War Diaries Talk

How do I use Hashtags?

  • HeatherC by HeatherC moderator

    What is a hashtag?

    A hashtag - represented by the symbol # is a method of drawing attention to a specific interesting word on the page you are tagging, especially if it's not something you can include in any of the pre-set Project tags or something you can only tag as "other" and you feel is worth drawing attention to. If you are going to hashtag something please stop to think first why you are tagging this specific thing and please do place the tag by the correct word and not just at the start of the phrase.

    How the hashtag works.

    A hashtag draws attention only to the word it is placed right next to. If you leave a space after the hashtag it doesn't work at all. The hashtag effectively provides a link to that word so you need to select the correct word to tag.

    For example. A popular occasion for hashtagging has been Christmas Day. Here are three ways this could be tagged:

    1. #Christmas #Day
    2. #Christmas Day
    3. Christmas #Day

    As you can see by where the text has changed to blue (indicating a link), these three are all different and only the middle one gives the correct result. Try clicking here http://talk.operationwardiary.org/#/search?tags[christmas]=true and you should see what this is trying to achieve, which is to collect pages with the same hashtag.

    When should I use a hashtag?

    Having seen in the above example how this is supposed to work, you can see that it's most useful if people are using the same hashtag for an event. You can also see there is no point at all in tagging really common words! There is a list of popular hashtags on the "recent" page here http://talk.operationwardiary.org/#/recent.

    Good examples include:

    King, gas, prisoners, sniper, football

    Poor ones include:

    hill, trench, horse (the words are simply too common to be interesting)

    Using hashtags to indicate problems with pages

    If you have a page that can't be read or tagged for some reason there are a number of tags you can use to indicate this, for example

    sideways, badscan, duplicate, unreadable, faint

    Please try to be consistent about what you use here so the pages can be all found together and rescanned or whatever is needed to make them taggable.

    How do I put a hashtag on a page?

    So having decided what you want to hashtag and how you are going to do it, what are the mechanics of actually doing it? Click on the little white "speech bubble" in the top right corner of the page next to the "Finish" button. This will open a box you can type in. Simply type in the phrase you want to hashtag, making sure you put the hashtag immediately before the relevant word leaving no space. Then click on "Post Comment" and click the white speech bubble again to return to tagging.

    Posted

  • makfai by makfai

    This is a valuable FAQ. However, there is still some confusion. The guidance makes it appear that you select a word in the text and insert the # in the text of the doc similar to inserting a standard tag

    Posted

  • HeatherC by HeatherC moderator

    I thought it was pretty clear in the last FAQ point how you actually do it. Obviously not - apologies if it is not clear..

    So for anyone who didn't understand what the last FAQ point meant, yes you do not add the hashtag within the text like a normal tag. You have to open the Comments box as described in the FAQ above and then type in the text you want to add a hashtag to, along with the hashtag itself in the correct place.

    What the hashtag effectively does is highlight to others that there is something interesting on the page. It isn't the same as the other types of tag which are used within the page text itself on this project. Hashtags allow pages with the same interesting word or phrase to be collected together and looked at as a group.

    Hope that helps.

    Posted

  • makfai by makfai

    Thanks HeatherC. I think others - like I did at the start - may have bern trying to put a #hashtag in the text as a marker and then going to the comments part to make the comment.

    Posted

  • MatthewIWM by MatthewIWM moderator

    Posting Heather's updated guide to entering hashtags, which she posted in a different thread:

    "Once you have decided there is a bit in your page that you want to hashtag - let's say it's December 25th and they are talking about Christmas and you want to add a hashtag to that, here's what you do. First of all you can't add the hashtag directly into the text, you have to put it in the comments box. Also you aren't attaching it to a word in the text, you are simply highlighting to others that there's something interesting on the page.

    1.Click on the little white "speech bubble" icon at the top right next to the Finish button. This opens a white box called "Talk Comments"
    2.Click inside the box (where it says "say something or add a #tag") and type in the text from your page which you think is worth highlighting to others, including the hashtag - so in this case type #Christmas Day. You don't need to type loads, just the word with the hashtag unless you want to add more.
    3.Click on "post Comment" under the comments box. This then "posts" (and saves) the hashtag
    4.Click on the white speech bubble icon again to shut the Comments box
    5.Return to tagging."

    A lot of other users seemed to find the above helpful. Any further questions let us know.

    Posted

  • makfai by makfai

    Is there any limit on the number of #hashtags per page?

    Posted

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

    I don't actually know if there's a limit but if you find you are doing more than two or three per page all the time then you are probably hash-tagging stuff that does not really justify it, as it will be too "routine", unless it's a really exceptional page. For example, Units went to Church parade or "divine service" most Sundays when out of the line and this is not really worth hash tagging as "special". Common words like trenches, guns, signal, road, track, patrol, training - all these are really too common to be worth hash tagging.

    Remember the point of the hashtag is to try to collect together interesting information about a specific type of event or object that cannot be collected by the normal tag. It's not really there to record routine stuff.

    Here are some good examples:

    christmas, king, victoriacross, militarymedal, tank, prisoner, football, measles, PUO, shellshock

    Also to try to collect together any hand drawn sketches use the hashtag sketch to mark them.

    Common mistakes people are making with hashtags

    1. Trying to hashtag a phrase of more than one word but leaving a space between the words - you have to write e.g. victoriacross all as one word and put the hashtag in front of it. Alternatively to get round this, people are stringing together a meaningless group of words like casualtynumberssuffereddeadwounded and hashtagging that. I hope it's obvious why this is not useful!

    2. Trying to hashtag an initial. This doesn't work at all, so for example you can't hashtag H M King by putting the hashtag in front of the H

    3. Putting speech marks in the hashtagged word. So for example you can't put a hashtag in front of "friendly fire" as it won't work.

    4. Putting the hashtag at the end of the word. This doesn't work, it must go at the beginning. Similarly joining two words together with a hashtag symbol doesn't work either

    Hashtags can be very useful in this project so please do ask if there are any further questions on using them properly.

    Posted

  • makfai by makfai

    Useful pointer there from HeatherC re: 'Trying to hashtag a phrase of more than one word but leaving a space between the words - you have to write e.g. victoriacross all as one word and put the hashtag in front of it.' I never realised that separating the second word would be of no value! So while I agree that #road or #track etc would be of little value but (now knowing how it should be written) I still think that #roadrepairs etc is of equal value to tagging 'digging/repairing trenches'.

    Posted

  • makfai by makfai

    HeatherC

    Just noticed that in the example you used earlier you said that to correctly hashtag Christmas Day it should be done as #Christmas Day. How does this reconcile with the example you have given of getting it wrong by
    'Trying to hashtag a phrase of more than one word but leaving a space between the words - you have to write e.g. victoriacross all as one word and put the hashtag in front of it.'

    Posted

  • HeatherC by HeatherC moderator

    OK so let's consider the difference between trying to hashtag the phrases "Christmas Day" and "Victoria Cross" or "military medal"

    In the first case, what we are actually interested in is the fact that it is Christmas. The word has a distinct and individual meaning on its own without the word Day. In fact if often appears in the diary without the word "day" at all. Thus the best way is to hashtag the single word not the phrase as that way you will probably collect more pages. You could in fact just write #Christmas and leave the word "Day" out altogether. My point in the example was that you need to think about which is the vital word - and in this case it's "Christmas" not "Day".

    In the second case, the words "Victoria" and "Military" do not on their own have a distinct and specific meaning. If you simply tag the first word in the phrase you are not necessarily going to get a unique set of hashtagged pages, especially not with the second of these examples. So in order to be certain you have the distinct and specific meaning (which remember is the purpose of hashtags!) you need to run the two words into one and hashtag the whole thing.

    Returning to your issue of wishing to tag other routine jobs done by units. They may indeed be of equal value to the activity of digging and repairing trenches, but the Project organisers have chosen not to give them an activity tag of their own so whether we like it or not it is tagged as "other". Hashtags were not intended to highlight routine activities and maybe that's why you can't put more than three on a page?

    Posted

  • makfai by makfai

    Thank you - you have been very patient and helpful. The only thing which is still a bit ambiguous is whether there is any limit on the nos of #hashtags or whether it was a glitch. Elsewhere, it has been said that there is no limit except for the nos of characters. http://talk.operationwardiary.org/#/boards/BWD000000d/discussions/DWD000049w?page=1&comment_id=52fc02cff08c7e440a0046d9

    Posted

  • HeatherC by HeatherC moderator

    Seems from what Eatyourgreens has said that this was a bug. He's the expert on the workings of the interface so he is the person to listen to here. I still think it would be an unusual page that merited more than two or three hash-tags or comments though. Keep up the good work of tagging!

    Posted

  • makfai by makfai

    I totally agree that it would be unusual and this was the first time I felt there was some merit. Thank you again for your help and I hope you appreciate I am passing comment not to be controversial but to seek help plus record feedback. Tjis is a brilliantly conceived project even though I take issue with some aspects. Thanks again.

    Posted

  • HeatherC by HeatherC moderator

    We still have a lot of people using hashtags ineffectively or incorrectly. This is most likely because they don't actually realise what they are really for and so I am directing a lot of people towards this thread by sending them private messages. However I'm not sure that everyone realises I've sent them the message in the first place as I have to admit the little white envelope that appears in the top right hand corner of your screen when you have a message isn't that noticeable!

    So in the hope that people using hashtags might read this thread about how to do it correctly I am going to bump it with this post.

    To add a few further points to what's already been said:

    1. It's actually not necessary to comment or add hastags on every single page just because you feel you should say something. If there isn't anything unusual to highlight then don't use a hashtag. Pages with 10+ hashtags on are probably going to be pointless as most of the words will be common ones and not worth tagging at all.

    2. Hashtaging common words like "rifle", "attack", "German", "Hill", "trench", etc is not useful to anyone and is a waste of your time (sorry...)

    3. Hashtagging the first word of a phrase does not hashtag the whole phrase - only the first word. Thus trying to hashtag "Private Smith" by putting a hashtag in front of the word "Private" will not work. In any case there's no need to hashtag names since there's a specific diary tag for them.

    4. The way to hashtag a phrase is to run the words together as mentioned in the first post of this thread. However do think about this before stringing together a phrase since if you are the only person doing it for that particular phrase then it's not of much value to researchers. You also can't put a hashtag in between two words to join them up - this won't work at all.

    I hope people take this as a positive contribution. It's not meant in any way to belittle what people are currently tagging as some great stuff that might otherwise have been lost or missed is coming out of this (especially the sketches and maps!), but there are also a lot of hashtags with no value being added and it's simply a waste of your time as taggers to do this.

    Posted

  • emilyrampling_ by emilyrampling_ in response to makfai's comment.

    Yes i agree

    Posted

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

    Perhaps we need a #badhashtag hashtag 😉

    Posted

  • HeatherC by HeatherC moderator

    Tagging honours and awards

    One of the problems with hashtagging in this project is that instead of giving a limited number of hashtgas for people to use we have allowed a total free hand. While this does mean there is wider scope for tagging, it also means that some items which should be collected together won't be because different people are using different hashtags for the same item. One I have noticed in particular is for honours and awards. This is complicated further by the fact that you cannot hashtag just two initials (so you can't for example tag VC) and you cannot hashtag an initial with a full stop after (so you can't tag D.C.M.)

    I'd like to suggest we try to be consistent with the hashtgas we use for honours and awards as follows:

    1. #victoriacross
    2. #DCM (for distinguished conduct medal)
    3. #militarycross
    4. #militarymedal

    For any other awards, simply run the whole thing together into one word with no spaces, no hyphens and no underscores, so for example #croixdeguerre

    I shall continue to add additional hashtags to pages where this has been done differently by others so that hopefully we can in the end collect them all up. I do think that mentions of gallantry awards - especially where details of the actions earning them are given - are important ones to try to gather together.

    Posted

  • makfai by makfai

    Useful guidance again Heather on what has turned out to be something of a challenge for some like me!

    As regards the awards etc why not make this a standard tag? It could then have dropdown menu (as for Person) and we could select or write in the award.

    Posted

  • makfai by makfai

    As I see it, one of the problems with the hashtag system is how researchers will find anything later.

    For example, I am dealing with a diary which refers to 'gas cylinders' For ease of future researchers I have tagged this as #gas cylinders rather than #gascylinders because a researcher is more likely to search for gas.

    Researchers are going to have to do some 'lateral' thinking to read our minds! 😃

    Posted

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

    Not a bad idea but not within my control I'm afraid, hence me suggesting this partial solution for now.

    I still see a lot of people are tagging individual words that have no value because they don't seem to understand how hashtags work and clearly think that tagging one word of a phrase tags the whole thing. Other than PMing people about this individually (which I am) and continuing to add to this thread as points arise I'm not sure what else can be done to improve our use of hashtags in this project

    Posted

  • makfai by makfai

    You have made a lot of effort to get & keep hashtags on track and I think we needed a consolidated bit of advice in the Field Guide right at the start.

    Posted

  • vishep by vishep

    We are given a list of Popular Hashtags, which includes some undesirable ones. Why not make this a list of official Hashtags to which we can refer with confidence.

    Posted

  • angiehart by angiehart

    it would be useful to have a list of 'good' hashtags to use so that there is more consistency. I have just been tagging the mention of British and German aircraft as #aircraft, but then I see that there are other similar hashtags, i.e. #aeroplane, #aeroplanes and #airplanes, it would be easier if these were all grouped together.

    Posted

  • HeatherC by HeatherC moderator

    I agree that better advice in the Field Guide at the start would have been good and that a list of "official" hashtags would also be nice. However I do not have the ability to do anything about either of these points and so my best option was to write and keep up with this FAQ, which I have tried to do.

    Yes I agree about having a list of "good" hashtags and I have tried to do that in this thread. In your example, #aircraft seems to be more popular right now than the others so why not let's all try to use that? Certainly let's not use "airplane" which is the American spelling!

    Posted

  • poppynine by poppynine

    A jolly good job of keeping up, Heather C. Wading through these discussion boards to get at any real advise, is time consuming. A list of official hashtags in alphabetical order may be an advantage.

    I seem to remember advise to type what you see, so for now that is what I am doing and my Diarist likes his aeroplane(s).

    Posted

  • HeatherC by HeatherC moderator

    And I see that aeroplane and aircraft seem to both figure on the most popular list so no problem there. I do think it might be easier when hashtagging any word that we do so as a general rule in the singular not the plural. Thus horse not horses (though personally I am not convinced any more of the usefulness of tagging anything about horses anyway!) and aeroplane not aeroplanes.

    I will make the point about getting information on hashtags located somewhere else (maybe in the Field Guide?) and I still live in hope of a properly structured FAQ as I agree these forums have become impossible to find anything in!

    Posted

  • makfai by makfai

    Is it possible to delete a #tag and/or comment you have posted it?

    Posted

  • HeatherC by HeatherC moderator

    I don't think it is possible for normal users but Moderators can do it, so if you want something deleted just PM me with a link to the page in question. I already saw your "ignore my Zeppelin" comment and deleted the Zeppelin hashtag for you 😃

    Posted

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

    Thank you. It was the Zeppelin one which triggered the question.

    Posted

  • 01dgobbo by 01dgobbo

    Heather C sent me a PM 13 days ago saying that I was over-using #. Unfortunately I have only just discovered the mail button top right and read her message. At this point I cannot remember what I was labeling with #. I am working on the diary of a field ambulance unit: they have lots of historically interesting problems - changing from horse to motor ambulances, arranging for the disinfection of uniforms and blankets, organizing hot water baths, setting up different types of dressing stations and hospitals, etc all of which are not very well covered if at all by the army life options; medical, hygiene, uniform.
    All the best

    Posted

  • HeatherC by HeatherC moderator in response to 01dgobbo's comment.

    At the time I think you were trying to hashtag some single letters which referred to Appendices - hashtagging a single letter doesn't work.. You were also hashtagging some things that were simply headers of documents (like Appendix A) and it is better just to use the normal reference tags for this.

    I understand the issue of a unit not being covered by the normal options but if you want to draw attention to those activities the best way is to use a simple comment on what is happening rather than a hashtag. Words like "bath", "hospital" and so on are really too common to be useful to researchers if hashtagged and so would lose their impact. Mind you, some people are still tagging "horse", "trench" and "attack" - I'm sorry to say it but those really ARE a waste of time!

    Posted

  • HeatherC by HeatherC moderator

    A few further points on hashtags.

    1. Please don't hashtag references to Orders or Appendices at all. The Reference tag was removed for a reason!
    2. Please don't hashtag places. There's a diary tag for that
    3. Please don't hashtag words that should be covered by diary tags like "attack" and "withdraw"
    4. Please please stop tagging common words like "trench" and "mud" - I mean really - what's the point!
    5. Please don't hashtag page headers. All diary pages were confidential or secret, there's not the slightest point in tagging the words!
    6. Some of you are still using a hashtag at the beginning of a long sentence without realising there is no point to this. Hashtags are there to draw attention to a word or a small and readily recognisable group of words (like VictoriaCross). If you put a hashtag at the beginning of a sentence all you are doing is hashtagging the first word, which probably will never be searched for and may in any case be out of context to the rest of the sentence. You can write a comment without the # symbol. I think some people don't realise this!
    7. Please don't just string together a load of words and hashtag them. Small groups of words that have a meaning and might get searched for - yes, a whole sentence that no-one will ever look for - no thanks!
    8. Do keep hashtagging the words sketch, map, privatediary, faint, badscan, misfiled and similar though - they are bringing out some useful stuff!

    Posted

  • IKINAWANA by IKINAWANA in response to makfai's comment.

    I discovered that you actually can change or remove a hashtag that YOU created yourself. Just go to your "Profile" page, then under "My Recent Object Comments" click on the page where you created the hashtag. Scroll down and look for the hashtag in the list of comments shown in the lower left of the screen. Hover your mouse over the hashtag and the option to "Edit" or "Remove" should appear. Once you've made your changes or removed the tag, REFRESH your browser. Your change should then appear under the "Tags" section, top-right of the screen.

    Hope this helps! Moderators, if I'm wrong here, please clarify.

    Posted

  • ral104 by ral104 moderator, scientist

    Nope, looks like you're spot on. Thanks for that, @IKINAWANA.

    Posted

  • IKINAWANA by IKINAWANA

    I searched the discussion boards for an answer to the following question, but had no luck, so I'm asking here in the form of an example. If I happen to come across an entry about a sniper (or other word that should be tagged) and I click on the speech bubble to create the hashtag and find that someone else already entered #sniper , do I need to enter it again? I ask because I've noticed that others have been adding hashtags that I or someone else has already added. To clarify, these are hashtags created days apart. Although entered more than once in the comments section, the hashtag list associated with the page only shows a single hashtag. Which do you advise - create the hashtag, or should we review the comments for an existing tag first? Thank you!

    Posted

  • ral104 by ral104 moderator, scientist

    If somebody else has already hashtagged the page, there's no need to do it again. That said, there's no harm in doing it either. A search should just return the page once, regardless of the number of duplicate tags.

    Hope that helps!

    Posted

  • erik.schaubroeckscarlet.be by erik.schaubroeckscarlet.be

    Do I have to hashtag (e.g. #draft) when someone else already did this?

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  • ral104 by ral104 moderator, scientist

    If somebody else has already hashtagged the page, there's no need to do it again. That said, there's no harm in doing it either. A search should just return the page once, regardless of the number of duplicate tags.

    Hope that helps!

    Posted

  • cyngast by cyngast moderator

    I have a question about using hashtags. How does someone use the hashtags to search for a topic? And does someone doing such a search see more than the word with the hashtag? For instance, if I were to leave a comment that says "#nominalroll of officers" (without the quotes, of course), would someone searching #nominalroll see only that or would they see my entire comment?

    I'm not planning to search for anything, but I thought that knowing this might help me to leave the most useful information for researchers.

    Posted

  • marie.eklidvirginmedia.com by marie.eklidvirginmedia.com

    Interesting question, look forward to the reply, often wondered about the comments we make.

    Posted

  • ral104 by ral104 moderator, scientist

    The hashtags themselves are the common terms which would be searched on (and we'll be able to extract a list of hashtags too, to make sure we don't miss any). However, they're essentially pointers to a page, so anybody searching for a particular term would get back a list of pages where that term had been used, complete with all attached comments. After that, it's up to them to read through the comments and the page itself, so any and all info you can include in the comments which serves to add context around the hashtag would be very useful.

    Posted

  • 141Dial34 by 141Dial34

    so if 4 people use the same hashtag on the same item on the same page how many would appear to a searcher?

    Posted

  • ral104 by ral104 moderator, scientist

    Remember that people will be searching pages, so any page with the search term on will come up. It doesn't matter how many times the search term appears on a particular page, the result is still just one page within a collection of other pages.

    Posted

  • 141Dial34 by 141Dial34

    If a previous tagger has eg #medical: with a colon directly after the word should I retag it without the colon so searchers can find it or ignore it & politely message the tagger?

    Posted

  • cyngast by cyngast moderator

    Reposting the hashtag without the colon will do. That will make it accessible to searchers.

    Posted