Notes from Ethnographic Training in Krakow

[amelia]

Notes from Ethnographic Training – Krakow 3/21

Participating: @Jirka_Kocian @supernova @Jan @Maja @Richard @DrSeanHanley

We had a productive session and got to know each other better. Everyone picked up the technical aspects of the coding brilliantly, and we got to play around with GraphRyder and learn the ropes. We also had good discussions about the coding methods we want to use, the standards we want to maintain, and the hopes that we have for the project as a whole.

Action items

1. Create a shared folder of texts to read before we start coding (Jan has a few in mind)
2. Create a coding exercise that we can all do remotely. We will make 4-5 duplicates of the same post, code it, and see what we find in terms of differences/similarities, then discuss.

The dream:

• start with this topic on well-being and get to the point where they are talking about political engagement, broadly understood.
• Answer: why do people support these ideas and/or find them compelling? How do communities of discourse emerge?
• Say something about how emerging network and evolving conversation is changing people’s understanding of the problem
• Stay positively and productively engaged

Requests and Technical Issues

Requests

Open Ethnographer

1. Ability to only edit our own codes (can’t edit other people’s)
2. See only codes from the current project as suggestions
3. Have a codebook display when coding (so, alongside suggested codes also the codebook entry. Need to figure out how to best do this visually)
4. Bring back function to add description to code while coding (to make the codebook then and there rather than in backend)
5. Have a way of searching for/showing/visually highlighting all instances of one code in a post (for recoding)
6. Have a way of assigning meta-codes/pattern that do not end up in the SSNA (so, ability to toggle between coding modes: semantic codes that do appear in Graph Ryder and non-semantic codes used for ethnographic analysis).

Graph Ryder

1. Ability to choose a date range to see when codes appear (instead of the sliding scale)
2. Have that appearance tied to when the post was made that the code appeared in, rather than when the code was assigned (to try and track emergence of ideas)

Issues

1. Can’t search for codes in administration (can only click through).
2. Lots of “oops” dialogues when you try to a) show a code b) destroy a code and a few other functions in administration
3. Can’t re-assign annotations to other codes in administration
4. When a code is renamed, if it has a parent-child relationship that relationship is deleted.
5. Word cloud shrinks in Graph Ryder
6. Small reset button doesn’t work in Detangler view on GR

[amelia]

Apologies for formatting, am in transit! Will spruce this up later.

[matthias]

Just seeing this now … Amelia, I think you forgot to @mention me. There’s no guarantee that I read every topic …

Ideally we’d receive feature requests and issue reports directly here on Github for Open Ethnographer, but as before I’m kinda ok with extracting that myself from conversations … iff you draw my attention to what you write.

Ok then, I’ll make Github issues from the above. For now, adding one more point from another topic here so I have everything in one place for the transfer to Github:

@amelia

to these I would add: the ability to add multiple codes to a single highlighted portion of text in one go (this has always been an issue, and it makes coding a lot more tedious and messy).

[amelia]

Hm, I was pretty sure we forked these into another thread where you and I discussed them, but I can’t find evidence of this. Apologies!

[matthias]

I’m going now through all of the reports about Open Ethnographer, indicating their status or where the issue is managed now. (Not doing the same for Graphryder right now, as that software has to be rescued first before we can meaningfully take issue reports for it …)

@amelia

Ability to only edit our own codes (can’t edit other people’s)

As per the new system with translated code names, codes are shared. So necessarily, people need to be able to add translations of code names, edit the code description etc…

@amelia

See only codes from the current project as suggestions

Will be implemented via Github issue #106.

@amelia

Have a codebook display when coding

Already managed in Github issue #77, now set to “important”.

@amelia

Bring back function to add description to code while coding

That (original) function was for descriptions / comments on annotations, not codes. We later discussed to re-purpose this for descriptions of codes, but so far I really think a fast and comfortable backend function is better for this (see Github issue #120). (You can comment there if you don’t agree.)

@amelia

Have a way of searching for/showing/visually highlighting all instances of one code in a post (for recoding)

Now managed as Github issue #140.

@amelia

Have a way of assigning meta-codes/pattern that do not end up in the SSNA

That’s not needed as a software feature in Open Ethnographer. You can for example make a convention for the project that all codes with a certain parent code are non-semantic codes and should be excluded from the SSNA when running the scripts. It has to go into these scripts / the Graphryder import.

@amelia

Issues: […] Can’t re-assign annotations to other codes in administration

Managed in Github issue #138 now.

@amelia

Issues: […] When a code is renamed, if it has a parent-child relationship that relationship is deleted.

That got fixed in the meantime – I just tested it.