Interacting with data presented in a web is new to me and is certainly out of my comfort zone. It was interesting to see what kind of patterns became clear as I moved and manipulated the data points within the web. At one point, I was moving songs in order of how many connections they had. I deemed anything that had been chosen 5 or fewer times as “unpopular” and separated them out from the rest. It was interesting to see that none of my choices fell into that category, that is that all of the songs I chose were all chosen by at least 5 other people in the class. I also moved the web so that I was at the center, which felt self-aggrandizing but was somewhat interesting to see as I had my 10 songs surrounding my name and had the web branch out from there.
And all that is interesting, but ultimately leaves me wanting more information. Why did other people choose those same “popular” songs? Since I don’t know the selection criteria that others used, I can’t use the data to come to a conclusion. I suppose I could visit everyone’s blogs and sort people according to the selection criteria they came up with but that would be tedious and time-consuming. I can see how this way of looking at data and connections may be more valuable when the data has been collected based on a consensus.
Reading about webs and connection also gave me more insight into why the linking assignments are a part of the course, and having completed only two links, gives me more food for thought when choosing the rest of them. For example, if I find a task by someone that has no comments, should I give that a higher priority to link to in the chance that it boosts engagement with that post?
