Berkman Buzz: September 23, 2011

A look at the past week's online Berkman conversations

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What's being discussed...take your pick or browse below.

* Mayo Fuster Morell publishes a new paper on "The Unethics of Sharing: Wikiwashing"
* Andrés Monroy-Hernandez considers terminology discussions as probes
* David Weinberger interviews LibraryThing founder Tim Spalding
* Dan Gillmor discusses what the new Facebook means for net freedom
* Stuart Shieber explores peer review
* Weekly Global Voices: "Uganda: Anti-Museveni Author Freed After Five Days"

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The full buzz.

"In order for online communities to assemble and grow, some basic infrastructure is necessary that makes possible the aggregation of the collective action. There is a very intimate and complex relationship between the technological infrastructure and the social character of the community which uses it. Today, most infrastructure is provided by corporations and the contrast between community and corporate dynamics is becoming increasingly pronounced. But in some occasions, rather than address the issues, the corporations are actively obfuscating it. Wikiwashing refers to a strategy of (some) media corporate where practices associated to their role of infrastructure providers (such as abusive terms of use, privacy violation, censorship, and use of voluntary work for profit purposes, among others) that would be seen as unethical by the communities they enable are concealed by promoting a misleading image of themselves associated with the general values of wikis and Wikipedia (such as sharing and collaboration, openness and transparency)."
From Mayo Fuster Morell's blog post, "The Unethics of Sharing: Wikiwashing"

"I typically avoid terminology discussions because they tend to lead nowhere, however, sometimes they are a useful way of knowing how different disciplines approach similar phenomena."
From Andrés Monroy-Hernandez's blog post, "Terminology Discussions as Probes"

"With the web, people are reading more than ever before you could say. But what are we reading? Likely it’s all short form: blog posts, tweets, status updates. They’re words, but it’s not exactly literature."
From "Library Lab/The Podcast 007: The Velocity of Books"

"In the world of technology, once you buy something – or, even more, become a user of a web-based service – there is a very good chance that it will change. And increasingly, the changes come with a take-it-or-leave it choice – which is to say, little to no choice at all."
From Dan Gillmor's post, "The Facebook template: when net freedom meets market forces"

"I’m generally a big fan of peer review. I think it plays an important role in the improvement and “chromatography” of the scholarly literature. But sometimes. Sometimes."
From Stuart Shieber's blog post, "Tales of peer review, episode 1: Boyer and Moore’s MJRTY algorithm"

"The Ugandan government has freed the author of a book who was imprisoned for five days without access to his lawyers or family. Vincent Nzaramba’s little known book People Power, Battle the Mighty General called for a coup and a revolution in the country, thrusting the little known activist into the spotlight."
From Rosebell Kagumire's post for Global Voices Online, "Uganda: Anti-Museveni Author Freed After Five Days"

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Compiled by Rebekah Heacock.

The Berkman Buzz is selected weekly from the posts of Berkman Center people and projects and sometimes from the Center's wider network.

Suggestions and feedback about the Buzz are always welcome and can be emailed to buzz@cyber.harvard.edu.