Social media has helped influence the way we donate to charity. It has made the experience more interesting, and makes it easier to get your friends involved. Sites like JustGiving make it easy to co-ordinate sponsored activities (and in the UK, integrates ‘GiftAid’; something many individuals would not bother with when organising such events) and gives the security of knowing that the money (besides a minimal fee) goes to the charity. Others, like the Causes application on Facebook, simultaneously raise both awareness and money.

Whilst people would likely donate to sponsored events even if tools like JustGiving did not exist, sites like that make it much easier to collect donations from distant sources (like friends hundreds of miles away). Sites like JustGiving have developed Facebook apps, so that new technologies can work with them. JustGiving is unfortunately not a free service, and charges charities £15 a month and charge a transaction fee per donation (this is about 5-6%, plus card processing fees). It could be cheaper for some charities to process transactions directly, but I don’t think this is really an unreasonable fee.

I find things like the Causes app much more interesting. They cleverly integrate the social element of it with a fundraising one. However, form my observations, it can have very different results. The amount donated per cause member wildly differs.

Causes with specific fundraising aims, or which serve a select audience, seem to perform better. For example, a Cause that aims to buy a bus for an Indian orphanage has raised over $2,500 with less than 60 members (about $50 on average per member), whilst a Cause that aims to abolish the death penalty has over 100,000 members, but has only raised about $1,000 (less than a cent per member). Whilst it could be argued this due to the moral problems some people may have, much less controversial causes like a cancer prevention one suffer a similar fate: it has over 5,000,000 members but has only raised $130,000 (about 2 cents per member). Another cause, which aims to buy mosquito nets has 15,000 members who have donated over $25,000. Donations seem to be made more generously when the donors know what it’s going to be spent on (whether a bus or mosquito nets!), but less generously on bigger causes with no specific material item being purchased (whether this be opposition to the death penalty, or cancer research) don’t get as many donations per member.

Some charities try to make giving more fun through the Internet, too. UK homelessness charity Shelter allows donors to buy a virtual house from £10 on their website, which can then have a picture, link and message when clicked on. This is advertising in the spirit of the Million Dollar Homepage, but mixing in a charitable element. Innovative, but virtual land isn’t exactly in short supply and you have to wonder how much money it raised for them.

Online giving seems to work best on a small scale, with specific aims, whilst large general campaigns – whether fighting cancer of abolishing the death penalty – will get lots of supporters, but not as much money per supporter!

I have found the Internet makes it easier and more interesting to donate money, but I’m sure some charities could get more donations if they better used it.

Something I love is OpenID. I love having a portable online identity, not being tied to an email provider or something like Facebook Connect or Twitter OAuth. Better yet, I don’t have to rely on someone else keeping their servers up – I can change my OpenID provider whenever I like and keep the same log-in (how?).

Why is OpenID not more popular then, when it is probably a safer and more reliable option? It might take a bit more work (registering with a service provider and then linking to this in the header of the HTML of the user’s webpage), but it isn’t exactly a huge amount of work. I don’t know how difficult it is to implement an OpenID log-in properly; dozens of plug-ins exist for many pieces systems like WordPress (I removed it here due to issues getting the log-in styled properly… not really a technically limitation!).

Why are more and more systems embracing proprietary log-in systems like OAUTH or Facebook Connect, but neglecting to include an OpenID log-in? Many sites, like AOL, are OpenID providers but then fail to accept OpenID themselves. It’s perfectly good having hundreds of providers, but little use if the major sites which provide these identities actually refuse to then accept them!

OpenID should be pursued, whether instead of or in addition to services like Facebook Connect and OAUTH. Better yet would be for Facebook and Twitter to accept and offer OpenIDs, of course!

A few weeks ago, Eric Goldstein, CEO of Clipmarks, invited me to his new website: Amplify. Amplify allows users to share clippings (like excerpts of text or images) much like Clipmarks, but encourages its users to comment on it and then the combined commentary and clipping are displayed together on a blog.

The uses are interesting. Amplify is a good way to quickly express an opinion on a topical issue and to share lesser known news stories. These can then be posted to Twitter, del.icio.us and/or Clipmarks through the site: maximising exposure.

The site also has a social element. You can comment on others posts and allow others to post on your ‘cliplog’, so many are ground cliplogs for specific projects etc.

WordPress MU is used so when you log-in, you face a familiar WordPress admin interface and you manage comments and users in the same fashion you manage WordPress users.

I like Amplify because it allows me to easily run a political blog (which can be seen here). I can clip stories that I want to share or discuss and write a minimal amount of opinion, but sufficiently communicate my viewpoint. I’ve even had a few complete strangers comment on my clips, and they’ve then retweeted them! It also displays retweets on the clipblog under comments.

Amplify allows users to log-in through Twitter’s OAUTH or to get their own account. Amplify, like Clipmarks, is well worth a look and is actually a really enjoyable but easy form of blogging.

I often blog about Wikipedia, but I have recently started to contribute to Wikinews. One thing that immediately struck me was that Wikinews’ community was much warmer than Wikipedia’s, but naturally it is much smaller.

As communities grow larger, generally more disputes arise. As more disputes arise, ways in which to resolve them must develop.

With thousands of active (and highly vocal) editors, Wikipedia finds itself with a plethora of arguments.

Wikipedia’s dispute resolution process can be described as notoriously bureaucratic. There’s requests for comments, third opinions, a mediation cabal, a mediation committee and an arbitration committee. Complex, don’t you think? The arbitration committee is the highest source of authority on Wikipedia (bar Jimbo Wales and the Wikimedia Foundation Board, who barely ever give an opinion). They are currently dealing with 14 cases I believe, and remember these are only the most severe/important disputes on the entire encyclopedia.

Wikinews, a community with only 50 admins, also has an Arbitration Committee with a similar role. They, however, have only fully dealt with 2 cases since 2006. In fact, the last case they had to decide whether or not they would take on was back in 2008, when they made a proposal to abolish the committee. One editor described it as ‘nothing but bureaucracy… with exactly zero point’, as there’s so few disputes.

So, bigger communities argue more. Smaller communities like Wikinews seem to have no major feuds inside them and all of their users are working towards a common goal, whilst in Wikipedia I feel that different editors want different things out of the project.

Working in a small community is much more rewarding than working in a large community with a lot of in-fighting. Things are also done quicker; I know Wikipedia can take several years to tidy up articles whilst on Wikinews, they’re fixed in hours.

I am a big fan of Wikipedia and for some reason, I chuckle everytime I read the media report about it. The old media appear to often have a negative bias towards the Internet, seeing it as a threat and a corrupter of morals. However, coverage of Wikipedia is always particularly negative.

Amazingly, The Observer deemed it newsworthy to report that Wikipedia had been edited to show Robert Kilroy-Silk (a controversial British MEP) was a member of the Monster Raving Loony Party. Whilst libel is definitely an issue and is wrong, most instances of blatant vandalism like this are fixed in minutes, if not seconds! That, though, doesn’t make a captivating headline or read!

Reporting on Wikipedia’s inaccuracies, libel and vandalism is old news. By now, the public should have realised that ‘WIKIPEDIA MAKES NO GUARANTEE OF VALIDITY’ (to quote their disclaimer). It’s perfectly easy for any journalist to find lies or vandalism on Wikipedia articles through purely clicking on the ‘history’ link on the article and seeing which edits have been reverted.

I found everything from local newspapers to major national news stories criticising Wikipedia (or information within it).

I hope the media begin to move away from blaming Wikipedia and begin to blame the editors who make the misleading edits. People, children and adults, still find it amusing to vandalise articles and it seems to even be considered acceptable amongst the populace.

The beauty of the whole matter is that despite the fact the media criticise Wikipedia’s reliability, they use it for quick research and occasionally even quote it as some sort of definitive resource!