Connecting to the Future
The Original Yonker
I chose the Wikipedia entry on Adriaen van der Donck because I find the Dutch colonization of New Netherland really interesting and rather neglected in American History. I also like the idea that he is the "Junk Heer" who gave us the name (through centuries of English corruption of the original Dutch) of the city of Yonkers, New York. I grew up about a mile from Yonkers and always felt like it caught a bad rap.
The entry for Adriaen van der Donck was originally posted on November 8, 2005 by a poster named Laurascudder, although soon after beginning, she discovered that another page on the same topic had recently been posted. Over the next two months, Laurascudder worked to merge her article with the other entry and to otherwise expand it. With bursts of activity on the 3rd, 5th, 15th, and 17th of December, 2005 and the 15th-17th of January, 2006, Laurascudder fashioned the article into roughly the shape it has today. She added substantial information on van der Donck's Netherlandish background, political activities in New Netherland, and agitation for the colony's independence from the Dutch West India Company. She significantly improved the readability of the article by adding various explanatory headings to subdivide the text.
Overall, Laurascudder has made 67 edits, the most substantial edits to the article by far. However, the leader for most total edits is a user named Yamamoto Ichiro, who has made 84, almost all of them on February 2nd, 2006, when a group of users or (more likely) one user under various names repeatedly (hundreds of times) vandalized the page, erasing the article or replacing it with crude anatomical illustrations.
In my opinion, the article is quite well-written, aside from a couple minor flaws (mistaking "culturing" for "cultivating," one or two errors in noun/verb agreement, and a reference to the Saw Mill River without "the," possibly because she is not from the New York area). It is intelligently organized and the narrative is appropriately engaging. It seems that Laurascudder, who seems to have done practically all the writing, has a real sympathy for her subject. She portrays him in an extremely positive light, quoting an assessment of Description of New Netherland as a "classic of colonial literature." While this is not my area of expertise, the account seems remarkably well-researched and accurate. It does conform to what I do know of the era of Dutch colonization in the Hudson valley. Laurascudder has sourced it rather extensively and added a possible bibliography for future reading.
The discussion on the page was not terribly robust. The majority of discussion was about the derivation of the word "Yonkers" from the Dutch "Jonkheer" with a couple of observations about the massive vandalism attack of February 2nd. However, there is a new one on the horizon, as an anonymous user has presented evidence that the picture in the article purporting to portraty van der Donck is actually a misidentification. This was posted in June of this year, but so far the picture remains.
While there have been hundreds of edits on this article, it is clearly Laurascudder's baby. She, on her personal page, describes herself as "a native Texan and an alumna of The Hockaday School and Harvey Mudd College" in Pomona California. Her "To-Do List" indicates that she has an interest in physics (reasonable for an alumna of an engineering school) and in the history of female-specific psychiatry (hysteria) and sexuality. She is a Wikipedia administrator and involved in projects on Texas, where she grew up, and Colorado where she now lives.
The entry for Adriaen van der Donck was originally posted on November 8, 2005 by a poster named Laurascudder, although soon after beginning, she discovered that another page on the same topic had recently been posted. Over the next two months, Laurascudder worked to merge her article with the other entry and to otherwise expand it. With bursts of activity on the 3rd, 5th, 15th, and 17th of December, 2005 and the 15th-17th of January, 2006, Laurascudder fashioned the article into roughly the shape it has today. She added substantial information on van der Donck's Netherlandish background, political activities in New Netherland, and agitation for the colony's independence from the Dutch West India Company. She significantly improved the readability of the article by adding various explanatory headings to subdivide the text.
Overall, Laurascudder has made 67 edits, the most substantial edits to the article by far. However, the leader for most total edits is a user named Yamamoto Ichiro, who has made 84, almost all of them on February 2nd, 2006, when a group of users or (more likely) one user under various names repeatedly (hundreds of times) vandalized the page, erasing the article or replacing it with crude anatomical illustrations.
In my opinion, the article is quite well-written, aside from a couple minor flaws (mistaking "culturing" for "cultivating," one or two errors in noun/verb agreement, and a reference to the Saw Mill River without "the," possibly because she is not from the New York area). It is intelligently organized and the narrative is appropriately engaging. It seems that Laurascudder, who seems to have done practically all the writing, has a real sympathy for her subject. She portrays him in an extremely positive light, quoting an assessment of Description of New Netherland as a "classic of colonial literature." While this is not my area of expertise, the account seems remarkably well-researched and accurate. It does conform to what I do know of the era of Dutch colonization in the Hudson valley. Laurascudder has sourced it rather extensively and added a possible bibliography for future reading.
The discussion on the page was not terribly robust. The majority of discussion was about the derivation of the word "Yonkers" from the Dutch "Jonkheer" with a couple of observations about the massive vandalism attack of February 2nd. However, there is a new one on the horizon, as an anonymous user has presented evidence that the picture in the article purporting to portraty van der Donck is actually a misidentification. This was posted in June of this year, but so far the picture remains.
While there have been hundreds of edits on this article, it is clearly Laurascudder's baby. She, on her personal page, describes herself as "a native Texan and an alumna of The Hockaday School and Harvey Mudd College" in Pomona California. Her "To-Do List" indicates that she has an interest in physics (reasonable for an alumna of an engineering school) and in the history of female-specific psychiatry (hysteria) and sexuality. She is a Wikipedia administrator and involved in projects on Texas, where she grew up, and Colorado where she now lives.
Comment
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Comment by Michael Dykema on October 11, 2009 at 6:05pm - Cool. I never played that particular game, but I did play the original colonization back in my youth. van der Donck didn't make that version. I think the main Dutch guy was Michiel de Ruyter.
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Comment by John Lee on October 9, 2009 at 11:44pm -
Good post and quite on an interesting historical figure. It's telling that van der Donck seems to remain somewhat obscure. Perhaps there is a Dutch bias at work??
I Googled "Laurascudder" and found a lot on the Laura Scudder potato chip maker. Wonder if this user is paying homage.
The photo debate is an interesting story. Seems like the community has at least entered the issue into the article by modifying the caption to say that it is a "presumed" image.
Adriaen van der Donck is also a character in the Civilization IV game from Firaxis - http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/colonization/leaders
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