Re: Columbus Center
So you are saying that your 16,000 page public record that you look into are not complete, genuine, or that the government stands behind them?
No, I never said that at all.
_ Your proposed project is evidence-dependent, and evidence must be complete, genuine, and government-backed.
_ So you have to get all your evidence, yourself, from each original author or government records custodian.
_ Collecting partial records from third parties does not produce evidence, and results obtained that way can?t be used as evidence.
. . . places where the documents are stored, with most giving access only if you're a resident of the City of Boston and/or by appointment only. . .
What you believe is not true.
_ You are ignorant about public records in general, and you are ignorant of both of the public records laws.
_ Neither law requires that a requestor be a ?Boston resident? as you wrote, and neither law requires that a request be handled ?by appointment only? as you wrote.
If you skip any of these 10 steps, then your project will fail.
1.
Learn the public records laws.
2.
Create a realistic work plan.
3.
Obtain 16,000 original pages from authors or government records custodians.
4.
Understand the significance of each page, and cross-reference it to related pages.
5.
Add the title, author, date, and new logical page number to each page.
6.
Build a professional index search-able by date, author, title, content, and page.
7.
Scan each page.
8.
Proofread each page and fix each incorrect text character.
9.
Store each scanned page in the repository, and log each page in the index.
10.
Test the procedure to find and retrieve pages via the index.
. . . You . . . have the documents and suggest that we read them, but you do not have the will to make them easily accessible? . . .
I do have 16,000 pages of public records, and I do recommend that people unfamiliar with this proposal get the same pages that I cited, and read them.
_ But making them ?easily accessible? as you wrote requires doing each of the 10 steps above.
_ And doing that much work, for an unknown number of years, for an unappreciative audience, for free, is pointless.
_ That?s why I am not willing to do it, and that?s why no one else here is willing to do it.
. . . Others have offered to handle scanning the pages and putting them online yet you refuse to be helpful. . .
You do not understand the project that you are proposing.
_ Just ?scanning pages? (step 7) and just ?putting them online? (step 8) is useless if you don?t first finish steps 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.
You mistakenly think that being ?on-line? and being ?accessible? are the same thing.
_ They are not.
If Barbaric Manchurian, Kent Xie, Seamus McFly, and Justin each post 4,000 pages on-line with no professionally prepared index, then those 16,000 pages are just as inaccessible on-line as they were off-line, because users:
? do not know the significance of what they are looking at;
? can not tell which records are available vs. unavailable;
? can not connect related records to each other; and
? can not find what they need.
I?s clear from the posts that forum members don?t read or recall what?s in the thread?s 203 pages now, so if they can?t do that then they surely won?t absorb an additional 15,797 un-indexed pages.
You can?t blame your project?s failure on my decision not to help you, because none of the 10 tasks depend upon me to get done.
_ With enough money, facilities, time, skill, and dedication, anyone (with a realistic work plan) can do them.
So, if you believe that your proposed project is worthy, then just do it yourself.
_ And, if you believe your approach could succeed, then do a 1,000-page test to prove your theory.
_ But if you keep skipping steps 1 through 6, and keep proposing to start at step 7, then no knowledgeable professional will waste their own resources by donating to such an ill-defined, mis-understood effort, and you will have to provide the funds, facilities, and staffing all by yourself.
. . . I think that what Ned is trying to say is that is that if he scans the records himself . . . then you'll all be accusing Ned of altering them.
No.
_ That?s not what I?m trying to say.
. . . just we want to see some proof to back up some of his more extreme statements.
The information I post comes from the public records that I cite.
_ If people who are new to the project feel that any information sounds ?extreme? then they should go get whatever records they doubt, decide for themselves, and post whatever they think is relevant.
But even after 2 years, no one has done that, and no one is willing to.
