 
Livedog2
Member
Username: Livedog2
Post Number: 1249
Registered: 03-2006
| | Posted on Wednesday, September 27, 2006 - 1:43 pm: |    |
Posted on Thursday, September 21, 2006 - 10:44 am:
Recently, I have been interested in the location of some famous Detroiters that have gone onto their final resting places or rewards. Specifically, I was interested in the burial locations of some famous Polish Detroiters to add some information to the “The Early Detroit Polish Community...” thread. But, I had been stymied by the lack of information concerning their deaths, obits, burials, etc. So, I went to the website called findagrave.com because they are the most well known of the websites that tell you where Famous Persons are buried. They are an excellent site dealing with Famous and Non-Famous people from all over the world. They are, also good at listing information about Famous Persons on a global basis but when it gets down to the level of Famous in a city like Detroit they’re not very good unless you’re Henry Ford or Rosa Parks. But, the ordinary Famous People of Detroit, whatever that means, are not listed there so I thought about adding something to the DetroitYES Forum so that we can list our own Famous People of Detroit.
Needless to say we all have our own areas of interest and it is obviously a large undertaking to list all of the Famous Persons from the history of Detroit. So, I am hoping that many of you will be interested in listing those Famous Persons that you are interested in. I emailed Lowell about the idea and he suggested I get it started with my vision of the way I see it developing and see what happens. So, after giving it some thought this is what I came up with:
• I thought of many things to call it some cute and some not so cute but what I settled on was a totally descriptive title called “Final Resting Place of Famous Detroiters”
• Next I had to think about the content of each listing and here’s what I came up with again
o Name of the Famous Person
o Birth Date
o Death Date
o What makes them famous i.e. Ran the 1st Polish Funeral Home in Detroit, Participated in the “Underground Railroad” in Detroit, Architect on many important Skyscrapers in Detroit, etc. (Note: Claim to fame “Please don't confuse importance with fame. Every one of your ancestors is important, and every veteran deserves to be remembered and honored-but that does not mean that they are 'famous'. An individual is more likely to be designated as 'famous' if he or she is well known outside of his or her local community and is known as famous by many Detroiters.)
o Obit
o Bio
o Burial of Person
o Photos of the Person
o Photos of the person’s grave
o Location of Cemetery i.e. country, state, city, county
o Grave location in cemetery i.e. section, terrace, grave #, niche, GPS coordinates, anything to help find the grave
What I haven’t been able to work out in my mind is how to make changes to or addition to persons that have been listed already. What I’m saying is what if person #1 lists the name, death date, birth date, etc. then how does person #2 add a photos, how does person #3 add a bio and so on and so forth because this usually works well as a collective effort.
Those are my ideas for the time being and I hope others will chime in with their ideas, refinements or suggestions.
Posted on Thursday, September 21, 2006 - 11:03 am:
"Wiki" software http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W iki_software
running on a web server would be the best way to allow for the kind of collaborative effort you desire. However, it requires contributors to do a little self-training to master the fairly simple coding required to create and edit (add to) an article on each deceased. Also, as the Wikipedia project demonstrates, unless you vet the contributors and password-protect the wiki, it will be open to vandalism and incorrect information.
Posted on Thursday, September 21, 2006 - 11:18 am:
Great input, Mikeg! I think your idea is very good about the use of the software and your comments
______________________________ __________
quote:
unless you vet the contributors and password-protect the wiki, it will be open to vandalism and incorrect information.
______________________________ __________
is totally valid. There is always an element of mischief in every human endeavor, especially anything to do with the internet because of the immature nature of so many users. I'm hopeful that we can come up with ways to do this that Lowell is open to.
Livedog2
Posted on Thursday, September 21, 2006 - 11:47 am:
I think that a wiki would be a good tool for amassing the information and images needed for a project like this through a collaborative effort. However, looking at the long-term, a wiki needs to be eventually "locked down" once it has matured and stabilized, which limits any further collaborative input.
The U of M School of Information has been looking at ways to make valuable archived collections readily available for viewing on-line while still allowing visitors to leave comments on each item in the collection. Here is their latest attempt
http://polarbears.si.umich.edu /
that went "live" back in January of this year, in conjunction with the U of M Bentley Historical Library. It allows visitors to easily navigate throughout the collection and to sort/organize records based on different attributes associated with each item in the archive.
Updated by:
Livedog2 |
Lowell
Board Administrator
Username: Lowell
Post Number: 3032
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, September 27, 2006 - 11:15 pm: | |
quote:What I haven’t been able to work out in my mind is how to make changes to or addition to persons that have been listed already.
Livedog, this thread has been converted to mega thread status meaning that new threads can be created within this thread. As you see above, I have done this with you first two characters.
Additions of informaton, pictures, etc. to the story of any of those characters can now be made by posting in those threads.
Adding a new person should be done by creating a new thread about them, not by posting a new post down here. Click the Start a New Thread link at the top to add a new famous Detroiter. |
Livedog2
Member
Username: Livedog2
Post Number: 1255
Registered: 03-2006
| | Posted on Thursday, September 28, 2006 - 12:29 am: | |
Excellent, Lowell! I think that will accomplish what we set out to do which is to have the capability to make additions by different posters to Famous Detroiters that have already been posted. Thank you. :-)
Livedog2 |
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