Dear James,

Nice to hear you on this list and thank you for your precise answers. I guess that, if I had known the rule, I would have explained what was new in Hypotheses in 2013. The main novelty in Hypotheses since 2 years (that means before 2013) is that we have decided to be open to non french contents. To do so, we have created specific steering committees for each language. So far, we have opened committees for german and spanish. The spanish speaking community is slower to join us than the german community, mainly because did not spend enough time, energy and money to promote the platform in Spain and latin america until now. We have plans to do so with different partners. If spanish speaking people in the list want to join this project, I would be very happy to discuss with you.

My main concern related to the focus on novelty is that the opening of a new language will take more than one year to become a success. So, the question is : should we focus on the date of the start of the project, with a likely small success at the begining (so very little chances to win), or after some years of promotion and development (but then with no chance to win any award because it will be considered as an old initiative). When we started Hypotheses, in 2008, it was a very small project, with no chance at all to be awarded, and now it is a success, but still no chance to be awarded. I guess that the best way would be to wait for the next major upgrade of the platform. But it will be a bit tricky to know how big and disruptive should be this upgrade.

This is not a complaint. I just want to share with you my questions related to the best way to apply to DH Awards. Do you have any advices to provide?

Best regards, Marin

On Tue, Feb 4, 2014 at 11:58 AM, James Cummings James.Cummings@it.ox.ac.ukwrote:

On 04/02/14 05:03, Marin Dacos wrote:

...

I was also surprised to discover that Hypotheses http://www.hypotheses.org was refused for inclusion in the nominee because it was not _created_ in 2013. For those who don't

know Hypotheses, here is a short presentation :

Hi Marin,

To give you the background on this, the committee all recognised Hypotheses.org as an extremely important and excellent publication platforms for academic blogs. But we took the decision before nominations that were announced that if we could not find any sign of extremely major updates, publication, or launch in 2013 that this would rule the nomination out for the awards for that year. We couldn't find any such indication for hypotheses.org itself and made the decision that just adding new blogs to the site didn't really count as a major infrastructural change. There was no malice intended in this decision, and the number of nominations falling at this hurdle was significant. (There were some resources which hadn't been touched since the late 1990s nominated!) Yes, this puts a focus of the awards on a year by year basis. This has downsides but also highlights that DH is a continually evolving and cutting edge field. That is part of the awareness we wish to highlight.

The rejection of Hypotheses as nominee for DH awards is not

...

related to our openness to language diversity, but to a strong focus on novelty in our field. That means that we do not focus on structure, nor in infrastructures. But DH should be the first community considering that cyberinfrastructures are very important for our future, our sustainability and our capacity of lasting (or capacity to stay?).

Exactly, the rejection of hypotheses.org was only to do with date, certainly not to do with any aspect of language diversity. (Indeed, as I said in my reply to Isabel we are actively trying to encourage that, in our poor stumbling ways.)

You are right that the DH Awards are focussed on novelty (though don't judge that particularly as a criteria -- a site can be nominated that uses quite old technology, if it was released in that year), and I see that this has both benefits and drawbacks. I don't see how we could have a set of annual awards which did not explicitly rely on the annual-ness of those awards though. The committee wants clear and easy-to-determine reasons for whittling down of the nominations provided since voters have a hard enough time looking at just a few resources per category. Other suggestions are appreciated.

Best wishes, James (founder of DH Awards)

-- Dr James Cummings, James.Cummings@it.ox.ac.uk Academic IT Services, University of Oxford

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I don't think there's any need to be defensive, James. This is, what, the second or third year of the DHAwards? You're going to have kinks and the suggestions and comments I'm seeing here are all very constructive.

And oh yes, everybody, GO::DH is a nominee... in tools.

On 14-02-04 04:06 AM, James Cummings wrote:

On 04/02/14 05:17, O'Donnell, Dan wrote:

...

model for recently with our essay competition. As I have just written, the real surprise of the essay competition (and I'd say GO::DH more generally) is the discovery that there's no reason not to say "submit in any language you want." It is simply not that hard to adjudicate multilingually. Indeed, I was amazed how easy it was.

I agree with this and think all such competitions should say this. I've tried to highlight that with DH Awards, but evidently need to do so even more if we run it again. For the very minimal criteria of nominations for DH Awards ("DH?", "Category?", "Date?") even the awful Google Translate was enough for someone like me to ascertain that some entries were perfectly acceptable or not. With an international nominations committee http://dhawards.org/dhawards2013/committee/ we have about 7 or 8 languages on the committee which helps, but would use Google Translate or approach those we knew spoke the language of any controversial nomination. This is a lot different from an essay competition of course, where the person reviewing it needs much more in-depth understanding.

...

I'd say our experience says you can run open language competitions relatively easily.

Although I may be sounding defensive (if so I apologise), I would definitely be interested in suggestions from GO:DH about how to encourage even more non-English nominations. Getting the call for nominations translated into even more languages I guess would be the first step. Other suggestions appreciated.

Best, -James

As an old TEI-er, it felt very much like tag abuse, putting GO::DH in tools. It fit the definition, but only if you read it with an otherworldy focus on the actual meaning of the specific words in the definition rather than what was meant. But I thought it wasn't a public-facing thing either.

-dan

On 14-02-04 08:11 AM, James Cummings wrote:

On 04/02/14 14:48, Daniel O'Donnell wrote:

...

I don't think there's any need to be defensive, James. This is, what, the second or third year of the DHAwards? You're going to have kinks and the suggestions and comments I'm seeing here are all very constructive.

Oh yes, I am taking these as constructive comments. Definitely need to arrange translations of call for nominations and voting announcements and get people to circulate them. Still not sure whether it is better to have a non-English category or not. (i.e. which is worse). I'm thinking next year to have a clearer call for feedback, categories, etc.

Please do feel free to translate and circulate the voting announcement! Another 10 days to go!

...

And oh yes, everybody, GO::DH is a nominee... in tools.

Yes, it was nominated under tools and we left it there. Arguably it could have been moved to being for 'public audiences'. Its place as a 'tool' is debatable... it is one in a metaphorical sense certainly, or in a _very loose_ definition. You commented on twitter that you thought we should have an 'other' category. I've resisted that because I feel it would then become a dumping group for miscellaneous stuff and voters would be comparing apples and elephants. (As it is they are comparing apples and oranges.) However, we've changed the categories each year (this year removing one and adding the non-Eng category). I expect a small change each year in categories.

-James

I agree with you Isabel. I think we are entering some very exciting and multi-lingual times.

On 14-02-04 09:23 AM, igalina wrote:

Dear James, I am so glad that you are on this list and were able to clarify. As I mentioned I really like DH Awards and I can vouch for the fact that there has been an effort to include resources from all over the world. I think that the non-English category threw me off a bit, as it seems to imply then that the other categories are for English-only resources. In your reply you ask whether the non-English category should be available at all. It seems to me that maybe not but rather as you suggest, make an explicit reminder that any language is allowed in any category. I don't know what others think. I also think that as we get more non-English DH regional communities forming (which is definitely the case!), we shall also have available more communication channels so that more people find out about the DH awards. I honestly hope that you do the awards again next year! Best wishes, Isabel

---

Dra. Isabel Galina Russell Instituto de Investigaciones Bibliográficas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) igalina@unam.mx @igalina

---

De: globaloutlookdh-l globaloutlookdh-l-bounces@uleth.ca en nombre de Daniel O'Donnell daniel.odonnell@uleth.ca Enviado: martes, 04 de febrero de 2014 09:14 a.m. Para: globaloutlookdh-l@uleth.ca Asunto: Re: [globaloutlookDH-l] DH Awards

As an old TEI-er, it felt very much like tag abuse, putting GO::DH in tools. It fit the definition, but only if you read it with an otherworldy focus on the actual meaning of the specific words in the definition rather than what was meant. But I thought it wasn't a public-facing thing either.

-dan

On 14-02-04 08:11 AM, James Cummings wrote:

...

On 04/02/14 14:48, Daniel O'Donnell wrote:

...

I don't think there's any need to be defensive, James. This is, what, the second or third year of the DHAwards? You're going to have kinks and the suggestions and comments I'm seeing here are all very constructive.

Oh yes, I am taking these as constructive comments. Definitely need to arrange translations of call for nominations and voting announcements and get people to circulate them. Still not sure whether it is better to have a non-English category or not. (i.e. which is worse). I'm thinking next year to have a clearer call for feedback, categories, etc.

Please do feel free to translate and circulate the voting announcement! Another 10 days to go!

...

And oh yes, everybody, GO::DH is a nominee... in tools.

Yes, it was nominated under tools and we left it there. Arguably it could have been moved to being for 'public audiences'. Its place as a 'tool' is debatable... it is one in a metaphorical sense certainly, or in a _very loose_ definition. You commented on twitter that you thought we should have an 'other' category. I've resisted that because I feel it would then become a dumping group for miscellaneous stuff and voters would be comparing apples and elephants. (As it is they are comparing apples and oranges.) However, we've changed the categories each year (this year removing one and adding the non-Eng category). I expect a small change each year in categories.

-James

--

Daniel Paul O'Donnell Professor of English University of Lethbridge Lethbridge AB T1K 3M4 Canada

+1 403 393-2539

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On 04/02/14 16:39, Bordalejo, Barbara wrote:

Isabel hits the target here. I was also puzzled by the non-English. So much so, that I thought of The Artist: only a foreign silent film can be nominated for best picture. As always, I am aware that there is no deliberate attempt to exclude and also, as always, I know that this is not necessary. The question is what can be done about it. My suggestion would be to eliminate the non-English category and to make a conscious effort to widen the spectrum of submissions. Providing clear guidelines of what the committee is looking for (up to date sites, new developments, classics) is absolutely necessary.

All sound like good ideas.

Thank you, James, for taking the time to give details of the fate of some submissions. It helps to know what happened.

I'm happy to respond to any individual enquiry. I don't email all the rejected nominations simply due to time constraints.

-James

I also found the lack of hyperlinking a pain--in fact I abandoned my vote for that reason and haven't got back to it yet.

I've been more sympathetic to the need for categories given our experience with awards at CSDH/SCHN (the Canadian DH society). What we've found is that categories can be necessary to defend the place of smaller projects or more technical mundane things. Otherwise, you end up with big, comprehensive, high profile things getting all the credit, and, to be frank, all the credit going to the PIs (who are often the ones who least need the awards). Certainly if you want to award things like particularly clever coding you may need categories to ensure the votes are spread out. The problem, of course, is that categories imply a typology, and if the eligibility limit is a single year, your typology can end being inadvertently exclusionary.

We should all go and vote for GO::DH, though ;-)

http://dhawards.org/dhawards2013/voting/

Still, however

On 14-02-04 11:19 AM, Ernesto Priego wrote:

Hello all,

I thought it would have been nice to have links to the projects in the voting form itself. I know a Google form was used with drop-down menus and I understand this poses a challenge in terms of hyperlinking. However I felt as a user that at voting one would like not to have to go to the previous page/other tab to click again on each nominated project before clicking on/voting for an option. It would be nice if all votes were casted for projects people actually knew, and not just because they sounded interesting, you were in a hurry and you only wanted to vote for your own project anyway ;)

I'm not sure how the importance of actually spending some time researching the nominated projects before voting could be stressed amongst the community, but I thought I'd share my feedback in this regard.

Labelling/categorising will always be a contentious issue. Having worked in the translation of Textal into Spanish I wasn't happy (personally) about it being nominated under "just for fun" (it was serious work). But hey, happy it was nominated at all...

I'd just be up for having a pool of nominated projects (i.e. all nominated projects would be under the same category: Nominated) and allow people to vote whilst giving them a chance to give their reasons behind the vote. This could provide the organisers with cool (messy, but cool, and potentially useful) qualitative and quantiative data about voters' preferences and rationale, and avoid the problem of pigeonholing projects and therefore offending (even if mildly) their creators, however chuffed they might be of having their project nominated.

All the best,

e

Dr Ernesto Priego *Lecturer in Library Science Acting Course Director, MSc/MA Electronic Publishing, City University London *

City University London offers a wide range of postgraduate courses delivered by world-leading academics. Register for our Open Evening http://www.city.ac.uk/events/2014/feb/postgraduate-open-evening on Wednesday 19^th February to find out more.

MediaCommons' THE NEW EVERYDAY is happy to announce the publication of a cluster on THE MULTIMODALITY OF COMICS IN EVERYDAY LIFE, curated by Ernesto Priego of City University London and David N. Wright of Douglas College. http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/tne/cluster/multimodality-comics-eve...

http://epriego.wordpress.com/ @ernestopriego https://twitter.com/ernestopriego Editor-in-Chief, /The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship**/http://www.comicsgrid.com/ Subscribe to the Comics Grid Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/iOYAj

On Tue, Feb 4, 2014 at 4:42 PM, James Cummings <James.Cummings@it.ox.ac.uk mailto:James.Cummings@it.ox.ac.uk> wrote:

On 04/02/14 16:39, Bordalejo, Barbara wrote:

    Isabel hits the target here. I was also puzzled by the
    non-English. So much so, that I thought of The Artist: only a
    foreign silent film can be nominated for best picture. As
    always, I am aware that there is no deliberate attempt to
    exclude and also, as always, I know that this is not
    necessary.  The question is what can be done about it. My
    suggestion would be to eliminate the non-English category and
    to make a conscious effort to widen the spectrum of
    submissions. Providing clear guidelines of what the committee
    is looking for (up to date sites, new developments, classics)
    is absolutely necessary.


All sound like good ideas.


    Thank you, James, for taking the time to give details of the
    fate of some submissions. It helps to know what happened.


I'm happy to respond to any individual enquiry.  I don't email all
the rejected nominations simply due to time constraints.


-James

-- 
Dr James Cummings, James.Cummings@it.ox.ac.uk
<mailto:James.Cummings@it.ox.ac.uk>
Academic IT Services, University of Oxford

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I agree with you!

On 14-02-04 11:32 AM, Ernesto Priego wrote:

Me again. Sorry!

Another alternative would be to allow people to vote only for the ones they really know and therefore want to vote for. Does anyone actually know all the projects ? They are a lot... honestly I wonder how many people actually clicked on all the links here http://dhawards.org/dhawards2013/voting/ before voting... Something tells me that having to vote for all the projects means many votes will be given completely at random. Am I alone in thinking this?

Dr Ernesto Priego *Lecturer in Library Science Acting Course Director, MSc/MA Electronic Publishing, City University London *

City University London offers a wide range of postgraduate courses delivered by world-leading academics. Register for our Open Evening http://www.city.ac.uk/events/2014/feb/postgraduate-open-evening on Wednesday 19^th February to find out more.

MediaCommons' THE NEW EVERYDAY is happy to announce the publication of a cluster on THE MULTIMODALITY OF COMICS IN EVERYDAY LIFE, curated by Ernesto Priego of City University London and David N. Wright of Douglas College. http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/tne/cluster/multimodality-comics-eve...

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On Tue, Feb 4, 2014 at 6:19 PM, Ernesto Priego <efpriego@gmail.com mailto:efpriego@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello all,

I thought it would have been nice to have links to the projects in
the voting form itself. I know a Google form was used with
drop-down menus and I understand this poses a challenge in terms
of hyperlinking. However I felt as a user that at voting one would
like not to have to go to the previous page/other tab to click
again on each nominated project before clicking on/voting for an
option. It would be nice if all votes were casted for projects
people actually knew, and not just because they sounded
interesting, you were in a hurry and you only wanted to vote for
your own project anyway ;)

I'm not sure how the importance of actually spending some time
researching the nominated projects before voting could be stressed
amongst the community, but I thought I'd share my feedback in this
regard.

Labelling/categorising will always be a contentious issue. Having
worked in the translation of Textal into Spanish I wasn't happy
(personally) about it being nominated under "just for fun" (it was
serious work). But hey, happy it was nominated at all...

I'd just be up for having a pool of nominated projects (i.e. all
nominated projects would be under the same category: Nominated)
and allow people to vote whilst giving them a chance to give their
reasons behind the vote. This could provide the organisers with
cool (messy, but cool, and potentially useful) qualitative and
quantiative data about voters' preferences and rationale, and
avoid the problem of pigeonholing projects and therefore offending
(even if mildly) their creators, however chuffed they might be of
having their project nominated.



All the best,

e

*
*
*
Dr Ernesto Priego
*Lecturer in Library Science
Acting Course Director, MSc/MA Electronic Publishing, City
University London *
*
City University London offers a wide range of postgraduate courses
delivered by world-leading academics. Register for our Open
Evening
<http://www.city.ac.uk/events/2014/feb/postgraduate-open-evening>
on Wednesday 19^th February to find out more.

MediaCommons' THE NEW EVERYDAY is happy to announce the
publication of a cluster on
THE MULTIMODALITY OF COMICS IN EVERYDAY LIFE,
curated by Ernesto Priego of City University London and David N.
Wright of Douglas College.
http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/tne/cluster/multimodality-comics-everyday-life

http://epriego.wordpress.com/ @ernestopriego
<https://twitter.com/ernestopriego>
Editor-in-Chief, /The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics
Scholarship**/http://www.comicsgrid.com/
Subscribe to the Comics Grid Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/iOYAj




On Tue, Feb 4, 2014 at 4:42 PM, James Cummings
<James.Cummings@it.ox.ac.uk <mailto:James.Cummings@it.ox.ac.uk>>
wrote:

    On 04/02/14 16:39, Bordalejo, Barbara wrote:

        Isabel hits the target here. I was also puzzled by the
        non-English. So much so, that I thought of The Artist: only a
        foreign silent film can be nominated for best picture. As
        always, I am aware that there is no deliberate attempt to
        exclude and also, as always, I know that this is not
        necessary.  The question is what can be done about it. My
        suggestion would be to eliminate the non-English category and
        to make a conscious effort to widen the spectrum of
        submissions. Providing clear guidelines of what the committee
        is looking for (up to date sites, new developments, classics)
        is absolutely necessary.


    All sound like good ideas.


        Thank you, James, for taking the time to give details of the
        fate of some submissions. It helps to know what happened.


    I'm happy to respond to any individual enquiry.  I don't email
    all the rejected nominations simply due to time constraints.


    -James

    -- 
    Dr James Cummings, James.Cummings@it.ox.ac.uk
    <mailto:James.Cummings@it.ox.ac.uk>
    Academic IT Services, University of Oxford

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Never dawned on me you might be. Talk about the "unaware subject" ;-)

BTW, in keeping with your points on the other thread, I was thinking more about your suggestion that we be more explicit about the open, public, and citable nature of this list. The other alternative, of course, is what you actually suggested: simply putting a licence in the message header so that everybody is aware that their contributions are distributed under a licence that permits citation and reproduction.

That's not something one does without discussion and consensus, so it might be something that we should let the new, elected, executive deal with when they assume office. But what about a header that said something like: "Globaloutlookdh-l is a publicly archived listserv. Contributions are distributed under a CC-BY licence." We could then link to a page about licensing that had the same information and a bit more detail in English and a few of the more widely used other languages.

A header like that would presumably clarify things with regard to what I was calling primary use (i.e. quotation and citation that engages with the content). I think you'd still need to handle things differently if your goal was secondary or orthogonal to the list's purpose (e.g. because you were studying how people interact and behave rather than what they are saying). But it would allow our users content to be used as a kind of grey literature.

On 14-02-04 11:37 AM, Ernesto Priego wrote:

Thanks; I also take your points re categorisation in your other message, very well said... we were posting at the same time and it might have looked like I was ignoring your message ;)

Dr Ernesto Priego *Lecturer in Library Science Acting Course Director, MSc/MA Electronic Publishing, City University London *

City University London offers a wide range of postgraduate courses delivered by world-leading academics. Register for our Open Evening http://www.city.ac.uk/events/2014/feb/postgraduate-open-evening on Wednesday 19^th February to find out more.

MediaCommons' THE NEW EVERYDAY is happy to announce the publication of a cluster on THE MULTIMODALITY OF COMICS IN EVERYDAY LIFE, curated by Ernesto Priego of City University London and David N. Wright of Douglas College. http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/tne/cluster/multimodality-comics-eve...

http://epriego.wordpress.com/ @ernestopriego https://twitter.com/ernestopriego Editor-in-Chief, /The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship**/http://www.comicsgrid.com/ Subscribe to the Comics Grid Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/iOYAj

On Tue, Feb 4, 2014 at 6:33 PM, Daniel O'Donnell <daniel.odonnell@uleth.ca mailto:daniel.odonnell@uleth.ca> wrote:

I agree with you!


On 14-02-04 11:32 AM, Ernesto Priego wrote:

...

Me again. Sorry!

Another alternative would be to allow people to vote only for the
ones they really know and therefore want to vote for. Does anyone
actually know all the projects ? They are a lot... honestly I
wonder how many people actually clicked on all the links here
http://dhawards.org/dhawards2013/voting/ before voting...
Something tells me that having to vote for all the projects means
many votes will be given completely at random. Am I alone in
thinking this?





*
*
*
Dr Ernesto Priego
*Lecturer in Library Science
Acting Course Director, MSc/MA Electronic Publishing, City
University London *
*
City University London offers a wide range of postgraduate
courses delivered by world-leading academics. Register for our
Open Evening
<http://www.city.ac.uk/events/2014/feb/postgraduate-open-evening>
on Wednesday 19^th February to find out more.

MediaCommons' THE NEW EVERYDAY is happy to announce the
publication of a cluster on
THE MULTIMODALITY OF COMICS IN EVERYDAY LIFE,
curated by Ernesto Priego of City University London and David N.
Wright of Douglas College.
http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/tne/cluster/multimodality-comics-everyday-life

http://epriego.wordpress.com/ @ernestopriego
<https://twitter.com/ernestopriego>
Editor-in-Chief, /The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics
Scholarship**/http://www.comicsgrid.com/
Subscribe to the Comics Grid Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/iOYAj




On Tue, Feb 4, 2014 at 6:19 PM, Ernesto Priego
<efpriego@gmail.com <mailto:efpriego@gmail.com>> wrote:

    Hello all,

    I thought it would have been nice to have links to the
    projects in the voting form itself. I know a Google form was
    used with drop-down menus and I understand this poses a
    challenge in terms of hyperlinking. However I felt as a user
    that at voting one would like not to have to go to the
    previous page/other tab to click again on each nominated
    project before clicking on/voting for an option. It would be
    nice if all votes were casted for projects people actually
    knew, and not just because they sounded interesting, you were
    in a hurry and you only wanted to vote for your own project
    anyway ;)

    I'm not sure how the importance of actually spending some
    time researching the nominated projects before voting could
    be stressed amongst the community, but I thought I'd share my
    feedback in this regard.

    Labelling/categorising will always be a contentious issue.
    Having worked in the translation of Textal into Spanish I
    wasn't happy (personally) about it being nominated under
    "just for fun" (it was serious work). But hey, happy it was
    nominated at all...

    I'd just be up for having a pool of nominated projects (i.e.
    all nominated projects would be under the same category:
    Nominated) and allow people to vote whilst giving them a
    chance to give their reasons behind the vote. This could
    provide the organisers with cool (messy, but cool, and
    potentially useful) qualitative and quantiative data about
    voters' preferences and rationale, and avoid the problem of
    pigeonholing projects and therefore offending (even if
    mildly) their creators, however chuffed they might be of
    having their project nominated.



    All the best,

    e

    *
    *
    *
    Dr Ernesto Priego
    *Lecturer in Library Science
    Acting Course Director, MSc/MA Electronic Publishing, City
    University London *
    *
    City University London offers a wide range of postgraduate
    courses delivered by world-leading academics. Register for
    our Open Evening
    <http://www.city.ac.uk/events/2014/feb/postgraduate-open-evening>
    on Wednesday 19^th February to find out more.

    MediaCommons' THE NEW EVERYDAY is happy to announce the
    publication of a cluster on
    THE MULTIMODALITY OF COMICS IN EVERYDAY LIFE,
    curated by Ernesto Priego of City University London and David
    N. Wright of Douglas College.
    http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/tne/cluster/multimodality-comics-everyday-life

    http://epriego.wordpress.com/ @ernestopriego
    <https://twitter.com/ernestopriego>
    Editor-in-Chief, /The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics
    Scholarship**/http://www.comicsgrid.com/
    Subscribe to the Comics Grid Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/iOYAj




    On Tue, Feb 4, 2014 at 4:42 PM, James Cummings
    <James.Cummings@it.ox.ac.uk
    <mailto:James.Cummings@it.ox.ac.uk>> wrote:

        On 04/02/14 16:39, Bordalejo, Barbara wrote:

            Isabel hits the target here. I was also puzzled by the
            non-English. So much so, that I thought of The
            Artist: only a
            foreign silent film can be nominated for best picture. As
            always, I am aware that there is no deliberate attempt to
            exclude and also, as always, I know that this is not
            necessary.  The question is what can be done about it. My
            suggestion would be to eliminate the non-English
            category and
            to make a conscious effort to widen the spectrum of
            submissions. Providing clear guidelines of what the
            committee
            is looking for (up to date sites, new developments,
            classics)
            is absolutely necessary.


        All sound like good ideas.


            Thank you, James, for taking the time to give details
            of the
            fate of some submissions. It helps to know what happened.


        I'm happy to respond to any individual enquiry.  I don't
        email all the rejected nominations simply due to time
        constraints.


        -James

        -- 
        Dr James Cummings, James.Cummings@it.ox.ac.uk
        <mailto:James.Cummings@it.ox.ac.uk>
        Academic IT Services, University of Oxford

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-- 
---
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Professor of English
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Lethbridge AB T1K 3M4
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+1 403 393-2539  <tel:%2B1%20403%20393-2539>


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yours.

Yo voto por eso:

“A header that said something like: "Globaloutlookdh-l is a publicly archived listserv. Contributions are distributed under a CC-BY licence." We could then link to a page about licensing that had the same information and a bit more detail in English and a few of the more widely used other languages.

A header like that would presumably clarify things with regard to what I was calling primary use (i.e. quotation and citation that engages with the content).

Aunque aclaro que siempre asumí que lo que escribimos acá es público para ser citado, etc. Debe ser por mi experiencia de crecer en un estado “muy vigilante”, en el que todo lo que se dice, incluso en espacios cerrados, será informado, archivado y citado para valorar el desempaño, tarde o temprano.

Yasmín S. Portales Machado

--------------------------------------

Marxista, Feminista y Bloguera

Twitter: @nimlothdecuba

Facebook http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=663817529

Mi blog: http://yasminsilvia.blogspot.com/

Parte de Proyecto Arcoiris

Colectivo LGBT, anticapitalista e independiente, de Cuba

http://proyectoarcoiris.cubava.cu/

Parte de Observatorio Crítico de Cuba

¡A la izquierda, pero por la izquierda!

http://observatoriocriticodesdecuba.wordpress.com/

"El feminismo ha puesto en evidencia, mejor que ninguna otra corriente de pensamiento, tanto la arbitrariedad del psicoanálisis como la insuficiencia del marxismo, es decir, ha cuestionado los dos grandes modelos totalizadores del siglo XX."

Carlo Frabetti

Snowden keeps being mentioned in relation to this, but the comparison is like apples and oranges. As a researcher I cannot but comment that there are degrees of access and surveilance. What the Snowden affair revealed is that the NSA had access to was emails' and mobile communcations' *metadata* (who emails when where and how to whom where when) not its contents (the WHAT). When we talk about citing emails we talk about citing the content of emails, not just their metadata.

So yes, taken to the ultimate circumstances we are all being watched by everyone and anything can happen. That does not mean we cannot have standards and documentation that clearly state how we are doing things and what people can expect. Same goes for research ethics: the world is mostly a place where ethics are not respected. This does not mean we cannot try to establish some open, respectful, transparent framework for interaction. Everyone can potentially engage in online piracy, but this does not mean that using open licenses is useless or naive.

And now I'll keep my mouth shut about this whole thing!

Cheers!

*Dr Ernesto Priego*Lecturer in Library Science Acting Course Director, MSc/MA Electronic Publishing, City University London

City University London offers a wide range of postgraduate courses delivered by world-leading academics. Register for our Open Eveninghttp://www.city.ac.uk/events/2014/feb/postgraduate-open-eveningon Wednesday 19 th February to find out more.

MediaCommons' THE NEW EVERYDAY is happy to announce the publication of a cluster on THE MULTIMODALITY OF COMICS IN EVERYDAY LIFE, curated by Ernesto Priego of City University London and David N. Wright of Douglas College. http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/tne/cluster/multimodality-comics-eve...

http://epriego.wordpress.com/ @ernestopriegohttps://twitter.com/ernestopriego Editor-in-Chief, *The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship * http://www.comicsgrid.com/ Subscribe to the Comics Grid Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/iOYAj

On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 12:49 AM, Daniel O'Donnell daniel.odonnell@uleth.cawrote:

On 14-02-04 04:41 PM, Yasmín S. Portales Machado wrote:

Yo voto por eso:

"A header that said something like: "Globaloutlookdh-l is a publicly archived listserv. Contributions are distributed under a CC-BY licence." We could then link to a page about licensing that had the same information and a bit more detail in English and a few of the more widely used other languages.

A header like that would presumably clarify things with regard to what I was calling primary use (i.e. quotation and citation that engages with the content).

Aunque aclaro que siempre asumí que lo que escribimos acá es público para ser citado, etc. Debe ser por mi experiencia de crecer en un estado "muy vigilante", en el que todo lo que se dice, incluso en espacios cerrados, será informado, archivado y citado para valorar el desempaño, tarde o temprano.

Actually that was really also my understanding too. I like that "muy vigilante" as a description. 'Course, with the NSA and other revelations here in Canada from Edward Snowden, it turns out to be true everywhere to some extent (the latest revelation in Canada is that they've been recording cellphones of every passenger as they pass through at least one of the Canadian airports).

Yasmín S. Portales Machado

---

Marxista, Feminista y Bloguera

Twitter: @nimlothdecuba

Facebook http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=663817529

Mi blog: http://yasminsilvia.blogspot.com/

Parte de Proyecto Arcoiris

Colectivo LGBT, anticapitalista e independiente, de Cuba

http://proyectoarcoiris.cubava.cu/

Parte de Observatorio Crítico de Cuba

¡A la izquierda, pero por la izquierda!

http://observatoriocriticodesdecuba.wordpress.com/

"El feminismo ha puesto en evidencia, mejor que ninguna otra corriente de pensamiento, tanto la arbitrariedad del psicoanálisis como la insuficiencia del marxismo, es decir, ha cuestionado los dos grandes modelos totalizadores del siglo XX."

Carlo Frabetti

--

Daniel Paul O'Donnell Professor of English University of Lethbridge Lethbridge AB T1K 3M4 Canada +1 403 393-2539

---

globaloutlookdh-l mailing list globaloutlookdh-l@uleth.ca http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/globaloutlookdh-l

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Gotcha ;)

*Dr Ernesto Priego*Lecturer in Library Science Acting Course Director, MSc/MA Electronic Publishing, City University London

City University London offers a wide range of postgraduate courses delivered by world-leading academics. Register for our Open Eveninghttp://www.city.ac.uk/events/2014/feb/postgraduate-open-eveningon Wednesday 19 th February to find out more.

MediaCommons' THE NEW EVERYDAY is happy to announce the publication of a cluster on THE MULTIMODALITY OF COMICS IN EVERYDAY LIFE, curated by Ernesto Priego of City University London and David N. Wright of Douglas College. http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/tne/cluster/multimodality-comics-eve...

http://epriego.wordpress.com/ @ernestopriegohttps://twitter.com/ernestopriego Editor-in-Chief, *The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship * http://www.comicsgrid.com/ Subscribe to the Comics Grid Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/iOYAj

On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 4:47 PM, Daniel O'Donnell daniel.odonnell@uleth.cawrote:

Sorry, Ernesto, I was just making a (sort of) joke about Yasmin's comment that as Cuban, she's used to a society that is muy vigilante.

On 14-02-05 02:15 AM, Ernesto Priego wrote:

Snowden keeps being mentioned in relation to this, but the comparison is like apples and oranges. As a researcher I cannot but comment that there are degrees of access and surveilance. What the Snowden affair revealed is that the NSA had access to was emails' and mobile communcations' *metadata* (who emails when where and how to whom where when) not its contents (the WHAT). When we talk about citing emails we talk about citing the content of emails, not just their metadata.

So yes, taken to the ultimate circumstances we are all being watched by everyone and anything can happen. That does not mean we cannot have standards and documentation that clearly state how we are doing things and what people can expect. Same goes for research ethics: the world is mostly a place where ethics are not respected. This does not mean we cannot try to establish some open, respectful, transparent framework for interaction. Everyone can potentially engage in online piracy, but this does not mean that using open licenses is useless or naive.

And now I'll keep my mouth shut about this whole thing!

Cheers!

• Dr Ernesto Priego *Lecturer in Library Science

Acting Course Director, MSc/MA Electronic Publishing, City University London

City University London offers a wide range of postgraduate courses delivered by world-leading academics. Register for our Open Eveninghttp://www.city.ac.uk/events/2014/feb/postgraduate-open-eveningon Wednesday 19 th February to find out more.

MediaCommons' THE NEW EVERYDAY is happy to announce the publication of a cluster on THE MULTIMODALITY OF COMICS IN EVERYDAY LIFE, curated by Ernesto Priego of City University London and David N. Wright of Douglas College.

http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/tne/cluster/multimodality-comics-eve...

http://epriego.wordpress.com/ @ernestopriegohttps://twitter.com/ernestopriego Editor-in-Chief, *The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship * http://www.comicsgrid.com/ Subscribe to the Comics Grid Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/iOYAj

On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 12:49 AM, Daniel O'Donnell < daniel.odonnell@uleth.ca> wrote:

...

On 14-02-04 04:41 PM, Yasmín S. Portales Machado wrote:

Yo voto por eso:

"A header that said something like: "Globaloutlookdh-l is a publicly archived listserv. Contributions are distributed under a CC-BY licence." We could then link to a page about licensing that had the same information and a bit more detail in English and a few of the more widely used other languages.

A header like that would presumably clarify things with regard to what I was calling primary use (i.e. quotation and citation that engages with the content).

Aunque aclaro que siempre asumí que lo que escribimos acá es público para ser citado, etc. Debe ser por mi experiencia de crecer en un estado "muy vigilante", en el que todo lo que se dice, incluso en espacios cerrados, será informado, archivado y citado para valorar el desempaño, tarde o temprano.

Actually that was really also my understanding too. I like that "muy vigilante" as a description. 'Course, with the NSA and other revelations here in Canada from Edward Snowden, it turns out to be true everywhere to some extent (the latest revelation in Canada is that they've been recording cellphones of every passenger as they pass through at least one of the Canadian airports).

Yasmín S. Portales Machado

---

Marxista, Feminista y Bloguera

Twitter: @nimlothdecuba

Facebook http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=663817529

Mi blog: http://yasminsilvia.blogspot.com/

Parte de Proyecto Arcoiris

Colectivo LGBT, anticapitalista e independiente, de Cuba

http://proyectoarcoiris.cubava.cu/

Parte de Observatorio Crítico de Cuba

¡A la izquierda, pero por la izquierda!

http://observatoriocriticodesdecuba.wordpress.com/

"El feminismo ha puesto en evidencia, mejor que ninguna otra corriente de pensamiento, tanto la arbitrariedad del psicoanálisis como la insuficiencia del marxismo, es decir, ha cuestionado los dos grandes modelos totalizadores del siglo XX."

Carlo Frabetti

--

Daniel Paul O'Donnell Professor of English University of Lethbridge Lethbridge AB T1K 3M4 Canada +1 403 393-2539

---

globaloutlookdh-l mailing list globaloutlookdh-l@uleth.ca http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/globaloutlookdh-l

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--

Daniel Paul O'Donnell Professor of English University of Lethbridge Lethbridge AB T1K 3M4 Canada +1 403 393-2539

Hi James,

I gave you my feedback as a user. It's not that I found the lack of links on the form "problematic", I said I wished there had been links on the actual form. As someone who works online every day, having to refer back to different tabs/pages always means extra labour. When you accumulate them, clicks are time and effort. Perhaps I am very slow and it's just me who felt I needed to refer back to the form to remember what it was exactly I was voting for.

You are right that the form does not have all the fields as 'required'. This is in technical, database terms. If I am presented with a form, I want to complete it all, even if some questions in it are not compulsory. Instead of suggesting a user is wrong for having perceived the whole form had to be completed, perhaps an indicative text or a different design would help avoid this misconception? https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1gDL-FR6r6il8uhMGcRN2ocjLoiWqEI2Fs06DnAYmbCc...

...

...

You seem to be missing the point though. The DH Awards are not primarily

about getting some accurate measure of the 'best' in any of these categories. To do that would necessitate having individuals vote who actually could assess these properly and make informed decisions. Since it is open voting, I agree that this is unlikely. The main point of the DH Awards is one of awareness.

I am missing the point as an active, informed member of the DH community, then. I did never suggest that the DH Awards are offering some accurate measure of the 'best', I was suggesting that allowing voters to categorise the nominated projects *could* be an alternative to pre-categorising the projects in advance. However, for many people (dare I say "most people"?) any awards imply that the best in something is being publicly recognised by a community of experts or consumers or whatever. Awareness seems to me to be a positive, but secondary consequence. Many public reactions to the DH Awards expressed the sentiment that the Awards were creating a "celebrity" culture around DH. It might be possible that you are underestimating the reputational element of the DH Awards.

My intention when voting was precisely to assess them properly and make an informed decision. Maybe I shouldn't have done this? I feel really stupid now for having taken this so seriously when it fact it wasn't. Logically, if I wanted to make an informed decision, I needed the time to do it, and this is I why I suggested that it would be nice if it were stated more clearly that one can only vote for one category and that's it (however, projects nominated under just one category are a fair number deserving proper assessment in my view).

Yo have clarified that the Awards are not about reflecting informed decisions and hence recognising 'the best' but about creating awareness of new projects. The About page of the page reads:

...

...

This site is dedicated to *Digital Humanities Awards: Recognizing

Excellence in Digital Humanities*.

...

...

*Digital Humanities Awards* are a new set of annual awards given in

recognition of talent and expertise in the digital humanities community and are nominated and voted for entirely by the public. These awards are intended to help put interesting DH resources in the spotlight and engage DH users (and general public) in the work of the community.

Perhaps this text could be edited that the projects *nominated* are already being recognised for their excellence, talent and expertise? As currently written it suggests to me that the projects that are deemed "excellent" are those who win. If you don't win, you were not considered "excellent" by the community of voters.

You have said in your reply that in order to assess which projects are 'the best' (often interpreted as a synonym of "excellent") the process would "necessitate individuals vote who actually could assess these properly and make informed decisions", and that "since it is open voting, I agree that this is unlikely." It is my view that as currently phrased the information around the DH Awards gives the impression that the intention is to reflect informed decisions from the DH community in order to recognize excellence. I personally don't think the obstacle to this is the open voting, but the way it has been implemented. Of course there are many positives in the way it's been implemented, but our focus here is brainstorming how it could be done better by sharing our feedback as users.

I am posing these issues with a constructive mindset. I understand you have worked very hard on the DH Awards and it must be hard not to feel defensive. I know what it's like when one unleashes a project onto the world and then the world seems only to complain. Like my colleagues who have participated in this thread we have shared our feedback honestly and with the best of intentions. I would hate it if you take our feedback personally. If one takes the time to share this feedback is because we believe the project is important; it might even be more important for others than what you as its creator might imagine.

Best regards,

Ernesto

*Dr Ernesto Priego*Lecturer in Library Science Acting Course Director, MSc/MA Electronic Publishing, City University London

City University London offers a wide range of postgraduate courses delivered by world-leading academics. Register for our Open Eveninghttp://www.city.ac.uk/events/2014/feb/postgraduate-open-eveningon Wednesday 19 th February to find out more.

MediaCommons' THE NEW EVERYDAY is happy to announce the publication of a cluster on THE MULTIMODALITY OF COMICS IN EVERYDAY LIFE, curated by Ernesto Priego of City University London and David N. Wright of Douglas College. http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/tne/cluster/multimodality-comics-eve...

http://epriego.wordpress.com/ @ernestopriegohttps://twitter.com/ernestopriego Editor-in-Chief, *The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship * http://www.comicsgrid.com/ Subscribe to the Comics Grid Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/iOYAj

On Tue, Feb 4, 2014 at 9:40 PM, James Cummings James.Cummings@it.ox.ac.ukwrote:

On 04/02/14 18:32, Ernesto Priego wrote:

...

Me again. Sorry!

Another alternative would be to allow people to vote only for the ones they really know and therefore want to vote for. Does anyone actually know all the projects ? They are a lot... honestly I wonder how many people actually clicked on all the links here http://dhawards.org/dhawards2013/voting/ before voting... Something tells me that having to vote for all the projects means many votes will be given completely at random. Am I alone in thinking this?

I'm sorry you find the lack of links on the actual voting form so problematic. I could re-examine this I suppose but the point is you are meant to decide on who you are voting for before going to the form.

I don't know where you get the idea that you need to vote for all categories...while of course I would encourage that, it is not a requirement. The *only* required fields are name and email address (which I use only to track those who seem to think scripting voting is a good idea).

You seem to be missing the point though. The DH Awards are not primarily about getting some accurate measure of the 'best' in any of these categories. To do that would necessitate having individuals vote who actually could assess these properly and make informed decisions. Since it is open voting, I agree that this is unlikely. The main point of the DH Awards is one of awareness. Even if people only look at a very few of the resources, or even just see their names in the categories, then there is some benefit. If good resources happen to win in their categories, then that is also good. I've already seen this working by having people tell me that they had never heard of project X Y or Z until they had seen them in the list.

-James

-- Dr James Cummings, James.Cummings@it.ox.ac.uk Academic IT Services, University of Oxford

Thank you for your reply, James. I don't feel we were abusing the list to discuss these matters related to the DH Awards. This thread is titled DH Awards after all. Replies are read by all members so everyone is part of the conversation. After all what we are discussing is very relevant for this discussion group as it has to do with the visiblity of research and about how it is perceived, received, categorised, recognised.

*Dr Ernesto Priego*Lecturer in Library Science Acting Course Director, MSc/MA Electronic Publishing, City University London

City University London offers a wide range of postgraduate courses delivered by world-leading academics. Register for our Open Eveninghttp://www.city.ac.uk/events/2014/feb/postgraduate-open-eveningon Wednesday 19 th February to find out more.

MediaCommons' THE NEW EVERYDAY is happy to announce the publication of a cluster on THE MULTIMODALITY OF COMICS IN EVERYDAY LIFE, curated by Ernesto Priego of City University London and David N. Wright of Douglas College. http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/tne/cluster/multimodality-comics-eve...

http://epriego.wordpress.com/ @ernestopriegohttps://twitter.com/ernestopriego Editor-in-Chief, *The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship * http://www.comicsgrid.com/ Subscribe to the Comics Grid Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/iOYAj

On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 11:41 AM, James Cummings James.Cummings@it.ox.ac.ukwrote:

On 05/02/14 09:59, Ernesto Priego wrote:

...

Hi James,

I gave you my feedback as a user. It's not that I found the lack of links on the form "problematic", I said I wished there had been links on the actual form. As someone who works online every day, having to refer back to different tabs/pages always means extra labour. When you accumulate them, clicks are time and effort. Perhaps I am very slow and it's just me who felt I needed to refer back to the form to remember what it was exactly I was voting for.

And thanks for your feedback, it is really appreciated. I'll investigate better ways to do it for next year. Using google forms buys all sorts of other benefits, but maybe there is a way I can put links into the selections.

You are right that the form does not have all the fields as

...

'required'. This is in technical, database terms. If I am presented with a form, I want to complete it all, even if some questions in it are not compulsory. Instead of suggesting a user is wrong for having perceived the whole form had to be completed, perhaps an indicative text or a different design would help avoid this misconception? https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1gDL-FR6r6il8uhMGcRN2ocjLoiWqEI2Fs0 6DnAYmbCc/viewform

I suppose it isn't entirely a misconception: the intent, after all, is to get people to know that these other projects exist. However, very many of the ballots do not vote in each category. I've updated the form.

I am missing the point as an active, informed member of the DH

...

community, then. I did never suggest that the DH Awards are offering some accurate measure of the 'best', I was suggesting that allowing voters to categorise the nominated projects *could* be an alternative to pre-categorising the projects in advance.

Oh, sorry, I misunderstood. Currently the categorisation is done by the person nominating the resource -- where multiple nominations come in for a single resource but in multiple categories, then the nominations committee might make a decision for one or the other. But generally we try to leave it where it was nominated. The owners of the successfully nominated resources are emailed to receive feedback on whether they agree to stand, we're linking to the right place, or indeed if they think it is in the wrong category. However, we work on assumed agreement and if they don't email back we will assume there is no problem. (So Dan could have complained about Global Outlook DH being in 'tools' at that point if he had wished.) The system, as you might guess, is intended to minimize the amount of work done by the volunteers on our end over Christmas and New Year periods. Entirely selfish, I must admit.

However, for many people (dare I say "most people"?) any awards

...

imply that the best in something is being publicly recognised by a community of experts or consumers or whatever.

That is precisely what the DH Awards aren't doing -- the nominated resources and the winners in any category aren't determined by some shadowy oligarchy who understands DH as experts, but by entirely open nomination and open voting.

Awareness seems

...

to me to be a positive, but secondary consequence. Many public reactions to the DH Awards expressed the sentiment that the Awards were creating a "celebrity" culture around DH. It might be possible that you are underestimating the reputational element of the DH Awards.

I understand people think that, and why, but so far disagree. If we look at the winners and runners-up from last year none of them are what I would view as DH Celebrities. http://dhawards.org/dhawards2012/results/ Omeka and DH Now are both certainly well respected but I don't think count as 'celebrities'? I don't know. The others I don't think have had any particular lasting glory because of it. I believe CEISMIC (winning in the Public Audiences category) was perhaps unusual in forwarding the voting announcement to their entire alumni mailing list. The benefit there is not only do those alumni who may know nothing about DH find out about that project but have learned that there are all those other DH projects out there. I've definitely received feedback that indicates both DH and non-DH people alike have found new resources entirely because someone had nominated them. To me this is the real underlying benefit and one of the reasons I had the idea to do this many years ago (and then sat on the idea for many years assuming someone else more important would do it).

I'm not entirely convinced that having some DH 'celebrities' is entirely a bad thing (there are certainly bad aspects to that), but any academic field has their 'rock star' performers and this has both good and bad effects on the field. I'm very pleased if in just over one year a grass-roots entirely open DH awareness activity has gone from a casual musing about whether I should do something that first occurred to me when the first Robert Busa award was handed out to something with such an effect. (Though hopefully without being overly or additionally divisive.)

My intention when voting was precisely to assess them properly

...

and make an informed decision. Maybe I shouldn't have done this? I feel really stupid now for having taken this so seriously when it fact it wasn't. Logically, if I wanted to make an informed decision, I needed the time to do it, and this is I why I suggested that it would be nice if it were stated more clearly that one can only vote for one category and that's it (however, projects nominated under just one category are a fair number deserving proper assessment in my view).

I've added a note like this to the form. Hopefully that will clarify it.

Perhaps this text could be edited that the projects *nominated*

...

are already being recognised for their excellence, talent and expertise? As currently written it suggests to me that the projects that are deemed "excellent" are those who win. If you don't win, you were not considered "excellent" by the community of voters.

Maybe 'excellent' and 'excellence' was a poor choice of words. This is difficult, of course, because we make no filtering based on quality. (To do so would turn us into the shadowy oligarchy I mentioned above.) I've edited the front page and tag line and would (offlist) appreciate any comments or suggested improvements.

You have said in your reply that in order to assess which

...

projects are 'the best' (often interpreted as a synonym of "excellent") the process would "necessitate individuals vote who actually could assess these properly and make informed decisions", and that "since it is open voting, I agree that this is unlikely." It is my view that as currently phrased the information around the DH Awards gives the impression that the intention is to reflect informed decisions from the DH community in order to recognize excellence. I personally don't think the obstacle to this is the open voting, but the way it has been implemented. Of course there are many positives in the way it's been implemented, but our focus here is brainstorming how it could be done better by sharing our feedback as users.

I'm happy to receive (offlist) suggested changes to the way it is now expressed. I've already changed the tagline.

I am posing these issues with a constructive mindset.

...

That is appreciated. I am taking them that way.

I understand you have worked very hard on the DH Awards and it must

...

be hard not to feel defensive. I know what it's like when one unleashes a project onto the world and then the world seems only to complain.

I'm trying not to be defensive... all of the suggestions I've received here on GO:DH have been extremely useful. (Though I do feel we've wandered away from the 'how to encourage more non-English projects to submit' topic so should probably stop *abusing* the list as my own little focus group!) It only bothers me a little when people say things which aren't true and especially that the FAQ clearly explains.

Like my colleagues who have participated in this

...

thread we have shared our feedback honestly and with the best of intentions. I would hate it if you take our feedback personally.

I'm not taking it personally. I've tried my best to make it open, fair, transparent, and useful. It is an experiment which seems to be more beneficial than not. As long as it feels that way (and doesn't become too much of a burden) I intend to keep doing it. If loads of people I know in DH were telling me it was a bad idea, I might stop.

If one takes the time to share this feedback is because we

...

believe the project is important; it might even be more important for others than what you as its creator might imagine.

I can understand that it is important (which of course feels weird for me), but mostly for the opportunity it gives less well-known projects to be highlighted. It is not meant to be in competition with the awards by other organisations. (See note about this on the FAQ for this year.)

As I said above, I've probably abused this list enough. But I'm more than happy to continue this discussion off-list.

Many thanks for the thoughtful feedback!

-James

-- Dr James Cummings, James.Cummings@it.ox.ac.uk Academic IT Services, University of Oxford

Thank you all for an amazing and informative thread! I've followed it closely, but am just replying now.

I certainly don't think the discussion has "outstayed its welcome" and hope to see more exchange on these issues - though not necessarily in the context of DH awards - in this and other threads!

Cheers! Élika

*--Elika Ortega, Ph.D.Postdoctoral FellowCulturePlex Lab | Department of Modern LanguagesWestern University | University College 114H@elikaortega | http://lectoresdeficcion.blogs.cultureplex.ca/ http://lectoresdeficcion.blogs.cultureplex.ca/+1 519 661 2111 ext. 82822*

On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 8:01 AM, James Cummings James.Cummings@it.ox.ac.ukwrote:

On 05/02/14 12:54, Ernesto Priego wrote:

...

Thank you for your reply, James. I don't feel we were abusing the list to discuss these matters related to the DH Awards. This thread is titled DH Awards after all. Replies are read by all members so everyone is part of the conversation. After all what we are discussing is very relevant for this discussion group as it has to do with the visiblity of research and about how it is perceived, received, categorised, recognised.

Oh certainly... if people really *wish* to keep discussing it here I'm more than happy to. Just thought that the thread might be overstaying its welcome, so to speak. For this mailing list I was more concerned with the suggestions on how to improve participation by non-anglo based projects. (Which I think I've got now, but happy as always to receive more.)

I just didn't want to annoy people with constant discussion of this rather than global outlook in DH. :-) Happy to continue on or off list.

Best,

-James

-- Dr James Cummings, James.Cummings@it.ox.ac.uk Academic IT Services, University of Oxford

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I put GO::DH in tools because I really missed an "other" category, so I wouldn't complain beyond saying there should be an other category (and that would be a mild complaint: having been on the receiving end of complaints before, let me emphasise that I think DHAwards is a great achievement, creating value out of nothing on a budget of close to or exactly 0). It didn't seem like it was for fun, or that it was not-in-English, or that it was a mobilisation effort (i.e. public-facing). I figured in an imperfect world, a Community of Practice is sort of a tool if no better category exists. It fit the narrative definition, anyway.

And all the members of this list can vote for it and we will be the one tool to rule them all. Mwah hah hah!

On 14-02-05 04:41 AM, James Cummings wrote:

On 05/02/14 09:59, Ernesto Priego wrote:

...

Hi James,

I gave you my feedback as a user. It's not that I found the lack of links on the form "problematic", I said I wished there had been links on the actual form. As someone who works online every day, having to refer back to different tabs/pages always means extra labour. When you accumulate them, clicks are time and effort. Perhaps I am very slow and it's just me who felt I needed to refer back to the form to remember what it was exactly I was voting for.

And thanks for your feedback, it is really appreciated. I'll investigate better ways to do it for next year. Using google forms buys all sorts of other benefits, but maybe there is a way I can put links into the selections.

...

You are right that the form does not have all the fields as 'required'. This is in technical, database terms. If I am presented with a form, I want to complete it all, even if some questions in it are not compulsory. Instead of suggesting a user is wrong for having perceived the whole form had to be completed, perhaps an indicative text or a different design would help avoid this misconception? https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1gDL-FR6r6il8uhMGcRN2ocjLoiWqEI2Fs06DnAYmbCc...

I suppose it isn't entirely a misconception: the intent, after all, is to get people to know that these other projects exist. However, very many of the ballots do not vote in each category. I've updated the form.

...

I am missing the point as an active, informed member of the DH community, then. I did never suggest that the DH Awards are offering some accurate measure of the 'best', I was suggesting that allowing voters to categorise the nominated projects *could* be an alternative to pre-categorising the projects in advance.

Oh, sorry, I misunderstood. Currently the categorisation is done by the person nominating the resource -- where multiple nominations come in for a single resource but in multiple categories, then the nominations committee might make a decision for one or the other. But generally we try to leave it where it was nominated. The owners of the successfully nominated resources are emailed to receive feedback on whether they agree to stand, we're linking to the right place, or indeed if they think it is in the wrong category. However, we work on assumed agreement and if they don't email back we will assume there is no problem. (So Dan could have complained about Global Outlook DH being in 'tools' at that point if he had wished.) The system, as you might guess, is intended to minimize the amount of work done by the volunteers on our end over Christmas and New Year periods. Entirely selfish, I must admit.

...

However, for many people (dare I say "most people"?) any awards imply that the best in something is being publicly recognised by a community of experts or consumers or whatever.

That is precisely what the DH Awards aren't doing -- the nominated resources and the winners in any category aren't determined by some shadowy oligarchy who understands DH as experts, but by entirely open nomination and open voting.

...

Awareness seems to me to be a positive, but secondary consequence. Many public reactions to the DH Awards expressed the sentiment that the Awards were creating a "celebrity" culture around DH. It might be possible that you are underestimating the reputational element of the DH Awards.

I understand people think that, and why, but so far disagree. If we look at the winners and runners-up from last year none of them are what I would view as DH Celebrities. http://dhawards.org/dhawards2012/results/ Omeka and DH Now are both certainly well respected but I don't think count as 'celebrities'? I don't know. The others I don't think have had any particular lasting glory because of it. I believe CEISMIC (winning in the Public Audiences category) was perhaps unusual in forwarding the voting announcement to their entire alumni mailing list. The benefit there is not only do those alumni who may know nothing about DH find out about that project but have learned that there are all those other DH projects out there. I've definitely received feedback that indicates both DH and non-DH people alike have found new resources entirely because someone had nominated them. To me this is the real underlying benefit and one of the reasons I had the idea to do this many years ago (and then sat on the idea for many years assuming someone else more important would do it).

I'm not entirely convinced that having some DH 'celebrities' is entirely a bad thing (there are certainly bad aspects to that), but any academic field has their 'rock star' performers and this has both good and bad effects on the field. I'm very pleased if in just over one year a grass-roots entirely open DH awareness activity has gone from a casual musing about whether I should do something that first occurred to me when the first Robert Busa award was handed out to something with such an effect. (Though hopefully without being overly or additionally divisive.)

...

My intention when voting was precisely to assess them properly and make an informed decision. Maybe I shouldn't have done this? I feel really stupid now for having taken this so seriously when it fact it wasn't. Logically, if I wanted to make an informed decision, I needed the time to do it, and this is I why I suggested that it would be nice if it were stated more clearly that one can only vote for one category and that's it (however, projects nominated under just one category are a fair number deserving proper assessment in my view).

I've added a note like this to the form. Hopefully that will clarify it.

...

Perhaps this text could be edited that the projects *nominated* are already being recognised for their excellence, talent and expertise? As currently written it suggests to me that the projects that are deemed "excellent" are those who win. If you don't win, you were not considered "excellent" by the community of voters.

Maybe 'excellent' and 'excellence' was a poor choice of words. This is difficult, of course, because we make no filtering based on quality. (To do so would turn us into the shadowy oligarchy I mentioned above.) I've edited the front page and tag line and would (offlist) appreciate any comments or suggested improvements.

...

You have said in your reply that in order to assess which projects are 'the best' (often interpreted as a synonym of "excellent") the process would "necessitate individuals vote who actually could assess these properly and make informed decisions", and that "since it is open voting, I agree that this is unlikely." It is my view that as currently phrased the information around the DH Awards gives the impression that the intention is to reflect informed decisions from the DH community in order to recognize excellence. I personally don't think the obstacle to this is the open voting, but the way it has been implemented. Of course there are many positives in the way it's been implemented, but our focus here is brainstorming how it could be done better by sharing our feedback as users.

I'm happy to receive (offlist) suggested changes to the way it is now expressed. I've already changed the tagline.

...

I am posing these issues with a constructive mindset.

That is appreciated. I am taking them that way.

...

I understand you have worked very hard on the DH Awards and it must be hard not to feel defensive. I know what it's like when one unleashes a project onto the world and then the world seems only to complain.

I'm trying not to be defensive... all of the suggestions I've received here on GO:DH have been extremely useful. (Though I do feel we've wandered away from the 'how to encourage more non-English projects to submit' topic so should probably stop *abusing* the list as my own little focus group!) It only bothers me a little when people say things which aren't true and especially that the FAQ clearly explains.

...

Like my colleagues who have participated in this thread we have shared our feedback honestly and with the best of intentions. I would hate it if you take our feedback personally.

I'm not taking it personally. I've tried my best to make it open, fair, transparent, and useful. It is an experiment which seems to be more beneficial than not. As long as it feels that way (and doesn't become too much of a burden) I intend to keep doing it. If loads of people I know in DH were telling me it was a bad idea, I might stop.

...

If one takes the time to share this feedback is because we believe the project is important; it might even be more important for others than what you as its creator might imagine.

I can understand that it is important (which of course feels weird for me), but mostly for the opportunity it gives less well-known projects to be highlighted. It is not meant to be in competition with the awards by other organisations. (See note about this on the FAQ for this year.)

As I said above, I've probably abused this list enough. But I'm more than happy to continue this discussion off-list.

Many thanks for the thoughtful feedback!

-James

On 14-02-05 10:17 AM, James Cummings wrote:

On 05/02/14 16:52, Daniel O'Donnell wrote:

...

I put GO::DH in tools because I really missed an "other" category, so I wouldn't complain beyond saying there should be an other category

Whereas I would have just not nominated it because it didn't really fit any of the categories. I don't think the categories *should* be all encompassing of DH. Partly because that is impossible, partly because voters would have even more choices, and partly because it would need an 'other' category which would then just become a repository for highly heterogeneous materials. So voting in that category would be comparing apples and elephants, rather than just the apples and oranges that are compared in the current categories.

Wow! That seems to me to be a pretty aggressive stance.

Basically, that advice would reduce to "DHAwards is an awards programme for the type of things we (the organisers) decide represent DH. If your project doesn't fit our categories, it means we are not interested in it and our advice would be to go away." In other words, it would suggest something that is not an open competition at all, but an editors' choice award with a public voting round. That advice, coupled with a single year eligibility criteria, would mean that the project is as much about hiding projects from view (by excluding them categorically) as bringing other ones to the fore.

I'm sure that's /not/ what the actual goal is, but it would certainly be an unintended effect of "I wouldn't nominate it if the category isn't there." It strongly suggests that the categories are about trying to define the field in exclusionary terms as much as celebrate it. It also seems to me to be a recipe for missing innovation since it implies that the organisers can anticipate what is important in the discipline. Even if we assume, as I'm sure has to be the case, that this is not the original goal, that kind of exclusion does seem to be an unavoidable result of the approach.

I'm afraid in that case, I have to agree with Ernesto's criticism. The award implicitly seems to claim to be a very different thing than it actually, in practice, is. Its name and rhetoric imply that it is about celebrating the range of of practice in DH. The advice not to nominate a project if it doesn't fit the proposed categories, however, implies that it is really about celebrating whatever subset of DH the organisers think is important. That just seems really dangerous.

I hate to say it, because I still think it is a great and elegant idea at heart, but I don't think I can support a competition that seems to be willing to put its thumb on the scale like that. I thought that the category issue was growing pains coupled with an unfortunate one year eligibility period (if the eligibility were longer, you could presumably wait until a suitable category was proposed). But if the categories are /meant/ to be exclusionary and the fact that projects fall between the category cracks is not an accident but evidence that they should not be considered, then I think it may do more harm than good.

I'm really sorry to come to that conclusion, because it really is an initiative I want to support and think is good. But I think this may be showing that the category issue is actually maybe a fundamental thing.

...

(and that would be a mild complaint: having been on the receiving end of complaints before, let me emphasise that I think DHAwards is a great achievement, creating value out of nothing on a budget of close to or exactly 0).

For those interested the technical setup, dhawards.org is a mirror of a similarly named sub-domain on my dreamhost.com fully-hosted personal domain. It just mirrors the sub-domain DNS and so it appears at that address but is hosted at the subdomain. Thus the only 'cost' is the domain name registration as part of my dreamhost account. If one was to cost the time... well you don't want to know. I would estimate that any individual member of the nominations committee who actively contributes to the debates and reviewing of the nominations, and advertises it, is probably donating a couple full days of work overall. As the one creating the spreadsheets, anonymising the nominations, setting up the site, forms, prodding the committee, emailing nominated resources, answering feedback, cleansing and tallying votes, etc. I probably spend about 1-2 weeks worth of time. I should probably come up with a slightly better system for display and review of the nominated resources -- currently people mark their votes/notes in a google spreadsheet. (suggestions appreciated.)

And this is why I don't like where the category discussion is leading my thinking, anyway. We should be thankful for the initiative and the effort.

...

It didn't seem like it was for fun, or that it was not-in-English, or that it was a mobilisation effort (i.e. public-facing). I figured in an imperfect world, a Community of Practice is sort of a tool if no better category exists. It fit the narrative definition, anyway.

I could see an argument for Public Audiences (erm, but not _really_ by the definition). But again, we decided to err on the side of including it. But yes, if we had a 'Community of Practice' category this coming year, then it would miss out...not having been created in that year. (As others have argued here.)

...

And all the members of this list can vote for it and we will be the one tool to rule them all. Mwah hah hah!

Perhaps. I probably shouldn't note this (since it is probably unfair on the others in that category) but you are currently the second runner-up. But that people have seen it, voted for it, learned about it, is hopefully the real benefit. But also I've not gone through a removed duplicate voters yet, so someone who votes for you under lots of different accounts or the same account many times may lower your score. ;-)

I actually might have accidentally voted twice.

Since we're not a tool in the classic sense (<northAmericanDialectJokeAlert>well my brothers often argued that I was</northAmericanDialectJokeAlert>), it wouldn't surprise me if we don't win. And indeed, there are some great tools there, in the more normal sense, that deserve to.

I'm being critical above, but really want to emphasise that I think it is a great initiative and I am grateful to you for the work you put into it. I do think that category issue (and/or the eligibility period) is going to have to be addressed if it isn't going to end up marginalising itself. But I really want it to succeed.

-James

I'd like to stress the whole time that I think this is a worthy initiative, that I think we should be grateful to James and others who were responsible for thinking it up, and to the committee for their efforts. It is not nice to be on the receiving end of criticism, but I think we should see this whole project as an example of the DH ethos of progress by screwing around. In other words, we're farther along because this exists--even if we think we see some flaws--that if it didn't exist. And we're finding these flaws (if that's what they are /because/ the project exists.

James lays down a reasonable challenge: what would you do?r eligib

I think personally, I'd implement two changes for sure independent of any debate about the fitness of specific categories.

1. I'd increase the eligibility period for most categories to 2, 3 or 5 years. 2. I would include an "open" category, even at the risk of it becoming unwieldy

I'd do (1) because I think the one year limit is creating some of the pressure that is causing the trouble. Marin and I both reacted to the one year eligibility in different ways. And a calendar year is a rough kind of schedule. I counted GO::DH as being a 2013 thing because that is when we started with the executive, got permission to call ourselves and ADHO SIG, and so on. But we set the mailing list up and started recruiting in very late 2012--meaning you could have considered us as actually being too old and instead eligible for the 2012 awards--on the basis of a couple of weeks work.

But more importantly, a year eligibility means you have one chance to hit the categories: a larger eligibility period would allow a rotating set of categories, for example, and reduce the unintentional exclusions or examples of category abuse. I suppose if the categories didn't cause trouble, as we've been arguing, then you might be able to use a single year (though you still end up with the problem of the project that starts at the beginning of December and is too young for this year's award and ineligible for any subsequent ones.

I'd do (2) because DH is simply a highly innovative field and there is no way you can guess what categories are going to be important. And if you can't guess and have no flexibility, the net result is going to be (inadvertently) defining and exclusionary.

I don't think that you should just have a single award (I'm not against categories at all). But I think you need a catch all. And then I'd say use some of our standard disciplinary categories: best edition, best popularisation of visualisation, best integration of multimedia, best article or blog, best journal, (or even better than "best" maybe "most innovative" for each category). I'm not sure of exactly what those categories might be, yet, but if you had an open category and a couple of years' eligibility, you could experiment without inadvertently excluding anybody.

I confess I would have included a "non English category" before my experience with GO::DH. Now I wouldn't. I might experiment with regional categories, perhaps focussing on subject matter or something (best project focussing on South America, best project focussing on North America, and so on), but I'm not 100% sure that's a good idea. But I think a longer eligibility period and open category might take the risk out.

Anyway, as I've said all along, I think it is a very worthwhile initiative and I'm grateful for it. I think this discussion might have exposed some interesting and unforeseen (and even potentially offputting) implications, but that doesn't mean the idea was wrong or that we should be angry about it. People are doing there best and this is certainly food for thought IMO.

Now maybe I'll be quiet. ;-)

-dan

On 14-02-05 01:15 PM, James Cummings wrote:

On 05/02/14 19:23, Daniel O'Donnell wrote:

...

Wow! That seems to me to be a pretty aggressive stance.

Hrrm. It isn't intended as such.

...

Basically, that advice would reduce to "DHAwards is an awards programme for the type of things we (the organisers) decide represent DH. If your project doesn't fit our categories, it means we are not interested in it and our advice would be to go away." In other words, it would suggest something that is not an open competition at all, but an editors' choice award with a public voting round. That advice, coupled with a single year eligibility criteria, would mean that the project is as much about hiding projects from view (by excluding them categorically) as bringing other ones to the fore.

Not at all! The problem is that if we have either many many categories for everything, or one category for 'everything else we didn't think of' then I suspect the number of resources nominated will become unmanageable. The limited categories, and limited year, are all an attempt to make this something that is possible to do. If we have to have any type of DH activity (which could be *vast*) or any year of activity (also *vast*) then we just simply would not be to run this activity. I'm certainly not trying to exclude any particular category of DH activity... that is just a necessary side effect.

...

I'm sure that's /not/ what the actual goal is, but it would certainly be an unintended effect of "I wouldn't nominate it if the category isn't there."

That might have been a bit of a flippant response.

...

It strongly suggests that the categories are about trying to define the field in exclusionary terms as much as celebrate it. It also seems to me to be a recipe for missing innovation since it implies that the organisers can anticipate what is important in the discipline.

Erm no, I think that isn't the case as well. We certainly don't know every field in DH nor would expect to. Each year I've asked for feedback and especially made a note of suggestions for categories. I didn't receive many last year (more confirmation of particular categories -- people liked the 'fun' and 'viz' categories), this year there has been more suggestions of additional categories and if the nominations committee routinely ignored the suggestion of a particular topic then it would be being exclusionary. If you have categories of DH work you'd like to see highlighted, then I'm happy to report back those suggestions. I'll try toencourage feedback when announcing the results, or point to a survey. Moreover the categories we have are not really about particular topics of DH work, but a mix of modalities of working and target audiences.

...

Even if we assume, as I'm sure has to be the case, that this is not the original goal, that kind of exclusion does seem to be an unavoidable result of the approach.

If you have another approach that allows open nomination and open voting in an easy manner I'd like to hear it.

...

I'm afraid in that case, I have to agree with Ernesto's criticism. The award implicitly seems to claim to be a very different thing than it actually, in practice, is. Its name and rhetoric imply that it is about celebrating the range of of practice in DH. The advice not to nominate a project if it doesn't fit the proposed categories, however, implies that it is really about celebrating whatever subset of DH the organisers think is important. That just seems really dangerous.

I'm sorry, I still feel it is about celebrating _a_ range of practice in DH. But I just don't think we can celebrate an unlimited range. We can change what is covered by that range each year.

...

I hate to say it, because I still think it is a great and elegant idea at heart, but I don't think I can support a competition that seems to be willing to put its thumb on the scale like that.

I'm sorry you feel like that, it certainly isn't our intention.

...

I thought that the category issue was growing pains coupled with an unfortunate one year eligibility period (if the eligibility were longer, you could presumably wait until a suitable category was proposed). But if the categories are /meant/ to be exclusionary and the fact that projects fall between the category cracks is not an accident but evidence that they should not be considered, then I think it may do more harm than good.

If the awards covered multiple years, then why would you repeat them every year? Surely you'd have to have them only every 5 years or something and then also be able to have a vast number of categories. That seems more detrimental to me for something intended as a DH awareness activity. It is not meant to encapsulate the entirety of DH, just some small segments of it for that year.

...

I'm really sorry to come to that conclusion, because it really is an initiative I want to support and think is good. But I think this may be showing that the category issue is actually maybe a fundamental thing.

I would be interested in proposed solutions. If you *have* to have categories, then which would you have and why? If you have to only have a set number, (we could maybe increase by 1 or 2) then which would you not include?

...

I actually might have accidentally voted twice.

Your ballot will be rationalised if you only voted twice. (I'll take the common elements). If you voted hundreds of times all of them will be removed.

...

Since we're not a tool in the classic sense (<northAmericanDialectJokeAlert>well my brothers often argued that I was</northAmericanDialectJokeAlert>), it wouldn't surprise me if we don't win. And indeed, there are some great tools there, in the more normal sense, that deserve to.

Yes, I try never to express my opinions over which nominations should win in which categories. I also don't vote, or nominate any projects I'm involved in. (A project I was very tangentially involved in was nominated but I don't think there was any conflict.) This doesn't (and shouldn't) hold true for the rest of the nomination committee however, as long as their nominations are treated fairly.

...

I'm being critical above, but really want to emphasise that I think it is a great initiative and I am grateful to you for the work you put into it. I do think that category issue (and/or the eligibility period) is going to have to be addressed if it isn't going to end up marginalising itself. But I really want it to succeed.

I'm happy to receive your proposals for modifications remembering the limited time that can be given to it. I think it is best to have annual awards because there is an annual chance to remind people of DH resources. I suppose that could be annually for the last 2 years or something... but that seems problematic in other ways. I think we need to have categories (to get multiple winners) and that we can't have unlimited categories. If you want to sketch out how you'd run it I'm sure I could find similar deficiencies...but I am interested to get the best/fairest system possible.

-James

Dear all,

In a way, I am glad that Dan has reached such a sad conclusion. As some of us have been saying for a while, many things in DH work like this and people who do not fit certain standards, especially those who lack the ability to communicate in English, are excluded. One thing that I find interesting about James´ reply is that it makes it clear that there is no malice involved: the exclusion is procedural and follows very concrete guidelines. You know, just like sitting at the back of the bus if you are black and it is 1960. What is worse here is that the people in power believe to be doing the right thing by following exclusionary guidelines that were created with the best of intentions. While I would love to call for a revolution, I am also aware that it might not solve anything. Instead, I suggest that everyone on this list goes to vote at the DH awards.

http://dhawards.org/dhawards2013/voting/

My suggestion (and it is only a suggestion) is to log your protest there and, if I were you, I would not vote in every category. Protest by voting only in the Best DH contribution not in the English language and vote for GO:DH in the Best DH tool or suite of tools (or Best Project that could not fit any of the regular categories). Let them know that we exist or, as put by Mario Benedetti “El sur también existe."

BB

On 5 Feb 2014, at 13:23, Daniel O'Donnell <daniel.odonnell@uleth.camailto:daniel.odonnell@uleth.ca> wrote:

Whereas I would have just not nominated it because it didn't really fit any of the categories. I don't think the categories *should* be all encompassing of DH. Partly because that is impossible, partly because voters would have even more choices, and partly because it would need an 'other' category which would then just become a repository for highly heterogeneous materials. So voting in that category would be comparing apples and elephants, rather than just the apples and oranges that are compared in the current categories. Wow! That seems to me to be a pretty aggressive stance.

Basically, that advice would reduce to "DHAwards is an awards programme for the type of things we (the organisers) decide represent DH. If your project doesn't fit our categories, it means we are not interested in it and our advice would be to go away." In other words, it would suggest something that is not an open competition at all, but an editors' choice award with a public voting round. That advice, coupled with a single year eligibility criteria, would mean that the project is as much about hiding projects from view (by excluding them categorically) as bringing other ones to the fore.

I'm sure that's not what the actual goal is, but it would certainly be an unintended effect of "I wouldn't nominate it if the category isn't there." It strongly suggests that the categories are about trying to define the field in exclusionary terms as much as celebrate it. It also seems to me to be a recipe for missing innovation since it implies that the organisers can anticipate what is important in the discipline. Even if we assume, as I'm sure has to be the case, that this is not the original goal, that kind of exclusion does seem to be an unavoidable result of the approach.

I'm afraid in that case, I have to agree with Ernesto's criticism. The award implicitly seems to claim to be a very different thing than it actually, in practice, is. Its name and rhetoric imply that it is about celebrating the range of of practice in DH. The advice not to nominate a project if it doesn't fit the proposed categories, however, implies that it is really about celebrating whatever subset of DH the organisers think is important. That just seems really dangerous.

I hate to say it, because I still think it is a great and elegant idea at heart, but I don't think I can support a competition that seems to be willing to put its thumb on the scale like that. I thought that the category issue was growing pains coupled with an unfortunate one year eligibility period (if the eligibility were longer, you could presumably wait until a suitable category was proposed). But if the categories are meant to be exclusionary and the fact that projects fall between the category cracks is not an accident but evidence that they should not be considered, then I think it may do more harm than good.

I'm really sorry to come to that conclusion, because it really is an initiative I want to support and think is good. But I think this may be showing that the category issue is actually maybe a fundamental thing.

On 05/02/14 21:47, Hugh Cayless wrote:

[De-lurking] I will just say, if you do this, please do not vote for Papyri.info. While it may technically squeeze into this category because of its non-English content and because it hosts data from a couple of projects with other main languages, it is based in the U.S.A. and its primary language is English. So don’t do it as a protest vote. I say this as the lead developer of the project :-).

Hi Hugh. That was another project which was debated by the nominations committee, while it didn't fit the spirit of the category it did technically. I did email you (from james@dhawards.org) and give you several days to withdraw from the competition. I'm sorry if you didn't have enough time to respond and ask not to stand. (Some other resources did at least.)

-James

Estoy con Bárbara

My suggestion would be to eliminate the non-English category and to make a conscious effort to widen the spectrum of submissions. Providing clear guidelines of what the committee is looking for (up to date sites, new developments, classics) is absolutely necessary.

Me pregunto si habrá algo en Cuba que pueda nominar en 2015...

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