Two Useful Websites

     In my project on Russian, classical composers under the reign of Stalin, the website TimelineJS would enhance my work because my audience would be able to see a visual of when the composers lived, wrote, and premiered their work. I am planning to focus on the last fifteen or twenty years of Stalin’s life in order to see specifically how he interacted with composers through World War II and to his death. He denounced several composers during this time and also awarded some of them the Stalin Prize for their compositions. A timeline would help my audience visualize when these things happened in correlation with other events; for example, did one composer receive a denunciation the same year that another composer received the Stalin Prize? This may lead my audience to question why, and I could include a link to a more in-depth article to explain the limited information presented in the timeline.

     A timeline would also help my audience deduce patterns of censure. Many Russian composers had to wait until after Stalin’s death for some of their pieces to be performed because they knew that their melodies could get them in trouble with, or killed by, Stalin’s secret police. A timeline would help my audience to see when pieces were composed as opposed to when they were premiered for the first time. Having this information on a timeline could show whether Stalin was prone to officiate worse censorship in some years as opposed to others.

     I plan on writing longer articles to exhibit certain composers, their compositions, and what was going on in the world that may have impacted the composers to write their pieces in a certain way. TimelineJS lets creators include hyperlinks in their timelines. This would be helpful for me because I could link to my longer articles. The timeline could, in a way, act like a site map or a database. It would be a way to entice my audience to explore people, places, and events in more depth by giving them visual context with dates.

     Another helpful website for my project would be a site like Many Eyes, though Many Eyes is no longer up and running. When it was in commission, however, it allowed common folk, like me, with limited graphic design skill, to create visual representation of data in the form of graphs, spreadsheets, infographics, or more. As I understand it, users were able to upload their data and it would be transferred to Many Eyes’ many data templates.

     This would be helpful for my project because I could present data about my topic in an appealing and easy-to-understand way. For example, many Soviet composers had to change their composing style and genre to avoid accusations of “formalism.” It would be interesting to see an infographic showing which genres of music were most popular for composers to compose in during different years of Stalin’s reign. As with the TimelineJS, this could reveal patterns in censorship. Additionally, it could show other data, such as volume of compositions per year and whether or not that changed during World War II. Data is often boring to read and hard to understand if it is simply written out. Infographics are a good way to present data in a visually appealing and understandable way.

Word Count: 547 words.

Investigating Wikipedia History

The first entry on Dmitri Shostakovich’s Wikipedia page is from September 26, 2006. The tone is very informal and uses the word “cheeky” several times, which makes me think that this article was written by someone without a scholarly background. The author briefly summarizes Shostakovich’s life, lists his fifteen symphonies, and provides a brief synopsis and analysis of each. Some of these synopses include sentence fragments, which does not lend credibility to the article. A link to a list of all of Shostakovich’s compositions does not appear until much later.

The first edit happens a month later on October 29, 2001. The editor changed the formatting and adds a few small details, such as Shostakovich’s birthday and where he lived. After this, edits are few and far between until, a year later, someone adds more content. The added content, however, contains more analysis of his music rather than an unbiased account of his life.

Minor revisions on formatting and spelling continues until July 2003 when the first graphic is added. This image breaks one of the ten rules about web design: it is bloated. When I accessed this page, the image was huge and the text wrapped around it oddly.

 In March 2004, an editor named Henry Flower (I looked at his Wikipedia page and he is a teacher and lawyer from Scotland) spent several days updated and expanding the biographical information about Shostakovich. He adds a table of contents at the top of the page so that it is easier to navigate the webpage. In May, he adds even more content and makes the bloated image smaller, too. He changed Shostakovich’s Wikipedia page from a conglomeration of non-scholarly facts and opinions about the composer to a more reliable resource.

Over the next fourteen years, people added, deleted, and edited the content, but Henry Flower’s extensive work in 2004 set the stage for the main organization and content of the website.

In 2015, a minor controversy arose over whether or not the word “Communist” should be included in the phrase “Joining the Party.” Eventually, one person gave up and “Communist” was left out.

The latest addition to the page was September 14, 2018, and it contained only minor revisions.

On Joseph Stalin’s Wikipedia page, the first article was created in October 2001. It was more advanced than Shostakovich’s page in that it started with sections. There was even a “to be added” section for future contributors. Stalin’s page was written in more formal and academic language than Shostakovich’s, but it was still very vague. From the beginning, however, the editors of Stalin’s page seemed more inclined toward accuracy and objectivity than those who edited Shostakovich’s Wikipedia page.

Until January 2002, the changes on Stalin’s page were minute facts, like childhood nicknames, or formatting changes, like the addition of more white space. In 2002, someone added a significant chunk to the information connecting Stalin and World War II. Later in January, someone noticed that a claim on the page was not from a neutral perspective and changed. By looking through the years, keeping a neutral tone of voice is important to the editors of Stalin’s Wikipedia page, though the editors certainly do not keep a neutral tone in their comments. They use personal attacks such as, “Leave that sentence alone,” and “[We’ve] replaced one hack with another…”

For a while in 2004, the page dealt with spammers who deleted the entire page. Right away, members of the Wiki-Police reverted Stalin’s webpage to its previous state.

The most recent changes are from today, the 20^th of September, 2018. The last person changed passive voice to active voice and clunky diction to more easily understandable words. Now, there are many sub-headings with hyperlinks to easily navigate the page. Over the last seventeen years, there has been much expansion on the original, skimpy biography.  

The page for Music in the Soviet Union began in October 2004. There was never much content on it, and it remained the same, minus some spelling errors, and focused on national music and folk music until 2008 when someone radically altered the page. They deleted all of the previous content and updated it to be about Russian classical, jazz, and movie music during Soviet reign. Still, the page did not have a lot of information on it until May 2013, when someone updated many of the sections to make them more complete. Now, there is much more information on the page than ever before, but it is not as professionally kept and updated as Stalin’s page.

This past April, someone vandalized the site. It was quickly removed, but the vandal was persistent and re-added his or her comment to the page two more times before giving up.

The last time this page was updated was in August 2018.

In the three articles that I looked at, editors were very active in 2004. It was during this time that most of the changes, especially in the first two articles, were made. It was in 2004, too, when most of the scholarly, “heavy lifting” research and work was put into the sites. Most of the major content changes for Shostakovich and Stalin’s pages were made in 2004 and the articles have only been tweaked since then. I looked at several of the major contributors to these articles, and, from their profiles, they seemed like scholarly people who have a passion for research and sharing their interests with the world. It is important to remember, however, that Wikipedia is accessible to be edited by anyone from anywhere; therefore, it should still be used with caution when writing academic articles.

Word Count: 937 words.

Historic Saint Paul

Saint Paul, Minnesota may not be the oldest city in the United States, but its colorful past and stunning architecture have sparked the imagination of both historians and writers. In fact, F. Scott Fitzgerald, the author of The Great Gatsby, was born in Saint Paul and wrote a collection of stories based on his home town. Over the years, historic homes and buildings have fallen into disrepair. Some have even been destroyed without a care for their historical significance. Historic Saint Paul is an organization that has dedicated itself to restoring, caring for, and fostering interest in historic neighborhoods in Saint Paul. 

Their website exhibits their preservation of Saint Paul neighborhoods and also provides some archival information about historic buildings, although they do not do this in a standard way. Rather than compile and keep the archives on their website, Historic Saint Paul invites their audience—those either living in Saint Paul or those interested in preserving or learning about the history of Saint Paul's neighborhoods—to participate in researching houses and updating a Wiki with information about specific properties. Historic Saint Paul provides resources via hypertextuality so that their audience is able to do this in a scholarly way.

While they provide other resources such as context studies, maps, walking tours, and historical information, Historic Saint Paul's main purpose is to raise awareness about the restoration projects and community building activities that they host. They have a secondary website called Saint Paul Historical that focuses on the history of the area. 

In this way, the Historic Saint Paul website is more of a hub that collects primary resources on Saint Paul neighborhoods than a digital project that interacts with the history itself. Their focus is on preserving the physical history so that others can interpret it. What little scholarship they do have on their main site, however, is up to date and reliable. 

Historic Saint Paul's website is well-organized and easy to use, though the historical information is somewhat difficult to find. On their main page, the website has six tabs and a search bar that allows the reader to discover for him or herself what the organization does and what services they offer. In order to get to the historical information, readers must click on the tab "Our Work" and scroll down and click on "Cultural Heritage" before finding the link to the Saint Paul Historical website and individual pages about the history of specific neighborhoods. Someone looking for this information has to go on a scavenger hunt through the website to find the history. On the other hand, it is very easy to find information about Historic Saint Paul's preservation and restoration work. 

Without their website, Historic Saint Paul would not be able to reach as wide an audience as it does, for only a niche audience reads books or watches movies about the preservation of historic houses. By maintaining a website, Historic Saint Paul ensures that those who are interested in Saint Paul's neighborhoods and buildings will stay up to date with their activities. They also provide access to resources that may not be readily available elsewhere for historians or curious homeowners. Additionally, they invite their audience to participate in scholarship with them by providing them with the tools to research Saint Paul houses themselves.

Overall, Historic Saint Paul is an effective website that serves its purpose well. Its historical information could be easier to find, but the overall design of their site is simple and not overcrowded with graphics, advertisements, or irrelevant information. Through exploring this website, one is sure to find man hidden treasures to capture the imagination.

Historic Saint Paul, https://www.historicsaintpaul.org/about-us. Created and maintained by Historic Saint Paul, Saint Paul, Minnesota. Reviewed September 13, 2018.

Word Count: 604 words