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Phone Phorever

For my rewiring assignment, I have decided to entirely use my smartphone for a day, and not use my laptop. This may be normal for people, but for an NYUAD student, both you laptop and your smartphone are you life. Nowadays, it is very easy to integrate yourself into solely using your smartphone for your day to day life. This is because our smartphone can achieve as much as a laptop can. The question here is how convenient and efficient it is to do it!

I use my laptop for surfing the internet, reading (pleasure and academics), watching youtube, netflixing, and coding! For today, I did all of the above on my phone except the coding part. While it is fully possible to code on your phone, it certainly does not look good.

Using Dcoder on Phone

As you can see, it may seem like it is a good idea as first, but being a computer science major who fiest started coding in my laptop, I have completely acclimated myself into coding in my laptop. Dcoder is an IDE compiler that is based in android, and lets you code on the go. When even trying to code a simple print statement, I struggled with the interface and how things are used on the application. I kept on pushing the wrong buttons and always going on and off the IDE to the file system. I just gave up afterwards.

For my entertainment, I am used to watching youtube videos on my phone, but not Netflix. On the one hand, watching youtube videos on the phone is a great experience, especially having a high quality screen with high quality videos. Also, the fact that the videos would typically range from 1 to 10 minutes would help with the experience because holding the phone with your hands for that long would not pose a problem. On the other hand, watching a 25 to a 40 minute show or even a movie on Netflix would really make my hands and arms tire from holding the phone. Now if you are a person who has a nice phone case that acts as a stand for the phone, great on you, however, I did not have that, so I had to hold the phone. The ratio of the screen did not make it a bad experience per se, however it did give me the feeling of wishing for a bigger screen.

Netflix on the Phone

Working on homework and assignment on the phone is not completely impossible, on Android there is microsoft word application ready to be installed that can help with writing essays and such. Even as you are reading this I am writing this blog on the phone.

Inception

Do not get me wrong, my experience with rewiring my use of technology allowed me to be exposed to new applications of the smartphone. Coding in Decoder was not a complete annoyance, I am confident that this can be used in a teaching setting where people can learn how to code through only their phones. However, since I was exposed through it in a computer or laptop environment, I think I got used to the handiness and convenience of the file system, seamless tabular window changing, and a bigger screen to fit more code. The good thing about having smartphone is when the time urges its use. I even downloaded a scanner application called Tap Scanner which can scan physical documents by taking images and processing them to create good quality PDFs.

Tap Scanner

Tap Scanner saved me from my fast approaching deadline when I had to scan physical documents and then send them in for submission. For people who are on the go, smartphone can safely replace computers. For me, I had a great experience, though sometimes annoying. This made me realize about some of the dependacies I had for my computer and its utilities. 

Snapping a conversation

  1.  

As part of the rewire experiment I decided to change the way I text. Usually I use whatsapp, FB and Instagram messenger, as well as e-mail when communication is more formal. I do not like texting, because what I usually observe is that the process tires me a lot, both physically and mentally. Besides, I feel like sending an informal text in one of the regular messengers takes too much time of my life – just like reading a message does, especially if a conversation goes on for a while (usually I never initiate such conversations, only support them out of politeness).

Also, I often feel like I cannot interpret the mood of the sender or emotion behind the message, which often leads me to a lot of contemplation on what the sender actually meant, what he/she felt while sending it, etc. Emojis are a bit helpful in interpreting emotions but might also be confusing due to their universality (in fact, in some cases certain emojis (or their absence!) led me to anxiety).

So what I decided to do is to communicate only with instant and self-deleting photos and short video-messages on Snapchat. That of course limited the range of people I could talk to, as not everyone uses Snapchat, and in some cases it’s not appropriate to communicate in such manner (I can’t really send a snap to my professor). So, I decided to communicate with friends that have Snapchat but with whom I usually communicate through other platforms.

Firstly, I sent a snap of the nicely decorated common area in my apartment with a text “Come check out our new apartment decorations!” to a few of my friends outside NYU. My intension was to invite them over. A couple of them replied saying something like “nice!”, and the rest just opened it and did not send a response. So, perhaps the message in a form of a snap lacks seriousness and directness, which makes the receiver perceive it as something that was sent without a serious intention, and thus does not require a response. In fact, when I started thinking about my own reaction to snaps – quite often I leave them without a response, as many of them just show what one is doing at a particular moment, what coffee the person is drinking, or just a stupid filtered face.

Anyways, later during the day I went out with my friend to the city. I sent a snap video with us playing music in the car, with a text “you didn’t come, so we went out ourselves”.  One of the receivers replied with a text: “where are you guys?”, another sent a funny face of himself using a filter, and another one sent a video from a family event. Two more opened the snap without replying. I sent a few other snaps of us walking around in the city without any text, and got only one emoji-response back.

So, having tried using Snapchat photos and videos for communication I realized that it cannot be formal, and that it is quite ineffective if you want to use this communication to arrange something in real life. In any case, having identified that, I also noticed that snaps make me feel like the ongoing communication is more real, in comparison with the dull text. Snapchat, unlike FB and whatsapp, gives an opportunity to experiment with humor and emotions, which makes it possible to express yourself better. Not worrying about the message being saved in the system, you can show yourself and your emotions the way they are at this very moment. Also, what I liked about sending the snaps of myself and receiving snaps back – is that there is no need to guess what the emotional response is. You can see it, laugh at it, and then quickly forget it.

If we consider that the ultimate goal of digital communication is to imitate real-life communication as accurately as possible, then probably Snapchat is closer to that than whatsapp and the messenger. However, it is also quite ineffective, which is why I would place it into the category of “entertainment” only – and would not want to waste my precious time on it.

Lefty for two days – Raitis’s “rewire” experience

According to an app on my phone that tracks my phone usage, I use it for 3.5 hours every day. This is a number I’m almost too embarrassed to admit. Nevertheless, acknowledging this number helps me with my goal of decreasing how much I use my phone. With this goal in mind, I figured I would use my “rewire” experience to find a way that would complicate the way I use my phone so that my usage time would drop. Therefore, I attempted to only use my left hand when using my phone to make my user experience less seamless. Regardless to say, I am a righty (as my name implies; pun intended).

It was weird to use all the apps with my left hand. I found it somewhat tiresome and inconvenient. Truth be told, old habits die hard and I often remembered about my goal only after having spent some time on my phone, using both of my hands. Nevertheless, when I did remember about it, my experience on my phone got a lot more complicated. Especially when texting. This made me stop my sessions on my phone faster, but I believe the main reason for that was not the inconvenience. Rather, whenever I remembered about the necessity to use the left hand, I also remembered about my goal to stop using my phone without a purpose, which then made me end the session on the phone. Therefore, I believe this “rewire” experience was a success. Nevertheless, I suspect that over time using my left hand would have become normal and I might have returned to my old habits.

On top of that, I was also curious to see if I will notice if some apps have a bias for right handed people. By this I mean, that I was trying to pay attention whether some apps are objectively easier to use if a person is right handed – similar to how regular scissors are meant for right handed people. I found that:

  • Swiping FB stories further is inconvenient as the thumb stretches across the screen and blocks the view of the stories,
  • Editing options for Instagram photos are all located on the top right corner of the screen making them impossible to reach only using the left hand.
  • Messenger and Whatsapp have placed people’s names and photos on the left side of the screen which means that swiping the screen with my left hand blocks all the names and pictures, making it more difficult to find the person I would be looking for.

These might be small details, but it is clear the apps were designed for right handed people. I found it interesting to observe this as I would normally not pay attention to this.

Rewired News – Keith

As I grew up, I distinctly remember when I would sit in front of the TV with my mum at 7:30PM to watch the daily news broadcast, a 30-minute segment that summed up international and local issues. What once started as a compulsory routine initiated by my parents became some sort of voluntary commitment. As the years went by, and I left home for highschool, this habit came to a halt. As much as I hate to admit it, over the past few years, I get most of my news intake through Facebook. While it seems to provide the greatest access to a variety of different sources, the validity and importance of some of the news can be questionable. Hence, for the rewire activity, I decided to begin my temporary detox from Facebook (I still retained the messenger app), and consciously (or forcefully) move towards a certified news broadcasting app – my choice being the New York Times due to the paid subscription our university provides.

My overall experience was quite fruitful, and I have two main takeaways from this activity. Firstly, Facebook wires our brain to a lower attention span. Most articles on Facebook are short and concise, with very limited details. Hence, as I started reading longer articles on NYT, I began to get restless, often stopping halfway through. Nevertheless, the depth of information you attain is remarkable, allowing oneself to be well-informed – one example being my current knowledge on Khashoggi’s death and the politics between Saudi and the US. Secondly, even with all its flaws, Facebook promotes diversity in terms of functionality and content (although content might be debatable at times). In retrospect, most of the news on NYT were US-centric – I was reading about US politics, about the pressure exerted on university students entering the NFL, about natural disasters in the US – everything was related somewhat to the US. Whereas, the content on Facebook is much more diverse, especially given the context of our university’s student body. Referring to Zuckerman’s book on Digital Cosmopolitans, cognitive diversity is vital in developing our creativity and problem-solving skills. Yet, the question is whether the value of limited but diverse information (Facebook) is more than detailed but concentrated information (NYT).

What I realize however is that the key is striking a balance between the two. The end of Chapter 8 discusses how news is shifting towards being more representative and more global, such that is vital for a world of digital cosmopolitans.

“Off The Grid” – Deep Dive Group #3

Off  / The / Grid.

Reflections 

– by Adam, Lateefa, Sohail and Yero. 

 Our group discussed privacy and the concept of being “off the grid” on the Internet. We thought that this was a relevant topic given the direction our class was taking and because it dealt with a contemporary debate around the Internet. One of the strengths of the Internet used to be anonymity and the ability to maintain a social presence while concealing one’s identity. Edward Snowden revealed in 2013 that the NSA (National Security Agency) could invasively monitor citizens. With that fact and the reality of many countries censoring Internet access in mind, discourse on privacy becomes increasingly paramount. Through our deep-dive session, our group discussed the various ways different “stakeholders” track Internet users, how to conceal oneself from these tracking tools, and how widely accessible and easy it was to find information on Internet users.

Yero started out the presentation by generating thoughts from the audience as to what they believed being “off the grid” meant. Responses were varied and showed how contextual the concept could be. From being off electronic devices over a holiday to tweaking one’s Facebook name to be invisible to employers on social media all the way to using softwares like TOR and having untraceable online activity, responses were influenced by each individual’s personal knowledge of online anonymity resources. He then dove into the specifics of what incentives were behind seeking “off-the-grid” behaviour online. This search appeared to be at a crossroads between privacy, untraceability and anonymity. Delving even deeper, it was clear that power, assets, relevance and confidentiality over sensitive information were what motivated different stakeholders, notably, governments, activist organisations or hackers to bother going the complicated route of being ‘under-the-radar’. Whether good or bad reasons motivate such a behaviour, could serve as substance for another debate, another time.

The second part of Yero’s talk introduced the concept of digital footprints, the trail of data we create while using the Internet. It includes the websites we visit, emails we send, and information we submit to online services. Most of the time, these small packets of information we leave behind ourselves are “passive”; that is, they are unintentional. It then became interesting to look at the different tools that websites, applications and ISPs use to track our activity online. We successively looked at IP addresses, HTTP referrers, Cookies and Super Cookies, Tracking scripts and Browser fingerprinting and their respective roles in both easing web navigation and privacy breaches. We included examples of how such tools could be used in a simple browsing session to collect info about users and subsequently be sold to advertising networks that then build up detailed customer profiles for pinpoint ad-targeting. Lastly, we invited the class to go to panopticlick.eff.org, a research project by the Electronic Frontier Foundation that allows participants to see how many bits of information one’s browser leaves behind when they’re surfing online.

Adam started with a small social experiment: each person had to search the name of the person sitting next to them and then post whatever they found on a shared Google document. This activity turned out to be particularly interesting. There was something about every person on the Internet – mainly information related to NYU and professional work posted by the students online. With a few exceptions, personal information was easy to find. What I found most interesting was the reaction that people had when they were sharing these in the group and the manner in which they reacted to the shared information. There was an expectation of pranking the person about their content, but there was also general awkwardness that undercut the entertainment factor. One interpretation can be that most users in the classroom realized the sensitive nature of the information that was shared inside the classroom, which is a much more formal setting than e.g. a friend group. Adam then proceeded to talk about what we call the Deep Web, how to access it (The Onion Router) and the Dark Web.

We also tried to contextualize much of the topics discussed on privacy to experiences in the UAE. We tackled how privacy and VoIP functioned within the UAE by looking at different applications such as Skype, Discord and WhatsApp. We also discussed the authoritarian behaviour that characterized how Etisalat and the TRA handle VoIP. We briefly discussed the rules and regulations on VoIP within the UAE and the details of their regulations throughout the years. (Initial Skype ban in 2006 and the March 2017 VoIP ban). There are a few reasons to why we wanted to extend the discussion on privacy to discussing VoIP in the UAE. One prominent reason is the privilege that comes with being an NYUAD student. That privilege includes experiences with open access to the Internet (although with limits to certain websites like Al Jazeera), which many individuals on campus do not realize is vastly different from experiences off-campus.

Part of the learning aspect of our presentation was to raise consciousness on the limits of privacy and VoIP within the UAE outside of the Saadiyat bubble. We discussed how the ban works (through port blocking that causes audio quality to be significantly reduced and not discernible by the other party). We also discussed the rationalisation given by the TRA on the banning of VoIP in the UAE, which is the claim that the encryption of VoIP makes it subject to being blocked and that non-encrypted versions (offered by the TRA), are not blocked. This ban of encryption strikes at the core of our discussion of privacy.

We also discussed methods people have to get around the laws and regulations over VoIP, including using VPN’s and trying to find new services that have still not been blocked. The current VoIP solutions offered are C’me and Botim, which are both paid monthly subscription alternatives that raise issues such as creating a monopoly over Internet services that are meant to be free, as well as exploiting expats/migrants who use the Internet to communicate with their families abroad. We also discussed the lack of transparency from the TRA and Etisalat on the subject of VoIP, of which many individuals on campus are unaware. After speaking with Craig after our class, we considered the viewpoint that just because a service is not yet blocked, doesn’t mean it hasn’t been uncovered. It may simply be used to track user attitudes and lead to a larger crackdown later on.

We were able to remain mostly on schedule. We had set aside portions for discussions, such as the group activity and a final discussion on the topics with class. Some parts of our presentation, including the group activity, dragged on slightly which caused us to be behind schedule towards the end of our presentation, and primarily leading Lateefa to rush her section.

REFERENCES




Rewiring Home Screens

There were a few quotes from Zuckerman’s book that contributed to the decisions I made when readjusting my Internet habits:

“Connecting with people when they live next door or in the same city; paying attention to the problems and concerns of people in the rest of the world is harder still.” – 23

“We are challenged to take seriously the idea that other possibilities  are worth our time and consideration, not our immediate opposition and rejection. When we embrace these, the effect can be uncomfortable and disconcerting. At the same time, it can also be a powerful force for those seeking insight or inspiration” – 24

Considering the spark of inspiration (the Dan people mask) that led to Picasso’s subsequent masterpieces that leaned on West African masks and sculptural forms, I decided to create a new digital environment where I am more likely to stumble upon inspiration for my own work by seeking out different feeds I don’t often scroll through. Starting with the beginning of the weekend, I considered the 10-30 leisurely minutes I spend on my phone (waiting in the dining hall, just before sleeping etc.) that are delegated to scrolling. 

This is the screen that I turn to when I’m bored and seeking out something entertaining.

For the Rewiring challenge, I first removed the applications from the home screen that I seldom used, deleted the Facebook app, and then created a home screen with several apps dedicated to design and art feeds, tech newsfeeds, and overall “bite-sized” news applications. I also added a couple applications that were dedicated to logical and puzzle brain games.

I quickly discovered that several news applications required paid subscriptions, and even though I was hoping to scroll through feeds that would lead me to find new “sparks”, I also realized that I was not especially interested in feeds with articles only about tech companies and their economic value. Eliminating and adding applications helped me better understand what I was actually looking for, which had less to do with finding news articles, and more to do with discovering new ideas. I wanted to find a balance between visual content as well as interesting articles featuring topics I had never read about before.  

(note: keeping Instagram was an application I debated deleting, and ultimately decided to keep while refraining from scrolling through it, and only using it to post artwork.)

When first selecting the content I thought I wanted to see, I soon found that most of the time that was inaccurate. I chose categories like mindfulness, fashion, beauty, and design, and then realized these categories were tailored more for a general population and didn’t offer as much substance as I hoped for. 

I ended up spending more time on my phone finding better applications to scroll through and ending up with one or two that I plan to continue looking through. In any case, I enjoyed taking more time to study applications and what they offered, because I better understood the content I wanted to expose myself to. 

I also began to realize that the less popular applications actually tailored more to my interests – breaking out of the more general news articles and into specific art and art history categories. 

Finding Serendipity in Reddit – by Professional_Cherry

For this weekend’s assignment, our focus was to “rewire” by changing our channels of media reception. Since I get most of my news channels and information from Instagram, I decide to erase the app from my phone and migrate to Reddit for a few days. 

As “the front page of the internet”, I expected to obtain new perspectives, different sources of media, and forms of discussion different to the ones on Instagram that could shed some light on previous biases. Therefore, I took one of the suggested usernames, Professional_Cherry, and started my voyage through Reddit.  

After reading the description about serendipity on “Digital Cosmopolitans” by Ethan Zuckerman, I felt like I had hit the jackpot with the activity. Zuckerman mentions that in order to achieve serendipity “we need to stumble on unexpected influences to make novel connections. This means granting some of our attention to curators – human and mechanical – who can introduce us to unexpected influences”. On Instagram, I tend to follow certified newspapers, fortune 500 companies, consulting firms, etc. – so the curation is very specific with a clear agenda for each of these institutions. News are portrayed in a specific journalistic format, announcements are made in official statements. This forum does not facilitate second perspectives – in the way that it is the companies that post about their news, and not people posting about the news that this company publishes. In addition to that, the medium itself is not designed for discussion, but the interaction modes are inclined towards “tagging”, where these tags normally stay within a first-network interaction of your friends and family – therefore there is mainly one way of receiving their message.

In contrast, Reddit’s model allows for posts to shared from a second perspective, where it is the average user that can get the equivalent attention as the Instagram verified user. Therefore, the curator changes – along with the purpose of the post and the agenda behind it. What is also a main differentiator with the Reddit postings is that it’s main purpose is to spark discussion, whether it’s on a news posting, a question, a recommendation, etc. This allows to build upon the second perspective, and that is where the new insights can come in. Posts are not only made as captions, but in the forms of interactive discussion that can have essay style lengths. 

In terms of discovering new content by avoiding biases, I believe Reddit is able to promote this in a particular way. There are subreddits such as r/worldnews (19.9 m subscribers) whose focus is on global news that EXCLUDES US-internal news. There is another subreddit called r/UpliftingNews (13.7 m) that only focuses on providing positive headlines. The top subreddit has 21.3 m subscribers, this places these two subreddits at the top of exposure within the subreddit rank, where they make the top 50 most popular threads. Going back to what Zuckerman said about media biases in chapter 3, where the only news that would be published for Nigeria would be in negative contexts regardless of all the positive potential headlines, Reddit allows for this type of subjective filtering to be left out. However, one may only receive these subreddit postings if they choose to subscribe to it, which is a personal filtering that would not lead to serendipity. But, Reddit poses another platform that can go beyond this – the front end. When one goes to the popular posts, one can see the most upvoted content of any subreddit, leading you to change your filter based on what the Reddit world is currently looking at.

And who makes up this Reddit world? Reddit has a total of 250 million users, 56% are American, and the second largest population is in the UK with 7.3%. Here we can see that the US does make up a majority, which does show signs that the content is curated by a specific demographic. However, it is rescuable to see that the other 44% is broken down into more diverse range, which is indicated by 49% difference between the first and the second top Reddit populations.

As you can see, this exercise has allowed me not only to dive into this Reddit world in order to Rewire, but the platform itself sparked a lot of interest in me and therefore I started looking up more into what makes up Reddit. I’m pretty sure I am still not aware of how everything works, since it seems to have a lot of layers, but up til now, I’ve been able to obtain new content. For example this morning, someone posted in r/news about how a US teacher in Mexico was killed by a cartel – and all the comments in the subreddits talk about how the cartel has acted within their scenario. Of course, not all of these stories make it to the news, and I would even say this one did make it because it was a teacher from the US. News like this would not be relevant without this figure since, and publishing regardless would be too repetitive! If it were to be reported without the US component, headlines like this would appear every other day at NBC people would first of all not care since it doesn’t directly prevail them, and even if they did it would eventually be desensitized due to its frequency. However, in Reddit discussions, one is able to see the power of the cartels more in detail. I can take it as alternative news, as it is not hard to believe. And just like this, I am exposed to new corners of the world.

  • Orignal Post in r/news


Overall, this has been a positive experience for me. After this, I’m definitely going to continue using reddit, and might perhaps even post content of my own!

Stackexchange

This assignment had proved harder than I have thought it would and in the end I have walked away from it by learning valuable lessons about knowledge itself. 

There are many thousands of questions on different Stackexchange sites that are waiting for answers but I trusted my knowledge that there will be some questions that I will be able to answer, or questions that I can ask that will be meaningful enough to get answered. Both of these things have proven to be more challenging than I expected them to be. 

First I chose the stack exchange sites that were dealing with topics that I was familiar with: vegetarianism, music and life hacks. I have been a vegetarian for 2 years now and I thought that there might be some sort of knowledge that I can share with the world or that I can ask a question that has not yet been answered. Even the Birthday Paradox (Shirky 25) was in support of this thought process. I quickly had to realize how wrong I was about this. 

On lifehacks, I asked about productivity. I have recently started using my screens in black and white after learning about how colors as design elements can try to keep users occupied with the device and its tools. For example the color red is mostly used to signal notifications since it is the color that stands out the most to the eye. Most of the time this is used to help the user experience, however it can disrupt the flow of consciousness of the user, causing them to use the app as many times as they see the red sign of notifications. Eliminating the color can help the user to focus on the content and individual decisions. I decided to ask for some clarification about this on lifehacks, since this seemed to be aligning with the agenda of this particular stack exchange. 

As of now my question had 17 views and one comment. 

BrettFromLA letting me know why my question is never going to be answered.

I quickly realized that this is not the right question to ask and after all lifehacks are not my area of expertise. I started going through the questions and the depth and specificity of them astounded me. These were more or less questions that were just as perplexing to me as they were to the people who asked them.

My experience on the Music Stack Exchange and Vegetarianism was slightly different. I did not have a genuine question in mind, but my hopes of helping someone who was learning how to play the guitar led me to browsing the questions on the site. After browsing these sites I realized that there are very few questions that I can actually attempt to answer and there’s only a few questions that I can ask. In a desperate attempt to tackle some questions and ear some “respect” I went on the English Language and Math Stack Exchange sites. Similarly, there were no questions that I could properly answer.

To sum up my experience, I found that there are 3 types of questions:

  1. The questions for experts. 
  2. The questions with easy answers asked by absolute rookies. 
  3. The questions that do not get answered. 

The questions for experts is a category where it is almost impossible for the average user to answer the questions. Whenever I tried to interact with these question I had to realize that my knowledge is simply too shallow to be able to meaningfully answer a question. All my answers can be easily googled and the research that would go into answering the question just doesn’t pay off. 

The questions with easy answers — well, they get answered really quickly. And the quality of the answers is very high. These questions receive answers in minutes after their creation and the accepted answers come from seasoned veterans of the site with very clear explanations. 

And there are the questions that will remain unanswered for the longest time. An honorable mention was asked on the Stack Exchange Movies:

This question is not going to have an answer.

This question asks about a film that came out 14 years ago and its financial information is not available. I tried to look for an answer for the respect points but there was nothing to be found. The question was also downvoted by the moderators. 

Bad question. 

To conclude with, the Stack Exchange sites have amazing potential. The knowledge that they offer is catered by experts. The communities have strong ties around the topic that they cover and even thought it takes time to earn the respect of the community the effort will pay off by obtaining knowledge that is singular through the world.

Woodworking, I won’t be back

Woodworking is not something I am primarily interested in, but getting to know the community that is passionate about it has been intense. 3 badges and 74 reaches later, I have questions that woodworkers won’t answer.

I asked two questions, firstly how do I get started and what tools should I consider. Neither of the questions was met with particular enthusiasm. The people in the community were very particular about the questions asked and more than happy to engage in lengthy debates about whether the question belongs to this stack exchange or no. I suppose it is not a bad practice as most of the posts end up being largely useful to the people inside and outside of the community. Especially seeing that many posts had thousands of views, and only 5 comments, it can be assumed that this stack exchange serves more people from outside “Woodworking”. I appreciated the promptness of replies, often within minutes, and the dedication of the users willing to reply at all times. While unfamiliar with woodworking and uncertain as whether all the advice has been actually useful, I suppose that, for instance, the recommendation to join a woodworking class at a community college near me, something I got as a comment on my post, is a good piece of advice for the beginners.

When I asked the community: what tools should I use, my post has been edited and changed to meet the community standards. I am still confused as whether I am absolutely annoyed or grateful for this. However, in the light of this event, I am just happy I did not get banned. 

In my short time as a member of woodworking I noticed a special category of users – the ones obsessed with getting reputation points. Someone called “Nate”, a new user,  commented multiple times on all my posts as well as on all the new posts that went online over the weekend. Why was he doing this? I will probably never know, but it is refreshing to know that, like me, he was also disliked by the Woodworking community.

Woodworking, I won’t be back, but I will go back to Stack Exchange.

❤️ Stack Exchange. Sincerely, Theo

Almost at the end of my undergraduate career in university, Stack Exchange has proven to be one of the most useful sites. Whenever I have question regarding homework from a computer science class, programming class, or a math class, chances are someone has posted a similar question on one of the Stack Exchange platforms in the likes of Stack Overflow, Mathematics, etc. Moreover, as a tech enthusiast who often plays around with under-the-hood options of operating systems, the Super User and Ask Ubuntu has proven invaluable in resolving problems ranging from minor tweaks and optimizations to critical failures. Hence, I embarked on this assignment with the expectations that I am well-versed in the Stack Exchange world.  Perhaps here is the place to say Thank You to every user on these sites who has made my life easier! 

One of the main aspects of this challenge was to try a site that I have not used before. Having a passion for photography, the Photography Stack Exchange bulletin board seemed the perfect opportunity to look at something that I have never used before, but I am interested in.

The first thing to do is sign up for the platform. Nowadays that’s just a single redirect to Facebook or Google anyway, I choose Facebook because my account there does not contain any personal information and I prefer to give out the least amount to any online service whenever possible, for privacy reasons. 

Being signed in automatically, I was already greeted with one message in my inbox – a welcome letter to the bulletin board. This welcome “page” contained a brief yet detailed overview of the site’s functionality, namely how to upvote and downvote posts, how to answer a post, and how to create a new post or tag a post. 

Now the interesting part – the points “reward” system. In a nutshell, your score goes up when others vote up your questions, answers and edits, with each of these adding a different number of points. When you reach a certain number of total points you unlock a new ‘privilege’, such as ability to upvote, comment, vote down, and eventually edit other user’s posts and answers. On top of that, depending on the quality of your contributions, you can receive badges to signify your ‘experience level’. 

At this point, the only privileges I had were to make a post or answer a post. I thought that would be easy, but the interesting part was that most of the questions were extremely technical, specific, or odd. For instance, “Calculate the distance of an object in a picture?” or “Connecting Yongnuo YN968EX-RT speedlight with a YN560IV off-camera”. Needless to say, I couldn’t find any question that I had sufficient technical knowledge or practical experience to answer. There were some questions that I tentatively knew the answer to, but I was afraid to post it in case it was incorrect, as being downvoted would affect my reputation (and I know how annoying it is to spend hours trying to follow a given answer on Stack Exchange only to find out it is wrong).

So, in the end, of the day, I was too scared to write any replies, I did not have any questions to ask, and I couldn’t do much else on the site at that time. I was able to gain a whopping 1 point for signing up for the bulletin board. Moreover, I was able to get 2 whole badges – “informed” for reading the entire tour page, and “autobiographer” for filling in the about section of my profile. Next step is to answer 30 questions from users. Will update in a month!