Monday, January 24, 2011

Reading #2: Edits & Credits: Exploring Integration and Attribution in Online Creative Collaboration

Comments:
Comment #1
Comment #2

Reference:
Title: Edits & Credits: Exploring Integration and Attribution in Online Creative Collaboration
Authors: Kurt Luther, Nicholas Diakopoulos, and Amy Bruckman
Venue: CHI 2010; Atlanta, Georgia; April 10-15

Summary:
This article discusses the growing phenomenon of collaborative online work, such as Wikipedia or open source software.  The site discussed in the article is Newgrounds, a website devoted to collaborative Flash animation projects.  On this site, a "leader" submits requests for specific work, and others in turn submit their proposals.  The leader then has the task of choosing the work he/she thinks is the best and puts them into the work.  If a contributor's work is chosen, he/she may be listed as an "author," which increases that person's status.  However, an issue arises because Newgrounds only allows for 10 coauthors per project.  It is rare that a project have more than that, but if it does, it leads to people getting left in the cold despite their contributions.  Also, the leader must edit the submissions to create an acceptable piece, which can upset the other contributors if their work is edited too much or without their permission.  Overall, the objective is to increase standing in the community, and the multi-authorship system (or MAS) allows for that.

Discussion:
I thought this was a fairly interesting article.  I've never heard of the Newgrounds website before.  It sounds like a good way to increase one's reputation should one be interested in Flash development.  I think it sucks that if there's more than 10 "authors" for a work, then you can end up not being credited for your work, but I agree with the article in that it creates more competition and higher quality pieces.  It certainly puts a different spin on public forums and social networking.

4 comments:

  1. It is nice to see social media being productive. Of course, it is difficult to feel productive while browsing newgrounds.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I like how you commented on their limit of 10 authors next to the picture with the tag line "Everything, By Everyone". Maybe they need to change that to, "Everything, By Everyone Up To But Including No More Than 10 People."

    ReplyDelete
  3. I didn't realize the community for such flash games and movies was so large. It was interesting that in some cases there were more than 50 artists all working together to make something <10MB large.

    ReplyDelete
  4. This idea really is a great idea and could be used for all types of creating. One thing this could be used in is for human resources of companies when they are trying to select employees for hiring. They could have a project for the prospects to work on and use that as a hiring tool when all the candidates have created their work.

    ReplyDelete