HE way knowledge is shared among and between people keeps changing–or put positively–evolving . Take for example stories and personal journals that are released under a Creative Commons (e.g. Attrib-NonCommerical-No Derivs 2.5) license. These come to show that content becomes a very ‘fluid’ thing where information is increasingly reused to improve existing knowledgebases. But it goes beyond that.

Many people are openly sharing information about themselves. They make it searchable online. Keywords and unique identifiers definitely help as well. Indexing makes streams of written consciousness easier to locate. Passively perhaps, I am among people who can organise personal data owing to searching technologies in a vast pool of informational context–the World Wide Web. I did not choose the path of anonymity. It was either a wise or a dumb choice, depending on who’s to judge. By collecting and piecing together over 20,000 UseNet posts of mine (a screenshot of my newsreader is shown on the right hand side), one could reproduce some of my life’s history and, potentially, highlight more controversial opinions, too.

There are less flattering pieces of information of the Web, including the defamation of one’s name and dignity. Sadly, there are some people who take advantage of indexing. The best method of evading nasty consequences is never to engage in conversations with those who shoot from the lip. Hopefully it becomes reciprocal, as in “if you want to discard my messages, then just killfile me”. In other cases, however, the coronation of stupidity takes over logic. Sick-minded (and often anonymous) people carry on with inane one-liners and personal attacks. Yesterday I confroned a Digg stalker. Yes, there is some crazy stalker on Digg who is a sworn Microsoft fan that systematically mods my comments down.

All in all, despite a little bit of negative publicity, I am fairly pleased with what I have contributed over the Web. I guess that every valuable thing with a noble cause, however benign, must have a cost.

As a side note and an off-topic discussion, I recently began using Google Groups. The local newsgroups server has been problems-ridden for a week, so I haven’t much choice. Here’s an observation: in Google Groups’ beta, I am rather surprised to find that Google makes ad revenue out of UseNet. It even appends “Copyright 2006 Google” to pages although the content is in fact contributed by various people without any connection to Google. A well-deserved reward for their service (UseNet gateway)? Probably. But the mind still boggles.

Personally, I only keep copies of messages and threads in which I am involved, whereas Google does this at a far larger scale. It also digs archives that are published without people’s awareness and consent. This leaves a few fuming non-anonymised posters from the nineties and eighties. One of them, for example, has demonstrated loudly and caused disruption to the Webmasters newsgroup. Constant harassment and floods carries on for a few months before cessation. My feelings remain mixed as far as Google’s involvement in public forums is concerned.

VER the weekend I expored the possiblity of adding an X-header to my outgoing messages. This particular one, known as X-Face, is a 48×48 pixel binary representation of one’s face. Here is mine:

.dYWu:H1\3ib`=T*Zoi9{>C].hHmdJ#z~":dJ5pFYAC`jJ6I~pf</F~#Sp(\[J6OgtEBO"[
@'u^%Ia#bVQhL%Cw#^nUFCIAEjS=M(B6B'>OUrp)Y"ZY}Z\Y~`g#I,JSw?7"3&Fctfk^)\]8{j[7)M
Nj%-#0a}S+*8oFlP^l,>&Y^1yhEYGz7>sv*'OuW}a9Oq}:<Ra*`;',OG@O=wj0mp'{Q|hbDm&yS-#r
m;DM)4S$!IX22Ou)-Y^lh[pu6VX8Dh0dG&Fv[54aJZeX*LAV]2w9wSR15

To view this short sequence as an actual image, use this Web-based tool. You may also create your own X-Face, which can be bound to your E-mail as a succinct header. I wonder if a fetch key can be created for X-Faces in the same way that PGP keys can be replaced by a shorter identifier. I suppose a URL can be specified in the header instead.

Net neutrality is somewhat similar to the closing of software in the eighties. It involves greedy corporations that observe somethings open with financial potential, as well as benefits to be reaped. They introduce restrictions and kill openness to serve interests and agendas.

This initially happened not so long ago, as Open Source software merely vanished in the 80′s. GNU/FSF were formed to bring it all back. It is a successful effort whose fruits we only begin to see as people learn from past mistakes. They want to have control rather than be controlled. It is important to ensure that the same ideas do not spread to media and information, much of its embodiment being DRM.

Most sadly, the same approach and idealogy is now threatening the Internet. History may repeat itself as the same approach is now takes our cyberspace, including the World Wide Web. Imagine being charged to visit sites, read articles, etc. Suddenly, you see elevated newspapers that overcharge. Freedom no longer prevails.

The gain for the corporation has a price. It is made possible at the expense of free wealth of information that, much like open source software, promotes exchange of knowledge and makes engineering, for example, advance more rapidly. And while ignorance is bliss to most, it is most blissful to the corporation (or sometimes government) that takes advantage of it.

IGG is changing. It potentially transforms itself for the better, but there are residual side effects. There will no longer be a tiered set of users. Top Diggers, including myself as a former active Digger, largely resent the new move.

To those unaware of these recent sizzling developments I’m referring to, Digg’s algorithm is being modified to be less (or more) democratic, essentially by weighting user’s votes as though they are not necessarily equal. It could bring about improvements, but it also raises many questions, affects morale, and lowers aspirations among new and senior contributers alike.

More latterly, several Digg contributers have been trying to assassin the character of Netscape, suggesting that the idea of removing avatars in protest came from Netscape or some shills it had recruited. It didn’t (see quotes below).

There are some Digg contributers who seek to blame Netscape for all the in-house trouble. But the removal of avatars, whose progress I followed from early stages, appears to have begun from the top and gone downwards with folks like DigitalGopher, P9, and George W. I didn’t realise what it was all about the first time I spotted the pattern. I thought top users were being banned or stripped of their identity. There are intersting discussion about the impact of the change.

Here’s another thought I had: if top diggers lose power and are then perceived as ordinary, that will a considerable turn-off, which is sure to stop them from participating much, let alone ‘game the system’, as Kevin Ross called it (impulsive accusation perhaps).

So what should we now expect from top contributers? Just a submission here and there to keep up appearance and be part of the scene (presence), not ‘becoming the next Albert Pacino (top all-time contributer)’, who long ago decided to hang up the towel.

Lastly, here is are some bits from an interview with the top Digger, who quit abruptly.

The other users did not remove their avatars in support of me. It was in protest of Kevin’s message as well as the verbal filth that many Digg users were spewing at Digg’s top submitters.

The #33 Digg user, Curtiss Thompson, had many of the same things to say, in an email to Wired’s Michael Calore:

The blog post by Kevin Rose in response to the Digg community’s outcry about top diggers gaming the system has caused many top diggers to be singled out from the community and buried not on the merit of their content, but on their unfounded accusations that the top Diggers were manipulating or “gaming” Digg’s democratic system. Not only was the blog post misrepresented, but it was misinterpreted, by the Internet community to support one Digg user’s claim that The Digg System Is Being Gamed By Top Users.

Side notes:

• A Digg friend was kind enough to have me mentioned and even credited. Thanks, buddy!
• I had an interview about my recent move to Netscape/AOL. I will post a pointer to the text (or a copy thereof) in my blog as soon as it goes live.

Update: some comprehensive, link-rich coverage has just been posted on the topic.

EEDS have improved the lives of everyone who wishes to be ‘on top of things’. But what tools should ideally be used? For syndication, I continue to use RSSOwl, as opposed to more bloated alternatives such as recent versions of Mozilla Thunderbird. I partly helped in the testing of RSSOwl (as a gensture of reciprocity), so I still feel as though I must ‘eat my own dog food’. And yet — recently had to check some other feed readers that are Web-based (or a carefully-crafted script that outputs (X)HTML). I was interested in better tools whose development is more active. The same applies to newsgroup readers. Some describe themselves as ‘application whores’ in such contexts.

Over the years I developed this banal habit of reading feeds. At present, I read the news three times a day (i.e. three passes), but other feeds — those which I once followed closely — I only go past or glance at about twice a week. Desire has been lost for full RSS coverage. Mailing lists and newsgroups likewise. Often I just quickly look through the titles/subject lines. It’s probably due to excessive subscription and burdensome load that I can no longer cope with. But there is no sense of obligation anymore. I suppose many people reach the state of feed overload, which is closely-related (if not an alias for) ‘information overload’. Such overloads take over innocent cyberspacers.

Side-anecdote: In hindsight, the last sentence if a bit of an overstatements or maybe a gross generalisation (projecting one’s problems onto others). But this generalisation is probably a benign one that acts merely as a warning sign. Unlike, for instance, calling someone a murder for taking antibiotics and killing germs…

IGG.COM is a Web sites where more prominent news stories are voted for by a large pool of users. An informal blog post from ZDNet revealed some intersting ‘Digg facts’. It is of great interest to me as I have become a regular member and participants of the Digg community (I am currently ranked 17^th).

Diggtrends.com aimed to find out answers to the following questions:

1. What is the real contribution of top 100 users?
2. Who took Jason’s (Netscape) Offer?
3. How did the user statistics changed after July 18th (Jason’s Offer)?
4. How many dig users are really contributing?

To the first question, they found:

• top 10 users contributed 1792 of the frontpage stories – i.e 29.8%
• top 100 contributed 3324 stories i.e 55.28%

Nearly 30% of frontpage stories contributed by just 10 people is a pretty amazing stat – talk about the A-List!

Addendum: here comes the more official analysis/announcement

NLY a few days ago, Netscape and AOL offered money for people to participate in their on-line portal. Having created a Digg copycat, they were willing to pay some generous sums of money for influential Diggers to defect and help create a larger and healthier community elsewhere. The cited article views these recent events in a rather objective way.

Dollar signs went off in the blogsphere Wednesday, as blog pioneer and recent Netscape recruit Jason Calacanis offered up to $1000 a month to woo volunteer posters away from popular reader-generated link sites like Digg and Reddit.

[...]

“I’m just surprised that he feels like he had to steal people away from Digg,” said Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief at SearchEngineWatch.com. “Certainly it’s starting to feel forced now. He’s looking for leaders in his community. None of them have emerged apparently, so he’s hoping to bribe them away from another place.”

[...]

Will the cool hunters in the Digg community take the bait? Reached via e-mail, Digg’s second most popular user, Dirtyfratboy (also known as Henry Wang), told Wired News that he was torn.

“Mr. Calacanis shows up this week and informs the world that users can receive payment for their work. I’ve stayed by Digg’s side ever since the 2.0 birth, but I’m in real pain right now. I would rather break my arm than to dismiss Digg, but my college tuition doesn’t pay for itself.”

Even to me this was tempting. Out of curiosity I got in touch with Calacanis and tested the ground, so to speak. They seem interested at the time, but this truly conflicted with my principles. It would also be awkward, if not a poor strategy altogether. Paying people to do what others already do voluntarily? A couple of days later this led to quiet riots by existing Netscape.com fans. So, I imagine the plan has been fully conceded by now.