VietNamNet Global: Vietnam goes digital to preserve and promote cultural heritage. “On March 28, 2025, the Vietnam Cultural Heritage Conservation Support Fund, the Department of Ethnic Culture, the Institute of Information and Communications Technology, and TikTok signed a cooperation agreement to digitally preserve and promote Vietnam’s cultural heritage. As part of the program titled […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/04/09/vietnamnet-global-vietnam-goes-digital-to-preserve-and-promote-cultural-heritage/

In development and looking for contributions: Signs of the Time, a database of protest signs. I appreciate how much the submission guidelines are designed to protect privacy.

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/04/06/in-development-and-looking-for-contributions-signs-of-the-time/

Rolling Stone UK: Music To Die For: New project uses music to open up conversations about grief. “Music To Die For is a new project built on that connection – between music and memory, loss and love – and it’s asking people to share the soundtrack to their grief. Created by clinical psychologist Dr Hazel Harrison and arts consultant Phillipa Anders, the initiative began during a Britten […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/04/06/music-to-die-for-new-project-uses-music-to-open-up-conversations-about-grief-rolling-stone-uk/

There is an #archive of #protest signs in development here:

https://signsofthetimes.omeka.net/

#Decentralized platform #Vana is letting users own a piece of the #AI models trained on their #data

https://techxplore.com/news/2025-04-decentralized-platform-users-piece-ai.html

#Dublin #Ireland #crowdsourcing #signs #CulturalHeritage #fontography

'Researchers at Trinity College Dublin are calling on the public to help them track down the capital's old street signs to document them before they disappear.

The bilingual green and white signs, which feature the old Irish font Cló Gaelach, date back to the turn of the 20th century and are believed to have been introduced to Dublin as a subtle form of protest against British rule at the time.'

https://www.rte.ie/news/dublin/2025/0331/1504912-dublin-historic-street-signs/

New paper alert: Mapping Noise Pollution Using Modelled and Crowdsourced Urban Noise Data

OPEN ACCESS https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nzg.70002

This study makes a novel contribution by (i) being the first to model traffic noise exposure in a New Zealand city, (ii) mapping Wellington’s traffic noise using both Modelled Noise Data (MND) and Crowd-sourced Noise Data (CND), and (iii) evaluating CND as a reliable alternative or validation source for MND, with a focus on spatial patterns.

https://www.europesays.com/1942249/ How AI Labs Are Tapping Contest Data To Build Smarter Models #AI #Codewars #ContestData #Creativity #crowdsourcing #Data #HumanIntelligence #LLMTraining #ProblemSolving #Topcoder #Wazoku

Bloomberg: Community Notes Can’t Save Social Media From Itself. “Eliminating the rewards for promoting misinformation would go much further than crowdsourcing to clean up social media. But in a social media world of growing incentives to make money in the viral casino, Community Notes is ultimately fighting a losing battle. This column seeks to fully examine how the people behind it are […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/03/19/bloomberg-community-notes-cant-save-social-media-from-itself/

This is Colossal: Who Shot Me? Help Identify the Anonymous Photographer Who Captured 1960s San Francisco. “Between 1966 and 1970, a San Francisco-area photographer captured thousands of images documenting civil rights demonstrations, protests against the Vietnam War, Grateful Dead concerts in Golden Gate Park, and so much more. Their archive is a veritable treasure trove of the era’s […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/03/18/this-is-colossal-who-shot-me-help-identify-the-anonymous-photographer-who-captured-1960s-san-francisco/

Massively Overpowered: The RuneScape Archive Project is paying a $500 bounty to folks who can dig up old versions of OSRS. “The RuneScape Archive Project is hoping to collect older versions than the already old [Old School RuneScape] that’s available now. Regular fans may know the game started from an August 2007 build of the MMORPG, but the operators of the archive are trying to gather […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/03/18/massively-overpowered-the-runescape-archive-project-is-paying-a-500-bounty-to-folks-who-can-dig-up-old-versions-of-osrs/

Organization of American Historians: Federal Employees and Contractors Oral History Project . “Since January 2025, the federal workforce has undergone and continues to experience changes that are unprecedented in recent U.S. history. In response, OAH is launching an oral history initiative to document the experiences of federal workers and federal contractors affected by these shifts. These […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/03/17/organization-of-american-historians-federal-employees-and-contractors-oral-history-project/

Library of Congress Blogs: What’s New Online at the Library of Congress: March 2025. “Interested in learning more about what’s new in the Library of Congress’s digital collections? The Signal shares updates on new additions to our digital collections and we love showing off all the hard work of our colleagues from across the Library. Read on for a sample of what’s been added recently […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/03/16/whats-new-online-at-the-library-of-congress-march-2025-library-of-congress-blogs/

University of North Carolina: Crowdsourcing transforms public health messaging. “The bouncy tune sounds like it’s meant for the dance floor or your Spotify favorites. Then you hear the lyrics. ‘If you feel it in your chest, you need to take some rest. Hypertension. . . Take the pressure, know your levels. Exercise, eat right.’ It’s a public health intervention, embedded in a song and […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/03/14/university-of-north-carolina-crowdsourcing-transforms-public-health-messaging/

A PDF version of The Collective Wisdom Handbook: Perspectives on Crowdsourcing in Cultural Heritage is available from the British Library’s Research Repository: https://doi.org/10.23636/jm0p-yt17

The 'open peer review' version is also still online! https://britishlibrary.pubpub.org/

National Library of Wales: Crowdsourced data enriching Welsh language resources. “The National Library of Wales has been working hard in this space too, crowdsourcing Welsh names for historic sites, improving Wikipedia articles about Welsh places and recording sound clips of local people pronouncing their place names. The Library has made all this data available via Wikidata, a sister project […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/03/10/national-library-of-wales-crowdsourced-data-enriching-welsh-language-resources/

Will try to find time to write this up into a blog post, but was asked a question in the comments about #CrowdSourcing the transcription and correction of historic statutes:

https://statutes.org.uk/site/new-year-new-social-media/#comment-6290

TLDR: #Wikisource is the best place to do it.

How Democracies Die - An Interdisciplinary Inquiry

Brainstorming toward a new course for undergraduate non-specialists

What would you put on the syllabus?

Looking for specific readings and resources.

Tom’s Hardware: Artificial Intelligence comes to smart pens, includes handwriting-to-text and ChatGPT. “On March 1st, engineer Zakwan Ahmad launched his concept for ‘The One Smart AI Pen’ on Kickstarter, debuting a device that looks on a surface level like a standard ballpoint pen but actually packs a battery, microphone, and Bluetooth radio for integration with HearIt.AI mobile control and […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/03/08/toms-hardware-artificial-intelligence-comes-to-smart-pens-includes-handwriting-to-text-and-chatgpt/