(1) Look at the History and Discussion tabs of several Wikipedia history entries and write about what you see.
I looked at three Wikipedia pages for topics related to my HIST 485 thesis this semester. The articles were titled “July 20,” “Operation Valkyrie,” and “Henning von Tresckow.” The “History” tab just appears to reveal a list of recent and older changes that have been made to the article since its creation. I think it is interesting that you are able to click on a change, see who made the change, and see a comparison of what the article looks like currently and how it appeared prior to the update. I did think the comparative information was a bit confusing in that I was not entirely sure what I was looking at. When I saw that you could click to compare the changes, I thought it would give you a section of the article and then show in red where the changes were, or something along those lines. The other tab, “Discussion,” includes comments users have made that suggest improvements to the article and also appears to be where users ask for help in editing. In this section, people will usually focus on a certain passage of the article and then describe why they think it should be removed or altered. This section alarmed me because people want to change information, and they state what they believe should be said, but they do not seem to offer any credible citation to support their views. If Wikipedia is all about making quality information available to everyone on earth, as Jimmy Wales stated, then they should make sure to use appropriate source material.
(2) Consider what Creative Commons License you might use for your own site. What role does copyright play in the resources you are working with this semester?
Being that our site with Murray and Slaughter’s letters is being created for and is consequently affiliated with the National Park Service (NPS), I do not know how much say we have in deciding what type of Creative Commons License to use. But, if we can choose one, I would say we would most likely use either “Attribution-NoDerivatives” or “Attribution.” Both options allow commercial uses of the work, while the first does not allow adaptations of the work to be shared while the second does. I do not like the idea of the work being changed, so I would most likely be in favor of “Attribution-NoDerivatives.” Since these two men are not very well known, if known at all, by the larger historical community, any parts of their letters or the content my group includes on the site should be taken as is because they are so unique. As far as copyright, I do not think my group will run into any issues. Most of our resources include the letters, biographical information on Murray that the NPS sent with his letters, Murray’s possessions at the Chancellorsville Battlefield Museum, Slaughter’s grave in the Confederate Cemetery downtown, and any additional information we learn about these two men from Luisa Dispenzirie, the museum curator at Chancellorsville. The Confederate Cemetery is open to the public and the Murray family gave the NPS George’s letters and things. The only area we will likely have to tread carefully is on using pictures and other information we find online. We will have to search on our own for information on Slaughter and Murray and so anything we find on other sites needs to be evaluated for use in our project.
