THE PROBLEM I'M TRYING TO SOLVE:

Often when I read a quotation online and think to myself: "that's a great quote,
but I wonder what it says 2 sentences prior or 2 sentences after". In other words,
what's the context, and how do I know the quote isn't cherrypicked?

MY APP: CiteIt.net: a higher standard of citation

My web citation app enables authors to demonstrate the context of their citations.
If writers link to a source URL in their blockquote "cite" tag, my program will
find the original quote, grab the context surrounding it, and make a small JSON
file that can then be used to supply context if the reader clicks on the arrow
above or below the quote.

DEMO: (3 min video introduction)

https://www.CiteIt.net/

GOALS:

My goal is to allow journalists academics, and web authors to demonstrate the
context of their citations so they can help their readers quickly learn more
and to distinguish themselves from the less credible and the "fake news".

One of my additional goals is to expand into audio and video, allowing authors
to cite transcripts of audio and YouTube videos easily, and then display this
videos inline at the cited starting position if the reader chooses. This would
allow a journalist to quote a public figure in text, but to have the video popup
if a reader wished to see the full context. (See Issue #10 for a mockup
of YouTube Video version.)

ABOUT MY PROJECT:

My project features a python web service and jQuery plugin frontend, packaged for WordPress authors as a (currently private) WordPress plugin and available as a straight jQuery custom function for programmers to integrate into any CMS.

All code is available on GitHub and MIT licensed:
https://www.citeit.net/code/

My eventual goal is to work with the internet archive and make my project part of their system, including an auto-archive feature that would archive a copy of everything an author cites.

I've also talked with someone who has worked for the Wikimedia foundation. It looks like the best way to make this available to them is to package the code to run as a Docker image so that Wikipedia could self-host my service and use it for their quotes. (He says he can write the plugin for MediaWiki. I just need to provide the web service).

TOP ISSUES IN NEED OF HELP:

You can see the list of top issues in need of help on the volunteer page.

https://www.CiteIt.net/volunteer/

Here are a few highlights:
(snip)

2) Create a standardized text version of every submitted web page, including a text version of PDF and Word Docs.
https://github.com/CiteIt/citeit-webservice/issues/2

3) Verify that the quote matches the original, even if the citing quote uses [C]apitalization or .. ellipses

10) Create a streamlined process to download YouTube transcripts so that authors can easily quote them and calculate the starting position.
Preliminary work: https://github.com/CiteIt/transcript-to-time-mapping

11) Develop an interface to make it easy to crowdsource the cleanup of auto-generated transcripts.

Right now, this is just a one-man project.
You can email me for more info or give me a call if you're interested.

- Tim Langeman:
Akron, PA (USA)
https://openpolitics.com/tim (contact info)

P.S. Be sure to watch the video first:
https://www.CiteIt.net/ (3 min video introduction)