Collaboration Using Git

Presenting your work in progress to peers and receiving feedback are essential steps in a historian's work. Current technologies offer new ways of collaborative working. In the case of Feeling the Past, I used GitLab to communicate with the other students of DigiZeit. During the game's beta in May, the other DigiZeit members gave feedback using the Issues function. It was really convenient to have one central space for discussion, instead of each member giving feedback individually, as they were able to react to and complement each others comments. In the later stages of development it was also really useful to have collaborators like Daniel McDonald directly edit the game repository using Git, for example in case of coding mistakes, which I then could easily either accept or discard with a single click.

While in this project Git was used for software development and communicational aspects, the same functionalities can definitely be applied to conventional historical work, for example hosting a digital archive like Maryam Joseph and Manuel Kissoczy, fellow participants of DigiZeit, did. Every change is tracked so at any point in time it is transparent who is the author of which work. This could solve some of the issues Rachel Mann (2019) raises, like that it is often unclear who can be credited with doing which work when the only product of a collaboration in the humanities is a conventionally credited publication . By being able to trace back the contributions of each project member starting from day one, it is visible who made additions to the technical, interpretative, or administrative aspects of the project. Additionally, Git offers the possibility of continuously publishing work. This way scholars can receive feedback from an early stage, like in the case of Feeling the Past, or add to existing work, thereby making insights and results public earlier, which then can contribute to other work. One such example is the project One More Voice, which follows a concept called agile publication, prioritizing short-form critical interventions to continuously expand the project.