War Diaries Talk

List of completed diaries

  • TimWright by TimWright

    I am new to tagging so maybe I have missed something obvious. Is there a list of diaries that have already been tagged? I recently downloaded the diaries for the 6th Battalion Royal West Kent Regiment from the National Archives for my own purposes (my grandfather was a captain) but would love to tag it if it becomes available. Has it already been done or can I look forward to it some time in the future?

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  • ral104 by ral104 moderator, scientist

    You can find the full list of completed diaries (along with their data) here: http://wd3.herokuapp.com/public

    Doesn't look like the 6th Battalion Royal West Kents is on the list, so keep your eyes peeled! It will arrive in the tagging queue sooner or later.

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  • TimWright by TimWright

    Thanks for the good news. Would there be any way to know when it becomes available other than scanning six or seven pages of randomly-sorted listings on a frequent basis? Do you, for example, tweet new additions to the list?

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  • ral104 by ral104 moderator, scientist

    At the moment, I'm afraid looking through the listings is the only way. However, I'll look at publishing a list of diaries in the queue, so people have an easier reference point.

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  • TimWright by TimWright

    Thanks. The queue would be perfect.

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  • HeatherC by HeatherC moderator

    I was asked this question (about when specific diaries might pop up) by PM yesterday by another user. The problem with publishing the "queue" is that we don't know if that's the order in which the diaries are added. In fact talking to Jim (our Zoonvierse admin) he thought it probably was not and he was not aware of an easy way to highlight new diaries. The "queue" is just a very long list of Units in Divisional order (starts with 1 Cav Div and goes down to 7 Div at the moment) so it doesn't tell you much I don't think. I am trying to keep my eye on it to see if I can work out what happens when a new diary gets added to the active list - i.e. where is it selected from and where does it pop up, but I'm not convinced that's it's not simply random!

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  • ral104 by ral104 moderator, scientist

    I'm pretty certain it's random 😄 My thought was that we could publish the current batch we're working on - we got 500 from TNA, if I recall, and should get further batches later. It's not perfect, of course. People will still have to keep an eagle-eyed watch if they're interested in a particular diary, but I suppose if that diary isn't in that particular batch then at least they won't watch for nothing.

    Anyway, I'll see if I can do anything useful with it over the next few days...

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  • purpleheather by purpleheather

    Noo, 2 Cavalry Division: 3 Brigade Ammunition Column has finished, I was enjoying tagging that one. Ah well. Time to pick a new one...

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  • ral104 by ral104 moderator, scientist

    Thanks for doing it!

    Will you go for something similar next or do you fancy trying a different sort of unit?

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  • GregS by GregS

    What does "finished" actually mean? Does it mean somebody went to all the pages in the diary and clicked "finished", or is somebody checking that everything that could be tagged has been tagged? Given the huge amount that could be tagged, I am am sure I would pick up more if I went through again. I imagined coming back and later and adding to tags as I became more experienced.

    I think it would also be a good idea to at least put a link to the "finished" diaries on the actual project war diary site. Until I dug around and found this thread, I thought the finished diaries had just disappeared.

    Also, I am trying to create a "community" and ultimately a timeline on the LIves of the FWW website. When is the tagged data likely to become available for that purpose? Will there be widget that compiles the tagged data in the timeline? Will there be another widget that compiles the locations on a map? Will there be another widget that gathers the casualty data and posts graphs on the map? Or should I download the CSV and do these things myself?

    Regards

    Greg

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  • ral104 by ral104 moderator, scientist

    Finished means that each page has been tagged by 5 people. With 1.5 million pages, we have to rely on numbers to make sure as much that can be tagged is tagged. So, yes, we'd expect peoples' tagging to improve as they become more familiar with the system, but they're not tagging in isolation, so even if items get missed by them, they should hopefully get picked up by others. Of course there will errors and omissions - no system is perfect - but we'll do what we can to overcome them.

    We're working on making the data available through the project site. It will come, but things are moving slowly as resources are relatively scarce at the moment.

    We spoke recently to Lives of the FWW about getting the first tranche of data ingested into the system - it should happen over the next few months, but we have work to do before we can hand it over to them. Currently, Lives data sets are loaded into the system and made searchable, so people can attach them to a particular life story. I would imagine the OWD data will be treated in the same way. Within OWD itself, we have no plans to produce the sorts of widgets you mention. We would like to provide the data online in a timeline view as well as in downloadable form, but this is likely to be a static display by diary or unit.

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