The History Commons is a website and organization that documents events and issues of great social and political significance via detailed timelines.
"[5] According to the History Commons "About" page, the purpose of the website is: "To provide a means for members of civil society to monitor the activities of powerful entities, such as governments, large corporations, and wealthy and influential individuals."
The data is displayed on the Web site in the form of dynamic timelines and entity profiles, and is exportable into XML so it can be shared with others for non-commercial purposes.
It is a socially and politically significant exercise because it has the potential to create a version of the historical narrative that is written by a wider swath of society, and therefore serves a broader scope of interests.
This is a key element of the History Commons' 'people-driven' nature, where the diverse contributions of its users make it possible to produce a record that transcends particular ideological and social agendas.
Each event summary cites at least one authoritative source, e.g. governments, organizations, mainstream media, scholars, investigative journalists and other recognized experts.
The History Commons website was originally developed and operated by the now-defunct Center for Cooperative Research (CCR),[4][7][23] which was founded in 2001 by Derek Mitchell, a California-based social entrepreneur.
In June 2002, environmental activist Paul Thompson joined CCR, bringing with him a copious amount of research on the September 11 attacks.
Due to the quality of the research, Thompson was invited by Rep. Cynthia McKinney to testify at a Congressional hearing on the failings and flaws of the 9/11 Commission report, and he did so in 2005.
[8] The History Commons Web application can also create dynamic timelines by clicking on an event summary title or tag, or by searching a keyword or entity name.
Each submitted entry is required to have at least one source, usually a news article, a government or non-governmental organization document, or a book, and is peer-reviewed by other contributors and project managers before being published to the database for public viewing.
In October 2010, Salon commentator Glenn Greenwald called the History Commons's Watergate project a "richly documented summary of those events.
The material they provide is a welcome antidote to the misinformation and disinformation that has been coming out of Washington in recent years and they are essential tools in assembling a counter-narrative that more honestly addresses the crises we face."
"[31] Investigative journalist and author James Ridgeway wrote for the Village Voice in April 2004: "Paul Thompson ... is one of a handful of freelance, unpaid, amateur sleuths who have become a 9/11 Information Central—what amounts to an intelligence apparatus aimed at pinning down what the Bush administration knew and didn't know about 9/11, before and after the attacks.
The researchers are in many ways similar to the team Scott Armstrong, the former Washington Post reporter, recruited in the mid 1980s to uncover the roots of Reagan's secret Iran-Contra deals.
"[34] Daniel Erlacher, the director of Austria's Elevate Festival, wrote in an e-mail to the site: The History Commons is one of the most important and technologically advanced projects of civil journalism there is today.
The History Commons is a project which helps connect the dots and sheds light on several inconsistencies in official narratives of some of the most important stories of our time.
... [I]t has surely become, through the continuing work of [Paul] Thompson and his colleagues, the greatest feat of annotated, investigative journal indexing ever achieved on a volunteer basis.
[37]Matthew Phelan, in a column for Gawker on NSA misuse of authorities, referred to factual information about significant entities and events being "dutifully logged at places like History Commons where ... people like to go to collaboratively try and figure out what the hell is going on, post-9/11.