ADH 5.0 – Page 11 – Digital History 2016

Project Update #2

Hello everyone! Today, I’m bringing you a small update for our Convergence Center project before the first big presentation. We ended up scheduling most of appointments for our interviewees for the week we return from Spring Break. We will be interviewing Hurley on Monday and quite a few people on the following Friday, so we will be quite busy. I’m not too worries since we all had training for the upcoming interviews.

We had some trouble with the test site that we were messing with. We needed a way to link pages and posts together and luckily, I remembered how to do that. I didn’t do it for all the pages because I wanted everyone in the group to be okay with it. They were, so we ended up finalizing our domain name after being unable to add-on to the actual UMW website. The name of our site will be explorehcc.umwhistory.com and if it works out in the end, whoever manages the UMW website can merge our site with existing Convergence Center one.

The last thing we ended up accomplishing was gathering some files from John Morello to help expand our timeline. Since only one member from our group, Andrew Steele, was able to meet with him, I can’t really talk about the files, but I will do so in a future post once I see them for myself.

Project Update #2

Project Process

The past few weeks have been a blast, as far as our project is concerned, dismissing the snow and weather. We have had the privilege in taking a tour of the entirety of the ITCC, from the man with the key to every room, the head of the ITCC. The tour was amazing from back rooms with masses of technology to the little perks and specialties that can be located or seen throughout individual rooms. The tour showed us the vast opportunities provided by the auditorium, from a large room for events to a click of a button to operate a set of fully functional bleachers to the broadcasting capabilities of a University show.
Another great step we took towards our goals the past weeks was taking a class to verify/certify our use of the Green Screen room (Video Production Lab) and the sound booth room. Not only do we plan on displaying the capabilities of these rooms, we plan on using them. The class was full of equipment and safety knowledge along with a wide array of excitement.

Wikipedia and Creative Commons

I was given the task to look at the Discussion and History tabs of a few Wikipedia pages, so I decided to look at the featured article about Myles Standish and a random article about Jacob van Ruisdael. Beginning with the Discussion tab, it was actually a lot better than I expected it to be. I was kind of expecting it to be in the same tier as the YouTube comments. Meaning, I thought the users were going to be pretty bad and not cooperative. Referring to the Standish page, they are mostly discussing facts about Standish and letting others know why they edited a piece of the article. Some users even had a discussion on how Standish’s first name is spelled because the article itself keeps going back and forth between “Myles” and “Miles”. In the Discussion tab for Ruisdael, there wasn’t that much, but the few users did discuss if a certain spelling for Ruisdael’s last name was helpful to the article. They ended up deciding that it wasn’t, so one user removed it. They were also worried that they may mislead someone with the image listed on the page. Some may think it is an official painting of Ruisdael even though it is stated that no one knows what he looks like later in the article.

Looking the History tabs of both articles, there isn’t really anything that stands out to me personally. The Ruisdael article is slowly being worked on. It began in 2006 and since then, it was edited 44 more times by 20 users. Compared to Standish’s 98 edits by 42 users, it’s pretty small.

To conclude this section of the blog post, I have the say that the users of Wikipedia are actually pretty friendly and are willing to help each other out on various articles. The discussions show how much the contributors care about the articles they work on and how much they want to make it the perfect article for informing the reader of whatever topic they may be looking at. It makes me wish more online communities were more like Wikipedia’s. The History tab was also pretty interesting in the fact you can compare all of the edits together to see how the article evolved over the recent years. I like how it’s there for public viewing, so you don’t have to use an extra tool like the Wayback Machine to view the article in its early years.

For our future Convergence Center website, we probably wouldn’t use a Creative Commons License since we are most likely going to pass the finish product over to the university once we finish and they can decide whether or not they want a license. If I had to choose one though, it would be the ShareAlike license, so that each of us could still be credited for the foundation of the website.

Copyright isn’t much of a problem for our project, be we have to make sure that if we do a video trailer or walk-through, we need to use some CC music and not a copyrighted song to avoid the videos form being taken down. We also need to make sure that our interviewees sign off on a form saying that they agree on being part of our project.

Creative Commons & Wikipedia

Look at the History and Discussion tabs of several Wikipedia history entries and write about what you see. 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?

I looked into several different history entries on Wikipedia to get a sense of how active those pages are and what most of the editing involved for those topics. Since I already had some practice editing Wikipedia I have a decent understanding of how administrators deal with newly updated content and the processes of how to make contributions to pages.

One of the interesting points I noticed was the varying levels of seriousness in the discussions on content in the talk pages for each articles. There were sections that contained heated debates right next to sections on reasons for removal or grammar arguments. For instance on the talk section for Sun Yat-sen there was a grammar question on how his name should be shorted when discussing him throughout the page. One of the contributors suggested using “Yat-sen” whenever he was referenced. However another reviewer brought up that “Yat-sen” was his first name and it is standard both in Chinese and English writing to primarily refer to an individual by either their full or last name.

Another page I looked into had an interesting perspective on sources. Wikipedia articles often have a series of sources for the information presented. In an article on the Great Leap Forward one editor wrote about trying to diversify the sources for quotes that the article uses. Noting that all of the quotes seem to be coming from the same print source, they suggest trying to check those quotes in other sources just to maintain the credibility of those sources.

In terms of Creative Commons licensing as a group we would need to come to a consensus on what type of licensing we should use for our site. We should also discuss with Luisa Dispenzirie about any expectations the National Park Service might had in terms of licensing. The diaries are of course currently public domain however since the Park Service are in charge of the diaries they may have an opinion or a standard procedure on copyright that we should be aware and respectful about. However I speculate that we will probably use a Creative Common license in the end, and one that is more restrictive than the least restrictive license that Creative Commons offers.

Week #6 Copyright and Wikipedia

1) Look at the History and Discussion tabs of several Wikipedia history entries and write about what you see. 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?

1a) Ant Page

History: Over 500 edits
Some people add information, others take it away and a few fix links to media
People that make edits make more than one edit at a time
Discussion: One can see where people changed parts of the page
People add links to other helpful websites
1b) Baseball Page

History: People added links and books to the page for further reading for internet users
Tagging page???
Date maintenance
Reversions of edits
Discussion: Some edit requests have been answered
Very little discussion when compared with the Ant Page

1c) Potato Chip Page

History: Same person made over 10 edits in multiple categories
Undid revisions and reverted
This page has been visited very frequently over the past two months when compared
to the other two pages
Discussion: Some discussion is going on but not much

2) Since my group and I are working with primary source artifacts, it is very important that we are aware of the copyright information regarding these objects

Week #5 Group Contracts and 3D Scanner Practice

Just as last week was busy for our group, so was this week. We were busy both in class and outside of class. met with Dr. Meadows to practice using the ipad scanner and another portable scanner outside of class.

During class time we worked on revising our contracts and answered many of Dr. McClurken’s questions We changed many parts of our contract including our purpose, our materials, our timeline, and our division of labor. The biggest change we made after talking with Jarod Kearney, curator at the James Monroe Museum, was that we decided to in corporate a few quick videos of either Scott or Jarod talking about each of the artifacts to go along with the 3D scanned object.

Outside of class on Thursday 2-11-16, the group and I met with Dr. Meadows in Trinkle Hall to practice using the ipad scanner and another portable scanner. During the meeting we also sent an email to Jarod at the James Monroe Museum asking if he would be able to bring one of the artifacts to campus next week for us to scan using the largest scanner that is available at UMW.

CCL for ITCC

Change, an idea that has plagued the heats and minds of people everywhere for all time. From change in social equality and standards to the change in technology we face each and every day. This week we were tasked with watching and reading up on a new era of change, a change for the world of digital information. “Creative Commons License”, this concept is growing with the demand for less restricted information and a wider yearning of shared sources. Wikipedia is one of the most popular modes of Creative Commons usage, ranking in the top 50 websites visited. Now with our website in mind and our use of Creative Commons material may be but not limited to web videos from youtube to vimeo to shared information gathered on our topic from UMW websites to information gathered from documents and emails during interviews.

Creative Commons

After looking at the History tab of several Wikipedia articles, I notice that a lot of updates tend to be around the same time. One day may have eight different updates/edits while another day may have none at all. Another thing I noticed is that most edits are small (change grammar/wording) while other edits are bigger and required discussion. Some edits were completely reversed after other users claimed that everything must be discussed when making an edit. On the discussion page, there were many suggestions to improve the articles by adding various people, events, etc. That said, it looked like any regular internet forum where everyone gets into fights over little details and users throw the rules at each other claiming that the page should/should not be edited because they (the user arguing) is in the right because of whatever their argument is.

Looking over the different Creative Commons Licenses, I believe our project would benefit most from the “Attribution” license given that the National Park Service may want to change something later after we finish (but since I cannot be sure what, this provides them with freedom to edit what they may want to). Of course, if the NPS would prefer this license, it will be their job to make sure all of the information is accurate. Copyrights should not pose much problem since we are only working with historical documents which we already have permission to scan, transcribe, and upload. At this point we have no intention of using anything licensed at all so there is currently no need to address any copyrights.

Wikipedia and Creative Commons

Wikipedia: I decided to look at the history and discussion tabs for extensive subjects like the American Civil War and Thomas Jefferson. Curiosity also drove me to look at a controversial topic, so I looked at the history and discussion tab for the 2012 Benghazi attacks. There actually seemed to be very little debate on each of these topics. Similarly, most of the editors seemed to be standardizing the format of the content and fixing grammar and punctuation problems. Occasionally, people responded to requests for additional citations by adding links to new sources. I was expecting there to be more content changes for the 2012 Benghazi attacks page. However, there was only one instance of someone deleting content without justification in the page’s recent revision history. Consistent with Jimmy Wales’s description of how Wikipedia works, someone who was watching the page fixed the deletion within minutes.

Creative Commons: Although my group would have to consult with the James Monroe Museum about which Creative Commons license they believe is most appropriate, I think the Attribution-Noncommercial license would probably work best. Since the objects are owned by a nonprofit, I do not see the museum wanting someone to use the 3D laser scans and videos for commercial purposes. However, the Attribution-Noncommercial license would allow people to improve or build on these resources for research and educational purposes. Not requiring users to license their new creations under the same terms as us would give them greater flexibility and encourage the use of our material.