Why the “upgraded” TJ forums will be a flop

For about 5 years, I was frequenting the TJ forums. It was a forum board managed by the Temasek Junior College IT club, and was open to students, alumni, as well as members of the public. There's quite a lot of interesting discussions, debates and sharing on the forum, and I've sharpened my analytical and writing skills by defending my views and attacking other people's arguments. I've also benefited from others relating their experience on life and work. Overall it has been an enriching experience, though at times things can get quite heated or boring.

First sign of upgrading - forum unplugged

Over the last few days, I had problems connecting to the forums. I guessed it was some server or network problem, so imagine my surprise when I received an email about the school admin deciding to take the forum down. Soon after, this message appeared when I tried to access the site.



That sounds OK right? Well, I was referred to a temporary forum where I learned more of what was going on. Especially revealing was enemychaser's post somewhere here.

Hey people, sorry about not informing you guys on time. Actually I wasn't even informed of the shutdown until well, it actually went down. Didn't even get to post any messages.

Anyway, from what I heard from the tech guys (my teacher in charge didn't tell me anything at all), the forums are closed down to "protect" the reputation of TJC, whatever that means. Sounds like a pretty half assed answer to me, to be honest, not to mention that we didn't even get to protest, as makoto had said. So folks, please accept my apologies. =(

What's up with this reputation thing?

I can guess a few things. A few TJCians themselves going around the forums making silly and disrespectful comments like calling teachers their servants. But there are only a few of such people around, so I don't think it warrants measures spelled out here.

To start off, the TJC forums is not being shut down, just that a couple of changes will be implemented. To the best of my knowledge, a key reason why the forums will undergo these changes is accountability.

A key difference is that the TJ forums will be almost (I'll come to that later) exclusively TJCians
only. From what I understand, posters will have their names displayed on the forums, though the exact nature of that (appearing next to each post? or only in profiles, etc) is still unknown.

That does not mean that ex- and non- TJCians will be unable to participate in the forums, however. This group of people will be able to apply for an account, though approval will have to be granted (again, details are blurry) before these accounts may be used for posting.

MadMax, as always, hits the nail on the head.

Perhaps she has removed the forum out of fear of disapproval by the MOE, when students discuss such 'controversial' topics as religion, terrorism and politics. History has shown us that quelling discussion of controversial topics benefits noone. It is by suppression that we breed ignorance, and by ignorance that we breed racism, fear and intolerance. It is only by open discussion that we learn to understand and tolerate. And perhaps this is the time to say that the TJC forum will survive with or without her authority. The only difference is that there will be no moderation, there will be noone to prevent posts on the oppressive dynasty of LKY, or the illegal sharing of files via forum links. However, the TJC name will still stand above this forum. Whether it is "The alternative TJC forum", or "TJC forums revived", the school name will still be present and used as an identity. If it is the reputation of TJC that the principal is looking to protect, she has taken the wrong path. Abolishment leads to Dissent leads to Underground Movement.

In the war of reputations: Keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer, and keep your students where you can moderate them.

Why the "upgraded" TJ forums will be a flop

Whatever the reason for the changes, if the stated changes do go through, it can only lead to blandness and monotony.

First, anonymity encourages people to speak up more, on more varied subjects. It gives people a (false?) sense of security and freedom from the pressure to conform. Taking anonymity from them is going to make a lot of them freeze up and worry about the social consequences of what they post. Will they be gossiped about, will they be ostracized?

Second, there is an additional barrier for alumni and the public. I'll say that most of the prominent and active forum participants are the people from these groups. Subjecting these contributors to some sort of arbitrary screening process is going to breed some ill-will.They might not even register at all. Some might feel indignant, especially those who've spent some time and built up a fine reputation in the community. For new registrants, this just means another hurdle to cross. The additional screening process is not going to make it easier to join in. I'm just wondering what kind of criteria we're looking at and how many will drop at the first hurdle.

Third, the presence of better alternatives will make the "upgraded" TJ forums even less attractive. It's like you know how bad a product is, but if you place a clearly superior alternative beside it, the original product seems a lot worse. Same case here. If a new forum is really created, I can imagine the kind of embarrassment the "upgraded" forum will suffer from. I'll say, let them compete head to head. See which forum will have more users, more posts, more varied and interesting content at the end of one year. If someone suggests this to the new prinicpal, I wonder what he/she has to say.

The myth of the eight glasses - How much water do we really need?

I was reading the newspapers over the weekend, and I came across this piece of news about water intoxication. A radio station in California held a contest where contestants had to drink lots of water and hold in their pee to win a Nintendo Wii. One of the contestants, a mother of three by the name of Jennifer Strange, died hours after the competition from water intoxication. Besides being a freaky incident, this piece of news caught my attention as I've recently resolved to drink more water. While I don't think I'm in danger of electrolyte imbalance or anything, it just made me think, how much water do we need to drink? Assuming we are drinking water within safe limits, is more water good? How much is safe anyway?

Actually, it looks like drinking more water is a goal set by many. Just look at how many people extol the virtues of drinking more water. From better complexion, increased alertness and loss of weight, it seems that increased water intake can help you do it all. Or can it? According to this, we can probably do fine with about four glasses of water each day. The claim that the average person needs to drink eight glasses of water per day to avoid being chronically dehydrated, according to the website, is just an urban legend. But there are benefits to being well-hydrated.

So, do we really need to drink eight glasses of water a day? I guess we can do fine with less, but there's really no harm in that volume of water, unless you have some special condition. So I'm sticking to my resolution and see if the benefits really are that many :-)

Do you want a camera to be poking into your face every time your sneeze?

I was talking to the taxi-driver last Friday morn on the ECP, it seems that some people are taking taxis as motels or something. There was a lesbian couple who were doing it recently, and he had a few other couples who can't wait as well. Why can't these people can't keep their urges in check? Anyway, I've become a bit cautious about inspecting the cleanliness of where I seat after that conversation.

I've seen that some people engage in kissing and groping or other bad behaviour on the SBS buses and the MRT trains, but the videotaping of a sex act on the buses still comes as a surprise to me on two counts. One, that the couple actually did it on the bus. Two, someone actually captured it on video and posted it online. I'm not sure which is worse, but I'll take it that the former is unequivocally bad. Now, what about the latter?

Kway Teow Man's refutations of Andy Ho's reasoning
The Kway Teow Man has put up a piece on public shaming and citizen journalism. In it, he disputes certain points in Andy Ho's article on the same subject. His arguments are

1. In cyber-shaming, the person doesn't carry the picture or movie on his/her forehead and there is some sort of forgiveness over time and it's not permanent.


2. Gossip is unfounded and often cannot be verified. Here, we are talking about EVIDENCE of wrong-doing

I think these 2 points do not stand up to scrutiny.

The Web does not forget
First, when an incident first erupts in cyberspace, it creates a massive wave which eventually dies down. But does the matter end there, do people forget? No, because of two things. People who record the event and put it on their websites or blogs, and search engines and aggregators. As an example, why is Tammy NYP back in the Technorati Top Searches? Because of hyperlinks, blog aggregators, etc. Because people remember. You can be sure if some issue about racist scholars crops up or musicians defaulting NS reemerges, a certain Chua CZ and Melvin Tan will be mentioned in blogs again and will eventually be picked up by aggregators . Anyway, I'm still getting some searches on Wee Shu Min....lol. In this sense, the area effect is large.

And the thing with search engines is that the longer your content lives, the more likely someone will link to you, and the more likely your content will withstand the test of time. Meaning, old content is given more priority by search engines, and it is harder for an issue to be completely forgotten. I can google someone up and see, OK, this guy said some pretty embarrassing, stupid, etc thing some years back. And it's difficult to ignore such a fact when we know about it. In this sense, the area effect is small, but it is likely to be felt more as the person searching you should be someone who knows you or needs to interact with you.

Now that it is harder to forget something, people have to make an effort to forgive whereas there need not be such an issue in the first place when they don't have the knowledge in their minds.

Don't believe everything you see
Secondly, a picture is worth a thousand words but it may not be enough for the full story. There was a ST article recently this year about citizenship journalism, something related to taking pictures of people pretending to be asleep so they don't have to give up seats to people who need it more. Or people who park their bikes in places parking spaces meant for cars. How do you know that the person who took the photo or video captured the context? Maybe the guy sleeping was ill. Or he did give up his seat when he realized there was pregnant woman, but the person taking the photo had gotten off the train. The truth is, you don't know. Are pictures and videos really hard evidence then?

What are the limits to citizen journalism?
I think that there ought to be limits to citizen journalism. For example, in the case of the man sleeping on the train, does one need to publish his face to the whole Internet to make a point on people not giving seats to people who need it? How does capturing the image of his face in 5 mega-pixel clarity and publishing on your blog solve the problem of Singaporeans lacking in social graces (if such is the case)? Besides shaming the person and making others fear suffering the same fate, it doesn't do anything much, does it? Why can't you just blur out his face? It's almost like the case of the MRT suicides, where full disclosure need not always be a good thing. Do we want to be constantly alert and worry about how we appear in public? Do you want a camera to be poking into your face every time your sneeze or cough on the bus? Do you want to be snapped when you slip and fall on a wet pavement?

Where to draw the line
Does anyone remember the case of the students hugging on the MRT train? How far does one’s private sphere extend into the public sphere? Do you have any legal rights against people who take photos or videos of you in public without your permission?

KTM says,

At the end of the day, a public place is a public place. Anything that is done in a public place, except for (indecent) acts forbidden by the law, is for public consumption.

If people want to post stuff they capture on camera or video online, they should be free to do so. That is called the freedom of expression. :-)

Well that is true, but I'm guessing people will not be happy if they are captured on pictures or videos without their permission. I don't think we are ready to say that it is ok for anyone to do anything with our images that are captured in public.

Why “The Peak” pales in comparison to “Today”

There's a new drama on Channel 8 starring Christopher Lee, Qi Yuwu, Elvin Ng, Jeanette Aw, Dawn Yeoh and Ben Yeo. It's supposed to showcase Singapore's offshore, marine and maritime industry, and I also suspect it's for manpower purposes. The cast certainly has a magnetic hold on the audience (Jeanette looks conspicuously fair though she's supposed to work under the sun, but I think she looks better that way), but I'm not sure that people are going to be attracted to the industry because of the show.

One important factor that is going to make job-seekers consider taking up a job in the industry, of course, is pay. Well, here's an excerpt of an article from Today on Jan 6, 2007:

Keppel Offshore & Marine (O&M) is paying out a record 7.2-month bonus to all its 7,700 employees this year, topping the 6.2 months given out last year. The good news comes after record order completions and timely deliveries for all its projects in the past 12 months.
.
Keppel O&M, a subsidiary of Keppel Corporation Limited, completed and delivered 26 new builds and conversions totalling $2 billion, all on time and within budget.

According to a friend,even though the average EEE grad's pay in this industry is slightly below average, the 6-7 months of bonus more than makes up for it. And they have projects lined up to 2010!

Anyway, I was quite surprised by Qi Yuwu when he spoke English, quite decently too. :-)

When higher education harms

While we usually equate higher education with increased job opportunities, this is not the case when the economy is bearish. I can remember that ITE and poly graduates were more employable when I went for a career talk about two years ago, and the we were shown some figures about the employability of these grads during the downturn. in India and China. Recently, there's been news that 1.24 million Chinese college students will be jobless, and now we read that Indian college graduates suffer from higher jobless rates compared to high school graduates. China and India are not in the midst of an economic downturn, in fact the economy is booming in these two countries

When higher education harms
Source: Business Times, 18 Dec 2006

Graduates of lesser Indian universities cannot share the spoils of India's booming economy as they lack marketable skills

In the shadow of those marquee institutions, most of the 11 million students in the 18,000 Indian colleges and universities receive starkly inferior training, heavy on obeisance and light on marketable skills, students, educators and business leaders say. All but a tiny handful of graduates are considered employable by top global and local companies.
.........
A study that the group published last year concluded that just 10 per cent of Indian graduates with generalist degrees were considered employable by major companies, compared with 25 per cent of engineers.
.........
India is one of those rare countries where you become less able to find a job the more educated you get. College graduates suffer from higher jobless rates - 17 per cent in the 2001 census - than high school graduates. But even as graduates complain of the paucity of jobs, companies across India lament the lack of skilled talent at their disposal.

For years there's been reports of Indian grads not being able to find jobs and having to take up jobs as cabbies. And I remember that either TIMES or Newsweek reported that Chinese grads from vocational training institutes were more employable that college grads. Why is there this anomaly?

Why college grads are unemployable
Some of the reasons cited in the article include

• Lack of marketable skills


• Classroom culture that discourages analysis, debate, creativity

Skills like communication, presentation and writing are lacking in many grads, as half of all Indian college students are taught in languages other than English. 'Hinglish' (I guess it's something like Singlish?) is in widespread use. In addition, many do not have the experience of working in teams or leading them.

Also, a culture that discourages discussion, feedback and encourages rote-learning and subordination breeds a class of grads that are unable to provide creative solutions to problems.

Reflections on local universities

Students in local universities get lessons on business or technical writing, get to do presentations and form groups to do projects, so they do get to learn some soft skills I guess. As extra-curricula activities are mandatory up to secondary schools, most will have acquired some experience of working in groups. Also, for guys, NS does help a bit.

My own experience is that local students do not speak up, though most lecturers and tutors do encourage to do so, to the extent of awarding participation points in class. With the emergence of the seminar-style approach embraced by SMU, I guess more students will have learn to speak up.

Resolutions for 2007

Not a habit of mine to make resolutions, but think I'll start making some this year.

Be more effective, be more organised, use time more efficiently
Actually, I've managed to finish a few books (The World Is Flat, Freakonomics ,The Long Tail) while I'm on my daily commute this year. I guess that's not too bad actually. I actually feel less ignorant, which is good, but I'm still quite ignorant...lol. However, I think I'll need to find better ways of doing things so that I can use my time for other purposes like doing things I actually like, maybe even take up more freelance projects. And stop procrastinating. Time, there's never enough of it.

Get my SCJP and one more certification, or learn one new skill
It's about time I start preparing for my Java exam, hope it'll make me more marketable. Then I can get a higher salary....haha. Maybe I'll get an Oracle certification in PL/SQL or something, or maybe I can take up Malay, most probably not going to do both simultaneously though.

Adopt a healthier lifestyle
Drink more water, eat less meat, less salt, less sugar, sleep more, do a bit of exercise. Don't sweat over the small stuff, choose the battles I go into. Maybe exfoliate? lol

There's that, now I just need to think of actual steps needed to fulfil them and some determination to stick to them. But that's for another day, not for the eve of new year :-)