War Diaries Talk

Tagging question - tag in place or arrange to make Timeline read correctly

  • amartin44 by amartin44

    Hi all,

    I have a question; do we place tags in the physical location on the diary sheet, or is the objective to tag and make the timeline read something plausible? Tagging in the physical location most times results in a meaningless timeline list so i thought i would ask the question.

    Just about the start my second diary.

    Hope I make sense.

    Cheers,
    Andrew

    Posted

  • ral104 by ral104 moderator, scientist

    Hi Andrew,

    Please place the tags over the info they relate to - the algorithm we use for processing relies on tags from multiple people being grouped within a certain area, so if you put them somewhere else there's a danger they may not register.

    Generally speaking, my timelines look pretty okay with this approach. What sort of problems were you experiencing?

    Thanks,

    Rob

    Posted

  • amartin44 by amartin44

    Will do.

    Generally it works out ok, but depends on the diary. Some examples:

    • where the current place is noted in the left and then i start tagging the main area on the right, then when i look at the Timeline the current place is noted half way through the days entry (not at the start).
    • similar issue with timed entries, the event text is physically above the noted time in the left column and therefore the Timeline doesn't read correctly.
    • when they list movements and do it in a reverse order, like "went to blah via blah, starting from blah" which then lists the places in the wrong order.
    • many entries are compact and slanted across the page which jumbles up everything in the Timeline.
      There's a few.

    I will make sure i do it by physical location though.
    Cheers,
    Andrew

    Posted

  • ral104 by ral104 moderator, scientist

    Are you checking the 'unit is here' box on the place tag for places in the left-hand column? That should sort out issues with them appearing halfway through the day. As for the rest, I see what you mean, but I guess if you think of date as the most granular level of the data (as you say, time isn't always so easy to use) then everything below that is a collection of things which happened on that particular day, so in that sense order isn't too important.
    Hope that helps!

    Posted

  • amartin44 by amartin44

    Hiya, yes very helpful.
    I use the "unit is here" box, which then places the name of the place on the right of the Timeline, and then I try to get everything under it without drifting the tags to much. However I guess as long as everything is in the same day it doesn't matter on the order to much.

    Thanks for the help!

    Posted

  • deehar by deehar

    After several weeks of tagging at the correct places in the diary text I decided to concentrate on getting the timelines reading neatly. So this means my input might be discarded! I also realise that I miss the check-box in Places for 'Unit is here' quite often which changes the timeline quite dramatically. I assume from the discussion above I should not worry about getting a perfect timeline and tag without thinking too much.

    Posted

  • ral104 by ral104 moderator, scientist

    That's right @deehar - the main thing is to get the tags organised correctly by date, and to make sure that they're clustered around the tags left by other people (you can't see this, but the best way to ensure it happens is to drop the tags over the relevant info). As long as your timeline is structured okay by date and place the unit was, that should be fine.

    @amartin44 - glad I could help!

    Posted