5 ms·

Is it only me? I think I lost the ability to read cursive handwriting. I tried reading a few pages, and it is really hard for me to follow what is written.

joshvm 8y ago
This kind of stuff is a good candidate for Zooniverse. Have a look at some of the ship log projects, for example.
- froindt 8y ago
  Thank you for mentioning this! I'd never heard of Zooniverse, but it looks very interesting. Have you used Zooniverse in the past? If so, what was the outcome/experience like?
  - joshvm 8y ago
    I've played with a few of the projects. It can be very addictive and often a lot of fun - for example Snapshot Serengeti where you classify camera trap photos. You get lots of nothing and then suddenly an animal. I did try the log transcription tasks but they're pretty difficult and evidently some more enthusiastic people had been there first. My research group actually has a project in beta at the moment on there: https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/rossmcwhirter/astro-ecology https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/rossmcwhirter/astro-ecol... We're asking people to tag animals in infrared images. There isn't much data on there yet while we figure out the simplest way to get people involved (feedback driven). The site engine is pretty good, it's very easy to set up your own data campaign. It's quite challenging to frame your problem in a way that people with no domain knowledge can label your data accurately. The only disadvantage (from a research perspective) is that you need exposure and traction to really succeed, because you need a huge number of classifications (multiple times per image) to get good results. If you look, there are a lot of projects with quite a lot of classifications but 0% completion. Certain categories are just popular - e.g. exoplanet detection and astronomy always gets a lot of interest.
jandrese 8y ago
The handwriting is pretty sloppy on at least the first few pages from what I see. A lot of the letters become so small that they're little more than bumps on a line. Being in cursive certainly doesn't help either. Some of the words use alternate spellings which makes them a little more difficult to recognize. But really, cursive is optimized for reducing the possibility of failure (inkblots) on primitive quill pens, not for readability. Even the best most precise cursive tends to be more difficult to read than modestly competent print.
- thaumasiotes 8y ago
  > Even the best most precise cursive tends to be more difficult to read than modestly competent print. That's purely a practice effect, like the fake finding that lowercase text is easier to read than all-caps text. (People you pull off the street do indeed read lowercase text faster. After a minor amount of practice, this advantage disappears.) There are a lot of cases here where a series of letters appears to have been reduced to just a wave pattern. But the biggest problems I have at first glance are - You can't zoom in far enough - Some letters are written in an unexpected (consistent, but not modern) way. Look at how e is always written like you'd expect a cursive o or a σ to look. This difficulty will be easily overcome if you spend any time reading the text, but as of now I have a lot more trouble identifying what letters have been written than identifying what word a sequence of known letters is supposed to represent. On the other hand, a lot of it looks perfectly fine. "This occasioned much discourse of the cause of Fountaines, and Dr Robinson was of opinion that (stormes?) occasiond by a subterraneall heat, either of fire or" (eighth bullet point at the beginning of 1686).
ronnier 8y ago
Even if you can read it, the language of the time can be hard to understand.
0942v8653 8y ago
There's a transcription available if you click the page-looking button in the sidebar.
empath75 8y ago
The vocabulary and sentence structure was different, spelling was different, you have no idea of the context, and if these were meeting minutes it was probably written in haste and full of abbreviations.
UncleMeat 8y ago
There's actually an entire thing that historians need to learn called Paleography since old documents tend to be nearly incomprehensible to laypeople. Its not just you!

joshvm 8y ago

This kind of stuff is a good candidate for Zooniverse. Have a look at some of the ship log projects, for example.

froindt 8y ago
Thank you for mentioning this! I'd never heard of Zooniverse, but it looks very interesting. Have you used Zooniverse in the past? If so, what was the outcome/experience like?
- joshvm 8y ago
  I've played with a few of the projects. It can be very addictive and often a lot of fun - for example Snapshot Serengeti where you classify camera trap photos. You get lots of nothing and then suddenly an animal. I did try the log transcription tasks but they're pretty difficult and evidently some more enthusiastic people had been there first. My research group actually has a project in beta at the moment on there: https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/rossmcwhirter/astro-ecology https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/rossmcwhirter/astro-ecol... We're asking people to tag animals in infrared images. There isn't much data on there yet while we figure out the simplest way to get people involved (feedback driven). The site engine is pretty good, it's very easy to set up your own data campaign. It's quite challenging to frame your problem in a way that people with no domain knowledge can label your data accurately. The only disadvantage (from a research perspective) is that you need exposure and traction to really succeed, because you need a huge number of classifications (multiple times per image) to get good results. If you look, there are a lot of projects with quite a lot of classifications but 0% completion. Certain categories are just popular - e.g. exoplanet detection and astronomy always gets a lot of interest.

jandrese 8y ago

The handwriting is pretty sloppy on at least the first few pages from what I see. A lot of the letters become so small that they're little more than bumps on a line. Being in cursive certainly doesn't help either. Some of the words use alternate spellings which makes them a little more difficult to recognize. But really, cursive is optimized for reducing the possibility of failure (inkblots) on primitive quill pens, not for readability. Even the best most precise cursive tends to be more difficult to read than modestly competent print.

thaumasiotes 8y ago
> Even the best most precise cursive tends to be more difficult to read than modestly competent print. That's purely a practice effect, like the fake finding that lowercase text is easier to read than all-caps text. (People you pull off the street do indeed read lowercase text faster. After a minor amount of practice, this advantage disappears.) There are a lot of cases here where a series of letters appears to have been reduced to just a wave pattern. But the biggest problems I have at first glance are - You can't zoom in far enough - Some letters are written in an unexpected (consistent, but not modern) way. Look at how e is always written like you'd expect a cursive o or a σ to look. This difficulty will be easily overcome if you spend any time reading the text, but as of now I have a lot more trouble identifying what letters have been written than identifying what word a sequence of known letters is supposed to represent. On the other hand, a lot of it looks perfectly fine. "This occasioned much discourse of the cause of Fountaines, and Dr Robinson was of opinion that (stormes?) occasiond by a subterraneall heat, either of fire or" (eighth bullet point at the beginning of 1686).

ronnier 8y ago

Even if you can read it, the language of the time can be hard to understand.

0942v8653 8y ago

There's a transcription available if you click the page-looking button in the sidebar.

empath75 8y ago

The vocabulary and sentence structure was different, spelling was different, you have no idea of the context, and if these were meeting minutes it was probably written in haste and full of abbreviations.

UncleMeat 8y ago

There's actually an entire thing that historians need to learn called Paleography since old documents tend to be nearly incomprehensible to laypeople. Its not just you!