FactMiners.org - Citizen Science

The FactMiners Green Field in the Participatory History Commons

Jim Salmons — Mon, 09 Jun 2014 19:37:09 +0000

WORK IN PROCESS - NOT YET PUBLISHED

FactMiners: Piercing the Veil and Moving the Bar

Jim Salmons — Mon, 09 Jun 2014 19:35:10 +0000

WORK IN PROCESS - NOT YET PUBLISHED

In this third part of the "FactMiners and the Participatory History Commons" we identify two significant ways that the FactMiners platform will explicitly support and amplify the quality and quantity of Citizen Scientist and Citizen Historian contributions to the Participatory History Commons.

We characterize our first innovation as "piercing the veil" as we strive to provide easy-to-use tools -- such as the FactMiners Fact Cloud Wizard -- to take crowdsource microtasks into the realm of modeling and 'fact mining' the "inner space" or representational meaning of textual and image-based digital collection artifacts.

The second area of FactMiners innovation is about "moving the bar" for what Mia Ridge has characterized as the distinction between professional historian activities and the microtasks of crowdsourced non-professional volunteers within the Participatory History Commons.

In the fourth and final post in this series, 'The FactMiners Green Field in the Participatory History Commons', I'll examine the unique opportunity for FactMiners and The Softalk Apple Project to serve as a 'means-focused' innovation hub while generating its own (ends-based) unique contribution of new data to the History of Science and Technology domain.

What's in a Word? MetaDATA vis-à-vis MetaMODEL

Jim Salmons — Thu, 05 Jun 2014 17:35:13 +0000

To distinguish FactMiners agenda from that of others, let's clearly distinguish these two these terms; metadata and metamodel. Wikipedia interestingly, and I think appropriately, redirects the term 'metamodel' to the page/term 'Metamodeling' which subtly suggests the active and transitional nature of metamodeling as a preparatory step in service to a further goal. That is, we metamodel as a way to gain leverage in subsequent modeling and development activity.

I have a hyper-sensitivity to the metadata/metamodel distinction having spent over twenty-five years as a hardcore Smalltalk software designer/developer. (True Smalltalkers are both, never one or the other.) As a model-oriented Smalltalker, I have learned and experienced the Mind-meld Power of the rigorous application of metamodeling – that is, the power of sharing a commitment to a model that guides and constrains the design of new models. In my 90's era case, these new models were Smalltalk software architectures strictly derived from metamodels. And that's the simplest explanation of what a metamodel is, "a model about models" that we use to build other models.

Here, for example (click to enlarge), is a top-level metamodel roughly derived from my work in the mid-90's on "role-actor executable business models." This model isn't about a specific role-actor model; it captures a shared understanding about how to design and build such agent-based role/actor systems.

Interestingly and relevant to the current discussion, a derivative of this metamodel will be found in the META:Process partition of the FactMiners embedded metamodel subgraph to handle plug-and-play composition of workflows for what Mia refers to in the Participatory History Commons diagram (referenced in Part 1 of this series, and linked here directly) as "typical crowdsourcing microtasks."

Whenever we derive the design of a new model for a specific system from a metamodel like this one, we are guaranteed to get a level of interoperability and tool-sharing "auto-magically" despite the fact that no derived model will necessarily be anything like any other. This is a significant and important feature; near-infinite variety in the generation of instances from the metamodel, yet guaranteed similarities that are traceable to the derivation from the metamodel. And it is this powerful feature that will give the FactMiners game platform its unique power and flexibility.

If I were to characterize my (layperson's) understanding of metadata as routinely referenced by those in the LAM community, it would be that LAM metadata is all about the "model elements" in a metamodel. But metadata in no way supplies the rest of what a metamodel does, which is, to provide a rigorous set of rules and recommendations about how these model elements may be put together.

From what I know so far about Metadatagam.es and Tiltfactor's Metadatagames.org – and it is important to note that these projects are already doing amazing games where FactMiners is just in our formative/design stage – current "LAM metadata" social game designs focus on some variation of 'community tagging' or folksonomy. Depending on the game design and host collections' visitor engagement goals, such tagging gameplay may include solicitation of user-contributed content, such as personal reflections and artifact-inspired storytelling. I've written about this shared interest in "FactMiners: More or Less Folksonomy?" which was my first "open shout-out" to the museum informatics community.

FactMiners is completely on the same page with others as far as our shared interest in contributing to the growing '#LODLAM cloud' (Linked Open Data for Libraries, Archives, and Museums). However, our FactMiners Fact Cloud design and associated platform architecture are unique innovations specific to our project.

FactMiners is building our #LODLAM social gaming platform based on an embedded metamodel subgraph design pattern to create "self-descriptive" graph databases that we call FactMiners Fact Clouds. Our graph database of choice is the Neo4j graph database, but the design pattern is not vendor-specifc. I believe that the combination of this software design pattern plus the uniquely powerful and solution-design-appropriate capabilities of today's property graph database technology will allow FactMiners to move into qualitatively new and different LAM social gaming territory.

In the next part of this series, "Piercing the Veil and Moving the Bar," we'll look at two specific areas where the innovative FactMiners platform can make substantive contributions helping to shape the infrastructure supporting the Participatory History Commons.

Is FactMiners Like Metadatagam.es or Tiltfactor's Metadatagames.org?

Jim Salmons — Wed, 04 Jun 2014 16:43:20 +0000

Pressed for time? The short answer is, "Yes, in all the most general and important ways, and 'No' in the specific way that we are designing our #LODLAM social-gaming platform around an "embedded metamodel subgraph" design pattern within an Open Source stack based on the Neo4j graph database and Structr, the Neo4j-based next-gen CMS and web services framework. This innovative design and associated platform will take FactMiners into qualitatively new LAM social gaming territory."

That quickly said, let me provide some backstory and detail in the first of this multi-part post.

I recently had a "tweet-versation" with Mia Ridge – the Oxford-based, PhD candidate in digital humanities, Open Uni (geospatial, crowdsourcing digitisation); Chair of @ukmcg; into code, UX, history and cultural heritage. I responded to her solicitation of input for her dissertation research survey (the link in her Tweet embedded here is live if you have input to share).

I jumped at the chance to share our experience – especially after visiting her blog and reading her Big Ideas about the Participatory History Commons as summarized in the linked post that served as a companion piece to her recent keynote at the Sharing Is Caring seminar.

Run a crowdsourcing or participatory project in history or cultural heritage? Help me learn from your experience http://t.co/sC3JjYIpTg

— Mia (@mia_out) May 29, 2014

@FactMiners @Softalk_Apple by the way, have you seen http://t.co/uS74wsVr5E and http://t.co/cmq3CUJG3c?

— Mia (@mia_out) June 3, 2014

This post – to which I'll point in Tweet-reply – answers her inquiry and, hopefully, stimulates further conversations and potential collaborations...

So "...have we seen Metadatagam.es or Metadatagames.org?"

Oh absolutely! :-) We're familiar with the amazing fun work of both (Mia's own) Metadatagam.es and the Dartmouth-affiliated Tiltfactor people and projects, as exemplified by their work on Metadatagames.org.

From a Kindred Spirits perspective, all of us (and others doing similar Cultural Heritage social games) are in the same "Serious Fun" Big Tent. Besides sharing many motivational values, there is lots of overlap at the user interaction (UX) and basic game design levels. That is, we're using game dynamics as a motive-force for crowdsourcing activity in response to traditional LAM (Library, Archives, and Museums) digital curation challenges and opportunities. In this sense we all have much to learn and share with each other.

Yet, and this is a good thing I think, each of these and other Cultural Heritage projects take a slightly different road toward the Valhalla land we all see on the horizon, and which Mia has conveniently and effectively characterized as the Participatory History Commons as shown here diagrammatically (click to enlarge this image from Mia's PHC article):

This diagram will be extremely valuable in helping us talk with each other about where and how we see similarities and differences between our projects' goals and methods.

FactMiners: Scientists Say It's a Great Idea!

Jim Salmons — Sun, 26 Jan 2014 20:42:01 +0000

Okay, the headline's unnamed scientists did not specifically say that the idea for the FactMiners social-game ecosystem we're developing in support of The Softalk Apple Project is a great idea. What they are saying is that game-powered crowdsourcing methods are a tremendous resource for doing real and important science research.

In today's world where pure science and many domains of research are financially challenged, getting gamers to have "serious fun" helping with underfunded research activity is a win-win for sure. But beyond creative financing, many scientists are also finding that social games with a "serious fun" side can be a great way to engage the public; a great way to have science be something 'we' do rather than something 'scientists' do 'over there' (and without 'us'). More win-win.

You don't need me to fill you in further, simply check out this exciting article at The Guardian and Observer website, 'How online gamers are solving science's biggest problems'. The column's author, Dara Mohammadi, has thoughtfully provided an excellent overview of this exciting gaming trend and then profiled ten examples with links to on-line games where you can help do serious scientific research by playing games.

This article gives me the proverbial goosebumps. It affirms my personal belief about the potential for the FactMiners social-game ecosystem to be my "pay it forward" tribute in honor and recognition of the importance of Softalk Magazine. This article – and especially the games and associated projects to which it links – provide context for what we're doing here to create the first FactMiners Fact Cloud as a companion to the on-line digital archive of Softalk Magazine. It is also good context to justify the excitement I feel about the ideas captured in the thread of blog posts looking at the potential to create FactMiners game plug-ins to build a Fact Cloud for the million-plus Public Domain Image Collection of the British Library.

If FactMiners sounds like it might be an interesting idea to you, by all means check out this article. In the meantime, I have to get back to writing an entry for the Neo4j's January GraphGist Challenge. I am writing a piece to explore the embedded metamodel subgraph design pattern used for "self-descriptive" Fact Clouds that are part of the FactMiners social-game ecosystem.