Has Web 2.0 made things really better?

[Tahuti]

Commentators speak about the evolution of the internet towards Web 2.0. Web 2.0. denotes the increased interactivity of websites. For instance, you can leave crap comments on YouTube videos. Supposedly, this makes the internet more interactive.

But honestly, is it? Doesn't it make people more oblivious to the possibilities internet offers? In the 1990s, if you wanted to comment on something (something which was really rare), you build your own website. It was easier for people to avoid it, if they disliked it, and easier to find it if they happenned to like it. Now, we have comments, and Sturgeon's law (90% of everything is crap) is at full swing here.

Rather than making the web more interactive, it has made users indeed more oblivious to the possibilities of internet. Everything people do on the internet is through specific channels. And the barriers for people with low-intelligence to post something horrible on the internet has decreased, at the same time.

So, am I missing something? If not, how to abolish/upgrade Web 2.0?

 

[Perfection]

Web 2.0 is so 2007, we're onto the internet of things, big data, and mobile everything.

You're behind the curve.

 

[Tahuti]

Outwardly, it is still the leading paradigm for websites such as YouTube.

Big data doesn't really appeal either, though at least it doesn't facilitate infantile debates.

 

[Perfection]

YouTube comments are stupid, but it's YouTube, noone but morons care about YouTube comments. I don't think that's representative of the web at large.

 

[Tahuti]

YouTube comments are stupid, but it's YouTube, noone but morons care about YouTube comments. I don't think that's representative of the web at large.

It largely is, because frankly, a lot of sites allow for comments. You have to look really hard for high Alexa-ranking site that doesn't have any, aside from search engines.

 

[Perfection]

Because only morons install the Alexa toolbar.

 

[Kyriakos]

I think that centralisation of the Web is *mostly* a myth/biased view, despite very obviously the change from the 90s being that now we have a few huge sites which link to each other. Also Google seems to be a monopoly, and not just for searching the web (always dangerous to virtually have just one main search engine). Wikipedia is another problematic case, despite also doing good (i routinely check articles there, but have to note that i also routinely find false info there and have to double check with other sites/sources anyway).

I am sure there are huge numbers of very interesting small sites around, but having some medium-large ones which also maintain some level of seriousness (eg some math or uni-communities) is likely more optimal.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

To be fair, youtube comments used to be a lot better when there were downvotes and when the comments were sorted by their up/down-vote-relation. The new system seems to encourage crap comments and crap debates.

 

[Tahuti]

To be fair, youtube comments used to be a lot better when there were downvotes and when the comments were sorted by their up/down-vote-relation. The new system seems to encourage crap comments and crap debates.

I'm not so sure about that. A lot of people often are encouraged by downvotes, actually. The best solution to me seems to either introduce a paid premium membership that allows comments, or shut them down wholesale. It's not that by removing the functionality of commenting, people are forbidden to comment, only that they will have start their own damn site if they wish to comment. I doubt the infantile commenters get any attention that way.

 

[Zelig]

Ads are worse for the web than comments, both are optional.

I recommend the "Block all YouTube Annoyances" filterlist, add to your browser filter engine of choice. (ABP for Firefox, ublock for Chrome/Opera) https://youtube.adblockplus.me/en/

Also Flash sucks, uninstall it and disable it in Chrome/IE: http://arstechnica.com/security/201...h-new-level-of-meanness-what-are-users-to-do/

 

[Hygro]

I had to double check the date on the OP.

 

[Marla_Singer]

I had to double check the date on the OP.

Yes me too, but the question asked by Kaiserguard is essentially about interactivity: comments, voting, thumbs up and down. And it's actually an interesting debate.

I think generally that the main issue is about flooding. The more there are people intervening, the less they are read qualitatively and the more they are read quantitatively. I'll try to explain that better: when there are only 10 comments, we will read each of them for what they say individually. When there are 100 comments, we'll start to group them, to categorize them and what will matter will be their quantity. How many are "for"? How many are "against"? This isn't anymore a discussion but only a power struggle in which the winning side is the more numerous side.

That's why I believe that discussion forums such as Civfanatics have not yet been beaten by comments boards as places for debates. Vbulletin boards are places dedicated to reply to one another, and not to all react to the same source material being perfectly allowed to ignore the others insights.

The thing though is that social networks and comments boards have the power of crowds, and there is a clear trend to use them as a source to find out what "others" think... even though it's necessarily simplified to the max. There is a clear danger to dumb down the quality of the debate if we rely exclusively on such a quantitative approach.

Interestingly, pollsters and think tanks always largely ignored internet forums, despite their more qualitative approach of discussions. I think the big issue is the necessary time to spend on them. Counting "for" or "against" comments to a video or a news story takes a matter of minutes. Following discussions on multiple pages to grab ideas take hours. It doesn't well explain why they seem to still be fully ignored even in qualitative analysises. For those who have never participated to internet forums, it feels like they are just considered an uninteresting primitive form of social network which have been largely outclassed by comments boards and supposedly more "advanced" social media.

I strongly disagree with that opinion, which I still feel mainstream amongst medias.

 

[downtown]

Comments are typically stupid, but Web 2.0 is about waaaaaay more than the comments of anything. And they're SO easy to ignore.

 

[Tahuti]

I had to double check the date on the OP.

For interactivity related things, such as YouTube and major blogs, it has never received an upgrade. If 'Web 3.0' is about big data and tracking, it has not superseded Web 2.0 at all. Rather, it has grown alongside it, without necessarily superseding it. In fact, the two work in tandem relying on each other.

In fact, the very notion of Web 1.0, Web 2.0, are misnomers, but we use these terms anyway because we don't have alternative words that are commonly accepted and easy to use in debates. They are misnomers because it implies that one is bound to supersede the other, though that hardly is the case. Web 2.0 did not destroy Web 1.0 completely. Web 3.0 has not replaced Web 2.0 completely. Neither will. It isn't a matter of added functionality or bug fixes, though rather, a matter of what is preferred and what not.

 

[warpus]

I think you're asking more about social media rather than web 2.0. Essentially I think "Has social media made the web better?" (but correct me if I'm wrong)

So.. has social media made the web better? I think it depends on the user. I am an introvert, so I view a lot of social media as silly, nonsensical, and/or not necessary. But a lot of it is very useful - it helps connect me to people. So yeah, it depends on who you ask and what exactly you're talking about - it's a broad subject that needs to be specified further to get anything useful out of the question, I think.

The most annoying part of it all is that every idiot and their half-dog half-human uncle are now online, generating content and commenting on stuff. Back in the 90s most people online were geeks and techie enthusiasts - nowadays these people are but a small subset of everyone who is online and participating. As a result places like youtube and news article comments are pure garbage - the least intelligent places in the universe.

Social media was sort of inevitable - we're a social species, we are going to become more and more connected, as much stupidity as that can lead to. The easy availability and quick change of status from luxury to almost necessity of mobile devices has been a huge catalyst for change.

The whole "web 2.0" thing wasn't really defined well enough to really comment on though - from a technological point of view there isn't really a very clear line between "web 1.0" and "web 2.0" - different people will paint different lines. And from my point of view "social media" has spurred a lot of changes in the web development world - we now have a lot more technologies to build these things, including responsive frameworks that allow you to build sites easily for all sorts of devices. So that's a big plus, I don't think it would have happened without social media nearly as quickly. The downside, as I see it, is that more and more sites are built for mobile devices - and not for larger personal computing devices that sit in your office. I mean, that's an inevitable march of progress, and one day there might be no PCs, but I don't have to like it. It dumbs everything down.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

It seems like a natural outgrowth of increased availability of high-speed internet access. Personally, I don't complain about all the crap content it enables. I ignore it and look for the good content that it allows to reveal. Learn to adapt to the increasing amount of data instead of futilely trying to stem the wave.

 

[Marla_Singer]

It seems like a natural outgrowth of increased availability of high-speed internet access. Personally, I don't complain about all the crap content it enables. I ignore it and look for the good content that it allows to reveal. Learn to adapt to the increasing amount of data instead of futilely trying to stem the wave.

Sorry if I feel repetitive from my earlier post but I do feel in the recent trends that the gigabytes of datas sent every seconds over the web are fascinating us and makes us focus more on quantity rather than on quality.

I agree though that's more a problem of critical reception to the informations sent by those tools than something caused by their very nature.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

I strongly disagree with that opinion, which I still feel mainstream amongst medias.

Yeah before they quote some douche on twitter they should quote me on CFC

But what you raise here has always been a problem. If they care for what people in general think then always only in shallow categories. No other way to do it.

 

[KevinLancaster]

I'm not so sure about that. A lot of people often are encouraged by downvotes, actually. The best solution to me seems to either introduce a paid premium membership that allows comments, or shut them down wholesale. It's not that by removing the functionality of commenting, people are forbidden to comment, only that they will have start their own damn site if they wish to comment. I doubt the infantile commenters get any attention that way.

YouTube used to hide comments that had too many downvotes though, so it didn't matter if they were "encouraged", they weren't seen. However, even though Reddit still gives people the ability to downvote and those comments with many are hidden, the quality of comments there still isn't that great for it. There are people who upvote their own posts using proxies for publicity, votebots, and rumours that corporations abuse it. SomethingAwful is an older website that required people to pay for membership to post on a forum, which ensured quality for some time, but it eventually just became hostile to new members.

"Web 2.0" social media sites are generally not that great for good conversation. Twitter doesn't allow for enough detail and ends up being a series of droll retorts and insults. Instant messaging on Facebook and Google Plus are fine, but still slower than an actual conversation, and the commenting systems on posts and videos have the trouble of not being well organized to see who is speaking to who on what post unless you are actually in the conversation and receiving notifications (or very intent on reading it), and this annoying thing sometimes where one person asks a question and a massive amount of people answer them even if their question was already answered by the first person, or a bunch of random insults (sometimes with likes). Youtube also has the bot account problem, with scam accounts liking each other's scam posts on videos. The default Top Comment system on Youtube for organizing comments is biased towards commenters with more subscribers, which is also probably open to abuse by scambots.

The data-mining across the board of social media sites could also be seen as annoying, but they need it to turn a profit.

"Web 1.0" forum formats are still the most useful for thorough communication.

Also, CFC seems to be perpetually stuck in ~2007, judging by the "Bookmarks" section at the bottom of the page. Digg? "del.cio.us"? "StumbleUpon"? What are these ancient names?

 

[aelf]

You can easily ignore infantile debates. It's a non-factor. Sometimes you might even see thoughtful comments that add a bit of richness to public discourse.

Maybe you can say that people might otherwise use their time more productively, but I doubt it.