Plagiarism

I just finished reading an excellent piece on washingtonpost.com that discusses the death of the research paper. The article brings up a valid point: the Internet has made plagiarism so easy that research papers and term papers are virtually useless as learning tools, unless you count finding stuff to plagiarize as "learning." In my humble opinion, this is only the tip of the iceberg, an iceberg that is being made visible by the Internet, not caused by it.

To me, education (going to school, doing homework, getting a diploma, or a degree) is preparation for the real world--it is a way of developing tools which you can use later on in life. In other words, elementary, middle, and high school are stepping stones to higher education (trade schools, colleges, universities, internships, and journeyman programs, to name a few.) But it doesn't end there. Higher education then becomes a stepping stone for a career, a vocation, a lifestyle. Think "journey," not "destination."

It seems that the vast majority of people do not share this viewpoint. Instead, they are "destination-oriented" and, so, are not adverse to using short-cuts, and workarounds. To many, the path is meaningless--only the goal is meaningful.

In this light, plagiarism, and cheating in general, can be viewed as a symptom--if a good grade is all that counts, then how you get that good grade is irrelevant. If keeping college students in class is the goal, and not their learning the subject, then giving them good grades, irregardless of actual performance, is perfectly acceptable.

So, you see, rampant plagiarism is a symptom of a problem, a really big problem. The Internet is not a cause. It is, at best, a torch which shows us the true extent of the damage.

To quote Pogo: "We have met the enemy, and they are us."

del.icio.us tags: plagiarism, writing, education

Identity 2.0

Milt passed me this jewel and I think I really need to share it with you:

http://www.identity20.com/media/WEB2_2005/

Dick Hardt talks about Identity in the Web 2.0 world. His talk is basically what I was trying to address in my last blog post.

Technorati tags: identity, web2.0

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Back-O-The-Envelope

In my last post ((Non-)Anonymity(?)) I talked about the difficulties involved with determining the actual identity of a commenter or blogger. Is there anything we can do about this problem using the framework that is currently in use? Let me throw out some ideas:

1. Set-up (on a site by site basis) a system where a commenter must request an ID and password. The request must include a physical snail-mail address where the information can be sent to. Once the commenter has the information, they can log in and change their password.
   Pros - A real, physical address is a much more substantial then a free e-mail address.
   Cons - This takes a lot of time and it must be done for each site.
2.  Establish an identity service (or services) that verifies that a person is who they say they are. The service can issue the user a license, which could be requested by the blog on which the commenter wants to comment on. No ID, no comment.
   Pros - It allows people to do one-stop identity verification. It opens-up new opportunities for entrepreneurs.
   Cons - It will cost somebody some amount of money.

The purpose of this exercise is to find an elegant solution to a perceived problem. I never liked the idea of band-aids as final solutions.

Any ideas out there in the blogosphere?

Technorati tags: civility, blogging

del.icio.us tags: civility, blogging

Imus

Just got this from the Wall Street Journal:

"CBS fired Don Imus from his radio show, the final blow for the broadcaster amid a mounting controversy over racist remarks he made about the Rutgers University women's basketball team on his program. A flood of advertisers pulled their ads from Imus's radio and TV programs under mounting public pressure."

Understand this: I do not condone the remarks made by Don Imus. I think that they were insensitive, and frankly, dumb. But, his firing raises an important question:

Does this mean that anyone who makes disparaging remarks about someone based upon race, creed, or color, must be fired? Or is it just people who make disparaging remarks of people who are of a different race, creed, or color?

If you watch movies, television, or see live comedy, you will see many cases of remarks that are not offensive if traded between people of similar heritage, yet very offensive if traded between people of dissimilar heritage or background.

Has someone published a guide that covers what remarks are or are not appropriate when exchanged in public? It would make things a lot less confusing.

Frank

 

Technorati tags: civility, Imus

(Non-)Anonymity(?)

A lot of people, myself included, have been talking about not allowing anonymous commenting--the thought being that a valid e-mail address would give some semblence of personal responsibility. Does this help anything, really?

How do you know if it is me writing this blog post?

I, Frank Carey, am a human being with specific DNA, finger prints, blood type, and other characteristics that make me a unique individual member of the human race.

Dolor Ipsum is a cyberspace representation  which is used by a human being to post blog entries, comments, and send e-mail. In some ways it, Dolor, can be looked at as a one-dimensional avatar used to facilitate Web 2.0 communication.

Ideally, I use Dolor to communicate with people on the Web. The big question is: How do you link Dolor back to me, or for that matter, any specific human being? Think about this for a moment.

Dolor is accessed via a Web terminal (PC, Mac, WebTV, or some other Internet appliance.) A human types something on the terminal's keyboard, which then changes the keystrokes into electronic signals. These signals eventually become messages, comments, blog posts, and other types of Web data.

So, we have a path, a chain of custody so to speak, that stretches from the Web communication (post, comment, email) all the way back to the keyboard that generated it. So, how do we tie a specific person to that keyboard and the communication in question? We have to somehow determine who used the keyboard to generate the communication. I don't think we can after the fact, at least not with any certainty, and not with technology commonly in use today.

Now, one could image some type of device that read biometric data--fingerprint, voiceprint, DNA--that could then be used to imprint any communication sent from that terminal. Devices such as this probably do exist, but unless they are put into universal use (along with software that can read the information, then imprint the communications) there will be no way to insure non-anonymity.

Oh, and how long do you think it would take before electronic identity theft became commonplace?

So, until we figure a way to tie someone physically to an electonic message, how do you really know its me writing this blog?

Frank (?)

Technorati tags: civility, blogging

A "Bit" of Thought

A thought: What if incivility is partially caused by our inability to see life in grayscale?

Take a situation where someone does something that could possible offend you. Now, do you you think in terms of "take offense"/ "do not take offense" or do you think in terms of a sliding scale? If you think in terms of  "take offense"/ "do not take offense" then you have two choices, thus you have a better chance of just deciding without further input. On the other hand, a sliding scale may encourage you to think about a response longer, possibly even encouraging you to gather more information.

Children, at least to me, seem to start-off life by looking at the world in binary terms--yes/no, black/white, thick/thin. Eventually, many will grow up and see that the world is actually a palette of grays, perhaps even colors, and that no answer is absolute. There is good answers and not-so-good answers and sometimes the best you can do is OK.

Think about it: we are social animals that, prior to the invention of writing, communicated primarily face-to-face so that we could see/hear/touch/smell/and maybe even taste the person we are communicating with. Writing changed all that. Now, we can communicate through a proxy called writing. This proxy lacks the subtle nuances that allow us to see life and each other in a spectrum. Perhaps Web 2.0 needs a bit more humanity on our part?

Just thinking out loud, folks.

 

Technorati tags: civility, Web2.0

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Law of Unintended Consequences

In my previous post (and a recent post on my other blog, Of Geeks and Artists,) I mention that I moderate comments on all of my blogs. This seems to be a key point in some of the other attempts at bringing forth order from the chaos that is the blogosphere. Well, I just realized that the Law of Unintended Consequences could rear its ugly head with regards to this approach:

Assume that one of my posts gets 100 comments a day (don't I wish!) which I need to moderate if I am to strictly follow my own guidelines. Assume that it takes one minute to moderate one comment.  One minute multiplied by one hundred posts gives me one hundred minutes, or one hour and forty minutes of non-stop moderating. Only 480 comments would take a whole 8-hour day to moderate! Now, 480 may seem like a lot of comments, but if you maintain, lets say, 10 blogs, then that is only 48 comments a day.

I wonder if anyone has thought about this as they write their codes and rules? What do you think?

del.icio.us tags: Civility, blogging

Technorati tags: blogging, civility

My Personal Code of Blogging Ethics

Here it is for all the world to see:

1. Human decency
2. Common sense
3. The Golden Rule
4. The dictionary is your friend
5. The writing style guide is your friend
6. I don't need no stinking badges

Frank Carey
Spring 2007

Technorati tags: civility, blogging

del.icio.us tags: civility, blogging