We’re always open for donations (and we try to be restrained about asking for them), but as the year comes to a close, it’s worth noting that if you donate before midnight on December 31, you can take the donations off your 2011 taxes.
Please give generously to help us expand our coverage for 2012.
There’s a new page for History Commons contributors, users, and friends. Check it out and see if any of the proposed new topics interests you. If you have an idea for something not on this list, post it here!
Just finished a Skype presentation with Daniel Erlacher in Graz, Austria. Daniel runs the annual Elevate Festival in that lovely town, and is a huge HC supporter. I spoke for about 15 minutes on HC in general and our 9/11 coverage in specific. Kevin Fenton also did a presentation a bit earlier. I’ll let him discuss that.
What I’d really like to see is a more “international” presence for HC. We are very US-oriented, with the vast majority of our coverage focusing on events that primarily impact the US in one sense or another. (Two exceptions that come to mind are the Kosovar Albanian and European Football projects.)
We need more international coverage. I’d also like to see a version of HC in, say, German, either using our information in a translated form, and/or a version incorporating German-language original research.
Cross-posted at the History Commons Groups blog.
Hi, Commons community,
You haven’t seen an email update from us in a while. That’s because there haven’t been any. I won’t go into they whys, except they center mostly around personal and family issues that have precluded the admins (i.e. me) from getting them done. And they’re not coming back! At least not in the way they have been….
Find out more at the History Commons Groups blog: http://wp.me/phFo6-tg
The History Commons has a new project up, focusing on domestic terrorism:
The project has nothing to do with the recent, tragic Arizona shootings, as it was conceived and implemented weeks ago. However, material from that shooting, and the issues surrounding it, is welcome and necessary. If you’re interested in writing up some of that material, join us.
(Crossposted at the History Commons Group blog.)
I assume you’re familiar with the Wikileaks controversy. The History Commons takes no position on the truth or falsehood of the array of allegations leveled at Wikileaks, Julian Assange, or the quality and effect of the material it has disclosed. What we’re interested in is covering it. If you’re interested in covering the material that the organization has made available, or if you’re interested in covering the facts behind the controversy and the reaction against Wikileaks from the numerous governments that are trying to muzzle it, we’d love to hear from you. Post here if you’d like to take a shot at some coverage.
Let’s see if this spiffy Google code will work:
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| History Commons Discussion Forums |
| Visit this group |
You’ll need a Google account, and that’s all that’s involved. We welcome and invite your participation!
Let us know what you’d like to see in the forums.
Okay, the votes are in, and it’s an interesting set of results and comments.
To the question, “Do you feel the History Commons is an inaccessible ‘walled garden’?” the votes are as follows:
Yes: 13
No: 58
That’s over 80% of respondents who don’t feel the History Commons is a “walled garden.” Here are some of the comments, reproduced from the poll results at PollDaddy:
“Tenstring” writes: “I would just say that the website is very raw, that is it’s just basically a collection of data — and that’s probably good. People can come and follow the timelines and come to their own conclusions. It would open a can of worms to provide analysis, although I wouldn’t be against it. It would certainly potentially complicate things, though.” Agreed. We weren’t suggesting analysis, you can get that just about anywhere and in any flavor, from hard-right to hard-left and anywhere in between. That has never been what HC is about. JZ disagrees with the idea that the Commons is “just basically a collection of data,” and has some very nice things to say about HC stacking up well against Wikipedia “in regards to value from the interconnections it reveals due to its format.” I agree with that 100%; it’s one reason why I write for the Commons instead of Wikipedia. HC contributor Erik Larson writes that HC offers “great insight into the big picture and small details are available from MSM and govt reports, but they are often ignored by the majority of pols and pundits, and missed by the general public, as they may be buried deep in the reports, at the ends of articles or on the inner pages, or only reported by a single news outlet, or only make sense in context with other information, which is not provided by MSM journalists; this is what historycommons.org does so well, and the org deserves greater attention.” Rick Mason sums it up well: “I always considered CCR as an information gathering site with verified and accurate contributions from responsible journalists. It’s where I go when I wish to make sure I’m talking about facts, not rumors. It would be great if it were interactive.”
Commentator Kevin Boulton recommends a program like Visual Thesaurus to “visually link” some of the events on the HC projects; we have considered something like this, and while I’m personally not sure VT is itself the solution, there are some very, very good visual information organizers out there that I’d love to see implemented as corollaries to our existing projects. JZ recommends looking at visual organizers such as The Brain, and steers us towards a TED video by David McCandless. The Brain looks terrific at first glance, and the video is very informative. I would welcome further discussion along these lines.
JZ asks about HC having “its own forum that is part of the site but not simply a commenting system for each entry which I think would fragment the feedback,” and recommends something along the lines of the Citizen Investigation Team forum. I would love to see such a forum implemented. If anyone has any ideas about implementing — and hosting and moderating! — such a forum, please let us know.
Overall, I find the responses heartening. We originally conceived of the idea of “History Commons 2.0” as essentially revamping the application and redesigning the site to be more user-friendly, along with adding some more interactive features. We’ve come to see that approach as lacking a fundamental understanding of what the History Commons is. As I wrote in a working draft for the HC staff: “History Commons 2.0 is not a revised app and a redone design, it’s a new community of contributors and participants.” The app will grow out of the needs and participation of the community, not the other way around. Discussions like this one are the first steps in growing a new and vibrant History Commons community. Let’s extend it by talking over some of the points above in the comments.
This is the first in a series of polls designed to find out more about how you perceive the History Commons, and how it can do a better job for you.
In Web development speak, a “walled garden” is a site or online tool that is inaccessible — you can’t do much with it besides read the content. It’s tough, sometimes impossible, to interact with others on the site, whether it be other users or the site administrators.
That’s what this poll asks you about. Please vote, and please share this with others who might use, or be interested in using, the History Commons. And please comment on your vote in the comments!
(This poll is replicated on our sister blog.)
We’ve put together a one-stop link to all the resources available for History Commons contributors. The page includes the “Entries for ‘Dummies’,” a Content and Copy Editing guide, walkthroughs, style manuals, links to writing resources, and more.
If you have suggestions as to what should be added to this list, post them below. Thanks!
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