Comments on: Prospectus writing in a post-Wikipedia world http://ragesoss.com/blog/2007/05/20/prospectus-writing-in-a-post-wikipedia-world/ assorted blogging by Sage Ross Fri, 11 May 2012 13:25:12 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 By: Sylwester Ratowt http://ragesoss.com/blog/2007/05/20/prospectus-writing-in-a-post-wikipedia-world/comment-page-1/#comment-49 Sylwester Ratowt Fri, 10 Aug 2007 03:26:00 +0000 http://ragesoss.com/blog/?p=82#comment-49 Great point, as usual. But would wikipedia be the place to include details, which while useful to researchers, might be a bore (and hindrance to finding more pertinent information) for the encyclopedia user. In addition to list of participant at meeting, I have in mind bits such as "Aug 8, 1893 John Smith talk to Victor Nabkov in Nabkov's house in Washington DC, topic of conversation unknown." or "Mara mentions <i>The Little Prince</i> in her letter dated 23 Jun, 1956 to Peter." <br/><br/>Over the last 6 months I have been compiling a database of such interactions, along with more traditional citations, meetings etc, for few hundreds people who were engaged in various dialogs related to earth's age in United States around the turn of the 20th century. I have been putting significant amount of effort into this database (how nice to procrastinate while convincing yourself that you are working on your dissertation). It would be a waist not to make this information publicly available for collaborative expansion. I am pessimistic, however, about the willingness of the majority of historians to engage in collaborative efforts, especially of an open access ones. I have also failed to imagine a plausible technology to support the project. The ideas of recreating historical individuals in Second Life has briefly crossed my mind. Do we have to wait for addition of the time dimension to Google Earth? Great point, as usual. But would wikipedia be the place to include details, which while useful to researchers, might be a bore (and hindrance to finding more pertinent information) for the encyclopedia user. In addition to list of participant at meeting, I have in mind bits such as “Aug 8, 1893 John Smith talk to Victor Nabkov in Nabkov’s house in Washington DC, topic of conversation unknown.” or “Mara mentions The Little Prince in her letter dated 23 Jun, 1956 to Peter.”

Over the last 6 months I have been compiling a database of such interactions, along with more traditional citations, meetings etc, for few hundreds people who were engaged in various dialogs related to earth’s age in United States around the turn of the 20th century. I have been putting significant amount of effort into this database (how nice to procrastinate while convincing yourself that you are working on your dissertation). It would be a waist not to make this information publicly available for collaborative expansion. I am pessimistic, however, about the willingness of the majority of historians to engage in collaborative efforts, especially of an open access ones. I have also failed to imagine a plausible technology to support the project. The ideas of recreating historical individuals in Second Life has briefly crossed my mind. Do we have to wait for addition of the time dimension to Google Earth?

]]> By: Thomas Söderqvist http://ragesoss.com/blog/2007/05/20/prospectus-writing-in-a-post-wikipedia-world/comment-page-1/#comment-26 Thomas Söderqvist Fri, 01 Jun 2007 19:56:00 +0000 http://ragesoss.com/blog/?p=82#comment-26 Hi, you may be interested in this: <a HREF="http://unrulymeditations.blogspot.com/2007/04/obiturial-prosopography-of-contemporary.html" REL="nofollow">http://unrulymeditations.blogspot.com/2007/04/obiturial-prosopography-of-contemporary.html</a><br/>Th Hi, you may be interested in this: http://unrulymeditations.blogspot.com/2007/04/obiturial-prosopography-of-contemporary.html
Th

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