War Diaries Talk

Plotting your tags on a map of Belgium

  • eatyourgreens by eatyourgreens moderator, admin

    I've been looking at the data for the first 200 diaries, which are now completely tagged. Here's an animated map of casualty tags that mention men killed, over the course of the war:
    http://cdb.io/1pqB4kp

    Dates for the casualty tags were taken from the date tag at the beginning of each diary entry, and locations from place tags where 'Is the unit currently here?' had been ticked.

    Jim

    Posted

  • HeatherC by HeatherC moderator

    HI Jim

    That's really interesting and it's great for people to be able to see the kind of data that can be pulled out of something like this. It looks as though there are some "stray tags" where the place has been wrongly identified - I saw one pop up in the UK, one in Luxembourg and some others were clearly way over behind the German lines in central Belgium. What do you think has happened there and how can we allow for that?

    Heather

    Posted

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

    Yes, there seem to be some places which have the wrong position on the map. I would guess that geonames has suggested a place with the the same name, but in a different location, and that's been selected for the place tag. It's probably best to err towards the "Not sure/don't know" option for places if you aren't sure about the suggested map locations. I think the timeline tool, top right by the comments button, can be good to check which dates and places have been recorded for your tags too.

    I've made another map, showing all the geocoded place tags from the first 200 diaries.
    http://cdb.io/1hiLRYl
    I'd estimate that out of about 6,000 tagged places, perhaps 200-300 are wrongly identified, so the error rate is around 5% or less. That seems like a pretty good figure to me.

    Posted

  • HeatherC by HeatherC moderator

    Wow, that's a LOT of little dots! Another very interesting map and it gives an idea of the amount of data that is coming out of this.

    It's obvious that some of the "misplaced tags" are from exactly what you have said, simply putting the wrong location with the right name - a classic is the island of Hooge of the coast of Denmark instead of "Hooge Chateau" and another one has picked the "wrong" Somme...

    Some are where people have tried to tag things that are never going to get a geographical match like "left sub-sector" or "Quadrilateral" and have then picked one of the (obviously wrong) suggestions rather than ticking the "None of these / don't know" option.

    I suppose the main lesson from this is if you don't know the location of the place then don't guess!

    Posted

  • eatyourgreens by eatyourgreens moderator, admin

    I think the other lesson is that 95% of the time, you guys are right and we'll only need manual intervention to fix about 5% of the place tags. 😃

    It would be interesting if this project produces a useful map of named WWI locations that can be used instead of geonames in future.

    Posted

  • cyngast by cyngast moderator

    These maps are really interesting! Thanks for posting the links.

    I'd also like to ask about areas that seem to be out of the range of the maps under the Place tag. I've worked on two diaries out of this most recent batch that began in areas that weren't included. One was a unit that was based in Dublin at the time of mobilization, and nothing came up for Ireland at all. The second was a unit that had actually been at the front in Italy and was moving back to France, but the first few entries were about the train trip out of Italy into France and nothing came up for any of the Italian place names, including a couple of well-known cities such as Genoa and San Remo.

    Posted

  • eatyourgreens by eatyourgreens moderator, admin in response to cgastwein@aol.com's comment.

    That's a good point. We restricted the geonames search to Belgium, France, Germany and the UK, so you won't get suggested places outside those countries. The Republic of Ireland should probably be added, though. I didn't realise that Italy was mentioned in the diaries.

    If you record a place as 'Not known/not sure' then the place name is tagged with blanks for the lat/long coordinates, which flags up to us that the place still needs to be geocoded.

    Posted

  • cyngast by cyngast moderator

    I was quite excited when I realized the battalion was in Italy. It was the 527 (Durham) Field Company Royal Engineers and they were attached to, I think, the 13th Infantry Brigade.

    Do you know if this project will ever expand to include diaries from other fronts where British units were fighting?

    Posted

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

    This has made me unreasonably excited at 6.45 AM. It's really fantastic! I can't wait to see more things like this.

    Posted

  • angiehart by angiehart

    I've just taken a look at these maps (plus the others you can access once on the webpage). They are really interesting - and it's great to see that all our tagging is producing some great information.

    Posted

  • Maria64 by Maria64

    Thank you so much for sharing these maps - it's fascinating to see how the information is being translated onto these maps. I'm so glad to be part of this project and can't wait to watch it develop.

    Posted

  • linda2 by linda2

    sorry, where can I find these Belgian maps ?

    Posted

  • HeatherC by HeatherC moderator in response to linda2's comment.

    In the links on Page 1 of this thread (we're on Page 2 now)

    Posted

  • eatyourgreens by eatyourgreens moderator, admin

    Hi, here's a link to the maps if you missed it the first time. https://the-zooniverse.cartodb.com

    Posted

  • MGHogue by MGHogue

    RE: Map tags are mapped improperly.
    My observations: (an American user here)
    In the diaries place names in the text are sometimes hyphenated. Some are prefixed with "Les" or "Le" which (it seems) may or may not have meaning to 'Google Maps'. There seem to be variants - excusable of course! (I've been around the military for 28 years, LOL!). I've seen a few which start (place A )-(place B ), then later in the text (Place B ), then dropped. (shrug). Who knows? Google maps may offer some suggestions, but it can be confusing. Opening the map to a new page helps, but I wonder if some of the townships are gone. Dumb American here, LOL.
    I will take the advice suggested and leave things 'unmapped' if not sure.
    I can't always figure out if they "are still there" or if they are moving out. Sometimes things change so fast on the battlefield. "Being shelled" - repositioned - "being shelled again" (repeat about a dozen times) - "billeted" and then mobilized. Gee. Feel for those guys. The Germans were overwhelming sometimes it seems early in the war.

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  • ral104 by ral104 moderator, scientist

    Yes, the early part of the war was much more mobile than the trench warfare which became the norm in 1915. It can often be confusing trying to follow the path a unit took. You're definitely doing the right thing in only mapping places which you're sure of. For the others, it's fine to just enter the name as written in the diaries, and we'll try and map it later on.

    It's also quite likely that some of the places mentioned aren't there anymore - plenty of villages were wiped off the map.

    Posted