When I went to the history and discussion tabs of Wikipedia history entries—namely, those of the Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the Gallipoli Campaign, and the Boxer Rebellion—I saw a common theme of conversation around sources. Some users expressed concerns about sources being outdated, too one-sided, or inaccurate. I think it is important that these kinds of conversations are being had, because considering the validity and nuances of sources is a significant part of dealing with history. Regarding the weapon used in Ferdinand’s assassination, one user noticed an inconsistency between the article about the asssassination, which claimed the weapon was a Fabrique Nationale model 1910 .32 caliber pistole, but the article about that kind of pistol claims it was inaccurately attributed to the assassination. Through this example, I can see how the community works together to find errors and seek to find answers and solutions. However, I also saw one user call attention to trolling in the article on the Boxer Rebellion, in which foreign casualties were listed as over 50 billion and allusions to a video game were made. The ability for anyone to edit an article is both a benefit and a drawback of Wikipedia. Still, it was interesting to see insight into how the Wikipedia community works and the kinds of discussions they have.
Since our mission is to collect sources and make information about UMW’s time as part of UVA and the history of UMW’s name changes accessible in one location for those who are interested, I think that our work should be able to be used by others for their research. Perhaps the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike CC BY-NC-SA license would work best, because it allows others to “remix, adapt, and build upon” our work non-commercially with credit, according to Creative Commons’ license descriptions. For our project, we will need to consider copyright for the work of others we include in the website, particulary regarding photographs. We have not yet decided how we want to implement photographs and which photographs we would want to use, but we are considering looking into whether the UMW archives have a collection of old photographs of the college from the time we are researching. Regardless, we will need to ensure to properly credit and cite the photos, and to ensure that the photographs are under a license that allows us to use them.