Historical Events Database - Coordination

This is a 'sister-thread' to the main thread called Historical Events Database - History. I've created this present thread for technical questions, problem reports, problem fixes, announcements, updates, coordination and general networking for all contributors of the Historical Events Database project (HED in short).

The other thread Historical Events Database - History should be used for questions related to history and content only.

After 2 full months of programming and thinking work, the old HED2014 has finally been turned into the enhanced HED2015. After filing more than 4000 Events last year 2014, this marks the second major stage in the HED project. For all previous contributors, and all others who want to help out in the future:

Please download the User Manual PDF (attached to this post, 28 pages) and read it carefully in its entirety before you post in this thread and before you resume your work in the HED.

I'd like to ask all contributors to regularly post updates (what you're working on and why, when you will be done, etc.) in this thread to keep all others up-to-date. Depending on how it goes, we probably will have to prioritize some aspects of our work from time to time.

The first priority for all contributors is to enter potentially missing Events from 600BC to 600AD into the HED and get ALL Events from that time span into the Reviewing state according to the User Manual. However we publish, it will be a multi-volume publication, and the first volume should contain the Fall of the Roman Empire.

The HED is still locked, and I'm going to unlock it one week from now, to give all contributors the time to read the User Manual. I'll run some additional tests in the meantime.

I've made it so that PDFs for both projects ("Chronicle of the Fall" and "Caesar") are automatically generated from the database every full hour!

These PDFs already resemble closely the final publication (general page layout and styling are easy to change). In addition to the Preview Window, the PDFs give better visual feedback about how the entered data (including keywords for the index at the end!) will be rendered. All contributors should check them regularly.

You will notice that the PDFs with the REVIEWING Events are empty right now. This is because all Events are currently marked as DRAFT. Our next main priority is to fix Events according to the "Review Requirements" section in the User Manual and get them out of DRAFT and into REVIEWING. More info on that next Friday.

Hi Data,

Thanks for letting us know where things stand ATM. And for your efforts thus far, of course. Looks great.

Since you asked for updates: I've completed my readings of the works of Flavius Josephus and filed 14 entries in total from all of them -- which is relatively modest given their total volume.

All I have to do next is normalizing all my entries to the exact format you've outlined in the User Manual PDF. I've downloaded that and read through it once only superficially; skimming it rather than studying it thoroughly. From what I understand of it, I've gathered the opinion that all future redactions (aka reviewing) will eminently be doable once I've seen a few examples of fully vetted entries (mine, of from others) as shining examples of what exactly will be required.

Those examples will visualize for me what the standard format really looks like in practice, and I will need those examples to fully grasp what is required from me vis-a-vis my own entries. As far as I'm concerned, those real life examples will be by far more instructive than a manual ever could get. Correct me if I'm wrong but to me, your PDF-file seems more like a repository of solutions to be consulted in cases of doubt rather than a recipe for how to tackle each and every entry from the get-go -- but that's just me, of course.

When my own entries have passed all tests and have been irrevocably incorporated into the database, I will consider whether I'll be able to contribute further to this project if any extra assistance would then still be needed.

Palinurus said:

Those examples will visualize for me what the standard format really looks like in practice, and I will need those examples to fully grasp what is required from me vis-a-vis my own entries. As far as I'm concerned, those real life examples will be by far more instructive than a manual ever could get. Correct me if I'm wrong but to me, your PDF-file seems more like a repository of solutions to be consulted in cases of doubt rather than a recipe for how to tackle each and every entry from the get-go -- but that's just me, of course.

Click to expand...

It is true, the User Manual won't be easily memorized entirely because it is very technical and contains many details. I agree, skimming through it, at least to learn what it generally contains, is enough for the beginning. Later, when you're working with concrete Events in the HED again, you will remember that the User Manual said this or that, and then you can consult it more deeply. By doing that, you will memorize all the rules step by step, until you don't have to consult the Manual any more.

Initially I planned to do screencast videos to make it more digestible and easy for contributors. But then I realized that tackling such a huge project will need a collection of strict and mandatory 'rules'. I'm sorry that it has to be this strict, but I don't see an easy way out. The alternative is the traditional approach: One single person collects stuff in a Word document and is responsible for all formatting and correctness. But this project is already much too large for a single person, the only way for it to succeed is when the load is shared amonst many, and for that, all contributors must be 'on the same page'.

Especially in the beginning I'll be there in this thread to give all of you assistance when something is not clear.

I've also made the User Manual available as HTML here: http://documentation.thebigrede.net/historicalevents/index.html

Ok, I've unlocked the database and feel confident that everything is going to work. The User Manual should cover most questions, but if you encounter any problems or if you are unsure about anything, please don't hesitate to ask here in this thread. Your feedback will be valuable input.

In the attached screenshot you'll see statistics about filed Events (up to 600BC), listed per user. You will notice that all your Events are in the Draft state. Now, for the next few days, I'd like to ask all contributors to get just 1 Event ready for review, and assign me ("data") as the Reviewer. The User Manual describes how this is done. This is just to test the review system and to get things going again after 2 months of pause. Initially, I'll give you feedback about your Events here in this thread, later we probably only use the Feedback system of the HED itself.

The priority for the next few months or so should be to get the majority of the "Drafts" into the state "Review passed", but you also can create new Draft Events (I'll add Events from Tacitus, starting where Laura left off). The statistics screen (screenshot) will show us if we are making any progress.

So, let's try this out and see if we are going somewhere! :D

In the attached screenshot you'll see statistics about filed Events (up to 600BC)

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Evidently, you meant to write 600 CE or AD.

Never mind, just nitpicking... Sorry about that. ;)

I'll try to get at least one entry ready for review in the course of next week. I'm wondering whether I'll get it completely right first time around. Well, we'll wait and see. :D

Palinurus said:

I'll try to get at least one entry ready for review in the course of next week.

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Same here. I hope to get my entries done soon as I want to focus my energy on another project.

I have one request: give me the power to edit all entries; like that, I don’t need to send hundreds of feedbacks.

Zadius Sky said:

Same here. I hope to get my entries done soon as I want to focus my energy on another project.

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If you want, I can edit your entries from 300 AD to 600 AD.

Zadig said:

I have one request: give me the power to edit all entries; like that, I don’t need to send hundreds of feedbacks.

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There is no need to send feedback to other users, if you mean that. Everyone focuses on their own entries. That's already a lot on our plate. The feedback system is only for communication between an Owner and the Reviewer, primarily to get an Event from "Draft" to "Reviewing". For now, I'm the only Reviewer, but I'm sure I'll need help at some point. The only alternative to using the feedback system is to write hundreds of forum posts here and I thought that this should be avoided.

If someone wants to give up their entries because they don't have time any more or lack the motivation, we will have to re-assign those entries to others, but this hasn't yet happened (and hopefully won't).

Edit: I have removed the following sentence in the warning in the HED: "If something needs to be fixed, added or deleted, please inform xxx via the feedback system". It was misleading.

Data said:

Everyone focuses on their own entries.

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The fact is that several entries are owned by several editors.

For example, if I want to change or add something to the 365 earthquake, I can’t, because the entry is owned by Zadius Sky.

That’s why, it’s easier and faster if I can change it directly without writing a forum post.

Zadig said:

For example, if I want to change or add something to the 365 earthquake, I can’t, because the entry is owned by Zadius Sky.

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You should not (and cannot) change other users entries. This is intentionally made this way.

Now, I realize that there may arise situations (and I assume that this is what you imply) where you want to add a Text to an already existing Event. For example, the same earthquake is reported by another Source, and some other user of the HED has already created an Event for this. In this case, please do it in the following way:

1. Create a new Event and add your Text. This new Event is now considered to be a "duplicate" as we have been using this term.
2. In this new Event, create a "needs merge" feedback for me (see screenshot)

When I see such feedback in my list, I'll merge the Events when the time comes.

I expect this will not happen too often. I may be mistaken. If I find myself doing lots of manual merges, I'll think about changing the behavior of the HED, but not yet.

I've made the following changes to the user manual:

Quotation text area:

Interesting text passages which stand out for us as editors should be highlighted with the "Bold" button. This will make the final publication more interesting and easier to read, because we'll be showing the readers why we've selected a particular excerpt. We'll do it like Sott.net editors. See screenshot for an example.

If you use chinese or japanese characters (e.g. pasted from Wikipedia), a blank space must be inserted before and after a word. This has technical reasons and has to do with font selection.

Authors field in a Source: If the Source is Wikipedia, add "Wikipedia" as the Author name.

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I'd like to repeat that all contributors, before making too many edits, should assign to me just 1 (one) Event of their choice for reviewing before other Events are edited. This is important, because the feedback I'll be giving you (either via the feedback system, or here in the forum) should be the basis for editing all other Events.

Here is an example of the kind of feedback I'll be giving you, e.g. for Source #198 which was edited yesterday. Source #198 now reads:

Source type: web
Authors: Libanius
Title: Monody: Funeral Oration for Julian
Publisher: Online edition
Address: Ipswich, UK
Translator: Roger Pearse
Year: 2003
HTML URL: http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/libanius_monody.htm

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The User Manual states that a Source "is one physical volume (one single “book” in the modern sense of the term)", even "when the text is re-published in, and copied from, the internet." Always try to locate the original. Many old books can be found on Archive.org. I quickly found the original with a Google search: https://archive.org/details/julianemperorco01juligoog. When you look at the title page of the PDF, it will help you entering the following info to the Source:

Source type: book
Authors: "Gregory of Nazianzus" and Libanius
Title: Julian the Emperor
Subtitle: Gregory Nazianzen's two Invectives and Libanius' Monody, with Julian's extant Theosophical Work
Edition: Bohn's Classical Library
Publisher: George Bell and Sons
Address: London
Translator: C. W. King
Editor: Roger Pearse
Year: 1888
Contains source keys: Liban:Or

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Roger Pearse is the one who digitized the book and made it available as HTML, he's NOT the translator! So, I would put him as editor.

This webpage here http://www.attalus.org/info/sources.html has a useful list of "Source Keys" which are generally used by historians. If available, such "keys" should be entered into the "Contains source keys" field of a Source, and then selected for Texts, so that the computer generated citations come out fully and correctly. In the above example the key is "Liban:Or".

Also, if possible, download the PDF from Archive.org (Download -> PDF), and upload it to the HED. It will be useful to have our own virtual library. I've done this already for some works of Livy, Cicero, Appian and Tacitus (see PDF links in the screenshot). This page https://ryanfb.github.io/loebolus/ has PDF download links for a large part of the Loeb Classical Library, published by Harvard University Press. When selecting PDFs for upload, prefer the ones from Archive.org. These PDFs have OCR applied and are thus searchable, and you can copy/paste text from them.