Tom Abrahamsson Knowledge Base Volunteers Wanted!

CameraQuest

CameraQuest

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Tom A was famous for generously sharing his bountiful photographic knowledge.

We at RFF are fortunate that most of Tom's writings are on RFF.

Tom's thoughts and knowledge are spread over 6071 posts, often overlapping in subject matter and multiple posts.

We are seeking volunteers to work together and organize Tom's writings into the Tom Abrahamsson Knowledge Base.

Tuulikki Abrahamsson has given her blessing to this project, and will own the copyrighted result. Tuulikki will have final edit.

Tom's Knowledge Base will be published on RapidWinder.com, RangeFinderForum.com and CameraQuest.com.

Time will tell if Tom's words are published in book form.

So, if you want to help shape what will be one of photography's best sources, speak up!

This will be a collaborative effort, editing and combining many posts into a working source.

Stephen
 
Are you able to export all posts in one big text file or would the team have to dig through 6000 posts manually?
 
dleyva2 said:
I am interested in collaborating. Please let me know how I can be of help.
Click to expand...

I'd like to help. How would this task be structured?

Tom had some interesting Leica projects, mentioned in the Leica M Compendium by Jonathan Eastland. He mentions the Rapidwinder, the 21mm Super-Angulon goggles, and the M4-3-2, an M4-2 with M3 framelines (picture of it on page 167).
 
Stephen: I would be happy to lend a hand. I think the posts above indicate interest in how to organize a crowd-sourced project like this. Are you imagining a chronological organization of material, or a topic-based "book" with chapters? I would think to publish something out in the world, you'd need consents of Tom's interlocutors as well, because a random post without the back-and-forth of the dialog that RFF encourages might not make as much sense or be of as much value. . . So: color me interested, and like the posters above I'd like to hear more about the shape of things and where individuals wanting to help with a Tom-Wiki might lend a hand.
 
Please describe how Forum members will access this information?

Where there be a scalable database designed to avoid legacy software issues?

Will the solution be able serve other, similar purposes?
 
that would be an amazing resource, and i'd be happy to help. i have an mlis degree, and i'm familiar with creating taxonomies and crowdsourcing classification.
 
folks, this is a new topic to me too - so I am no expert what can be done or the best way to do it.

yes, we can export the posts, but they would still have to be considered in the context of the thread. For instance the M2 was a favorite Tom topic. There might be 20+ posts under a "Leica M2" heading

Working from a common google document source? or ?

I am open to the best way present this info. I was envisioning a searchable html document. Guessing it will be 20 to 30 pages - but that is totally a guess on my part.

Not sure if a database is needed, but what ever works best.

What is the best way do this ?
 
aizan said:
that would be an amazing resource, and i'd be happy to help. i have an mlis degree, and i'm familiar with creating taxonomies and crowdsourcing classification.
Click to expand...

Nice! Should we expand this to:

Calling all (digital) librarians on RFF?
 
why not? :D

what's the scale of the project and the desired presentation? the outcome can be anything from a basic Google Spreadsheet or website to a wiki. they have different interfaces and costs, so it all depends on our resources and how Tuulikki Abrahamsson and the head bartender want to package this information for use.

who's in, and what skills do you have? my technical skills are half-decent but amateur (i.e., i can set up an online forum, but i can't code a new piece of software or write scripts from scratch), and i took several classes on informatics, though that wasn't my specialization in school.
 
I bet there are members who have emails and/or pm messages from Tom. That was how I communicated with him when I had a question. He always replied too. :)
 
Well, I am retired—and from an academic/university life—so can search and compile results wherever the experts point me. Add my name to the busy bees list.
 
Maybe what needs to happen right now is just for us to start posting links to threads or posts we believe would be worthy of inclusion.
 
I guess we should write out a project charter and assign roles. Here’s a list of the volunteers so far:

Benjamin_Marks
BillBingham2
Contarama
dleyva
Peter_Wijninga
rhl-oregon
Rob-F
willie_901

We should also write a project proposal with Stephen and Tuulikki.

After that, we can make a plan and take a look at an export of all of Tom’s posts.
 
There should be a relatively simple way to do this. A listing of Tom’s posts could be created using a search on his member number in the forum database, and then the associated threads that contain those posts could be duplicated and moved into a new forum. Once that is done the threads could be sorted by topic. This would be a static forum/knowledgebase, with no new/continuing posts. New threads in other forums could link/refer to threads in the knowledgebase and of course it would be searchable by the usual methods.
 
This is a very cool idea. He had so much first hand experience with a lot of stuff.

A year or so ago I read through some of Tom's old posts, and it was very informative, but I could only go back 1000 posts or so. I'm sure Steve can work his magic to open up the rest of them.
 
I’d be happy to help.

I’d be happy to help.

I would be happy to help in a way I can. I also should have some older personal emails from Tom and a few photos.
 
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