Proposal talk:A repository for reminiscences
Impact?
Some proposals will have massive impact on end-users, including non-editors. Some will have minimal impact. What will be the impact of this proposal on our end-users? -- Philippe 01:09, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
A source of first person history - much more immediate than the dry accounts we have now. A way for people who do not have vast detailed knowledge of the academic sources to contribute to world knowledge. This kind of first person account has been the basis of sociology and anthropology and social history. Now at last we have the technology for the people themselves to bypass the academics or at least to make themselves full partners in the process.--Filceolaire 19:45, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
Wikinews?
Is there a reason Wikinews doesn't meet this need? -Peteforsyth 20:03, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
- For news stories yes this is so but most of this stuff isn't news. It's stuff that happened years ago. Many reminiscences were never news - old stories grandmother heard from her grandad are useful, when aggregated with other old stories, in giving a picture of which stories were popular where but hardly qualify as news.--Filceolaire 20:57, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
- I'd be inclined to give it a shot anyway. They are pretty much sticklers about the timeliness of synthesis stories (i.e., stories that draw only from other news sources), but looser about original reporting. I'm active there, but not really expert in these kind of boundaries. But certainly, people (David Shankbone comes to mind) have published excellent interviews there, which were not specifically tied to any current news event. (You may encounter resistance if a person isn't really notable in their own right, but I doubt it would be a problem if they have some significance like being one of the few remaining veterans of a war, etc.)
- I'm not saying it would be 100% perfect for your intended use...I understand the value of interviewing a wide variety of people, who may have no obvious significance. But I think if you were to start there, and see how much you could accomplish while building a body of work, then you'd be in a really good position to propose a new project if it turned out not to fully meet your needs. (Not to say this proposal isn't worthy of consideration -- just that there are a variety of ways to get to this end goal.) -Peteforsyth 21:35, 4 October 2009 (UTC)