[Air-L] user generated content, motivation to post (Zeynep Tufekci & others)

[Seda Guerses]

with respect to why people/users generate content, it might be fun to  
look at how this topic was addressed in the pre-web2.0 and pre- 
ecommerce times. "cooking pot markets" for example was a concept  
explored by rishab ghosh which first appeared in 1996, in the years  
following many variations were reprinted and many conferences in  
europe picked up on the topic (the wizards of os conference (berlin)  
is one example where ghosh himself was a speaker). ghosh's own  
homepage provides the following listing of the article:

Ghosh, Rishab Aiyer, 1998, Cooking-pot Markets: an economic model for  
the trade in free goods and services on the Internet, First Monday,  
vol 3, issue 3, translated into French and German and reproduced in  
multiple versions in several books, journals and other publications

and with respect to anonymity: we have been informally discussing a  
similar topic, but from the perspective of those who design, research  
and develop anonymizers e.g., tor. we were asking the question if  
anonymity leads to less successful file sharing systems in comparison  
to file sharing systems with a identified participants, social network  
or community behind it (or maybe it is for other reasons that these  
systems do not pick up? but this could be one aspect).

i believe though that this is a different concept of anonymity then  
what was meant by zeynep and others. if i would try to explain the  
difference from a technical point of view it would look likethis: when  
we say "anonymity", we are not referring to the use of pseudonyms  
(e.g., people using nick names) or the posting of contributions  
without an explicit logged in user under a pseudonym called  
"anonymous". rather, we are talking about certain tools which in  
addition to the use of such pseudonyms hide the ip address of the  
user/ source of information. now, it would be interesting to find out  
what for users count as anonymous? or, what was actually meant in the  
earlier contributions with anonymity?

and, in any case, thank you for all the other references, very useful  
for the discussions we have been trying to have.... :)
best,
s.








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