evo2011mlit

Last chance to update profile and remain in this Ning

Hi everyone,

As I mentioned earlier, this Ning graciously sponsored by Pearson Education is only graciously sponsored up to 150 members. We are at 148 members now. When we reach 150, which could be soon, I will have to go through and find users whom we don't know and who have not interacted here and remove them from the Ning.

If this happens to you, don't worry, just re-join.

If you don't WANT this to happen to you, it won't if you simply update your profile. Ideally you'll put a picture there, but at least put something there that indicates you are a non-bot human. Keep in mind that any spam bot can generate its own name, put a number in the "age" category and toss in a location where it purports to be from, so if this is all you have filled in you might be culled.

You are welcome to stay and participate in the course starting now, but as we insist on 'live' members, please help us to ascertain your physical existence.

Let the F.U.N. begin!

Vance

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Vance Stevens on October 9, 2010 at 8:01am

Hi everyone,

Thanks to those who participated in the recent pp107 multiliteracies course. I think everyone had a good time doing it, and there was plenty of F.U.N.

This Ning has 150 members, the limit allowed by Ning under free Pearson sponsorship. There are now legitimate colleagues requesting to join us. In order to let them in I need to remove some members. If you are reading this and have an interest in this group, this does NOT concern you. There are numerous profiles here of people unknown to us or worse, who are actually spam bots posing as real people.

I have to delete one of those today. I know you are real if you upload a picture or avatar to your profile or if you fill in any information there that a spam bot would not.

Here is a potential bot profile, joined July 6, no activity since

Tony Mulqueen

* New York, NY
* United States

another: Cordelia Monkton, joined Aug 27, no activity since

* Los Angeles, CA
* United States

So you see the pattern. I'll start deleting these.

If you want to remain here, please put real information in your profile.

Thanks,
Vance

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Permalink Reply by Vance Stevens on December 31, 2010 at 9:36am

Hi everyone,

This is your last call to update your profile here if you would like to remain in this Ning. We are about to start up a new EVO Multiliteracies course here in January 2011 and we need to make room for a few dozen expected new members. We have a lot of profiles here now similar to this one which I just now denied: http://screencast.com/t/CDr6fCOk6wS, and all like it need to go.

If you have a profile here with a recognized name, I will try to keep you in this Ning. I will in the next day or two go through and remove all members whose names I don't know and who have added no information to their profiles and remove them to make room for new members. We can have only 150 members under Pearson sponsorship.

In case another level of pruning is necessary I may need to remove profiles of anyone with no activity or content here, so if you want to forestall that, at the very minimum, update your profile in this Ning.

If you are interested in maintaining involvement here, you are welcome to stay. I think we will be able to remove enough members who in the first instance are not human, and in the second (if it becomes necessary) are not actively participating.

Again, simply update your profile to remain with us and I look forward to interacting with you in our next round of Multilteracies for Social Networking and Collaborative Learning Environments.

Vance

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Permalink Reply by Vanessa Vaile on December 31, 2010 at 9:47pm

I've been looking forward to it ~ already thinking about specific projects. Something new that I can weave into ongoing projects. Please let me know if I can help with the course in anyway.

Vance Stevens said:

Hi everyone,

This is your last call to update your profile here if you would like to remain in this Ning. We are about to start up a new EVO Multiliteracies course here in January 2011

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Permalink Reply by Nina Liakos on January 4, 2011 at 1:47am

Hi Vance,

I will be participating in the Podcasting session this year, so if you need to delete me, it's okay, go ahead, and if you don't need to, leave me there and I may drop in from time to time, or come back another year.... Have a wonderful session! I wish I could be everywhere at once.

Nina

Vance Stevens said:

Hi everyone,

Thanks to those who participated in the recent pp107 multiliteracies course. I think everyone had a good time doing it, and there was plenty of F.U.N.

This Ning has 150 members, the limit allowed by Ning under free Pearson sponsorship. There are now legitimate colleagues requesting to join us. In order to let them in I need to remove some members. If you are reading this and have an interest in this group, this does NOT concern you. There are numerous profiles here of people unknown to us or worse, who are actually spam bots posing as real people.

I have to delete one of those today. I know you are real if you upload a picture or avatar to your profile or if you fill in any information there that a spam bot would not.

Here is a potential bot profile, joined July 6, no activity since

Tony Mulqueen

* New York, NY
* United States

another: Cordelia Monkton, joined Aug 27, no activity since

* Los Angeles, CA
* United States

So you see the pattern. I'll start deleting these.

If you want to remain here, please put real information in your profile.

Thanks,
Vance

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Permalink Reply by Vance Stevens on January 4, 2011 at 12:00pm

Hi Nina,

As much as I hate to drop you from the Ning, it might be necessary. I'm starting to very much dislike having to micro-manage a community size down to 150 members. This makes me even more resentful of Ning and its business model, but don't get me started ;-) Anyway, if you're interested, read Stevens, Vance. (2010). The Ning Thing. TESL-EJ, Volume 14, Number 1: http://www.tesl-ej.org/wordpress/issues/volume14/ej53/ej53int/

I've gone through our list of members and found that we'd actually weeded out most of the spammers. So I deleted members who enrolled in 2009 (the Ning was created in January of that year) who had provided no content and had not even added friends. I left in those with no content but who had added a few friends. I think that group will be the next to get the chop. If you are paying attention here and want to stay in the group, please register some activity. The Ning tells me if you've even updated your profile. Anyone who does anything (apart perhaps from adding friends) will be retained in the group.

I then added all those queued to join us but not the apparent spammers such as the 96 year old male named Ashley. I wonder why they bother.

Meanwhile us moderators are twiddling things on the side as we gear up toward starting us off, so our Ning and wikis might change a little in the next week.

Looking forward to resuming the session,

Vance

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Permalink Reply by Vanessa Vaile on January 4, 2011 at 2:30pm

Vance

I hate to think my presence was the one displacing Nina ~ or someone new for that matter. If necessary put me on the list (just let me keep lurking). I'd prefer though to pitch in and make myself useful enough to keep around. I've been thinking about starting (and tending) a couple of forum threads related to multiliteracies and my own interests

Vanessa

Trying to corral all my networks at, http://netvibes.com/vanessa_vaile

Vance Stevens said:

Hi Nina,

As much as I hate to drop you from the Ning, it might be necessary. I'm starting to very much dislike having to micro-manage a community size down to 150 members. This makes me even more resentful of Ning and its business model, but don't get me started ;-) Anyway, if you're interested, read Stevens, Vance. (2010). The Ning Thing. TESL-EJ, Volume 14, Number 1: http://www.tesl-ej.org/wordpress/issues/volume14/ej53/ej53int/

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Permalink Reply by Vance Stevens on January 13, 2011 at 6:00am

Hi,

Thanks to the folks checking in and volunteering to go on the block to make way for new members. Fortunately it has not been necessary to delete the profile of anyone who has shown that much interest in our sessions. However, I've had to delete some profiles in order to accept new members.

First I haven't touched any profiles added since January 2010. I haven't deleted any profiles of anyone whose name I recognized at time of deletion. Starting with the first profiles added here (long long ago) I deleted profiles of those who had absolutely no content here. By no content, I mean they had added no friends and had received no messages. However, it soon became necessary to delete some profiles of members who had made friends and had perhaps received a welcome message, but had not replied to it and had placed no other content in our Ning.

In other words, whereas it has been necessary to remove some participants here, this Ning has lost no content contributed by members, and when further removals are necessary, I will endeavor to maintain that position, no removal of members who have contributed content.

There has been one incident which illustrates how WRONG this policy is (of Ning imagining that limiting memberships to 150 members to keep the Ning online at a cost that Pearson, sponsor of many Nings that survived the initial shakedown, will support). Going on the pattern just described, I deleted the profile of one member who just days later sent an email to me and others in our group apologizing for not having got back in touch but she'd had a child and started on a phd program, and now she is planning to do a dissertation on Webheads. She was alerting us to the fact that she might be asking our support. It had nothing to do with the Multiliteracies Ning.

But obviously our community has been forced to cull a potentially productive member. Aside from the time it takes me to go in and find people to remove, and to have to decide whom and whom not to, this is clearly not healthy for a community, and this is the most striking illustration of this that I have so far come across.

I will invite this member back. As no content was disturbed, it won't really pose a problem. However, Ning's business model for anything but paid communities clearly does not serve the long tail that Web 2.0 is meant to serve, and this will ultimately set Ning outside the realm of sharing.

I'm reading Remix by Lawrence Lessig at the moment. He describes sharing economies such as Webheads or Linux, as opposed to commercial ones such as Microsoft, and how if a sharing economy such as Ning goes to a commercial model, this is to the ultimate detriment of the community (iPhoto sharing assumed by Kodak was one example he used, Kodak's takeover an imposition of sales features led to the demise of Kodak iphoto as a viable sharing site, and not to be confused with Apple iPhoto). The same happens to a commercial economy that tries to become a sharing one, but it's possible to create a hybrid economy as well, as with Red Hat Linux, another of Lessig's examples.

In any event, Ning is somewhat unsuccessfully in my view running down a sharing economy and is heading in the direction of Kodak with iPhoto.

In any event we'll continue to use this one for the time being while hoping to come across something that replaces Ning not only as a social networking site of the quality that Ning still maintains, but that is welcoming and truly sharing as well.

Vance