Lecture Avery Dame-Griff
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Lecture Avery Dame-Griff
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Like this is me, Margarita
I’m Lilian
I’m Tommaso
Alex here
Jules
Avery
Gijs: to be clear. We ask you to take notes during the presentation in this shared document.
Avery is on the West Coast. It’s 6am local time.
Avery can talk about web archiving in the Q+A, but will focus more on digital communities in this presentation
Introduction
Avery Dame-Griff is a Lecturer in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Gonzaga University and author of The Two Revolutions: A History of the Transgender Internet (2023). He founded and serves as primary curator of the Queer Digital History Project, an independent community history project cataloging and archiving pre-2010 LGBTQ spaces online. Based on this experience, Avery shared his experience with the (collective) act of archiving online activity, why it matters, and what it means to archive typically private content like emails or messages on boards.
The Queer Digital History Project (QDHP)
The Queer Digital History Project (QDHP) archives queer web history. From the outset of the early internet, English was the primary language for communication.
Not always have been using the same internet. Minitel famous example of national video network.
–> What people talk about, how and why.
In early days of internet exhilirating to communicate long distance through email.
in the late 80s and early 90s, email offered a safe space for communication
CDForum example of mailing list where
archiving average user communcation, not well known people or activists
The archive is very complicated
People keep rights to their messages. List started in 1988. At time different ideas of privacy.
Messages posted to the list were expected to be private.
quoteit was very common to republish things that you encountered online in community newsletters
The Key issues:
* The collaborative nature of digital communities
* Question of publicness, privacy, access and right to be forgotten.
* questionPeople often change their mind over time - link with 'the right to be forgotten'? Is it okay to use what people have written a long time ago and interpret it as something they find important, even though now they might no longer have the same perspective? #ethics
* the way people felt about their messages might be very different today then when they first posted, and they might want them to be forgotten and erased completely
*
Messages have been archived by one of the members of the list
Yahoo Groups (launched in 1998) became very popular, especially among queer community. One of the reasons of its popularity was its accessibility. It has:
- Discussion Boards
- File Hosting
- Calendars
- Polls
There were arond 10 million groups on Yahoo Groups
Mid 2000s, they were eclipsed by newer online services like Tumblr.
Became legacy platform. Not driving income for the company. But kept available.
Early 2020 Yahoo groups were (announced to be) taken down, how to preserve them? This project tries to answer this issue
Locating individual posts within the ecosystem of the larger community/ Recognizing poster’s rights (I missed this part it was in the slides)
Authors keep copyright over their messages. While they are also responding to each other. (Can’t just archive a single message)
questionWhat if people reference something outside of the environment their conversation takes place in? Do you archive that as well?
This is an ‘ecosystem’ problem. This makes it complex, because it is e.g. difficult to isolate single messages, or connect them to their wider context.
Web preservation is not only what is visible. It’s also the code, infrastrcture, people’s experiences. Authors have rights to their message, and the right to be forgotten.
Challenge 2: Privacy and Post Content
Yahoo groups had a variety of levels of privacy. Some groups required requests for access.
In (some of) their posts and groups there was very private information like full names and locations and images not meant for a wider audience. Also topics about surgery were discussed. It was not meant for a wider audience.
Posts were considered “publicly private”: Technically it is public. But it feels private (to the author).
How did Avery end up approaching it?
Decide scale, or collection scope: Avery decided to focus on message texts (and not images, etc.)
Avery discussed the idea of “tiered consent”. Identify:
- what are musts?
- what are wants?
As a legacy platform, most users were no longer active on it.
Groups considered for collection: Public, Non-Active Groups: these are groups that Avery contacted and collaborated with to archive
Tried to find community partners > send an email to someone who was .. as moderator. Avery worked with the moderators.
quoteNo one checks their yahoo mail any more.
A way to do it was to use a donation form to collect things like background information
Also included a way to ask for material, like images or texts, to be excluded: right to be forgotten.
the community partner was expected to be able to reflect the wishes of the community
- This is based on best practices for archival practices for indigenous groups
This is not an experimental approach in archiving per se but it is experimental when it come to indgenous gropus
Internet archive > rapid scraping. Getting as much as we can.
In order to address the scope, think about:
- What can you manage, in terms of time, infrastructure, funding, etc?
- What materials are ‘worth’ saving and why?
Rhizome as example for video preservation, an archive of born-digital artworks from 1983 to the present day: https://artbase.rhizome.org/wiki/Main_Page
Avery commented on the tension between getting as much as we can before it all goes away (due to the fleeting nature of digital material, online communities, infrastructures etc.) vs. slower community-oriented practice.
challengesDefinition of public and private are not universal.
interesting-practiceExports originally in json, translated to plain text to make them accessible to the community members.
How to involve the community:
- plan perservation with community involvement from the start
Personal Archives (the case of email)
In the process of defining the scope, think about the kinds of messages that should be saved and how they can be identified?
Important to think about defining public and private, what you are comfortable with being preserved and what private communication should be preserved? What sensitive information might be in your email inbox that should be excluded? When is it ethical to seek consent from other parties?
Example of the laptop of Susan Sontag. Researchers had access to it. But with it also her private emails with Annie Leibovitz.
Examples:
- Have you gotten into contact with Yahoo to provide an export over a scrape.
- Answer from Avery: this kind of preservation technically violates terms of service. Do not work with the ‘corporate host’. They have little interest in the material being preserved. After announcing sunset Yahoo limited API-access to avoid people archiving material. As a user or community you made the thing, but the control is with the company.
- Lilian made the example from Aiden Walker about how the internet archive scrapes public information, but not the more private information, which is also important for understanding the ecosystems of community online and their interconnection
- (Repeated) LLM bot scraping has made it more expensive to keep legacy platforms online. Wondering whether same has happened to Typepad. Time between announcement and taking down was about a month.
- How do you decide what is worth saving? is it based on the stakeholders in the community? Could you give an example of this process for you?
- What do you mean with community involvement “from the start”? What is the start here? To what extent are you still ‘the leader’ of the project? (Thinking about co-creation for example)
- Avery: in an ideal world, try to go to a community from the very beginning of launching the project
reflectionI was thinking about, how making it clear something will be archived might influence what will be there to archive in the end. It made me think of a similar problem often discussed around documentary film making. How does the film crew being present influence what they get to film? Doesn't the archiver by making him or herself visible also influence the content of the archive?
- Thinking about digital communication (such as social media posts or emails), are these born-networked objects individually or collaboratively produced? How do we differentiate between these two categories?
- Follow-up: For collaboratively produced objects, what right do producers have to access these objects? What would that access look like?
- Think about your own email practices. How would you define a “public” email (one that could be archived) versus a “private” email?
- Can a communication be simultaneously public (so, not restricted in terms of who can access it) and private (not intended for all audiences)? If so, how do you make this determination?
- Follow-up: For these kinds of materials, how would you determine what should be archived and who should have access to it?
- Presentation Slides
- Useful practice-related texts:
- [Jace Steiner, A Queer Guide to Personal Digital Archiving]https://lesbianherstoryarchives.org/a-queer-guide-to-personal-digital-archiving/
- [DIY Web Archiving zine] (https://literaturegeek.itch.io/diy-web-archiving-zine)
- Katie Mackinnon, Early Internet Memories zine
- Organizations doing collaborative/participatory/interesting digital archiving
Etherport Workshop
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Workshop Etherport
Introduction
Etherport is a place for experimental, multi-voiced, and non-linear cultural event reports.
Etherport is a tool for cultural organisations to make more experimental, multi-voiced, and non-linear event reports. By integrating the entire process of creating event reports into one tool, it also helps to standardize your event reporting workflow, reducing production workload and clarifying the role division between author(s) and editor.
Workflow integration: All steps in the creation of an event report, from (real-time collaborative) writing to editing and publishing, are integrated in Etherport.
Hybrid publishing: Publishing an event reports on Etherport generates two versions simultaneously: a web version, and a printable .pdf.
One-click design: Both the web version and .pdf of your publication are automatically designed using a template. (It is possible to create your own template, to match the visual identity of your organisation, in CSS.)
Content labeling: Etherport uses a labeling system that allows readers to engage with the event report in a non-linear way based on theme or type of content. This same feature creates links between reports of different events, which makes it easier to nagivate and activate the event report archive.
Content templates: To accomodate custom serialization, it is possible to create pad templates for different types of reports/publications.
Multi-media content: Etherport supports text, images, audio, videos, and timestamps.
Shared infrastructure: Multiple organisations can use the same instance of Etherport. This shared infrastructure can grow into a shared archive of event reports, in which relations between events from different organisations become visible and navigable.
Can I use Etherport?
Etherport functions as an open-source, free-to-use tool developed especially for cultural organizations. It helps to standardize the event reporting workflow, reducing production workload and clarifying the role division between authors and editors. To find out more about the functionalities, watch the introduction video below, or read the Etherport manual.
How was Etherport developed?
Etherport is based on the tool patchwork Ethertoff, which includes Etherpad (text editor), Django (framework), and Paged.js (paged media polyfill). It was developed by Open Source Publishing and the Institute of Network Cultures in the context of the research project Going Hybrid.
Key Terms
Pad: A pad is an online text editing document (such as a GoogleDoc or, in this case, the open-source alternative Etherpad). On the back-end, publications in Etherport consist of pads. Each pad generates a single page on the front end (or ‘static version’). Simple publications may have just one pad (apart from the ‘index’, see below), but they can also be parts (e.g. chapters) of a larger publication.
Index: An index is a special pad of which each publication has one. It functions as the home page (digital version) or as the combined colofon and back-cover (print version) of a publication. In the index, you will typically include an overview of collaborators and a blurb.
Template: When creating a new pad in Etherport, it is possible to select a template. If you select a template, the newly opened pad will not be blank, but it will include pre-structured base content. For instance, the template ‘Event Report’ includes a step-by-step guide for the author who will write the event report. (It is possible to create your own template files, or customize existing templates.)
Folder: The pads in EtherDish are organised in folders (like the files on your computer). EtherDish is programmed to recognize each folder as a separate publication. The content of this publication is the collected content of all pads in the folder.
Root folder: This is the main of the folder system, where all publication folders and master template files are collected. The root folder is also the landing page on the back-end of Ehterport, from where you can navigate to any publication.
Static version or generated version: This is the ‘front end’ or ‘read mode’ version of the digital tool, which is automatically generated and designed. To refresh the static version and preview changes, it is required to regenerate it.
Label: Labels are used to categorize bits of content (typically sentences or paragraphs) as a specific type of content (e.g. quote, opinion). These labels create additional, non-linear pathways throughout a report and between reports on EtherPluck.
Workshop
2. If your device had a personality, what would it be? (Think of: a hoarder, a minimalist, a chaotic archivist)
chaotic accumulator +1
Structural Seeking Archivist (aka Chaotic Archivist)
chaotic archivist
Chaotic hoarder with the wish to properly archive
hoarding archivist
connecting archivist
ager archivist
poradic archivist
3. How can an archive become a dialogue rather than a collection?
comment function where visitors can have conversations about the archived materials
Wonderful question, having the audience/visitors actively participating with the collection and sharing this with (potential) other audience/visitors via comments, videos, audio forms
instead of archiving (just the) content, also interview participants, the audience. Or by creating an archive together with other people
reate a space for storytelling
allow various modalities as non-absolute media and create space for participants-collaborators to expand that accessibility (e.g., sound as physical medium, description, and non-acoustic medium)
come up with ways to discuss the contents and make that a continued commitment (with available resources) if possible
aking the collection accessible through multiple mediums to a broader audience (remote) that can interact with the contents via commenting, referencing, etc. Creating a broader network in which the content can live and relate to more than one collection potentially.
creating ways for people to interact with one another in relation to the content, like commenting on things, creating space for conversation even if it happens across different temporal spans
Creating events around certain parts of the archive
Allow participants to curate the archive, so we can have multiple perspectives on seeing the archive
4. Do you have examples or references from your own practice around the questions brought during the lecture?
*The question of what needs to be archived is coming up a lot/Is it even an archive when there is no curation happening? On the other hand this could lead to blind spots.
uestions of intent - why, what, who
The question of how you can set and embed an intention to archive/preserve from the outset I often find relevant - how do you make this part of it, without being too preoccupied with the “afterlife”, before a project or event has even started/happened.
Since we do a lot of public events with The Hmm, was thinking about how we can take people’s own ideas around privacy into account more when we document an event. Also in our livestream we document comments in the chat (although with anonymous user names), but there is this assumption for most events that since they are public you choose to be documented. But what if we take Avery’s ideas about deciding together (or at least with vital stakeholders) about how much information we want to document. –> an idea of creating a collective consent at the beginning of the event?͢ > this is a nice idea, and would be interesting to think about how to generate consent in this context
I also have to think of the datacenter tour we organised with The Hmm. Usually we livestream our events and publish the entire livestream. Because the datacenter tour was a day long event, it didnt make sense to publish the entire event and there was an audio collective making the report. They didn;t just record parts of the presentations, but also asked the audience questions.
ast and present modes of identifying oneself - how archivists can navigate this, ethics of representation
The question about privacy/the right to be forgotton vs preserving the knowledge for the future generation, if Susan Sontag email archive for example has a right to be forgotten we would have lost a valuable insight in her activism.
5. Are there labels you’d like to add. If so, which?
Maybe something about the infrastructural level of the the archive?
Reference to an external source like a publication/website/…
something like ‘example’ or ‘anecdote’ from the research process? agree with this one
I think ‘links’ could be a nice label, so you can collate all shared links together
oncept - to further knowledge base
**6. Which Group would you like to join or would you prefer to work on your own archive instead? **
- Work individually on your own archive
Julia
Zuraida
Chietra
Jay → I decided to work on how to navigate Etherport :) +1
eg
- Polishing up the report of Avery’s presentation
alex
Lilian
Margarita
Avery
-
Gather references (from your own practice) in a separate pad. See whether links can be made through the labels.
-
Work on one of the labels we defined during Avery’s presentation, together with others in a group. Explore how this label relates to your own practice. Participants can then publish your reflections collectively.
Intent, privacy, right to be forgotten
Tommaso
- Work on the visual style (css)
harlotte
