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Kuro5hin is a community web site where people or members are able to express, analyse and critize issues regarding the world around them. It makes it possible by providing a place for members to submit articles with in depth analysis. The topics are categorized into various categories, e.g.: technology, culture, politics, media, news, etc. They are the eleven categories located on the top kuro5hin.org navigation bar.
This site is one example of [open publishing]. It is the type of news publishing where the readers can see how the news is produced. They can see editorial decisions made and can also participate in the process.
Kuro5hin was officially established on December 1999. The name of Kuro5hin is a pun on the founder's name, [Rusty Foster]. It is taken from the word 'corrosion', which is roughly synonymous with 'rusty'. Then, inspired by a character named Da5id from Neal Stephenson's book Snow Crash, he changed the letter 's' with number '5'. Hence, 'Kuro5hin' is the name.
Rusty Foster started kuro5hin because he wanted to create an online community that does not suck. He did that by creating scoop, the software that runs kuro5hin.
In 2002, he faced financial hardship and announcing that he might need to shut down kuro5hin. But his solicitation for donation gave him $37,000 of fund and goods. In 2003, many of the diarists left kuro5hin and started posting on [Hulver's site]. At around the same time, there are many complaints about trolls on kuro5hin.
On March 25, 2004, Rusty closed some users accounts because they had offended him. To prevent it happened again, he announced to implement new user sponsorship. However, the plan was scrapped on July 13 because it did not work out.
This site is for people who like to think about various issues that emerge in the world and critize them from different angles and point of views. They do that by writing articles whose contents depend on their interests and knowledge. In the articles, they explore various ideas regarding culture, technology, etc. They challenge the limit of the community by their writings.
Every member must have a user name. It is used as an identity in the Kuro5hin community. The only thing that must be legitimate is [the email address], because every account related email will be sent here. The members who register in this web site commonly use nick names or user name to hide their identities and backgrounds.
In some cases, there are some rules that members or new users do not follow. For example, they only submit stories without having ever commented or posted anything. They are often called nullos. In the latest poll, there are 30.000 Kuro5hin readers that are from different background and interest.
Kuro5hin.org mainly contains articles written by its members. Those articles then are commented and rated. The articles' topics range from technology, culture, science, politics, media, news, internet, education, to fiction. Those articles are submitted by the kuro5hin members to the editorial process explained in the website's FAQ. If approved, the articles are posted to the relevant area and probably to the front page.
Articles posted to kuro5hin are manifests of the site's mission, to provide a place for its members to express their thoughts about the world they live in. However, being a community website, kuro5hin allows two way communication to happen. Members can give feedback to the articles written by other members by commenting and rating the comments. While the main article provides a well written argumentation of the topic in hand, the comments are usually just few paragraphs expressing agreement, disagreement, or anything other member wants to say about the article. This reminds us of how individuals in the society interact with each other. The comments help the readers to see perspectives other than the one beautifully written in the article. In the end, the readers need to decide for herself whether to agree, disagree, or even do something about the argument in the article.
Diaries are places for members to post their stories which are not moderated,not like posting articles. The member that owns the diary is the only one who can write and post stories into it. The stories are posted automaticly without any editing or selection. Members are allowed to view and comment on the stories posted by other members. Content of the stories consists of intro, body, and poll.
There are eleven catagories in which members can participate by posting articles or commentd on articles. Those catagories are represented by the eleven headings on the top navigation bar.
The editing process starts when a member submit a story. Firstly, an article goes into the edit queue, which is a place where other member can comment and criticize articles before it is posted to the public. This phase provides a chance for article writers to get feedbacks on their writings. Articles in edit queue can be refined and rewritten based on the comments they get there. They stay there for a maximum of 24 hours or until the writer is happy with them.
From the edit queue, articles go to the voting queue. There, the fate of thise articles are decided by the members. They can vote for the article to be on the front page or the section page. Beside that, they can also vote for it to be dumped. They also are able to not give any vote.
After voting, the tally determine what happen with the article. A mathematical formula is used to calculate post threshold and dump threshold. If an article's votes to post are above the post threshold, the article will be posted. Otherwise, it will be dumped. If more than 50% of the vote for front page, it will be put on the front page. An email will be send to the writer is his article is dumped.
Beside posting articles, members can give comments on them. Comments can contain anything, be it insights, feedback, questions, new discussion issues, and sometimes humour. Comments are there to helps articles develop into discussions. Sometimes, some members give comments intended to create flames, these comments are called trolls.
Members can also rate the comments. Comment rates are the average of the rate given by the readers, who can rate with numbers between 0 and 3. Those rates are displayed next to every comment's title. They are written as X/Y, where X is he average rates and Y is the number of the readers who rate them.
The rates are there to help future readers to distinguish good comments from the bad ones. The reason behind high or low comment rates are actually not obvious. Mostly they just come from the readers' likes and dislikes.
This case study is taken from the Culture section. It is written by benna. He (just assume benna is male) has already posted 315 comments, 2 stories, and 6 diaries. This article explain an argument of legalization of marijuana in US. He argues that the cost of enforcing the law that says marijuana is illegal costs the goverment billions of dollars annually. Moreover, he provides evidances that marijuana is less harmfull to human health than alcohol and tobacco. He says that proponent of marijuana illegalization is that it is the gateway to other types of drugs that are more dangerous. He counters the argument by asserting the fact that although most drug users, such as cocaine or heroin, also consume marijuana, it does not mean that marijuana causes people to try other drugs. [Benna's story]
After posting the article, he received some comments from other members. As explained above, comments provide insights, feedback, questions, new discussion issues, and sometimes humour. For example, a comment from a member named cdguru. Her comments are against Benna's argument in the article. She says that people should think about the effect of marijuana legalization to the society, and she predict that the number of marijuana users will become three times bigger.
This comment can be argued by other members wheather they think is rellevant or irrelevant. While they are writing some comments, they can also rate the comments to other members from 0 to 3 that based on the quality of the article. In this case,for example, the Russell Dovey's comment has been rated by other members such as Xenofile, skyknight, RelliK. As the result, the average rate is 3 which mean that this comment is interesting.[comment rating]
Books
Internet Resources
--Etty soraya 04:12, 2 Sep 2005 (EST)
