Managing Identity on the Web (Class 8) - Stephen Cranefield

IAMS: tools for accessing social media.

You can put forward to the world any identity you wish - an option you cannot do so easily in the real world.
"The Web doesn't forget" - search engines cache content so deleting, for example, a tweet will not remove it from public view - it can take many, many years for something to not be found again..
One identity can have multiple user accounts so how do we manage this? Perhaps a more fundamental question one first needs to consider is do you want to manage having multiple accounts?
Many ways - write them down (bad), Use same user name and password, "password vault" (either fingerprint activated or protected by a strong pass phrase), or online service (mashedlife)

OpenID
Authentication through one site which allows others to verify you. This allows you to have multiple online identities. Question to ponder: is this a useful tool or simply bizarrely complicated?

Should Wikipedia be used to back up an academic argument? There is still much debate on this topic. On the one hand, more studies are beginning to show that Wikipedia is equally, or more, accurate than a good encyclopedia. Some of these studies are not reported in second-rate publications (see this one in Nature, for instance. Actually, you should check out the controversy over this-RATHER amusing). Of course, much comment is subjective yet it must be granted the foundational editing principles of Wikipedia mean it is able to keep up with developments much more rapidly than traditionally published encyclopediae can. Yet, a lot of traditional academics also move slowly; the ivory tower was built to last. So, much of the ill-feeling towards Wikipedia within academia can be more correctly termed prejucdice. We must also note that Wikipedia itself warns there could be problems with uncritical use of information contained within it. However, for some research - particularly those in the social sciences - Wikipedia may be the best source of information. What I feel the reason most academics have a problem with citations from Wikipedia is that it promotes sloppy research. Indeed, one should never use any singular source as a foundation for an argument and this is something students may not quite realise - particularly students at lower levels. This argument can be summed up as follows: use Wikipedia but do not use it exclusively.

For information from the University of Otago Library about using Wikipedia download their brochure Why Not Wikipedia.