2003: "Harringay has become invisible with no identity". Have we moved on?

I should be working today, but by way of displacement activity I was jotting a quick reply to a mail from a HoL member who commented on the site's local history resource and asked what my motivation was for starting the site.

In checking a date, I stumbled across a despairing comment written by a local in 2003 about Harringay's identity. I hadn't seen it before and it put what I've been doing on the web in a new context. I dared to imagine that other people might find what I was writing in my reply to be of passing interest. So I'm adding the few paras below as an open reply to M.

The site as it is started almost by accident. Back in 2007, having lived here for a number of years, I got involved in a local issue (about parking, I think) and realised that the new social media tools could be very for effective community organising. So I started the Harringay Community Website. At the time I had no idea quite how it woud take off.

The local history stuff is one of my guilty secrets, but also coincides with what I've been trying to do for the area. Not long before I set up this site (in fact almost exactly five years ago) I noticed Harringay's entry on Wikipedia (You can see that version here). At the time that was pretty much all there was about Harringay on the web. So I started tinkering with the main article, and ended up rewriting it and adding another two dozen or so articles on Wikipedia about Harringay and related subjects.

Just about the only other findable article on the web at the time was on the BBC h2g2 website. It was much more positive than the Wikipedia article, but even so it had the unfortunate title of "The Trouble with Harringay". A local commented on it, "For many years since the demise of the stadium, we have become invisible with no identity".

I found out how to submit a rewrite of the h2g2 article and did a 70% revision together with a new title in 2008. The BBC sold off the h2g2 site last year (which has been awful for its Google ranking) and it is now simply the h2g2 website.

As I started to research Harringay's history so I could write a few lines in the main Wikpedia article, it became quickly apparent that Harringay's history was always just a few lines a the end of the histories of Hornsey or Tottenham. So I've tried to rectify that by digging up materials and making them readily available to the people who live here both on Wikipedia and on HoL. Whilst I haven't written it all into a book yet, I hope it helps that there are now two places where people can go to find out about our history. Also, I was glad to see recently that a local member of the local history society has just recently put out a little booklet on Harringay's Victorian urbanisation. All grist to the mill.

As I look back, I remember that as of 2006, it was very difficult to find out anything about Harringay or our history on the web or anywhere else. I hope that providing a very public platform for Harringay and a rich resource for our history has done something to address that despairing cry from 2003.

I guess it must be time for me to move now.