What was most interesting to me, was the discussion and difference of opinion on whether social media spaces like YouTube, Twitter and Facebook are publishing or conversation. Damien Damjanovski was a conversationalist; Sam North was of the opinion that as soon as you put something online you are publishing, and by entering the public domain you are availing yourself to be quoted, scrutinised, sued for defamation and have your Facebook photos printed in the Sydney morning Herald. Renai LeMay from Delimiter was a journalist trying to toe the publishing and ethics line. While he would freely quote a public figure’s tweet in an article he would only use an image found online if it was published under creative commons. He added that a journalist should go to the primary source of material they are using to verify its accuracy if nothing else. So at this point in the night the debate became one based on the premise that if we are putting ourselves out there publicly how can this content be used and how do we feel about that use (and vulnerability).

I side with the publishing angle myself and by that I mean that posting something online is a form of publication by its inherent distribution. Having said (and contradicting) that, I feel it is completely inappropriate for a newspaper to obtain a photograph from a social network because that photograph is from an entirely different context to the story. Who is the publisher? This was not explored in tonight’s discussion at the event but it did get me thinking. Part of the reason why the likes of Facebook and Tumblr claim copyright on your material is so that they can have the right to distribute your material which is what they are doing when you post content to them. While I think it is wrong of newspapers to delve into Facebook for pictures to illustrate their stories I think that the users of these platforms should take issue with Facebook as much as they may take issue with the journalist and the newspaper. Surely it is Facebook’s responsibility to protect its copyright as a means to protect its users. What should users expect of the social networks they participate in?

I could go on but I think the debate will continue at the next Digital Citizens event.

N.B. The hashtag for this event was #digicitz. The title of this post is paraphrased from a tweet on that stream.

Go to a group in Facebook and have a look at the members list. In a group with 12,504 members you can only progress through the list with previous or next links.

Facebook Group Member list

Go to albums, or to a particular album. While the extent of content is revealed the total number of pages isn’t, not until you get to the very end.

Facebook Album Progressive Pagination

The approach to pagination differs at the Mayo Clinic, a medical information site. Conducting a search will reveal the total number of search results and the total number of search result pages. In a large search result list, this will hopefully prompt the user to narrow their search terms.

CMS search result pagination

Google invested so much in pagination that they married their logo to the number of search result pages. As we are all well aware, the Google logo itself helps to illustrate the vastness of the search with added O’s that stretch the length of the logo to match the length of the search result. Google has a hybrid approach to the two patterns of pagination discussed  above.

A search for “cancer” yields approximately 198,000,000 results but at first only 10 search result pages.

Google pagination showing 1 to 10 of about 198,000,000

Clicking next reveals the 10th, 11th, 12th page and so on. As you progress further the pagination increases by 10 pages. The total pages are never revealed.

Google progressive pagination

From memory, Google use to indicate the total number of search result pages, but I could be wrong. This could be due to the fact that it is not worthwhile doing the calculation. It has been well tested and documented that people are likely to only look at the first few search result pages. Google’s approach to  initially show 10 pages  may just encourage people to search deeper, stay on their pages longer and have more eyeballs on sponsored links.  I am not sure if I should consider Google’s 10 page pagination approach as cynical; it could be both a matter of usability and a revenue raiser. It is obvious that in large search results there is no point in even offering the user access to all the pages.

Admittedly the purpose and technologies behind these three sites are completely different so it is no surprise that their pagination is different. The Mayo Clinic is a vast website and information resource and runs on a CMS. Google of course is a search engine and anyone faced with large search results is likely to refine their terms.

Facebook on the other hand clearly defies the web conventions we have become accustomed to. It never offers us the total number of pages and teases us with progressive page numbers. Nor does is offer links to the first or last page. This is the case in albums, groups, search result pages, throughout the application it seems.  It is a clever strategy albeit one that reminds me of shopping centre architecture—deliberately designed to get you lost, make you wander inside and lose your sense of time.

References

For a more thorough discussion on pagination and pagination patterns see http://justaddwater.dk/2008/01/03/usability-of-pagination-links/

Screenshots taken and annotated with Fireshot.