23-10-2015, 08:05 AM
Tom Scully Wrote:Also Brian, your exuberance is breath taking. After awhile, the "input" you'll receive, your own record of contribution to the cause notwithstanding, will tend to make you run out of gas...... Once you've been punched enough in the gut, you'll wonder why they minimize or so quickly forget what you think are your important discoveries.
lol - yeah, I hear you. This (your post) is a tremendous amount of research, lots of reading.
I haven't contributed anything yet, except for a little info on Boise B Smith maybe - like you it seems, I end up finding a lot of stuff in the society columns.
Quote:BTW, Brian, it is probably still not too late for you to turn and run in the opposite direction, as fast as you can!
Ha ha - no, my job is only to bring a little structure to all this. There is structure in these linkages, that's the very reason they're important, yes? So, what we need is a convenient way to represent these relationships. It's hard reading lots of words in print, but it's easier looking at a picture or a diagram. For instance in your post George de Mohrenschildt is one of the central figures, and others like Clemard are peripheral figures (at least as far as the JFK part of it is concerned) - all that's needed is a simple way to represent the relationships. That's easy, isn't it?
There's benefit in that, because once you have things in graphical form you can very easily identify where the missing pieces are. (Much easier that way, than sifting through lots of words). For instance, if Clemard knew he was talking to a CIA man that means there's a handler someplace. Was it his secretary? Put her on the list of possibles. It generates issues for further research, and they're very specific issues and questions, unlike the broad-thought conspiracy bit which tends to hover on the vague. There's a whole set of people who are only important because they relate to George de Mohrenschildt, and the reason we're researching them is because we're trying to find out more about George de Mohrenschildt. So, we need to represent that. That's easy too.
A person such as yourself who ends up doing a lot of research on names and relationships, should benefit greatly from an interactive tool that can represent the relationships between people. And, this type of research should be readily available to the public, instead of people having to sift through forum posts to get to it. If you're reading through something, the most common thing is, you get to wondering if someone might have known someone else, and is it possible they might have been able to share some information. You should be able to go straight to the Who's Who and get the answer. Did David Atlee Phillips know anyone in Dallas? Answer: yes. He was a member of the Dallas Petroleum Club. At the same time Jack Crichton was a member, the director of the Dallas Emergency Operations Center. And, we could show the list of the other membership, with a little + sign next each one that you can expand into a list of relationships, that kind of thing. Almost like a "namebase", but with personal relationships instead of publications. Anyway, it's just one of many thoughts, but that's the general idea, these things need to be "easy", not complex. Webs of personal relationships need to be made "accessible" to the layman, and maybe the easiest way to do that is in graphical form. I don't know, that's one of the things we could discover from doing an exercise like this.
And lastly then, a Who's Who is agnostic to conspiracies or lone nuts or whatever, it's just a list of names and relationships. I don't see why anyone would want to clobber a Who's Who, it's just as useful for the dedicated conspiracy theorists as it is for the government shills. I would pointedly keep "theories" out of the list, that's a whole separate section that has nothing to do with "people". The purpose of a Who's Who is specifically people and biographies of people and relationships between people. It has to be able to handle all of the basic situations one finds with people, like multiple people with the same name, multiple aliases for the same person, people identified with groups and multiple groups at the same time, all that kind of thing.
There are two situations I've found are "common" when doing research into people, one is you find "nothing" and you really have to dig, and the other is you find "fluff" and you have to work to separate the little bit that's helpful from the volume that's not. The most common thing is you read a name you've never heard of and you want some background, so both those situations are equally annoying. If you could just get a reliable "wiki-page" type summary with a little biography and links for further information, that would be a step beyond what's available today. (Stuff like Spartacus is okay, but there's only 100 names on those pages, could be more helpful from a people-research standpoint).
If fluff ever becomes an issue, it's easy to triage the data, I could think of several ways of doing that right off the bat, either before during or after data entry. For instance, if the person isn't directly involved in a JFK-related event then they're deemed "less important". If they're the second cousin of a CIA big-wig but there's no other information that relates them directly to the JFK case, then maybe they go to the second tier of importance, that kind of thing.
So, you and me, would make great development partners, because you're the end user so you're in the best position to say what the convenient representations are. Like for instance, reading through your post, I'd probably say, "Show me this in a nutshell". The first time I see it, I probably don't want to read through the detailed supporting evidence, however if I'm really interested I should be able to push the "expand" button and see it.
How can I say this... Mary Ferrell doesn't really have any of this, at this level. You can type in a name and all you get is text references, and frankly they're great for testimony but they don't tell you anything about the rest. RIF's don't do me much good either, when I want information on Boise B Smith. One of the very big advantages of a Who's-Who-type format is that you can put placeholders in there saying "We Simply Don't Know" (like, oh look, Smith's counterpart Crichton was a member of the 488th military reserve, was Smith a member too? "We simply don't know." Who else was a member? "We simply don't know, but here's a list of the few people we know about.")
If we do this right, we'll spend a lot of time digitizing the Batchelor Exhibit. (For instance). Because, what'll happen is, we'll want to capture all those relationships. The DPD "Homicide and Robbery Division" becomes and important entity in its own right. The "Intelligence Division" has properties and features that no other division has. There are orders affecting entire divisions at a time, that kind of thing. Just f'r instance. Most of it's pretty straightforward though, there's a few things that need to be fleshed out at that level, like maybe the TSBD employment structure, maybe the composition of the SS and the FBI through its local offices (ie which officer was a local and which came from HQ), and so on.
It's a finite amount of work. It's not that daunting. It's not "me" who should running anyway - 'cause I'm just the software guy, it's you who knows the names and therefore it's you who has to structure the data. And, as long as you're going to do all that work anyway, you might as well do it in a useful way so others can access it too, and so it'll be around for all time in a public place. You're the researcher, I'm just the software guy, my job is to make your job as easy as possible, and as efficient as possible. The tool's supposed to work for you, and yes I benefit too (to the extent that I get involved in actual research, I get to be one of the end users too).
But look... we (the Research Community) probably need to start thinking in these terms. We're perceived as being in complete disarray, going off in a million directions with a million conspiracy theories and no structure. The information we're dealing with is in a thousand different places, it's disorganized, you practically have to be a lifetime researcher to access some of it (much less make sense of it)... we (the Research Community) really need to start changing some of this. And as far as being "just another JFK site", the only thing I can say about that is, "lead by example". Advertisements like "JFK Case Resolved!" just make a mockery out of the people creating them. By the same token, McAdams has become its own kind of laughing stock over the years. It's time for something new, something with a new look and feel, and something with a new layer of credibility. IMO.