  I also tried to keep it limited because I was concerned that maybe my post would be deleted (my history of fake posts always got deleted immediately).  I did a bit of research on their developer page and added a brief bit that seemed to be a relatively recent update that was not represented on the Wikipedia page.  It also seems like that this page receives attention pretty sporadically since there are a bunch of sources from either 2007 or 2011.

Media Social Networking - Post 4

It's been quite awhile since I've posted about my practicum - really since I presented.  Most of what I've done on Kongregate has been in the Serious Discussion portion of the forum.  I've started contributing to the more casually social aspects of the site, from their terribly designed chat rooms to the off topic and general chatter forums.  But, thus far at least, I've found it difficult to get into any real thoughtful conversations.  I'm hoping I can have a couple of notable experiences in the more casual conversation threads by the end of the semester.

When I first started posting on the Serious Discussion, people generally just assumed I was a troll.  After all, I had never posted on the forums before, and troll alts are relatively common, especially when someone receives a temporary ban from the forums.  One person asked me, since I'd had an account on the site for about three years, why I hadn't posted at all.  This suggested to me immediately that this particular thread was generally closed-off to new-comers.  I would guess this has arised from a history of trolls and the like.

Once I began to post a little while, I finally connected with one person.  We agreed on one particular thread and began to talk via private messages about the issue we agreed about.  Eventually, we began to talk about more social stuff and write to each other every now and then which was exciting.  Unfortunantly, this is the only person that I've really made a connection with so far - most people who are regulars on this particular thread largely seem to stick to themselves.

Generally when I've been posting on this section of the forums, I've found myself getting into many fiery arguments with people.  I think for the last bit of the semester, I'm going to try to remain more unemotional and see how my interactions with the people on the forums differs with more laid-back style on the forums.

Participation 6 - Hulu V. YouTube

These are two sites that I use frequently since I rarely watch TV when it is actually scheduled.  In terms of Hulu, the amount of ads that the site has seems to has increased drastically over the past few years.  It seems like I remember the ad breaks in the middle of episodes used to be 30-seconds - now it's relatively often for me to get an ad break that is 90-seconds.  It's still far better than if I watch the programming live, but it's a bit disappointing that how commercialized they have made it.

I much prefer YouTube to Hulu and spend far more time on it.  I like how the ads don't interrupt the middle of the video - once they air at the start, then they're over, every time.  It's also nice how many of the YouTube ads have the skip ad feature after a few seconds.  I also think that just the general user interface in YouTube is a lot easier to manage.  I regularly make use of the subscription function, whereas Hulu, I find myself typing in the show individually rather than subscribing to it.

Perhaps what makes YouTube the best is when you want to view a short clip of a show.  The ad is usually super short, or sometimes nonexistent, where as Hulu is a bit of a process to view just a clip.  The searchability of Hulu just doesn't compare with YouTube.

Copyrights

I personally haven't had a direct impact on copyrights personally that was anything terrible serious.  The only notable instance was during my freshman year here at UW when I was living in the dorms and using Res Net.  In my high school years, I had a fair bit of pirated music on my computer.  Res Net happened to notice that one of my songs was infringing on copyright protection and sent me what was basically a cease and desist email.  Now, I never pirate music since I've found the music quality to just buy the CD on ebay for a couple of bucks is far greater and there is no danger of acquiring a virus.

While I don't pirate music anymore, I have, on occasion, pirated sports streams.  Most recently, during the NCAA tourney, I noticed that they are now charging to watch the tournament online.  I was not about to pay the $4 for the stream when I'm already paying for the channels it airs on via my Charter subscription.  So I went to my stand-by site that I use to stream NFL games to watch the tournament while in class.  Seeing as the NCAA and TV networks make billions off of unpaid student athletes, I didn't feel terribly guilty about doing it.

Blog 4 - Googling Myself

Before I Googled myself for this blog post, I wasn't entirely sure what I would find since I share the same name as my dad.  I first googled my name in quotes.  This turned up basically nothing except some Linked In profiles for Bill Melcher (which I don't have) and an array of Facebook profiles for various Bill Melchers.

I then decided to add Wisconsin into my search bar to filter out the various great Bill Melchers who live throughout the world (one of which, a Bill Melcher who lives in NC, have tied the Facebook Friend knot).  Again, virtually nothing showed up.  The only noteworthy thing that did appear was info on my dad and the family business that my parents own.  I was a bit dismayed that none of the newspaper stories that charted my 'dominance' in varsity golf didn't show up.  But, I was overall pleased that my efforts to maintain a non-existent presence online, especially via a Google search has paid off.

Out of curiosity, I decided to take a deep breath and try the painful search engine better known as Bing.  This was a bit more troubling than the Google search - although nothing I really expected.  The first result was again a hit for my dad, but the second hit linked directly to my Facebook profile.  After that, a lot of stuff for my dad, although there was a hit for My Life (never heard of this) mentioning that I graduated from Spooner High School in 2008.  Nothing terribly groundbreaking on Bing either.

Media Social Networking - Post 3 - Prelude to a Group Project

Over the past three weeks or so, I have been engaging with the Kongregate community.  Through this time, I have noticed several distinct traits emerge.  For starters, there seems to be a conscious attempt among the community members to be helpful to fellow developers and to have legitimate conversations with other members.  Any attempt to troll or flame members is either ignored or reported and quickly removed by a forum mod.  In fact, these discussion boards are some of the most proactive in terms of removing content that is detrimental to the positive/thoughtful discussion that happens the bulk of the time on the website.

Within Kongregate, there is such a broad community aspect that users almost have to create their own niche within the website in order to really enjoy the experience.  Most people simply do not have enough hours in the day to contribute to the discussion revolving around coding and aiding aspiring game developers, as well as, contributing to the chatrooms and to the regular discussion boards.  Because Kongregate is so masssive, the sheer amount of categories the website had placed within its community seems to be a subtle attempt to say, "Don't worry about doing a little of a lot of things - do a lot on a few things."

While I'll touch on both of these aspects when presenting today, in terms of the discussion question, there is something else that I think is important to think about.  On Kongregate, the individual identity of people is rarely, if ever, discussed.  The profiles of users is limited - Kongregate keeps it bare bones, seeming to emphasize the content and not necessarily who the creator is.  This leads me to my question: do you prefer a community situation where you know who other people are and they know you (Facebook, Twitter) or do you prefer to participate in a more annonymous setting (YouTube, Kongregate, etc.)?

Media Social Networking - Post 2

I have begun getting involved within the Kongregate community.  The first thing I've noticed as I started to browse the community aspect of the site was just how massive it is.  Kongregate has, really, three different community options for people to get involved in.  There is a developers' site, with feedback for people on their coding, on game ideas, on places to go for potential funding for new games, etc.  Within the developers' section is the ability to upload your game onto Kongregate and to receive a portion of the funding for each hit you get (I'm not entirely sure how much that actually amounts to).  There is then the main Kongregate forums which are entirely massive.  There are forum boards for the current 'hot' Kongregate games, for general video game chatter (these threads focus on console games, not PC/MMOs).  Finally, there are the forums used more for discussion, from discussion of current news events, to off-topic/lightheard discussions, to people posting art, poems, photography, and the like.

The first forum that I've began to investigate and try to take part in was the board titled "Forum Games."  These games are basically just an opportunity for people to Role Play (RP) depending on what the post's scenerio is.  There are Mafia games, there are adventure-themed RP discussions, and really anything in between.  I've been part of two games thus far, although my experiences thus far have been less than ideal.

My first experience in Forum Games was a Mafia type game.  The game only featured 8 players which is quite a bit smaller than most of the Mafia games on Kongregate seem to start with.  This was due, in part, to the Original Poster (OP) being especially eager to get the game underway.  This was his first attempt at running a Mafia on Kongregate which probably didn't help make the game go smoother.  The game ended really quickly (after two days), including forcing someone to role switch (myself) when the RNG after the first night messed up the competition of the remaining members.  As I mentioned, this was my first experience with the Forum Games, but the others seemed to understand all of the jargon/abbreviations.

My second experience with this part of Kongregate was an entire RP story.  This also hasn't gone terribly well either.  Most of the people seemed to have quickly lost interest with this thread.  I personally signed up for one of the lesser roles and never really experienced much of an opportunity to get involved in the story or keep the story going.  This is my first experience doing any real RPing of any kind.  There are some threads on this forum that have several hundred posts and I'm hoping to at least experience on of those over the course of the semester.  I am about to start another Mafia game on the forum.  If anything noteworthy occurs, I'll mention it via the Practicum, otherwise, I'll be posting about my experiences on other aspects of the Kongregate community.

Media Social Networking - Post 1

For my practicum (Media-Based Social Networking), I have decided to use Kongregate.com.  For those of you who aren't familiar with Kongregate, it is basically a site that collects the latest and greatest Flash games that the Internet has to offer and puts them under one site.  The site, to help encourage users to try out new games that they may not otherwise sample, they offer Badges (who doesn't want to collect shiny badges?), including a Badge of the Day that the most diehard Kongregate people can achieve daily.

When I initially was assigned Media Social Networking, I wasn't sure if I wanted to do Last.fm or Kongregate, so I spent a couple of days posting and interacting with both sites message boards and getting a feel for their communities.  My experience with Last.fm was a message board that was pretty quiet, with the only posts that were active were posts that wondered "What is your favorite band?" or "Make a comment about the above user's last played song."  These threads were often into the thousands in terms of replies and didn't seem to foster must of a discussion.

Kongregate's forums, on the other hand, are super active and have a wide variety of different categories to choose from, from Off Topic, to general gaming, to Serious Discussion.  While I have had an account on Kongregate since Sept. of 2009, I have never visited the forums until I was assigned the practicum (something that a poster even commented - but that will be mentioned in my next post).  During the practicum, I will be contributing/participating in the forums, and will try to contribute and read from several different forum groups on the site.

I-Dosing

I had never heard of I-Dosing before hearing it mentioned as one of the options to blog about.  Since I was familiar with the MySpace panic and had braved Chatroulette before, I decided to see what I-Dosing was all about.  The gist of it is that the videos, through the images and sound, are supposed to replicate the effects of recreational drugs.

I tried to keep an open mind while watching the videos throughout.  While watching, I became almost mesmerized by the imagery and I think the music that accompanied it (some shoddy club music) seemed to fit.  When I was watching, I was pretty relaxed, but after it ended, I wasn't left with a high of any kind.  Instead, the only thing I really took away from it was a headache.  I guess if people can get a high from them, then they've found a thrifty way to get high.

Video Response

I guess I've never really stopped to think how amazing of an invention the Internet is and how many different processes were necessary in order for it to come into existence.  I knew the Internet had its roots from the military (at least in the US), but I had thought it began in the mid 1960s - not 1957.  I was also completely oblivious to the fact that France had any role in the creation of the Internet.  It's incredible how much the Internet has evolved, from something used primarily for academic and military purposes to a social and entertainment fueled medium.  On a side note, I couldn't help but notice that the video forgot to give Al Gore credit for inventing the Internet...

Introduction: Bill Melcher

Hey, I'm Bill Melcher.  I'm a senior majoring in Comm. Arts and Political Science and will graduate in December.  In my free time, I like to golf, ski, and play the occasional hand of blackjack.

When I saw this class, I was instantly intrigued.  The Internet has risen as a medium that is as important, if not more than, television.  I'm interested to begin to look at the Internet in a more critical fashion and see where it may be headed in the next 10-20 years.