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To collect information with crowdsourcing is a popular method for cultural heritage institutions. User comments in free-text format are especially propagated as empowering users and their influence on cultural heritage. However, in adjusting user-created information to suit the collection management system in use, rhetorical mechanisms of the system have impact on the moderation of the information. This article investigates how rhetorical mechanisms of information systems influence user-generated information and users' possibilities of impacting heritage collections. The results are based on twelve interviews with professionals working with administration of user-comments in cultural-heritage image collections, covering six different systems. Several rhetorical mechanisms of the systems were identified based on professionals' statements about how systems affected decisions made in the moderation process. This article shows that the design of collection management systems can cause user-generated information to be discriminated and lead to decreased data reliability, searchability, and even loss of crowdsourced data. In particular, personal memories and perspectives are among the types of information that are most negatively affected. To conclude, collecting user comments is a problematic method to use in adding multiple perspectives to cultural heritage collections and demands carefully designed collection management systems in order to avoid distortion of user-created information.

This article investigates how an online forum for a participatory archive project can offer a platform for controlled power-sharing between archivists and participants. Additionally, it explains how participants affect the processes, structures, and end usability of the information resource they are invited to create, with a focus on representability and the ethical responsibility of archivists. This study takes its point of departure in a participatory online transcription project: Begravelser 1861-1912. The influence of participants is studied through observation of the communication between archivists and transcribers in an online discussion forum. Theoretical concepts of maximalist and minimalist participation are used to contextualize levels of user influence. The study uses a framework inspired by Community-based participatory research (CBPR) to analyze the communication. The results show how participants used the forum to gain influence in the project, and how several elements of CBPR-shared influence, mutual development, and mutual use-were manifested in the forum. The conclusion is that using a CBPR approach in participatory projects can produce synergetic effects of increased knowledge and enhanced archival responsibility in conjunction with sustainable participatory engagement.

Purpose The present study aims to contribute to the understanding of digital participation in heritage collections as a democratizing practice by identifying and challenging silent assumptions concerning how the insufficient influence of participants is conceived of as a problem. Design/methodology/approach Three carefully selected scholarly texts incorporating problematizations of insufficient participatory agency were analyzed in detail using a method inspired by Carol Bacchi's approach "what's the problem represented to be?" (WPR), with special emphasis on analysis of ontological elements of the problematizations. Findings Participation is problematized based on the assumption that participatory agency risks jeopardizing the protection of heritage and leads to parts of the public memory being forgotten. To challenge the idea that participatory agency is destructive, the present article argues for elaborating an understanding of what forgetting entails for heritage. Framing forgetting as a potentially both harmful and generative concept enables a separation of destructive forgetting (e.g. destruction of historical evidence) and constructive forgetting (re-contextualization). Research limitations/implications The study is based on a limited number of texts, and problematizations are investigated in relation to a specific perspective on participatory agency. Practical implications By understanding forgetting as a potentially beneficial activity for representation and heritage construction, the article provides a conceptual rationale for facilitating re-contextualization in the design of multi-layered information structures for heritage collections. Originality/value There is little earlier research on the silent assumptions that affect how participation is understood and implemented.