War Diaries Talk

Choice

  • alfredadams by alfredadams

    I realise this might not be an easy ask but would there be any way you could choose a unit and continue with it? Because I am a nurse, I chose a Field Hospital which to me was riveting. I got used to the Officers names and how the Hospital ran then one day I went back and was thrown into something entirely different. For anyone doing any diary I think gaining familiarity with names, places and handwriting is a great asset and you can work faster. Also I agree with someone elses comment that it could be nice to pick a unit you have a connection with. My grandfather was kia with 243 MGC, how I would love to be working on that!

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  • charcinders by charcinders

    The idea of "owenership" of a diary is a good one I think, for exactly the reasons you gave, not to mention the fact that you get emotionally involved with the story of the unit. The only rule at the moment is that every diary page is completed once it has been tagged by 7 people, and whenever someone chooses the diary the first available page is given to them. That's why you were dumped out of that diary; every remaining page had been fully tagged. I had a similar experience with my last diary, I was dumped out of it because other people had raced through it. Fortunately the powers that be then changed the number of tags per page from 5 to 7 so I was allowed to finish it.

    The way the system works at the moment is not encouraging for those of us who don't have much time to spend on the site. If we start the diary at the beginning we will have been overtaken by 7 "hares" before we get to the end, so we may never get to finish a diary.

    I think a better system would be once you have tagged 10 pages you get ownership, and if you don't tag any for a few days you lose ownership and the diary goes up for grabs to anyone. I don't hold out any hope that a system like this will be implemented though.

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  • HeatherC by HeatherC moderator

    I sympathise with the sentiments expressed here about continuity in tagging a diary as I too have found myself staring at the "this diary has been completed, please choose another" screen when I was actually expecting another 50 or so pages. However this very issue was discussed in several threads early on in the project and it's fairly clear that no system of "ownership" is likely to be implemented at the moment, since this is simply the way Zooniverse Projects always work. The point was made early on that following a story such as these diaries is a little different from tagging galaxies but as the previous poster said I doubt this system will be changed.

    One problem with such a system would of course be that it might lead to a lot of "stalled" diaries where people simply dropped out or did not come back for a long time after tagging a few pages. This then would "lock up" those diaries and stop them being available for others, which in turn quickly leads to there being nothing at all to tag (as happened last weekend). So even though we may find the current system frustrating, it does have some advantage as there is more likely to be something left in the list for new people to tag.

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  • charcinders by charcinders in response to HeatherC's comment.

    I haven't participated in it but doesn't the Old Weather project allow you to follow one ship's log?

    My suggestions of only awarding ownership after 10 pages and having ownership lapse after a few days of inactivity would help prevent the situation of locked up diaries.

    Another solution of course would be to get a lot more diaries up on the site so that users are more thinly spread out across the diaries. That would also go some way towards letting people choose units that are of personal interest to them, the second thing the OP asked about.

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  • alfredadams by alfredadams in response to charcinders's comment.

    I liked your idea after 10 pages of tagging being allowed 'ownership' but having it withdrawn after a period of inactivity so as not to stall the diary. I had got through 7mths of 'my' hospital and had become very attached to it before being booted off! Thanks for the info about how many people tag each page, I had no idea it was so many so it does explain why being jumped about happens. Anyway, as I have come late to the project, I did not realise it had been discussed before. Thanks to both you and Heather for responding.

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  • bootnecksbs by bootnecksbs

    I am in total agreement with all comments here, it's very frustrating losing a diary all of a sudden or even" jumping pages" which I find most infuriating especially if I'm following an operation and all of a sudden I'm back in billets in another place entirely different to the one I was on. Or an Officer suddenly goes missing and someone else is O.C of the Regt etc (is he dead, wounded, posted or on leave???) I notice a point by charcinders saying "Fortunately the powers that be then changed the number of tags per page from 5 to 7......." It's very rare for me to only tag 5 or 7 points per page, for example, I have just finished a page which had 25+ tags what with date,places, time, people (awarded medals etc) grid ref etc so am I very lucky or maybe I'm missing the point. Glad to be part of the community. Good Luck with "Tagging" to everyone. Max

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  • poppynine by poppynine

    I can't remember any limitation to the number of tags per page but eatyourgreens mentioned that a diary is now closed after 7 people have tagged each page.

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  • HeatherC by HeatherC moderator in response to bootnecksbs's comment.

    You have misunderstood the comment about the number of tags per page. As Poppynine says, the current diaries are closed when 7 people have tagged them. There is no limit to the number of tags on a page.

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  • bootnecksbs by bootnecksbs

    It was rather late (past 1am) when I decided to have a quick look here and have realise I have totally totally misunderstood. Thanks for the clarification. "To err is human........"

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  • HeatherC by HeatherC moderator

    But to be tagging at 1am is definitely beyond the call of duty! 😉

    I do sympathise as I have said, with the frustration of having the diary jump pages or even finish altogether when you are just getting involved in the story. I have asked for someone from IWM to look at this thread and comment on the suggestion made about diary "ownership".

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  • charcinders by charcinders

    My fault, I should have said "changed the number of people tagging each page from 5 to 7"

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  • eatyourgreens by eatyourgreens moderator, admin in response to charcinders's comment.

    Hi,

    I had a look at Old Weather and it turns out a ships log page is completed after 3 people have worked on it. I found this discussion on their forum, where they mention skipping events and pages if too many people are working on a particular log: http://forum.oldweather.org/index.php?topic=9.90

    Here's someone who missed the Battle of the Falklands because someone else completed those pages 😕 http://forum.oldweather.org/index.php?topic=119.0

    We beta tested Operation War Diary with volunteers from Old Weather. I'm not sure if any of them are still here, on this forum. They might have some useful advice about working on a diary that many other people are working on.

    From a technical point of view, our database doesn't track who is working on each diary, only who has worked on individual images. I'm not sure we could implement ownership of diaries by volunteers, mostly for performance reasons.

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  • charcinders by charcinders in response to eatyourgreens's comment.

    Fair enough.

    Then may we have lots more diaries please?!

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  • eatyourgreens by eatyourgreens moderator, admin in response to charcinders's comment.

    I've just increased the number of links on the Diaries page. Should be listing about 200 diaries now, instead of 100.

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