History Commons
Encyclopedia
The History Commons is a web site and organization that documents events and issues of social and political importance, focusing primarily on events and issues from the 1970s
to the present day. The History Commons operates under a Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike license. It is sponsored by The Global Center , a 501(c)3 organization, and is operated by the Center for Grassroots Oversight, itself a 501(c)3 organization.
. It allows people to investigate important issues by providing a space where people can collaborate on the documentation of past and current events, as well as the entities associated with those events. The Web site can be used to investigate topics at the local, regional, or global level. The data is displayed on the Web site in the form of dynamic timelines and entity profiles, and is exportable into XML
so it can be shared with others for non-commercial purposes." However, the data export feature was non-functional as of April 2008 and has not been fixed since.
The "Timeline" feature is the main research tool of the website; 29 have been published, and others are in the planning and development stage. The term "timeline" is something of a misnomer: the term "project" is a more accurate label, as some projects have multiple, subsidiary timelines contained within. A timeline is a series of dated entries that describe historical events, listed in chronological order. Each project is based exclusively on "mainstream" media sources, i.e. information produced by governments, public and private organizations, media and recognized experts. All projects are continually in progress; the goal is to provide the most current, comprehensive and detailed overview of each project's subject, and the related time periods, events and entities. Each project is organized chronologically; entries are based on general time periods or specific moments, or on specific entities or events, and each entry is a summary of the relevant information, with sources referenced. The homepage of each project displays a "table of contents," with links to subsidiary timelines and actual individual entries. It is also possible to search specific dates or times, and/or names of specific entities and events; this returns a timeline of the relevant entries. More than 14,000 events and more than 5000 entities are profiled in the History Commons database
. "Entities" refers to people, governments and agencies, businesses and organizations.
Similarly to Wikipedia
, the History Commons is a database that the public can edit and add content to. Some important differences are that the ability to do so is limited to registered users, and that entries/edits go through a peer-review process before being published. According to a History Commons "Conceptual Summary", "There are three steps to the review process. After an entry is submitted, it is reviewed for content to ensure that it is well-written and well-sourced. Sources are checked to ensure that what is in the entry accurately reflects the source material without resorting to plagiarism. An entry approved for content is then submitted for copyediting, using the HC style manual as a guide. If the event is rejected during the first step, it is sent back to the user, who reads over the comments and then resubmits the entry. If it is approved, another user, who is in charge of managing the user-defined timeline that the event was submitted to, then makes a decision whether or not the verified event should be added to the timeline. Each event is thoroughly reviewed for accuracy and proper grammar
and spelling
."
and Iraq
and , US prisoner abuse and torture
, the loss of US civil liberties
, the September 11 attacks and Islamist terrorism, domestic propaganda
in America , global warming
, US health care
issues , US electoral politics , Kosovar
Albania
n self-determination , and others. Currently there are 29 active projects.
The content of the projects is written, edited, and posted by independent volunteer contributors who are responsible for their work. The History Commons describes itself as "a tool for open-content participatory journalism
" that provides an "open space" for contributors to add their content. Its mission statement reads: "The History Commons is a free and open space where you can collaborate with others to chronicle history, monitor powerful private interests, and conduct oversight of governments." It more fully describes itself: "The History Commons is a social media website that provides a online space where Internet users can collaborate in the documentation of historical events. ... The History Commons ... is people-powered and people-driven, as opposed to being driven by powerful entities that represent a very narrow band of society. Contributors to HC work together to build an online documented version of the historical record. It is a socially and politically significant exercise because it has the potential to create a version of the historical narrative that is written by a wider swath of society, and therefore serves a broader scope of interests. It is a narrative that is less subject to control by the dominant sectors of society. Contributors participate for a variety of reasons. In most cases they are people who have an acute interest in politics and who have a perspective on history and current events that is in conflict with the narrative that is broadcast by powerful interests such as governments and the major media networks. They write because they want to create a written record of alternative narratives that checks the power of these interests. This is a key element of the History Commons' 'people-driven' nature, where the diverse contributions of its users make it possible to produce a record that transcends particular ideological and social agendas."
In July 2008, History Commons project manager Michael Tuck wrote in an article for Nieman Watchdog
, "Contributors own their content; the Commons provides a searchable information base where disparate material can be brought together in a single repository." In April 2004, Village Voice correspondent James Ridgway wrote that the History Commons' "aim is to keep the entries as neutrally written and as well sourced as [it] can." In April 2005, the Guerrilla News Network
described the History Commons' approach as "seek[ing] to encourage grassroots participation and collaboration in the documentation of the public historical record using an open-content model."
joined CCR, bringing with him a copious amount of research on the September 11 attacks. Thompson eventually used the material he contributed to the website for his 2004 book, The Terror Timeline
, and in 2005 testified before Congress on the failings and flaws of the 9/11 Commission
report
. Mitchell, Thompson, and other researchers steadily expanded the website's projects and timelines. In 2007, the Center for Grassroots Oversight (CGO) took over operation of the website, renaming it to the History Commons. The current version of the History Commons Web application is written in Java
and runs on Apache Tomcat
. The data is stored in a MySQL
database accessed through JDO. The presentation layer is done in JSP using a templating system called Bricks."
document, or a book, and is peer-reviewed by other contributors and project managers before being published to the database for public viewing. The site provides a detailed style manual and a walkthrough tutorial to aid prospective contributors.
In October 2010, Salon commentator Glenn Greenwald
called the History Commons's Watergate project a "richly documented summary of those events."
In a 2009 e-mail to the site, author Philip Shenon, a veteran New York Times reporter and author of The Commission , a book about the 9/11 Commission
, wrote: "Your timeline has been invaluable to me over the years. I'm certainly aware of -- and flattered by -- your citations from my book."
Craig Unger
, author of House of Bush, House of Saud and The Fall of the House of Bush , wrote: "For serious research, it's hard to think of a more valuable resource than the timelines assembled by History Commons. The material they provide is a welcome antidote to the misinformation and disinformation that has been coming out of Washington in recent years and they are essential tools in assembling a counter-narrative that more honestly addresses the crises we face." In his acknowledgements to House of Bush, House of Saud, Unger wrote: "The Center for Cooperative Research is another valuable Internet tool. Because I made a practice of citing original sources, it does not appear in my notes nearly as often as it might. However, its timelines about 911 and related issues often helped me find exactly what I was looking for. I highly recommend it to anyone doing research on 9/11 and I encourage its support."
Author Peter Lance
wrote, in the acknowledgements of his book Cover-Up
: "As mentioned throughout, I was blessed in this state of my research with access to Paul Thompson's remarkable timelines from the Center for Cooperative Research each citation in that database is supported by a news story from the mainstream media. ... Any research, reporter, or scholar with an interest in the war on terror would consider the Cooperative Research timelines a bonanza of open source information."
Correspondent James Ridgway of the Village Voice wrote: "[The History Commons is composed] of a handful of freelance, unpaid, amateur sleuths who have become a 9/11 Information Central—what amounts to an intelligence apparatus aimed at pinning down what the Bush administration knew and didn't know about 9/11, before and after the attacks. The results of this sleuthing often find their way to the 9/11 families, and in particular, to the by now mythic Jersey Girls
, as the leaders of the survivors' families have come to be called. The researchers are in many ways similar to the team Scott Armstrong
, the former Washington Post reporter, recruited in the mid 1980s to uncover the roots of Reagan's secret Iran-Contra deals. The National Security Archive
, making extensive use of the Freedom of Information Act, soon established itself as the lead independent investigatory body, and today stands as a major independent research operation in the nation's capital. At the hub of the 9-11 research is [Paul] Thompson's intricate timeline. ... Still other timelines delve into official 'lies' from 1979 forward."
New York Magazine correspondent Mark Jacobson wrote in 2006, "[The History Commons'] 9/11 timeline has become the undisputed gold standard of truth research..." Minneapolis City Pages reporter Steve Perry wrote in 2003 that the History Commons is "endlessly informative."
Daniel Erlacher, the director of Austria's Elevate Festival
, wrote in an e-mail to the site: "The History Commons is one of the most important and technologically advanced projects of civil journalism there is today. The website of the project is an enormous resource for researchers. Because of the excellent possibilities to tag entities and to group them in timetables, people can easily read and filter information, which is usually presented out of context. The History Commons is a project which helps connect the dots and sheds light on several inconsistencies in official narratives of some of the most important stories of our time. The Elevate Festival was very proud to present the project for the first time in Europe in 2008 and we will continue to support it."
Matthew Hurst wrote on his Data Mining blog in 2008: "The site is a cooperative approach to history and presents data in timelines. ... I like this vertical approach to wiki data as it has the potential to focus both expertise and data structures, making the data more valuable in a number of dimensions."
Author David Ray Griffin
wrote in the acknowledgements of his book The New Pearl Harbor Revisited: "In acknowledging the tremendous amount of help and support I received in writing this book, I wish to begin by mentioning the indispensable source for 9/11-related stories published in the mainstream press: The Complete 9/11 Timeline at History Commons (formerly known as Cooperative Research). ... [I]t has surely become, through the continuing work of [Paul] Thompson and his colleagues, the greatest feat of annotated, investigative journal indexing ever achieved on a volunteer basis. Having served as the source of about half of my references in The New Pearl Harbor, this timeline has been equally indispensable for The New Pearl Harbor Revisited."
1970s
File:1970s decade montage.png|From left, clockwise: US President Richard Nixon doing the V for Victory sign after his resignation from office after the Watergate scandal in 1974; Refugees aboard a US naval boat after the Fall of Saigon, leading to the end of the Vietnam War in 1975; The 1973 oil...
to the present day. The History Commons operates under a Creative Commons
Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons...
Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike license. It is sponsored by The Global Center , a 501(c)3 organization, and is operated by the Center for Grassroots Oversight, itself a 501(c)3 organization.
Nature and Purpose
According to the History Commons "About" page, "The Web site is a tool for open-content participatory journalismOpen source journalism
Open source journalism, a close cousin to citizen journalism or participatory journalism, is a term coined in the title of a 1999 article by Andrew Leonard of Salon.com...
. It allows people to investigate important issues by providing a space where people can collaborate on the documentation of past and current events, as well as the entities associated with those events. The Web site can be used to investigate topics at the local, regional, or global level. The data is displayed on the Web site in the form of dynamic timelines and entity profiles, and is exportable into XML
XML
Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
so it can be shared with others for non-commercial purposes." However, the data export feature was non-functional as of April 2008 and has not been fixed since.
The "Timeline" feature is the main research tool of the website; 29 have been published, and others are in the planning and development stage. The term "timeline" is something of a misnomer: the term "project" is a more accurate label, as some projects have multiple, subsidiary timelines contained within. A timeline is a series of dated entries that describe historical events, listed in chronological order. Each project is based exclusively on "mainstream" media sources, i.e. information produced by governments, public and private organizations, media and recognized experts. All projects are continually in progress; the goal is to provide the most current, comprehensive and detailed overview of each project's subject, and the related time periods, events and entities. Each project is organized chronologically; entries are based on general time periods or specific moments, or on specific entities or events, and each entry is a summary of the relevant information, with sources referenced. The homepage of each project displays a "table of contents," with links to subsidiary timelines and actual individual entries. It is also possible to search specific dates or times, and/or names of specific entities and events; this returns a timeline of the relevant entries. More than 14,000 events and more than 5000 entities are profiled in the History Commons database
Database
A database is an organized collection of data for one or more purposes, usually in digital form. The data are typically organized to model relevant aspects of reality , in a way that supports processes requiring this information...
. "Entities" refers to people, governments and agencies, businesses and organizations.
Similarly to Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
, the History Commons is a database that the public can edit and add content to. Some important differences are that the ability to do so is limited to registered users, and that entries/edits go through a peer-review process before being published. According to a History Commons "Conceptual Summary", "There are three steps to the review process. After an entry is submitted, it is reviewed for content to ensure that it is well-written and well-sourced. Sources are checked to ensure that what is in the entry accurately reflects the source material without resorting to plagiarism. An entry approved for content is then submitted for copyediting, using the HC style manual as a guide. If the event is rejected during the first step, it is sent back to the user, who reads over the comments and then resubmits the entry. If it is approved, another user, who is in charge of managing the user-defined timeline that the event was submitted to, then makes a decision whether or not the verified event should be added to the timeline. Each event is thoroughly reviewed for accuracy and proper grammar
Grammar
In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...
and spelling
Spelling
Spelling is the writing of one or more words with letters and diacritics. In addition, the term often, but not always, means an accepted standard spelling or the process of naming the letters...
."
Featured Timelines
The "Timelines" page lists the projects that have been published. These include projects on the current global economic crisis , the US wars in AfghanistanAfghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
and Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
and , US prisoner abuse and torture
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
, the loss of US civil liberties
Civil liberties
Civil liberties are rights and freedoms that provide an individual specific rights such as the freedom from slavery and forced labour, freedom from torture and death, the right to liberty and security, right to a fair trial, the right to defend one's self, the right to own and bear arms, the right...
, the September 11 attacks and Islamist terrorism, domestic propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
in America , global warming
Global warming
Global warming refers to the rising average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans and its projected continuation. In the last 100 years, Earth's average surface temperature increased by about with about two thirds of the increase occurring over just the last three decades...
, US health care
Health care
Health care is the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in humans. Health care is delivered by practitioners in medicine, chiropractic, dentistry, nursing, pharmacy, allied health, and other care providers...
issues , US electoral politics , Kosovar
Kosovo
Kosovo is a region in southeastern Europe. Part of the Ottoman Empire for more than five centuries, later the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija within Serbia...
Albania
Albania
Albania , officially known as the Republic of Albania , is a country in Southeastern Europe, in the Balkans region. It is bordered by Montenegro to the northwest, Kosovo to the northeast, the Republic of Macedonia to the east and Greece to the south and southeast. It has a coast on the Adriatic Sea...
n self-determination , and others. Currently there are 29 active projects.
The content of the projects is written, edited, and posted by independent volunteer contributors who are responsible for their work. The History Commons describes itself as "a tool for open-content participatory journalism
Open source journalism
Open source journalism, a close cousin to citizen journalism or participatory journalism, is a term coined in the title of a 1999 article by Andrew Leonard of Salon.com...
" that provides an "open space" for contributors to add their content. Its mission statement reads: "The History Commons is a free and open space where you can collaborate with others to chronicle history, monitor powerful private interests, and conduct oversight of governments." It more fully describes itself: "The History Commons is a social media website that provides a online space where Internet users can collaborate in the documentation of historical events. ... The History Commons ... is people-powered and people-driven, as opposed to being driven by powerful entities that represent a very narrow band of society. Contributors to HC work together to build an online documented version of the historical record. It is a socially and politically significant exercise because it has the potential to create a version of the historical narrative that is written by a wider swath of society, and therefore serves a broader scope of interests. It is a narrative that is less subject to control by the dominant sectors of society. Contributors participate for a variety of reasons. In most cases they are people who have an acute interest in politics and who have a perspective on history and current events that is in conflict with the narrative that is broadcast by powerful interests such as governments and the major media networks. They write because they want to create a written record of alternative narratives that checks the power of these interests. This is a key element of the History Commons' 'people-driven' nature, where the diverse contributions of its users make it possible to produce a record that transcends particular ideological and social agendas."
In July 2008, History Commons project manager Michael Tuck wrote in an article for Nieman Watchdog
Nieman Foundation for Journalism
The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University is the primary journalism institution at Harvard. It was founded in 1938 as the result of a $1 million bequest by Agnes Wahl Nieman, the widow of Lucius W. Nieman, founder of The Milwaukee Journal...
, "Contributors own their content; the Commons provides a searchable information base where disparate material can be brought together in a single repository." In April 2004, Village Voice correspondent James Ridgway wrote that the History Commons' "aim is to keep the entries as neutrally written and as well sourced as [it] can." In April 2005, the Guerrilla News Network
Guerrilla News Network
Guerrilla News Network, Inc. was a privately owned news web site and television production company that declared as its mission to "expose people to important global issues through cross-platform guerrilla programming." This was accomplished through the production of original articles, reporting...
described the History Commons' approach as "seek[ing] to encourage grassroots participation and collaboration in the documentation of the public historical record using an open-content model."
History
The History Commons website was originally developed and operated by the now-defunct Center for Cooperative Research (CCR) , which was founded in 2001 by Derek Mitchell, a California-based social entrepreneur. Along with software developer Michael Bevin, Mitchell helped develop the History Commons web application after it became apparent that a static HTML-based Web site was not enough to manage its rapidly expanding content. In June 2002, environmental activist Paul ThompsonPaul Thompson
Paul Thompson may refer to:*Paul Thompson , quarterback for the University of Oklahoma Sooners*Paul Thompson , former basketball player...
joined CCR, bringing with him a copious amount of research on the September 11 attacks. Thompson eventually used the material he contributed to the website for his 2004 book, The Terror Timeline
The Terror Timeline
The Terror Timeline: Year by Year, Day by Day, Minute by Minute: A Comprehensive Chronicle of the Road to 9/11 — and America's Response is described by its publisher as a compilation of over 5,000 reports and articles concerning the September 11, 2001 attacks.The book was compiled by a...
, and in 2005 testified before Congress on the failings and flaws of the 9/11 Commission
9/11 Commission
The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, also known as the 9/11 Commission, was set up on November 27, 2002, "to prepare a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 attacks", including preparedness for and the immediate response to...
report
Criticism of the 9/11 Commission
Criticism of the 9/11 Commission includes a variety of criticisms of the 9/11 Commission, the United States congressional commission set up to investigate the September 11 attacks in 2001 and chaired by former New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean. Because the investigation was controversial and...
. Mitchell, Thompson, and other researchers steadily expanded the website's projects and timelines. In 2007, the Center for Grassroots Oversight (CGO) took over operation of the website, renaming it to the History Commons. The current version of the History Commons Web application is written in Java
Java (programming language)
Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...
and runs on Apache Tomcat
Apache Tomcat
Apache Tomcat is an open source web server and servlet container developed by the Apache Software Foundation...
. The data is stored in a MySQL
MySQL
MySQL officially, but also commonly "My Sequel") is a relational database management system that runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases. It is named after developer Michael Widenius' daughter, My...
database accessed through JDO. The presentation layer is done in JSP using a templating system called Bricks."
Users
Users of the History Commons can search through the 29 major projects listed above, as well as a large number of more region- and topic-specific projects. The History Commons Web application will also create dynamic timelines sorted by entities—for example, showing all the site's entries covering events in which a particular person or organization participated—or by specified terms entered using the site's search facility. The History Commons Web application also generates a "context timeline" based on a particular event, which show the entry for that event alongside a number of other timeline entries describing similar or related events. Context timelines are scalable, so a user can focus his or her search as narrowly or as widely as the user chooses. The History Commons Conceptual Summary states: "[T]he user is able to conduct a finely tuned search for specific information regarding a specific entity or event, or can launch a more broad-based search for information of wider interest."Contributors
Those choosing to contribute material can begin contributing by creating an account with the History Commons and then submitting specific entries on a topic of their choice. Each submitted entry is required to have at least one source, usually a news article, a government or non-governmental organizationNon-governmental organization
A non-governmental organization is a legally constituted organization created by natural or legal persons that operates independently from any government. The term originated from the United Nations , and is normally used to refer to organizations that do not form part of the government and are...
document, or a book, and is peer-reviewed by other contributors and project managers before being published to the database for public viewing. The site provides a detailed style manual and a walkthrough tutorial to aid prospective contributors.
Comments
Numerous individuals have given feedback on the History Commons, often praising it for its uniqueness and usefulness.In October 2010, Salon commentator Glenn Greenwald
Glenn Greenwald
Glenn Greenwald is an American lawyer, columnist, blogger, and author. Greenwald worked as a constitutional and civil rights litigator before becoming a contributor to Salon.com, where he focuses on political and legal topics...
called the History Commons's Watergate project a "richly documented summary of those events."
In a 2009 e-mail to the site, author Philip Shenon, a veteran New York Times reporter and author of The Commission , a book about the 9/11 Commission
9/11 Commission
The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, also known as the 9/11 Commission, was set up on November 27, 2002, "to prepare a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 attacks", including preparedness for and the immediate response to...
, wrote: "Your timeline has been invaluable to me over the years. I'm certainly aware of -- and flattered by -- your citations from my book."
Craig Unger
Craig Unger
Craig Unger is an American journalist and writer. He grew up in Dallas, Texas, and attended Harvard University. His most recent book is The Fall of the House of Bush, about the internal feud in the Bush family and the rise and collusion of the neoconservative and Christian right in Republican party...
, author of House of Bush, House of Saud and The Fall of the House of Bush , wrote: "For serious research, it's hard to think of a more valuable resource than the timelines assembled by History Commons. The material they provide is a welcome antidote to the misinformation and disinformation that has been coming out of Washington in recent years and they are essential tools in assembling a counter-narrative that more honestly addresses the crises we face." In his acknowledgements to House of Bush, House of Saud, Unger wrote: "The Center for Cooperative Research is another valuable Internet tool. Because I made a practice of citing original sources, it does not appear in my notes nearly as often as it might. However, its timelines about 911 and related issues often helped me find exactly what I was looking for. I highly recommend it to anyone doing research on 9/11 and I encourage its support."
Author Peter Lance
Peter Lance
Peter Lance is an American journalist who is a multiple Emmy Award winner.-9/11:Peter Lance is the author of 1000 Years for Revenge which is a broad survey of Al-Qaida operations in the US prior to 9/11 and Cover Up: What the Government Is Still Hiding About the War on Terror...
wrote, in the acknowledgements of his book Cover-Up
Cover-up
A cover-up is an attempt, whether successful or not, to conceal evidence of wrong-doing, error, incompetence or other embarrassing information...
: "As mentioned throughout, I was blessed in this state of my research with access to Paul Thompson's remarkable timelines from the Center for Cooperative Research each citation in that database is supported by a news story from the mainstream media. ... Any research, reporter, or scholar with an interest in the war on terror would consider the Cooperative Research timelines a bonanza of open source information."
Correspondent James Ridgway of the Village Voice wrote: "[The History Commons is composed] of a handful of freelance, unpaid, amateur sleuths who have become a 9/11 Information Central—what amounts to an intelligence apparatus aimed at pinning down what the Bush administration knew and didn't know about 9/11, before and after the attacks. The results of this sleuthing often find their way to the 9/11 families, and in particular, to the by now mythic Jersey Girls
Jersey Girls
The Jersey Girls or Jersey Widows refers to four American women who lost their husbands in the September 11 attacks. All four, Kristen Breitweiser, Patty Casazza, Lorie Van Auken, and Mindy Kleinberg, were residents of New Jersey, and helped lobby the U.S...
, as the leaders of the survivors' families have come to be called. The researchers are in many ways similar to the team Scott Armstrong
Scott Armstrong (journalist)
Scott Armstrong is the current director of Information Trust, a former journalist for the Washington Post, and founder of the National Security Archive...
, the former Washington Post reporter, recruited in the mid 1980s to uncover the roots of Reagan's secret Iran-Contra deals. The National Security Archive
National Security Archive
The National Security Archive is a 501 non-governmental, non-profit research and archival institution located in the George Washington University in Washington, D.C.. Founded in 1985 by Scott Armstrong, it archives and publishes declassified U.S. government files concerning selected topics of US...
, making extensive use of the Freedom of Information Act, soon established itself as the lead independent investigatory body, and today stands as a major independent research operation in the nation's capital. At the hub of the 9-11 research is [Paul] Thompson's intricate timeline. ... Still other timelines delve into official 'lies' from 1979 forward."
New York Magazine correspondent Mark Jacobson wrote in 2006, "[The History Commons'] 9/11 timeline has become the undisputed gold standard of truth research..." Minneapolis City Pages reporter Steve Perry wrote in 2003 that the History Commons is "endlessly informative."
Daniel Erlacher, the director of Austria's Elevate Festival
Elevate Festival
The Elevate Festival takes place around the Schloßberg in Graz. At this festival there are discussions and workshops every day, concerts and party every night. That's why the festival is subtitled "Festival for contemporary music, art and political discourse"....
, wrote in an e-mail to the site: "The History Commons is one of the most important and technologically advanced projects of civil journalism there is today. The website of the project is an enormous resource for researchers. Because of the excellent possibilities to tag entities and to group them in timetables, people can easily read and filter information, which is usually presented out of context. The History Commons is a project which helps connect the dots and sheds light on several inconsistencies in official narratives of some of the most important stories of our time. The Elevate Festival was very proud to present the project for the first time in Europe in 2008 and we will continue to support it."
Matthew Hurst wrote on his Data Mining blog in 2008: "The site is a cooperative approach to history and presents data in timelines. ... I like this vertical approach to wiki data as it has the potential to focus both expertise and data structures, making the data more valuable in a number of dimensions."
Author David Ray Griffin
David Ray Griffin
David Ray Griffin is a retired American professor of philosophy of religion and theology. Along with John B. Cobb, Jr., he founded the Center for Process Studies in 1973, a research center of Claremont School of Theology which seeks to promote the common good by means of the relational approach...
wrote in the acknowledgements of his book The New Pearl Harbor Revisited: "In acknowledging the tremendous amount of help and support I received in writing this book, I wish to begin by mentioning the indispensable source for 9/11-related stories published in the mainstream press: The Complete 9/11 Timeline at History Commons (formerly known as Cooperative Research). ... [I]t has surely become, through the continuing work of [Paul] Thompson and his colleagues, the greatest feat of annotated, investigative journal indexing ever achieved on a volunteer basis. Having served as the source of about half of my references in The New Pearl Harbor, this timeline has been equally indispensable for The New Pearl Harbor Revisited."