Vandalism or Ignorance? Malice or Comedy?

Wikipedia has been a point of conversation in academia for many years. I can not remember a single research based class where a teacher did not warn us, the students, of Wikipedia's unreliability.

Wikipedia has its uses, in fact, I would go out on a limb and say it's an excellent source of basic information on given subjects. Wikipedia's open editing policy allows a massive body of contributors from which information may be pooled. Assuming that Wikipedia's contributors are well informed students of the topic upon which they are giving insight, Wikipedia's platform is the pinnacle of human intellectual forums; unfortunately, this is rarely the case. Wikipedia, for all of its potential, often shows that manipulation of information by an ambiguous, unregulated individuals allows not only ignorant, but also self interested contributors to distribute misinformation.

What drives people, then, to modify Wikipedia's entries? Many are motivated out of an interest to better the website, attempting to clarify and inform others on the topic at hand; unfortunately  many of these people are often mis-informed as well incapable of (or too lazy to) conveying valuable ideas. Ignorance manifests at every corner, mis-communications become the norm, and writings on Wikipedia convey incorrect information of little value.

Others are motivated by self interest; executives at Microsoft have hired individuals from around the globe to edit Microsoft's Wikipedia entry to convey a more positive view of the software giant. this blatant attempt at misleading Wikipedia's users is insulting and it diminishes the value of what could be an incredible source of knowledge.

Some people are driven by comedy. Entries on anything from our nations forefathers to popular sports have been edited sheerl for comedic effect. This article from Huffington Post shows some of the comedic interpretations. While some are complete nonsense (see Leonardo DaVinci Wikipedia entry) intended to garner a cheap laugh, others are serious political and social critiques.

Reviewing a few Wikipedia articles, one of the most common themes was the removal of content labeled as vandalism. Wikipedia does have a very quick turnaround, often reverting Wikipedia pages to older formats within minutes of vandalism. The Abraham Lincoln Wikipedia entry has one case of vandalism which was corrected in less than a minute.

Misinformation, however, is harder to spot. The Marie Antoinette page used to feature a section on how revered she was by the general population, Wikipedia even listed "let them eat cake" as a direct quote for a period of time. This article, however, has been well reviewed and now seems a stable source of information. The citation page at the bottom appears to be a reliable source of scholastic materials on Marie Antoinette. In the talk section, Marie Antoinette is argued over by scholars, sources are disputed, and improvements are constantly made on the page.

More modern topics such as famous rapper, Lil' Wayne receive scrutiny not only from scholarly, but also individuals unrelated to the field who are notoriously unprofessional and mis-informed. In one post on the talk page of the Lil Wayne Wikipedia page a fan points out an incorrect fact: "Yeah man, Dwayne only has one daughter and one son, there definately is NOT two daughters, so that REALLY needs a dick , cause it should have been changed by now. That would be great y'all. ^-stephaanie (talk) 23:01, 10 March 2009 (UTC)"

Who knows, rarely is an edit on Wikipedia motivated by malice, however, there have been cases of slander through Wikipedia. I find that the real problems with the information in Wikipedia entries arise in relation to ignorance and comedy.

Dead Ends and New Hopes

Leaving a group meeting last week I had planned to meet with many of the members of NC's music scene to get a view of Charlotte's musical past. My plan was to question many of the members of Greensboro's music scene about any affiliation with Charlotte's music scene. What I found was astounding even if it wasn't exactly what I was looking for. Of the people I questioned non appeared to have any information that particularly related to Charlotte. I heard stories about a dive in Greensboro called "Friday's" and a pizza joint called "New York Pizza" both of which were host to a myriad of bands from the seventies up through the late eighties. I heard about the culture surrounding UNC-Greensboro and how its student body helped to shape Greensboro's music scene. I learned about several Avant-Garde bands many of whom are still on the cutting edge of improvisational art. I even had the pleasure of playing with one, the F-Art Ensemble, who has been active since the early eighties.

While specifics surrounding the Charlotte area were sparse I found some good jumping off points. I was directed towards Bill Hanna who has been hosting an open Jazz Jam at the Double Door Inn (a bar in Charlotte) for almost twenty years. I also found out that the owner of Somewhere Else Tavern in Greensboro has thirty years of experience and contacts that could be to my advantage. 

These developments are also exciting because it gives me an idea of the era in which my research could be the most useful. Because I am currently involved in North Carolina's Music scene, I figured recent history would be more fitting to my experience. The sources that I have begun to pool give me a better target for the information that I might actually be able to find; the experience also introduced me to a great target audience, musicians. Interest was very high among the musicians to whom I spoke. Hopefully I can start building a great base of study. 

Contracting, Conspiring, Completing

Creating a group contract never appeared to be a massive undertaking, however, the due date for the project presented certain challenges. While it makes sense to present a full group contract early in the semester, the relative lack of familiarity with the project left me... concerned.

After a few trips to the Charlotte Public Library, our research led us to a conclusion: this is a huge undertaking. Ideas for organization of the project developed over time. We initially consented to select eras, around a decade a piece, upon which to base our research. We quickly realized that a decade of music not only included an incredibly diverse number of artists to log, but also presented us with too large body of other mediums (such as venues, shows, sheet music, and radio broadcasts) to reasonably manage. Eras were quickly presenting more problems than they solved.

We quickly decided that a better method by which to evaluate the music scene in Charlotte was selecting a medium. We resolved that each person should select from venue, radio, sheet music, magazine, recorded music, or photographs. We once again ran into a problem; creating any sort of narrative with no cross medium integration was nearly impossible.

Eventually, Tina decided that the best way to approach the issue was using Venue as an organizational tool, and so it stood. By focusing on certain venues each (concert halls, bars, hotels, radio stations) we are enabled to focus our research. Many venues in Charlotte have been host to bands large and small, national and local, signed and unsigned, from a variety of different backgrounds.

Drafting a contract, then, became much simpler. The Contract was now a way to decide what areas we needed to focus on and to be realistic about each of our responsibilities to the project and to the group. I decided that I would take overarching control of the website as well as focusing on contemporary music venues; most notably Tremont and the Double Door jazz club in uptown Charlotte. Our group has now decided what it wants to do with the website and how to represent the material in an interesting and valuable manner.

September 11 Digital Archive

The September 11 Digital Archive is an archive of resources related to the tragedies which occurred on September 11th, 2001.

From the website:

The September 11 Digital Archive uses electronic media to collect, preserve, and present the history of September 11, 2001 and its aftermath. The Archive contains more than 150,000 digital items, a tally that includes more than 40,000 emails and other electronic communications, more than 40,000 first-hand stories, and more than 15,000 digital images.

This website is a perfect representation of my aims as a digital historian; that is not to say that the website has no flaws, but it represents a huge database of electronic resources. Most interesting are the 40,000 emails. This is an indispensable collection.

Emails are a great source of first hand accounts, they are personal and contain personal accounts of situations. Personal correspondence can't be faked, these are actual insight into people's thoughts and feelings. it offers a great step towards humanizing and connecting users with the personal aspect of the tragedy.

The September 11 Digital Archive is also nice because its collection is seemingly endless, this archive has been open since 2002 and now includes Emails from regular individuals, relatives and friends of victims, and government officials. The website also contains information like FDNY daily plans at the World Trade Center site. It has a catalog of interviews and a photo archive of information relating to 9/11 which is fully searchable.

Having been created in 2002, the website describes its self not only as an archive of resources related to 9/11, but also as an "opportunity to develop free software tools to help historians do a better job of collecting, preserving, and writing history in the new century." This website benefits largely from the limitless space available on the internet as well as the ease of accessibility afforded by the internet. It was so successful that the library of congress accepted the database into its own catalog. The September 11 Digital Archive is now guaranteed continued accessibility.

The biggest issue I find with this website, however, is also its greatest advantage. The website's "Browse" section contains 31 headings linking users to thousands of resources. This body of information, while very thorough, is intimidating in its scale. Navigation of the website could also be simplified, by more intuitive headings and a home page with some useful information the website could seem more welcoming. At its welcome page, the website looks almost empty.

Omeka

Omeka is a powerful tool which allows users to create and organize information as an online exhibit. I've done some research and it appears that the interface for Omeka is both user friendly and diverse. Its simple layout offers the ability not only to easily manipulate data but also to apply ones creative flair to whatever medium they should choose.

Since my group is creating an archive of music in Charlotte I thought I would look at some of the tools available that may enhance our client's experience. Omeka offers a host of plugins that could really make the user experience on our website more rewarding and enjoyable.

Here are three of the features that I think will be very useful:

Download Logger:

Download Logger is a system which shows how many times each of the items on your website have been downloaded. I think this could be really useful because we could see which features on our website are the most popular. While popularity is not the only goal, if we have more popular exhibits then hopefully more traffic will come through all parts of our website.

Geolocation:

Geolocation adds mapping software to websites. This feature will make it easy to geographically note where certain hot spots within the Charlotte music scene were including clubs, bars, music venues, and record companies. I believe this is powered by Google maps which is an online tool that is widely used already and will hopefully be self explanatory to users. 

Dropbox:

Dropbox will allow users to upload their own media. While, in the long run, this could create more indexing work for the developers, it would be nice if we could get user contributions. The only thing I worry about with this plugin is the copyright implications. We will have to be very careful about what content we allow on our website.