With the upraising of social networks like Google+ and Facebook a new term was introduced into the normal language which is called share. The word is so important that a dedicated share button was invented and is visible on million of webpages in the internet. The surprising fact is, that the definition what share means is unclear. I'd like to explain the idea in detail.
To make things easier we assume that not a real social network with a proprietary software is used which is hidden from the user but all the actions are made in a textfile on a local computer. This allows to see complete inside the box. Now we can compare the classical idea of copy&paste a link into a textfile with press the share button. Before i will present the textfile it is important to warn the reader. Even if the cases looks the same there are a difference, and i will explain the difference shortly. For the meantime here is the textfile.
normal linking: The best programming language for AI projects is Python.
https://www.python.org/ sharing: The best programming language for AI projects is Python.
https://www.python.org/
Like i said, both cases look the same. What i want to explain is, that sharing is not defined in the textfile itself but depends on something which is hidden behind the text. And now we have to search for this hidden meaning. I'd like to start the journey with the more easier case which is the first one. Somebody writes a sentence, is referencing to a programming language and puts a URL at the end of the sentence so that people who are not familiar with the subject can find more information. I would guess that case1 is uncomplicated and most users will argue the same way. Posting such a link is common.
The more interesting and more complicated to explain case is the second one. If the bytes which are typed in are the same how can the sharing feature be realized? Where is the button to share the link? This problem can be answered if we know the complete situation. In case one a single user talks to an anonymous audience. He has created a text and likes to explain to the world what the best programming language is. Such a communication style is heavily used in blogs and in forums.
Sharing means something which is completely different. The literature is a bit shy to give the concrete details. The best explanation which i have found is in the documentation around the planet feedreader aggregator. If somebody has understood what the planet software is doing he has understood what sharing is.
Let us take a look into the planet manual. What is described there is a command line tool. The program takes different RSS feeds as input and produces a single RSS feed as output. If this feed is put on a website the website is called a planet frontpage. What planet is doing is called sharing.
Let us analyze the motivation of somebody who has created a planet newsfeed. Is his motivation to explain the world what the best programming language is? No he operates on a metalevel, that means, he takes existing content which is located in the input RSS feeds and puts this information forward. Putting something forward means to aggregate the information.
How can a user press the sharing button? The interesting point is that no real button is available, the decision if a paragraph is created in the normal linking mode or in the sharing mode is done before a text is written. Let me give an example. An author sits on his computer and likes to write a normal text, He can type in the following sentence:
Each neural network needs a training algorithm to adjust the weights.
This sentence is the result of the author's knowledge. The sentence is visible in the texteditor. The author likes to a add a reference, he is searching in the internet and finds the WIkipedia page. Even the URL is a bit too general he copy&paste the URL at the end, to show that he is a professional author.
Each neural network needs a training algorithm to adjust the weights. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_neural_network
Now we can play a slightly different example game in which the author is working in a different mode. Again, he sits in front of an empty texteditor. But this time he is motivated to share something. What he is doing is the following. The author asks himself, which piece of information is important. According to the planet software handbook he needs a URL of an existing RSS feed. One possible source for the imaginary RSS inputfeed is https://mc.ai/deep-learning-best-practices-activation-functions-weight-initialization-methods%E2%80%8A-%E2%80%8Apart-1/
Under this URL a longer text about weight initialization in neural networks was published recently. It was written by an expert and contains useful images. Now the URL can be shared. That means the URL is copy&pasted to the beginning of the text and then a small annotation is made.
https://mc.ai/deep-learning-best-practices-activation-functions-weight-initialization-methods%E2%80%8A-%E2%80%8Apart-1/ Each neural network needs a training algorithm to adjust the weights.
This kind of short message is send to a friend. I hope it was made clear what the difference is between putting a link to an existing text and play the planet software feedreader game. The decision is made of the author of a text before he types in the characters. He has to decide if he would like to type in a normal text which is added with references, or if he likes to do content aggregation of existing information.
The difference is how important the URL is. At the case one, the URL supports the existing information. If the URL is missing the information remains the same. In the second case, the URL is the dominant information and the text gets the lower priority.
For reason of a better understanding i have changed the order:
case1: text URL
case2: URL text
But in theory, the case 2 can be ordered in the same way like case 1:
case1: text URL
case2: text URL
Which means we have the confusion situation that both are looking the same, but they aren't.
Definition of sharing
I don't like the word sharing very much because the underlying description is that sharing is motivated by the individual who would like forward a message. The more elaborated definition is focused on the RSS feed which is used before something can be shared. Sharing means to search for an existing RSS feed, extract one or all URLs and paste this information into an e-mail with the advice that the receiver should read it.
Let me give an example. Suppose we want to explore better what sharing means. Before we can do so we need an input RSS feed. This is described in the planet software manual and this is the correct workflow. Which RSS feed is the right one? Maybe the RSS feed from Arxiv is great, or the RSS feed from the own blog, or the RSS from an online forum. There are lots of sources in the internet. We can select one of them or we can use random generator which takes the decision
The surprising fact is, that if we select via random generator one of the URL of the Arxiv RSS feed and put this into an e-mail the receiver will understand that we are in the sharing mode. Even if the e-mail contains only of text he can read by a magical force that the URL is tagged as shared link. The exact background why the receiver sees the sharing tag even it is not explicit there is unknown. This is the reason why the definition of sharing is so complicated because the topic is not fully understood.
One general rule is, that the sharing mode is used for coordinating projects in the now and use realtime sources, while the mode of referencing to URL is used for describing more general ideas which are not belonging to current projects. Books which are available in the library are using references. It is not important to read the book within the next 24 hours a book can wait months and years until it gets it's readers.
The more eloquent term over share is to say “curate a link” or even better to “curate a playlist” because this is refering more explicit to the underlying activity. Before a link can copy&pasted to a textfile, somebody has to identify the RSS feed and extract the URL from it. This task is called curating or aggregation. It means to decide which of the content is appropriate for the opponent. In the offline world, curating is something what a DJ or a radio moderator is doing. He takes a look into the database and decides to play a certain song. He acts as a gatekeeper between song producer and audience.