Katz: Making OutHistory.org; a Diary, July 4, 2008-present

Jonathan Ned Katz's Online Diary of the Making of of OutHistory.org

Note: I will only include here thoughts and data that can be publicly shared

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Sunday, March 29, 2009

Today, discussing the death of the noted African American historian, John Hope Franklin (1915-2009), Peter Applebome, in the New York Times says that Dr. David Levering Lewis, another prominent historian of the black American experience, "and others argue that Dr. Franklin's work helped empower not just African-American studies, but the whole range of alternative stories -- of women, gays, Hispanics, Asians and others -- now so much a part of mainstream academia."

In my own case, my early work in black American history was certainly encouraged by my knowledge of Dr. Franklin's work, and it was research in African American history (and, a little later, women's history) that allowed me to imagine the existence of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender history."

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Finally!!!!! OutHistory.org is getting picked up by Google. I hope that will help potential users find the site. I will check the other search engines.

Wednesday, August 19, 2008

We are online for a trial run, to work out the problems and start to get users' reactions. We had our first comment today, on the Main Page Discuss section. Joan Nestle is writing wonderful meditations on Lesbian history for the site. This is all very moving. I don't have time to write much here. Using all my time to work on the site itself.

Friday, July 4, 2008 5:06 pm

When I looked at the entry on "Whitman, Sexuality, and Intimacy" yesterday, I realized that Martin Murray had done a lot of work on it -- the first active collaboration on OutHistory! I was surprised at how moved I was. This really can work. People can really get together and do constructive things on the Net.

Priorities:

To avoid reinventing the wheel:

Study the decision making structure and process of Wikipedia and how transferable it is to OutHistory. Espec as regards to controversial content.

Study the personnel structure of Wikipedia and how transfereable it is to OutHistory.

How transparent is the decision making and personnel structure of Wikipedia and how transferable is it to OutHistory?

Start rounding up volunteers to be general editors of particular areas of content.

Wednesday, July 2, 2008 1:48 am

Can't sleep thinking about the site. I just realized that the site as a whole has now become so complex in operation that one or two people (me and the Project Coordinator) can no longer understand everything or administer it. We need to immediately call for and try to round up volunteers to direct particular aspects of the site. Here's the list of major functions that I worked out with Dee Michel a few weeks ago and added to the About section of the site, but will repeat here.