Week 12 - Tutorial Reflections

In last weeks tutorial I didn't have a great deal of time talking to Robert, however I had a really good discussion with two other students, Dale and Sutee, about the pros and cons of a curated system compared with a community based system (liked a forum). Dale brought up a highly relevant point that if something becomes too curated, it cotton wools the experience leading to a lack of trust in the system as well as diminishing one of the key components of this design which is to create a program that makes people make their own mind up and not just feed them what somebody wants. There is also the point of passive observation which operates in a community ruled situation: someone won't do something bad as they are being watched by people. I'm not sure this would completely be the case with this kind of upload though as there is still a high level of anonymity which would counteract this phenomena. A good example of this is the comment section of online news articles - people say some fairly offensive/irrelevant and hateful things. Maybe we need to hear these types of stories though to understand how severe the problem is? I'm not 100% sold on this though.

I think the benefits of having a curated system, be it just filtering out offensive (involving swear words etc) and totally irrelevant uses of the software, can have some major benefits. For one, it makes the software appropriate for all ages to use. Course language would not work well if this was being viewed by a child, and I believe it is important that this connects with children as well as they are in a crucial stage of forming opinions on the world. As well as this, by filtering out irrelevant stories, it maintains integrity in the project, people know they will find an interesting story, much in the same way tedx has built their brand and users know that they will hear an interesting talk no matter what they select. It also maintains the purpose of the project, after all, I don't want this becoming something that generates hate and intolerance. 

I believe it is far easier to screen and select a handful of curators whom I would trust to filter where necessary while maintaining a strong sense of a communal voice, rather than leaving the success of this project open to trolling and misuse from anonymous users.