War Diaries Talk

2nd batch of unit war diaries added to Operation War Diary today!

  • MatthewIWM by MatthewIWM moderator

    Some very exciting news - we've added the second batch of unit war diaries to Operation War Diary! That's another 4,000 diaries from France and Flanders that we need your help to explore and tag.

    So what's new in this second batch of diaries?

    This second batch contains records relating to the last of the Cavalry and numbers 8-33 Infantry Divisions deployed to the Western Front in the First World War. They cover the entire period of the units’ involvement in France and Belgium, from their arrival on the front to their departure at the end of the war. That includes the Indian Cavalry, the South African Brigade and The Welsh Guards regiment

    The unit war diaries show both simple yet effective tactics – such as 'dummy soldiers' operated by strings - alongside the introduction of more advanced twentieth century technologies such as the first (German) flamethrowers and the first (British) gas attacks. Given these advancements in technology and the increasing threats, suspicions were heightened – even extending to cats and dogs that were believed to be working for the Germans

    How you've already helped us to make history

    Thanks to your incredible help, in the first 8 weeks since the launch of the project we've already uncovered an incredible amount from the first batch of diary pages. The 10,000 of you that have already volunteered to help us explore the pages of the unit war diaries have already tagged:

    • 260,000 separate mentions of named individuals
    • 330,000 places
    • 300,000 activities

    That's the equivalent of two years work, or someone working 40 hours a week for four years (!), which really goes to show just how much you have all supported the project - it would've been impossible to achieve the same without your help!

    Improvements to tags

    We've taken on board all your feedback we've had so far and are using this to improve the project as we go. One of the first main improvements we're making to the project is to update the tag categories, introducing new categories and tweaking others slightly to enable you to tag all the information from the diary pages that you'd want to. We'll be posting on the discussion boards very soon when we implement those changes.

    We hope you've really enjoyed reading and tagging the diary pages that have been made available so far, we can't emphasise enough what an incredible contribution you are making to First World War history here.

    Thank you again!

    Matthew
    IWM

    Posted

  • MartinCoulson by MartinCoulson

    Hi, I have been merrily tagging 56 Fd Coy RE (Sept-Dec 14) and found some comment tags made by 'King Edward' e.g. on 10 Dec 14 he has tagged a sketch of a wire entanglement. I was a bit shocked to think I had spent hours repeating work already completed by someone else. How can I be sure that I am tagging 'virgin' diaries? Cheers, Martin (ex-Sapper...).

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  • eatyourgreens by eatyourgreens moderator, admin

    Hello, we need each page to be tagged by more than one person in order for the project to work, so don't worry that you are repeating other people's work. See my more in-depth answer here: http://talk.operationwardiary.org/#/boards/BWD0000008/discussions/DWD00000gh?page=1&comment_id=5324443dd33e516a3b00005d

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  • MartinCoulson by MartinCoulson

    Ah, understood. I will continue...

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  • Josie_Holford by Josie_Holford in response to MartinCoulson's comment.

    That duplication can be disheartening especially when confronting long lists of names for example. Would be great to know where to focus one's time most effectively. I understand the need for, and desirability of, more than one tagger/ classifier but share your concerns. Right now there's a choice - either assume the work has been done and skip over it. Or dig in and know that there's an excellent chance your work is irrelevant.

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  • HeatherC by HeatherC moderator in response to Josie Holford's comment.

    As eatourgreens explained in his linked post (above) the way this project works is to have at least 5 people tag every page (temporarily increased to 7 a few weeks ago). Thus you will only ever get presented with a page that has not already been tagged by the required number of people and so tagging work is never going to be irrelevant. If taggers choose to skip over bits of the page, then when the data is compared with that done by others, the way I understand it, the page is likely to get put out for tagging one more time just to be sure, so I'd not recommend skipping sections.

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  • milh0use by milh0use

    I hope no one is disheartened by the need for multiple classifications per page. I've been working with the data being produced by volunteers and my experience has been:

    • We don’t know in advance how many “taggable” objects there are on a page
    • Some volunteers are tagging things less comprehensively than others.
    • If we were to accept a single volunteer contribution per page, many of the pages may only be tagged by one of the less diligent volunteers, potentially missing a lot of information that we’d like to capture.
    • However, there is often disagreement between volunteers about exactly what is tagged and how it is spelled, so having multiple classifications per page allows us to determine a “majority opinion” set of tags.
    • For the task of establishing a “majority opinion”, the work of the less diligent volunteers is still helpful as they tend to focus their efforts on the tags of most general interest, often creating a consensus for tags where otherwise there would not be one.

    So everyone’s contribution is valuable in its own right. Even if a user tags everything on the page, there is a risk of misreading handwriting or occasional typos creeping in so in the interests of ensuring that everything is captured accurately, every contribution counts.

    Posted

  • bootnecksbs by bootnecksbs

    Hi Y'all,

    Just my two pennies worth on the subject,

    It is not unusual for projects such as this one to have more than one volunteer for each page especially for the reasons pointed out above.

    Over the years I have worked on four of the Zooniverse Projects (Space, Nature, Climate) most recently the U.S Ships logs for Old Weather who only have 3 transcribers per page. I feel under more pressure because of this as I know that at the most, only two people are following on each page.

    Working on the War Diaries is less stressful for me as I know that if I discover on the next page that I'd made an error on the previous page or, as I've done a couple of times, pressed the finish button instead of closing the "Talk Comments " box (c'mon, admit it we've all done it...no really? Please don't say it's just me...Boo Hoo) anyway I know at least one of the other 4 or so "taggers" will enter the correct detail. I have never professed to being perfect so it's reassuring to know I'm not alone on the page/diary I'm working on.

    And naturally it works both ways, as I could be adding information missed by the volunteer before me.

    I was chatting with someone at Old Weather last week and he told me that he's just spent an hour or so here on War Diaries and had completed 128 pages In an hour or so.

    Now c'mon Guys/Gals, I'm sure we've all been lucky and been on a roll with a clear well written or typed diary with out a lot to tag and maybe the odd Report, Order, Signals Pad, Map etc thrown in at the end of the month/diary but that many in 90 minutes....or, maybe I'm doing something wrong (Boo Hoo)

    Either this chap is flippin' "Speedy Gonzales" (other names available, of course) or lucky, but in both cases he's had volunteers following to add anything he may have missed.

    This is just my lighthearted point of view, please take it as such.

    I'm learning a lot working on the diaries but at the same time, I'm having fun as I'm sure the majority of us are.

    Happy Tagging Fellow Volunteers.

    Posted

  • HeatherC by HeatherC moderator

    I'm the fastest tagger in town, me. (just kidding but when I get going I don't hang about) but 128 pages in just over an hour? Blimey. I'm inclined towards the "he's not really doing it properly" end of the scale myself!

    And no don't worry you're not the only one who has pressed the finish button when you didn't mean to... (did I admit that out loud?)

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  • eatyourgreens by eatyourgreens moderator, admin

    Slightly off-topic, but some researchers at UCL published a paper about Old Weather for a conference called Gamification. One of the things they found was that some volunteers thought the ranks in Old Weather, ie. becoming Captain if you've done the most pages, encourages people to speed through the logs, rather than taking the time to do a good job.

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  • brecon_beacons by brecon_beacons

    128 pages in a hour?? I wonder what he has been recording. 😦)

    I am COMPLETELY at the other end of the scale. I take about an hour over each page. But I will: check all place names are correctly spelled, check that routes taken make sense, research to find out the full names and numbers of personnel that are mentioned, research to ensure I understand exactly what kind of activity is taking place, and when.

    I also provide a full transcription of every page - which I know we are not required to do, but which I think it is useful in case any of the tagged items I have put in are ambiguous or appear to contradict themselves (e.g, when a regiment has split into two, or three or more, places at the same time; and are undertaking different activities).

    I think the different approaches that contributors take to the work underlines the need for there to be multiple 'taggers' at work on each page.

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  • bootnecksbs by bootnecksbs

    I agree with what @eatyourgreens posted. At the moment I am working both here and with Old Weather project on US Ships weather logs and my modest contribution of 180 on this particular vessel has earned me the rank of Lieutenant but look at how many the Captain has done. http://www.oldweather.org/ships/522f918068f4b84bd9000002

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  • RobinLucas by RobinLucas

    128 pages an hour is idiotic - less than 25 seconds a page to read, understand, digest, tag.... useless to expect anything of value in this sort of effort. It smacks of a call centre mentality... tick complete and move on just to show you are the most efficient "agent". Ridiculous

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  • HeatherC by HeatherC moderator

    Agreed and that's exactly why we have more than one person tag each page!

    Posted