What could we improve?

by Skyletron in response to timrousbeastie's comment.

Have come across "xxxx casualties", without specifying the type (killed, wounded, missing...), I can't log them under 'casualties' because I can't put them in categories. Though I imagine the number of casualties would be useful info. to have. Can we have 'unspecified' as a type of casualty. For now, I'm putting them under 'sick' (sort of covers it them all?). Hopefully at some point we can go back to pages we've done & modify this.

Posted January 14, 2014 7:47 PM

by wildcatjenny moderator

I tagged a page, made a comment and then was unable to return to page I was working on. I did not click "Finish" so assume that my work was lost. Tutorial suggest that one make comments before clicking "Finished". Can we get a clarification of the instructions?

Posted January 14, 2014 8:02 PM

by Onegoodturn

Be great to be able to reverse colour, change contrast, filter etc to make it more legible.

Posted January 14, 2014 8:07 PM

by ian_hodgson

Would love to be able to adjust contrast. Writing in faint pencil with a grey background can be very difficult to read

Posted January 14, 2014 8:28 PM

by MarkSinkinson

'Stood to Arms' should be an option under Unit Activity. Granted it happens daily, but it doesn't really fit under any of the other options.

Posted January 14, 2014 8:33 PM

THIS. Please let us toggle tags.

Posted January 14, 2014 9:32 PM

by kvib

Perhaps add a button to the zooming tools that resets the view to whole page. It's good to review the whole page after reaching the end of the page. Also, I did not really understand what the "magnifying glass" zooming tool does or how it should be used.

Posted January 14, 2014 10:01 PM

by debcam

"my" diary was written in really personal style - lots of comments about the enemy ("stupid idiots", the Russians and comments on some of his dead comrades. it is a pity there isn't a small box to add some "quotes" thus showing how the soldiers were feeling? (i know this may be mainly for "historical" and "strategic" etc purposes, but think how much detail is in these. I really enjoyed the read; it was quite a lyrical 4 pages!

Posted January 14, 2014 10:15 PM

by Alisonallen

Very difficult to get through a whole page when the site info box jumps around then connection lost. Cannot seem to return to page working on. Would like to know if there is an area to add comments other than the options given which dnt cover all activities such as about to be in reserve but shell fire on road or trench names

Posted January 14, 2014 10:24 PM

by cerilawley

Found a reference to deserters but no way to tag it. Would also like the opportunity to go back to previous pages. Would be nice to be able to tag the condition of the trenches. Noticed that the casualty dialog does not reset so you have to reset it manually each time you use it.

Posted January 14, 2014 11:57 PM

by BewareofCrisps

Under 'Unit Activity' perhaps include 'Resupplying' and 'Engineering Work'. One of the diaries I looked at mentioned supplying ammunition to regiments along the Ypres several times but I had no way to tag this apart from 'Other', and in the same diary the construction of wooden billets and shelters is mentioned.

Posted January 15, 2014 12:21 AM

by Jockgit64 in response to cerilawley's comment.

I agree with the being able to go back, a couple of times I have felt the need just to check what I have done, but can't find a way of doing it.

Posted January 15, 2014 12:33 AM

by DennisM45

My first page simply disappeared while trying to resize. I went and looked at discussions and found nothing so I clicked on "return to classifying" and it took me back to the tutorial! No way to get back to the page I was working on or retrieve any of the tags I have done.

This is a really disappointing and unusable format. Very jumpy with the tags not going where placed.

Using Safari for what it's worth.

Posted January 15, 2014 12:38 AM

by simonedi moderator

We could do with horses as a casualty, ive counted about a dozen dead so far.. also we have promotions and so on but nothing for when a person assumes command of a unit

Posted January 15, 2014 1:42 AM

by TMinnich

This format is very jumpy and most of my tags get placed all over the page.
Sometimes when I zoom in, the page just keeps going until it is unreadable. Then, I can't get it to zoom out. All of the tags are lost.
This is a fascinating project but I hate losing all these data tags. Is there a solution?

Posted January 15, 2014 2:09 AM

by TMinnich

What is the purpose of the magnifying glass? It does nothing on my pages. Usually, we should be able magnify a specific word or area on a page, which would be extremely useful!

Posted January 15, 2014 2:11 AM

by KindKit

After zooming in on a page, it needs to be possible to move up or down the page--right now you can only see the middle of a zoomed page.

It would be nice to be able to temporarily hide one's own previous tags. I found myself hardly able to read the page I was working on because of all my tags overlaying it.

Also, I've had this weird thing happen repeated where, if I go into the Diaries for a new unit, I will see one page for a few seconds and then it will disappear and I get a different page to work on. I have no clue why that would happen.

Posted January 15, 2014 2:16 AM

by hue.tone

number fields left blank replaced by "0" instead of NaN would be helpful.

Posted January 15, 2014 2:18 AM

by wlcounsil

problems with place on Firefox--pulldowns don't clear so you can enter information. After clicking "finishing, despite other web pages loading quickly, it's taking 10-15 minutes to submit a page; this makes me not want to continue AT ALL.

Posted January 15, 2014 2:37 AM

by DennisM45 in response to TMinnich's comment.

Exact same thing that happened to me. This format id virtually useless!

Posted January 15, 2014 3:06 AM

by woollamc

To reiterate what others are saying. Have worked my way through the diary pages - fascinating - then came across all the "appendices", which are mainly movement orders and many are undated. I could work out the dates if I was able to go back to main sections and find the corresponding entries but can't. Facility to move around the document - backwards and forwards - would greatly add to the project.

Posted January 15, 2014 9:09 AM

by Mandark

I transcribe parish records and we're each given a set of images to work on that can be uploaded in a bundle but can be amended and submitted again, replacing the earlier file. This is really useful as it allows for mistakes to be rectified as you go along.

Posted January 15, 2014 9:36 AM

by ffirefly

I had a page with '13 killed and wounded' but had no way of putting it into the casualties tag.

The page also ended with '...including the 2nd in command' (amongst in the killed and wounded), so being able to page forward to read the end of the sentence would have been good.

Then I lost everything because the finish button did absolutely nothing so unfortunately it was all a waste of effort anyway.

Posted January 15, 2014 10:57 AM

by BizzieLizzie

I have been reading through the comments and agree with a lot of them - instead of repeating the same query could do with sorting the queries into topics with the answers given so we don't repeat.
My queries so far:
Need back button to return to previous pages - as we read on we may need to correct previous entries. Also when accidentally leaving a page before completion we cannot return to finish. Need to go forward sometimes to understand entry before tagging.
Page hard to read due to contrast and all the tagging.
Need more classifications - Supply Column diary cannot be tagged with 'supply' or 'delivery' etc but only with 'other'

Posted January 15, 2014 12:04 PM

by Rhyz

I often have dates packed together 12-13-14-15|11|1914. I'd really like a way to put in a timespan instead of just a single date.
I had a Engineering Bataillon building bridges and no way to record it, only "other".
It would be really great if there was a list with the names of the regiments in the same division. A list of already tagged names and places for this diary would be great, too. The handwriting sometimes is really bad and you can only guess what regiment or officer was mentioned.
I also had Companies that were detached or attached to some other unit without a way to mark that.

Posted January 15, 2014 12:17 PM

by El_Lion

This is the second Zooniverse Project I entered which does transcriptions of hand written pages. With the last one we had so similar problems that I wonder, do you guys from a Zooniverse Project ever talk to others in order to get some information on how to do the stuff and to avoid the same pitfalls, like lines which cannot be moved, page crashes without being able to save the work, etc.? Also with the last project I already wondered why in all the world nobody seems to betatest first, and then make a release. And I mean HEAVY beta testing with some volunteers who know what they have to do: 1. make it crash. 2. if it doesn't crash any more, make suggestions for efficiency. Your option "Trying to fix it on the way of improvement" is terribly frustrating.
BizzieLizzie already made a good overview of the most pressing queries and I second that list!

Posted January 15, 2014 12:20 PM

by Paisleyman

How can you save a page and go back to it later to complete the classification? I had started on a page, which looked really interesting, but was called away. Now I can't seem to get it back.

Posted January 15, 2014 1:02 PM

by imaginatian

Just started "tagging" and a little frustrated by software limitations already. So...

Full Screen mode please. Like many users I have a monitor that is 1920 x 1080 pixels. It's annoying that only around 40% of this is used to display the document and tagging information.

Secondly please make the tags available more appropriate for the type of document being tagged. I've just done an Operational Orders page and the only relevant tags I could use were Person - who was issuing the order - Type - for the type of order - and Date - for when it was issued. However there were 7 places mentioned, 9 times specified and 7 regiments mentioned. All very interesting information that it is not possible to tag and then share. The "missing" tag types are available on different document types.

You almost need a "Part Finished" button because there so much more information that could be tagged...

Posted January 15, 2014 1:05 PM

by Jet1577

Would it be possible to have some exemplar of the different types of document that has been tagged so that those of us that are inexperienced have a concrete example to compare our work to?

The diary tutorial was very useful but then I was given an order page and it didn't match the diary tutorial so I wasn't sure what to do/ how much to tag.

Posted January 15, 2014 1:54 PM

by spof moderator

Rhyz

You can find a list of units in each Divsion here

http://www.1914-1918.net/britdivs.htm

Glen

Posted January 15, 2014 2:01 PM

by On_A_Fizzer

If, as it seems, tagging is to be crunched into a searchable archive perhaps another menu on the Reference tag. Something to differentiate between detailed, mentioned and minor entries, to aid functionality.

Posted January 15, 2014 2:04 PM

by pawcards

What about recording horse deaths?

Posted January 15, 2014 3:47 PM

by MatthewIWM moderator in response to KindKit's comment.

Hi there, if you have zoomed in you can still move around the page, you just need to click and hold and you can drag the page around to see different parts of it. Let me know if you're still having problems with that.

Posted January 15, 2014 5:29 PM

by sazzlecat

The option to save progress and return to finish the page later would be useful.

Posted January 15, 2014 7:40 PM

by ryan1404

one page i was looking at was awarding 4 people a medal, i tagged them receiving that, as i read on it appears one died,one wounded,one MIA another redeployed so i tagged them again with this information. is there a way for one tag to have more than one reason for you tagging them without having to tag twice?

Posted January 15, 2014 8:24 PM

by KJL1911

It would be useful to be able to print out or have a pdf of the guidance notes

Posted January 15, 2014 8:52 PM

by nickb55

It's great that the system prompts you with the previous tag data for places, unit activity and the weather as these often repeat. However, casualties never repeat exactly. Could you automatically reset all the casualty entries to zero every time we click to add a new casualty tag.
Others have remarked that the only work under unit activiy is digging and repairing trenches and rightly pointed out that this is far from the only work. Even if you aren't able or it's not appropriate to have lots of detailed entries for different types of work, perhaps something generic like "Work party" would cover lots of situations.
On the casualty list could "gas" be added? Up to now I've included them as "wounded" but I can imagine scenarios where researchers will want to find specific gas casualties.

Posted January 15, 2014 9:50 PM

by HeatherC moderator

All the comments made on here today and we've had ONE Moderator response about how to zoom? Is anyone reading all the stuff we are bothering to write here? Frankly I am getting to the point of not doing any more as so many issues are being raised it feels like a waste of time to continue when so much needs changing.

Posted January 15, 2014 10:13 PM

by soccerguy

Quite a lot of information could be tagged in Ops Orders other than what seems to be caught in the orders category. Quite a few of the tags used in the general diary pages would apply to Ops Orders.

Posted January 15, 2014 11:42 PM

by danberto

There is an 'author of diary' option for the person completing it but in the battalion I've done there were many 'Operation Orders' that were signed by the adjutant of the battalion.

When marking the person for this I had to use 'other' as there isn't an 'author of operation orders' tag. (I lost count the number of times I 'met' H. Flint!). Perhaps a new tag could be included or the existing one changed to something like 'author of document'.

Posted January 16, 2014 12:01 AM

by nickb55 in response to HeatherC's comment.

I don't think you should be discouraged. The way the tagging is being done means that it will be relatively easy for people to go back in later and add lots more tags - for example, just looking in the diaries for references to the use of gas. It also means that eventually tags will be able to be searched, so that, for example, if they were to add some new options to unit activity such as "laying cables", it would be possible to display all the tags with "other" and the relevant part of the scan of the diary and allow them to be updated appropriately. I'm sure it's not wasted effort.

Posted January 16, 2014 12:24 AM

by rogerlwhite in response to nickb55's comment.

nickb55 - I could be wrong but I assumed HeatherC wasn't just talking about tagging but about the whole range of issues people are raising that are going unanswered. I also suspect that the one 'project' person who responds to queries has in effect been 'landed' - the project management need to review all the points being raised and get a grip!

Posted January 16, 2014 9:31 AM

by HeatherC moderator in response to rogerlwhite's comment.

Roger is spot on. The whole thing feels badly organised and poorly thought out. And to cap it off, after following the same battalion through 10 months of 1916, I log on this morning to be greeted with a "finished" message, so I assume the rest of the diary has been tagged by someone else . A point for the organisers, this isn't quite like tagging galaxy types, it's about following a STORY. I get the bit about having at least 5 people tag the same diary for statistical analysis but why not let one person finish what they started (maybe with a default time of a few days inactivity to put it back into the menu for others to choose?)

I'm afraid I won't be spending any more time doing this until some changes are made. What a shame.

Posted January 16, 2014 9:50 AM

by dullrider

I gave up after a couple of pages, due to the strain of trying to read the faint images. It would have been nice to have the images enhanced beforehand.

Posted January 16, 2014 12:38 PM

by Mandark

In response to the click and drag comment by the moderator - it is really difficult to find a blank part of the document to move the image once you've started tagging. I kept opening boxes instead of moving the image.

Posted January 16, 2014 1:30 PM

by julianbarker

When doing the veterinary unit diaries, there are loads of activities that can't be recorded about the numbers of animals, casualties, etc tha trelate to the animals. There is not even an animals category which would go some way towards recording these.

Posted January 16, 2014 1:34 PM

by lukesmith moderator

Hi Everyone,

Thank you again for all your suggestions. We are reading them and we will post a detailed response. We plan to gather them all up next week and process them together. So please keep them coming.

Did I mention that this is a long term project 😉

thanks,

Luke (IWM)

Posted January 16, 2014 1:40 PM

by julianbarker

Probably been mentioned already, but i don't have time to read all the posts, but two isues that drove me mad last night -

Navigating the page - the image window is fixed so is far too small for a large screen so I need to zoom in and click and drag. Everytime I click I get a tag I don't want that I need to repeat. There seems to be no way of turning tagging off.
With a page with a lot of tags, for example, one diary page I had was closely spaced typewritten and covered a lot of info for about 14 days and every day there were parades, training, mentions of officers, locations etc, plus daily weather meaning I placed about 60 or 70 tags, the system starts to becoem very unresponsive. I was waiting severla seconds for a tag to appear on a dual core 4Gb system with no other apps running, and navigating the document was painfully slow.

Posted January 16, 2014 1:42 PM

by nickb55 in response to julianbarker's comment.

(1). Yes, this has been raised in a couple of places. The solution is either to click on the page and start dragging immediately so a tag doesn't get dropped (not so easy as you might think and some still get through!) or (and this is pretty foolproof) click on the "1" at the top left to go back to the choice of documents. Now you can move the page around without dropping any tags. Simply click back on the document type to continue tagging.

Incidentally, this also allows you to drop alternative tags on pages - if you get casualties, for example, in a report. You can select diary to drop the casualty tag and then click "1" and "report" to go back to the normal view.

(2). Can't help with this but I'm sure it's not your system. All the processing is being done on the server.

Posted January 16, 2014 1:58 PM

by nickb55 in response to imaginatian's comment.

I have had the same issue but have discovered that It's possible to use tags from other document types by clicking "1" at the top left, selecting an alternative document, using its tags, then clicking "1" and your original document type to go back.

Posted January 16, 2014 2:02 PM

by Katybb

I have a two tagging issue: firstly, it would be great if there was a way to not be tagging anything, so as I drag the page about I don't accidentally add tags; and secondly, tags don't seem to actually drop where I click - it feels like it might have something to do with zooming or having dragged the page about....

Posted January 16, 2014 6:46 PM

by Malcolmino

I totally agree with Katybb's comment re dragging the page. It seems to be impossible to control the centre of the zoom, so there are effectively parts of the page you cannot enlarge.

Posted January 16, 2014 8:34 PM

by Phil_Evans in response to MatthewIWM's comment.

Yes - would be useful as I've come across several 'Injured in accident' entries, including use of circular saw!

Posted January 16, 2014 10:40 PM

by Antirius

The unit I am working on spends a lot of time on vehicle maintenance. It would be good to have that as a unit activity or army life.

Posted January 16, 2014 11:18 PM

by Veegee

I would like to see an event for 'fatigues' on the unit activity. I have my diary people doing that a lot, due to bad weather,
so they are fixing roads, fixing wires, distributing uniforms etc while waiting for orders and nothing seem to cover that

Posted January 16, 2014 11:48 PM

by DonnaHolcombe in response to KindKit's comment.

I can hold the primary mouse button down and drag it as you would with a map. I am on Firefox.

Posted January 17, 2014 3:42 AM

by DonnaHolcombe in response to TMinnich's comment.

I don't like the symbol either. It would be nice with the standard magnify glass with a plus and magnifying glass with a minus. When I click the + and - below it zooms.

Posted January 17, 2014 3:44 AM

by angela_nz

The Google maps box that comes up when you type a place name in seems to only cover France/Belgium - the diary page I just finished was from 1919 when the unit was stationed in Cologne, Germany - the only options coming up in the place name selection list were various Colognes in France. Presumably many units were stationed in Germany immediately following the war so extending the coverage to Germany might be useful?

Posted January 17, 2014 8:24 AM

by lukesmith moderator in response to angela_nz's comment.

We have added Germany to the geocoder --many thanks!

Posted January 17, 2014 11:27 AM

Interface:

Definitely support idea of "hand" tool to move page around without putting in a tag and hiding all tags already put in.

Agree would be great to be able to adjust the contrast of certain pages.. and also to rotate them slightly, so that the timeline can be built correctly even when the lines on the page aren't straight.

Support being able to move back to previous pages would be great too; OK several people will be doing them but often there's information on one page that only becomes clearer on the subsequent page.

Would be good to be able to always see the cover page of the Diary you're working on, so that you can find month & year when these aren't specified.

Also be able to mark tags as being "uncertain", i.e. we're not sure we've read it well and should be checked. I find this particularly important for peoples' names.

Place names
Place names are tricky I can see you've put a lot of effort in trying to help us tag these correctly but someone will have to fix that all up afterwards.
Would be great if the pop-up google map were more scalable, and showed the previous location you were in - so that if you have to choose between several names, you can find the one closest to where you last were. And better capture of alternative spellings. (eg. St.- Saint- St; wood v. bois, accents. v. no accents, old spellings vs. new spellings especially in Flanders).

Casualties:

horses dying or being wounded: are they of any interest? Should they be recorded? Is the whole point of this only to find people, or to also get an idea of overall human & other losses over the course of the war?
totally support non-combat casualties option;
friendly fire deaths/wounding also?
unspecified - after some battles, there are "XXX O.R. casualties" but we don't know what kind they are... so if we put them all in one of the categories you provide that would be misleading.

Tagging persons as casualties - killed in action is sad business.

Orders:
If we tag orders, then the times and places & instructions (e.g. to attack) show up in the timeline, this distorts it. We should be able to have a tickbox that would qualify these tags as being outside of the timeline. (or, not tag orders at all).

People:
Often people are temporarily dispatched to another unit or temporarily join, sometimes have a temporary promotion. Perhaps a temporary tick box?

Unit Activity:

For combat units, I think there should be two levels of this. First level: "Back of Lines - In Reserve - In the lines". Second level (if we want this detail), would allow us to tag more detail of what is happening.

With respect to what is happening "in the lines", I find the tags don't allow us to draw the whole picture.

Most of the time, they're firing at each other without actually attacking. When the Germans are firing, we can put "under fire", but we can't say that the UK is just firing.

Then when the UK is actually attacking, we can put "attacking", but when the Germans are attacking, we can still only put "under fire" - so we can't tell the difference between a German attack and the Germans just firing.

Then sometimes whole pages are devoted to explaining the details of a battle, with different companies doing different things - firing, attacking, falling back, going to support other units, trying to dig people out, Germans responding, etc... For this, the tags "Attacking" and "Under fire" seem a bit inappropriate, perhaps there should be a "battle" tag.

There should be a "fatigues" tag, too.

Non-combat units
And a different set of tags for non-combat units, because most of their activities are "other" and that's not informative. Suggest you not have non-combat units tagged until you have a better idea of the information you need on them.

Good idea to start with just part of the diaries, then rethink, tweak before continuing with the others.

Posted January 17, 2014 1:42 PM

by Sariemarais

Frustrating beyond belief on Ipad. Freezes. Can't move without tagging occurring. Can't find finish button to save so have attempted same page 4 times. Will wait till it's fixed before attempting again.

Posted January 17, 2014 2:16 PM

by Veegee

@itsmestephanie, I too have had 'friendly fire' deaths, usually it was because of some accident, ie some ordinance blowing
up in camp accidentally, killing one and wounding 8 others, and that doesn't seem covered as you stated. I just recorded them the best I could. And, there wasn't a task for funeral, as in this particular case, the one dead was a Lt, so they held a funeral for him the next day and buried him, had to put it down as camp activity other. For the most part, the tags seem to cover 80% of what we might need, but needs a few tweaks added here and there.

Posted January 17, 2014 2:25 PM

by Beez

I have come across many horses being killed, wounded and shot because of exhaustion, but nowhere to report this. Would these details be of interest to anyone?

Posted January 17, 2014 2:26 PM

by spof moderator

I agree on non-combat deaths. Not just for exploding ammo dumps but many men died from illness or accidents like being hit by a lorry etc. I would call it "Died - Non Combat".

Posted January 17, 2014 2:29 PM

by codebreaker01 in response to MatthewIWM's comment.

Also soldiers are killed by their own artillery firing too soon.

Horses also killed because they were wounded, and horses killed because they were running off towards enemy lines. Horses should be kept out of wars.
People too. 😦

Posted January 17, 2014 2:30 PM

by lukesmith moderator in response to Sariemarais's comment.

Yes, we know there are problems with iPad. SORRY!

See bug report at: http://talk.operationwardiary.org/#/boards/BWD0000001/discussions/DWD00000mn

We are looking at this, but it may take a little while. This is a long term project and we'll be addressing as many issues as possible.

Posted January 17, 2014 2:49 PM

by lukesmith moderator in response to Beez's comment.

We welcome hash tags, such as #horses, in the comments. They are not something we are gathering structured data on for this project. Many thanks.

Posted January 17, 2014 2:52 PM

by Mistshadow

It would be helpful if, while classifying Orders, in the drop-down list for Type for there was an option for "Signaling".

Posted January 17, 2014 10:05 PM

by Col._Gibbon

One thing I find very annoying is when your working on a live page, with a tab selected, the mouse sets lots on new markers, when I try to move around the page, I have to go back and delete them, before I can scroll on. It would be better if the tab went live when click on it, and then you enter the information, and save, At that point the tab could go to sleep, until you click on the next tab.

Also "Cleaning Kit" and "Drulling" seem to be a popular pastime, which we don't seem to have..

Posted January 17, 2014 10:40 PM

Hi I participate in other archive sites , they have an option to lighten the pages in order to read them better if the writing is feint would this be or is it already available.

Posted January 18, 2014 8:57 AM

by Col._Gibbon

Thinking about this last night, can we activate the arrow keys, so you can scroll around the docuement? I made a copy of a page, and viiewed it in Paintshop, and it was much easier to read by scrolling along a line of text, than trying to navigate a page using the mouse.

Posted January 18, 2014 9:59 AM

by novistar in response to Railman's comment.

It would be really good if the Timeline were longer, ideally could be moved out of the editing screen. If "scroll" the scrollbar of the timeline (as opposed to clicking on top/bottom arrow), the whole page scrolls and that's bothersome.

Posted January 18, 2014 9:18 PM

by josiahnz

Apologies if it has already been requested, but could there be a Casualty option called Gassed? I'm not sure what to put these under. Thanks

Posted January 18, 2014 9:34 PM

by firejuggler

I would love a 24 Hour format for "time"

Posted January 18, 2014 9:53 PM

by mobow

I would like to have the time options of morning, afternoon, evening and night as often these are how activities are described as taking place rather than specific times

Posted January 18, 2014 10:17 PM

by charcinders

Probably quite a big change but would be so useful - a selection box containing all the places and people you have entered previously for this particular unit, to save having to constantly type the same things over and over.

Also, in Orders, an option for "carry on", i.e. continue doing what you are doing, pending further orders.

Posted January 19, 2014 1:31 AM

by antje23

A tag for dis-mobilization would be helpful. In the later entries many of the diaries describe this for specific officers, but the closest option is "leave" which isn't quite the same.

Posted January 19, 2014 7:54 AM

I had this problem also. I used the person tag and selected other from the drop down box then entered the number of other ranks and demob in the unit box at the bottom. Hopefully whoever is collating the info will understand.

Posted January 19, 2014 11:40 AM

by lukesmith moderator in response to emg's comment.

Added to long list oin my long comment on page 5 or 6 at: http://talk.operationwardiary.org/#/boards/BWD0000008/discussions/DWD00001b0

Posted January 19, 2014 10:57 PM

by lukesmith moderator in response to Railman's comment.

Do you mean for a person?

Posted January 19, 2014 10:59 PM

by lukesmith moderator in response to vlnapolitano's comment.

Good suggestion. See http://talk.operationwardiary.org/#/boards/52d7dfe435cb5d4fbd000410/discussions/DWD00000en for related tip

Posted January 19, 2014 11:03 PM

by lukesmith moderator in response to A.Sky's comment.

Fair request. On the list!

Posted January 19, 2014 11:04 PM

by lukesmith moderator in response to kvib's comment.

Good idea. Added to list.

Posted January 19, 2014 11:05 PM

by lukesmith moderator in response to BizzieLizzie's comment.

On the case, of a little slow 😉

Posted January 19, 2014 11:09 PM

by lukesmith moderator in response to HeatherC's comment.

Sure are 😉

Posted January 19, 2014 11:13 PM

by lukesmith moderator in response to itsmestephanie's comment.

Hi. Thank you for your feedback. Lots to think about here. Some of these are new suggestions -- we'll set up new topics for them on the boards - -but now its time for bed!

In the meantime, I have added them to our internal list -- more tomorrow!

Posted January 19, 2014 11:19 PM

by lukesmith moderator in response to itsmestephanie's comment.

We have now been through ALL the suggestions up to here. THANK YOU ALL for adding them. Sorry its taken us a little while to respond, but we are listening (and beavering away). This is a long term project so there's plenty of time to improve things.

Many of the suggestions are for new categories and all new category suggestions will be responsed to at: http://talk.operationwardiary.org/#/boards/BWD0000008/discussions/DWD00001b0
Full details, including your suggestions that I just added, in my long post on page 6 of the thread above.

Others are for functionality that is discussed in other topics in this improvements board.

A fair few relate to the need to go back / change tags / see previous tags. We are considering different option here and will get back to you.

Finally, thank you for sticking with it. this is the very beginning of a new type of citizen history project -- thank you for being part of it.

Find out more about IWM's Lives of the First World War

Posted January 19, 2014 11:29 PM

by peterr1006

I find the writing on some pages to be very faint and difficult to read. Zooming in does help to some extent but this slows down understanding of the information being conveyed. I wonder if it would be possible to introduce a means of darkening the print so that the words stand out more clearly?

Posted January 20, 2014 11:49 AM

by Poethlyn

Is it possible to tag pages without logging in?

I received an e-mail after showing interest in the project. I worked through the tutorial & then tagged for a hour & not have a nagging doubt that because I wasn't logged in (registered even) that work was wasted.

Posted January 20, 2014 12:07 PM

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

We do record tags from anonymous users. However, if you don't log in then we can't record your progress through a particular diary, so instead we send you pages chosen randomly from the archive of untagged pages.

Posted January 20, 2014 12:12 PM

by lukesmith moderator

Users of bigger monitors -- we have increased the size to make better use of large screens. I hope that is useful. Thanks!

Posted January 21, 2014 12:21 PM

by Pammby

COULD WE HAVE DETAILS WHEN PERSONS GO ON LEAVE AND OTHER PERSONS ARRIVE.

Posted January 21, 2014 2:53 PM

by Veegee

I would suggest a tag maybe for wiring, because it seems like they spend a lot of time either cutting wire or repairing wire, and in old photos, you can see the barbed wire strung around the trenches, so it was a real weapon of war for them. Also, I notice there are always conferences or meetings of the top ranks, doesn't seem to be anything that is a good tag for that, they are always going here and there for some 'conference', probably on the state of the war and the next moves for the troops.

Posted January 21, 2014 3:56 PM

by spof moderator in response to Pammby's comment.

Pammby

If the person going on leave is named, used the Person Tag with Departed: On Leave and Returned: From Leave. IF the person is not named or it says "% ORs on leave" use the Unit Activity with Unit Strength to show that the strength of the unit has changed with these men going on leave.

Posted January 21, 2014 7:56 PM

by spof moderator in response to Veegee's comment.

Wiring would be a good tag for infantry battalions but artillery, medical, cavalry etc. didn't do a lot of it so it would just be unneeded for them and we'd end up with too many tag options. As youy say, the wire was a key part of the trenches so Digging and Repairing Trenches should cover it.

I like the idea of Conference and I would put it in the Person list as there is nearly always someone mentioned. At worst you just add a blank entry with, say, Brigadier for rank, commander of X unit as his unit and conference as the reason.

Posted January 21, 2014 8:01 PM

by SarahtheEntwife

Another vote for a way to increase contrast on the images; I know that's likely to be difficult but it would be a huge help. I love my current unit's adjutant and his typewriter. 😉
One minor thing that would be a big help for me -- especially if there aren't many more categories for the "reason" field for people tagging planned, I think it would make more sense to have the default be "other" rather than "author of diary". At least for the ones I've done so far, the author usually only appears by name once a month or so, whereas the vast majority of people are visiting officers, the head of a group mentioned, that sort of thing, and so fall under "other". I'm sure I've got a good few incorrectly-tagged "authors" because I forgot to change the field.
It would be nice to have better activity options for tagging transport and other non-predominantly-combat units. If this project expands more, it might even eventually make sense to have a different list of tags for different types of units, so you're not faced with an overwhelming list but have options that are relevant to your current diary.

Posted January 22, 2014 4:02 AM

by paratsoukli

TIME TAGGING If we are to record times in am/pm, then 1200 on the menu must be substituted with Midnight/Midday. This goes back to the historic military argument as to whether midnight is am or pm. Thus the use of 2359hrs!

Posted January 22, 2014 4:04 PM

by iwfleisch

It would be helpful to have a Task Organization tag which would allow us to identify when a subordinate unit it either attached or detached to another unit.

Posted January 22, 2014 5:49 PM

by ftm42

Could we have a page eg on the 'diaries' tab that gives a summary of how we, as a community, are doing? e.g. how many people are registered to the project and how many pages we've done so far?

Posted January 24, 2014 3:00 PM

by 3639

It would be great if there was a way to get feedback on the first three or four pages we complete, so we can learn from our mistakes (incorrect tags, things we've missed and so on). I'm guessing this isn't feasible due to the number of participants and moderator time constraints, but if it is possible I think it would be really helpful. Another option would be if we could compare our tags to what others have tagged on the same page. Thanks,
Mike

Posted January 24, 2014 7:38 PM

by Lauri_Mac

Is there a way to scroll horizontally while examining a page? Pages scroll vertically, but while examining a page using the magnifier, left & right edges disappear. It would be helpful to scroll left - right. Thanks.

Posted January 24, 2014 8:56 PM

by 3639 in response to Lauri Mac's comment.

Hi Lauri,
if you click on the page with the left mouse button and hold the button down you should be able to move the view left, right up an down. Hope this helps,
Mike

Posted January 24, 2014 9:26 PM

by mary5n

It would be useful to have an option that deals with arms and ammunition

Posted January 28, 2014 4:49 PM

by clareck

When tagging Field Ambulance Diaries, an appropriate set of tags for 'Unit Activity' would be useful, because I found myself having to tag nearly all the activities as 'other', which covered a varied range of work.

Posted January 30, 2014 2:26 PM

by Maltmasher

There are so many tasks that the Engineers are doing that isn't covered in the drop down. Bridge building, demolition, etc. could there be a text line on the "other: selection so that we can describe it?
Also a "stand to"- selection- the cavalry seems to do that frequently

Posted January 31, 2014 12:33 AM

by Lauri_Mac in response to 3639's comment.

Hello 3639 -

Thanks for the tip. Today, I accidentally discovered that the arrow keys move the page-currently-in-view while a section is magnified. So . . . two methods!
Thanks.

Posted February 2, 2014 10:39 PM

by hawk39

There should be a label for "working parties" in Unit Activity.
The "Under Fire" is also not precise enough. You should make separate categories like "Under bombardment", "Sniper fire", "Gas", "Friendly Fire", etc.

Posted February 4, 2014 5:12 AM

by HeatherC moderator

All have been suggested before here http://talk.operationwardiary.org/#/boards/BWD0000008/discussions/DWD00001b0

Site admins - it would be nice if we could have some idea of when / if any of the improvements suggested (especially additional tags like in this last post) are likely to be implemented?

Posted February 4, 2014 9:01 AM

by Cameronian_Volunteer in response to charcinders's comment.

I would appreciate this. I have to type the same names repeatedly every day for the engineers I am dealing with.

Posted February 4, 2014 6:04 PM

by Cameronian_Volunteer in response to spof's comment.

I have recorded as "Departed: posted to another unit" for an individual who was recorded as "left the battalion". No reason was given. It seemed more appropriate than "other". However the individual was on duty the next day. I am sure there will be a story attached to this.

I have another who "left for England". I have presumed "on leave" as their seems to have been a replacement.

Posted February 4, 2014 6:18 PM

by topcat_1802

I had a page where 9 recipients were awarded the Military Medal, this was recorded in the diary with their names rank and number, but all I could tag with was awards and commendations, it would have been nice to be able to record what the award was for i.e. Military Medal

Posted February 11, 2014 9:39 PM

by HeatherC moderator in response to topcat_1802's comment.

You can. Use the hashtag #militarymedal - FAQ on how to use hashtags is here http://talk.operationwardiary.org/#/boards/BWD000000f/discussions/DWD000034v

Posted February 11, 2014 10:26 PM

by Poodle in response to ian hodgson's comment.

I agree with Onegoodturn and ian hodgson. Some of the pages are barely legible, especially to older eyes. If the contrast could be adjusted, it would be a great help. I don't want to miss useful information.

Posted February 26, 2014 7:58 AM

by Grandad_Tom

Moving back and forth between pages as suggested by stripedcatty would definitely be a good idea for helping decipher place names etc.

Also, I'm finding it really difficult to identify anything much on the pages I've seen so far. I think this is largely because the contrast between the handwriting and the form is so low. I've tried changing the display options on my laptop but as yet haven't been able to make much of an improvement. I'm not sure you would be able to do anything with the pages already uploaded but it might be worth increasing the contrast the next time documents are scanned in.

Posted February 28, 2014 11:07 PM

by linda2

It could be usefull if we could mention the releave of other company's as well. Now we can only tag on releave from the diary's company

Posted April 27, 2014 8:06 PM

by HeatherC moderator in response to linda2's comment.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean here but the point is to tag activities for the Unit whose diary it is. Activities for other Units will be tagged in their own diaries.

Posted April 27, 2014 10:17 PM

Suggestion: Regarding Place names in the diaries. Some can be faint and some indistinct but not all. (Apart from Google maps etc, maps in WW1 books and some WW1 maps in booklets from the battlefiellds) -Some Operation orders come AFTER the diaries. They give details mostly typed out of the places and what the operations are. I don't suppose these Operation Orders could be put BEFORE the diary pages, then those tagging would have an idea of the place names etc. Maybe not possible though because of the way the National Archives send the information for these diaries through - just a suggestion.

Posted April 27, 2014 10:52 PM

by cyngast moderator

I think what Linda2 meant was that it would be good to have a way to tag when companies within the battalion relieve each other, such as A and B companies relieving C and D companies. This happens a lot and there isn't currently a tag to note this activity as there is for the relief of a battalion by another battalion. I've been marking it as a unit movement, but that doesn't really seem right.

Posted April 28, 2014 7:30 AM

by HeatherC moderator in response to marie.eklid@virginmedia.com's comment.

I can see what you mean but TNA scans the diaries in the order in which they are written and I doubt they will want to change that.

As for the Movement within the Unit, yes I do see that might be what Linda meant but it would involve an awful lot of extra tagging and to be honest if you just mark it "in the line" I suppose it is taken as read that there would have been a normal Unit routine in the line and a part of that would have been a rotation of Companies. They would also have had stand to, change of sentries, rations coming up and so on but none of that gets mentioned because it is taken for granted.

In some Units it is common for the Companies to be doing things separately all the time (RE or MGC for example) and then you can certainly tag the activities of the individual companies, since they represent an integral part of what the Unit was doing to support others.

Posted April 28, 2014 8:17 AM

by Jan_Greenslade

More and more I am coming across very concerned diary writers going into a lot of detail as to the condition of the trenches. I know arguably the weather tag covers the reason for this, but the outcomes are life threatening, eg breakdown of communications, parapets not bullet proof, trench walls collapsing on men, attack failure due to trench conditions. I wondered whether there could be an extra item in the Army Life tag? Maybe I'm getting too involved in the lives of the servicemen and feel the hardships and hazards they experience should be recognised as well as the military achievements.

Posted May 22, 2014 10:23 AM

by IKINAWANA

One suggestion - it would be nice if the map window we use to geo-locate could be increased in size, at least double. Zooming in and out with the mouse wheel is easy enough, but a larger map window would be helpful, especially when moving the map around. Also, I don't know if this is even possible, but it would be a great thing if you could tie in with Google Earth and the map timeline. This might help when it comes to geo-locating the place names used at the time instead of the place names as they now appear on the current map. Thank you! I'm really enjoying this project!

Posted June 25, 2014 1:17 AM

by ral104 moderator, scientist in response to IKINAWANA's comment.

Thanks for the suggestions. Our problem at the moment is that we don't have any developers working on the project anymore. However, there are improvements we definitely still want to make, so I'll add these to the list.

Posted June 25, 2014 9:13 AM

by pdhosmer

Just started tagging today. The tags aren't well suited for Signal Regiment activity - any chance of adding some? e.g. Laying lines, comms failure? Or just 'communications' depending on the level of detail wanted.

Posted August 4, 2014 8:11 PM

by HeatherC moderator in response to pdhosmer's comment.

As Rob said above, we don't have any developers working on the project any more and so aren't likely to get any new tags at the moment. As you rightly note though we don't want to dig into every tiny detail of unit activity, so we want to be a bit selective in suggesting new tags. I don't think we'd want to add a whole load just for RE Signals so maybe suggest just one or two that will cover everything? We only added one - "construction" for general RE activity in the last round of changes if that gives an idea.

Posted August 4, 2014 8:42 PM

by lnnseagan

That finish button really needs to be moved.

Posted February 26, 2015 12:34 PM

Suggest Finished Button moved to bottom of the diary page - I feel it is too near the comment box - in the past I have used the finished button instead of the comment box button. If the finished button was at the bottom of the diary page, when you pressed it you would know that the diary page was finished.

Posted February 26, 2015 3:58 PM

How About having a heading - gassed- on the casualty list.

Posted February 26, 2015 3:59 PM

by ral104 moderator, scientist

Thanks, both. We still don't have any development resource, but that doesn't mean we can't collate a wishlist for when we do.

@Innseagan: where would you like to see it moved to? Same place as Marie, and for the same reasons?

@marie: To my mind, 'gassed' is covered by wounded, as are all sorts of other injuries - machine-gunned, shot by a sniper, etc. I'm not sure that picking gassed out alone would be worth doing. I think if there are useful additional details around the use of gas, it would be better to use the #gas hashtag to record them.

Posted February 27, 2015 4:20 PM

by lnnseagan

Anywhere but where it is now.

Posted March 5, 2015 11:28 PM

by calvados

It would save a lot of frustration if the date was sticky, ie if the date was retained after a finishing a page and signing off, or a computer crash. Its so easy to start a new page and assume the date is keeping up with you. I would also agree with those who ask for the Finish button to be a the bottom of the screen.

Posted March 10, 2015 9:50 PM

by ral104 moderator, scientist

Thanks, @calvados.

Do you mean that the date should retain the last value you used, or that it should increment itself? (so, if you tagged 1st September, 1915 the next time you use the tag it would read 2nd September, 1915)

Noted re. the Finish button. As soon as we have some development oportunities, we'll put that to the front of the queue.

Posted March 11, 2015 10:31 AM

by calvados

Either would be great. At The moment (using a mac if it makes any difference) if I finish a page and sign off or get dropped, when I start again the date reverts to the start of the diary. So I try to make sure I sign off before I finish a page, so that I can start from where I left off. I know I can always check my last page in my profile, maybe my technique is wrong?

Posted March 11, 2015 7:08 PM

by ral104 moderator, scientist

No, doesn't sound like there's anything wrong with your technique 😃

I'll make a note of this on our development wishlist. Thanks for bringing it up, and apologies for the frustration it causes!

Posted March 12, 2015 1:35 PM

It doesn't worry me yet but all my dropdowns are stuck on a previous one ie they are not changing.Place,activity etc.Tried logout etc.

Posted March 18, 2015 3:09 AM

by ral104 moderator, scientist

This sounds like a similar issue we had a while back. Have you tried clearing your browser cache? That's worked for people before.

Posted March 18, 2015 9:49 AM

yep,all cleared.Refreshed Mozilla, weird isn't it as it didn't happen to me when it did the others a month back.Did it right itself or did techies do a tweek?I can still work here so no biggie.
Ah a new issue from today as it isn't saving my uncompleted pages when I exit.It always has but not today!BTW I never usually logout -is this recommended or needed?I have over the weekend & today & now it wont save..hmmm.what next!

Posted March 18, 2015 10:08 PM

by ral104 moderator, scientist

Okay, I think this probably is the same issue we experienced before. It seems to be because you've tagged so many pages:

Could you follow this link and then let us know what the debug info say?: http://www.operationwardiary.org/#debug

Once we have that, hopefully we can get it resolved! Thanks.

Posted March 19, 2015 9:43 AM

Local Storage Used

Storage size: 5242802

Storage available: true

Number of stored keys: 4604

read/write test passed.
Defaults

Unit activity: reconnoitered

Place: YPRES

Other unit: 5TH W GREYS

Posted March 19, 2015 10:38 AM

by 141Dial34 in response to ral104's comment.

I could always rename myself to start again,after this diary.

Posted March 19, 2015 10:40 AM

by ral104 moderator, scientist in response to 141Dial34's comment.

Thanks, but I don't think that'll work.

Let me pass this on to the Zooniverse team, and we'll hopefully be able to get it sorted for you.

Posted March 19, 2015 12:46 PM

by ral104 moderator, scientist

Okay, clearing the browser cache (just to be clear, from the history menu, choose 'clear recent history', 'time range to clear':everything), then logging off operation war diary and logging back in again should clear this issue.

Let me know if that doesn't work!

Posted March 19, 2015 2:42 PM

Didn't work.
cleared cache,history,days to store-nil,signed out,logged out,restarted computer,logged in signed in.but to no avail.

Posted March 19, 2015 10:58 PM

by ral104 moderator, scientist

Okay, sorry to hear that. Leave it with me and I'll see what else the Zooniverse guys can suggest.

Posted March 20, 2015 9:33 AM

np my current 14 letter place name is firmly in my memory now!I have copied my profile list of diaries(all completed)so if I have to I can be renamed and just check the list for a new diary.Do all my projects in Zooniverse add to the total space I am using?or are they separate totals?

Posted March 20, 2015 10:36 AM

by ral104 moderator, scientist

Honestly, I'm not sure. I'd guess they're separate, but better to ask one of the Zooniverse guys. I've got a support request in, so just waiting to hear back from them now.

Posted March 20, 2015 4:20 PM

by eatyourgreens moderator, admin

Hi,

Clearing the cache, or logging out and back in, won't clear this. However, if you go to History > Clear Recent History, select Offline Web Site Data and delete that, that should clear all your saved tags etc. from the browser and get the site working again.

Jim

Posted March 20, 2015 5:59 PM

I have to sign in to enter main page & War diary even when I didnt sign out.The boxes are all cleared when i come back in(either by clicking X or signing out) & data not saved on unfinished page except for hastags which saved to the page.
Also it didnt let me classify so I had to go to talk then return to classifying to get in.
Signing in/ out didnt save any data or let me back onto diary page,but can still get in through talk.
i found the offline data delete thingy but windows reckons it deletes it anyway in the normal delete history button -eatyourgreens.

Posted March 20, 2015 11:06 PM

by eatyourgreens moderator, admin

Hi,

The problem was that local storage had built up slowly over time and reached 5MB, which is the maximum Firefox lets you store for a site. From your new numbers, it's been cleared out now so everything should work again.

I've put in some changes in what data gets stored by the browser, which will hopefully stop the site from using so much space in future. Unfinished pages, and default tag values, should continue to be saved indefinitely.

Firefox (and other browsers) sets storage limits per site, so the limit for operationwardiary.org won't affect stored data for other domains eg. oldweather.org or sciencegossip.org

I'm not sure why you couldn't log in last night, but we were running another project with BBC Stargazing, so it's possible that traffic was high and the login servers were slow.

Cheers
Jim

Posted March 21, 2015 12:53 PM

I have I changed to Google Chrome,disabled Sheen extension , & after a few hiccups all seems to be OK tx all.Date resets on each entry though,but I write it down before leaving.

Posted March 22, 2015 3:12 AM

by ral104 moderator, scientist

Thanks, Jim!

Glad you're back up and running, Dial.

Posted March 23, 2015 9:42 AM

I've been inactive for about a year (for medical reasons, not laziness!) and on coming back I find that the map shown in the 'Place' field seems to have changed: it is now only a postage stamp size, and it's impossible to move it substantially to visually link an unsure name with the proximity of a previous name. Is this just me, or has it been changed - for the worse?

Posted November 10, 2015 5:47 PM

by cyngast moderator

fisfiris, I've been actively working on diaries while you were unable to and I do think that the Place tag field has changed. It seems to be zoomed in more closely than before, so that in many more instances there are no towns or cities visible to act as a reference point for the place you're trying to locate. There's now a Zoom In/Out feature in the field, too, but I find it's not very helpful. Either zooming out still doesn't give me a valid reference point or it seems to cause a glitch where you see only a partial map, especially for other choices if there are several listed for the place you're trying to find. When I cannot find a reference point I just click through to Google Maps, although I usually have Google Maps open when I'm working on a diary anyway.

I hope your medical reasons are completely mended!

Posted November 10, 2015 6:46 PM

Places on google maps. If I have a place and it does not appear on the google map on the diary page, maybe because of Author mis-spelling place or other, I open a new tab - on top of screen and do a google search and put in say for example -Desvres ww1, and then search. It generally brings up the place you require, say if the Author had put Desures by mistake, it will show an alternative spelling. Also, here is a link of a good map you can find places on. There is a search facility on this (beside the name of Drv. Adey R.E.
https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=zdb60x-hR0HU.kWiY4l3t6vIU&hl=en_US

Posted November 10, 2015 10:59 PM

Thanks for that Marie; I've done that in the past but only as a slower fallback. I'm relieved that cgastwein agrees with me - I was thinking that I'd lost the plot. The previous 'Place' map was usually the quickest check, and the current one is a retrograde step.
Thanks. Shingles. Couldn't use my right arm. Try to avoid it!

Posted November 10, 2015 11:14 PM

fisfiris Regarding your message. Sorry to hear you have been suffering from Shingles - Very Painful. Hope your health improves.

Posted November 10, 2015 11:32 PM

by ral104 moderator, scientist

Sorry to hear you've been unwell, @fisfiris, but good to have you back 😃

The place tag has changed, you're right, but I believe the changes are at google's end rather than ours. I tend to do the same as Marie and Cynthia, and rely more on a separate google maps window to keep me right, but I know that's an imperfect solution.

One of the clever people at Zooniverse might be able to suggest a fix for this, but unfortunately I think even they are at the mercy of whatever google decides to do.

Posted November 11, 2015 8:55 AM

I find it so frustrating even after 2 years that I don't take enough care when changing the month on the drop-down.I get to the March diary page & find I have been tagging Feb wrongly!February NEVER works as it goes to March then you do it a 2nd time to get Feb up.Same for June & Nov. Note to self...CHECK!
What gripes you?Let out your frustrations here but happy tagging!

Posted January 25, 2016 3:03 AM

by cyngast moderator

That little trick of the calendar's irks me no end, too. It's especially easy to tag June dates as July if you don't remember to check it! It seems to want to jump over the months with less than 31 days to the next month with 31 days.

Posted January 25, 2016 3:25 PM

by ral104 moderator, scientist

I've never particularly been aware of that - would you mind describing it in a little more detail? If it's a bug, I'll raise it as an issue.

Posted January 25, 2016 4:24 PM

by 141Dial34 in response to cyngast's comment.

Date calendar: I find this can be a problem also, so that I have to really check the date before I finish the dairy page because of the issue with this. I find it happens particularly when you leave the diary page for a reason, open a new tab and maybe go into google, go into talk etc. When you go back to the diary page the calendar date/month seems to change. I just keep a note of the diary page number etc and the date entered in my notes. This has been happening for a long time. P.S. I am working on Windows 7 and Chrome.

Posted January 25, 2016 6:25 PM

by cyngast moderator

Rob, My experience is that when I need to change to a month with less than 31 days--February, April, June, September or November--I click on the chosen month on the drop-down menu and the one that comes up is the next one. So that if I want April, I get May and so on. I make sure that the cursor is pointing to the month I want, but it still jumps. A second click on the month I want takes it to the correct month.

This happens both when I have just logged in and started tagging or if I have been working for a longer period. This doesn't seem to happen when selecting a month with 31 days.

My comment above about June and July is just that if I don't look carefully, at a glance they are so similar in appearance I may not notice unless I particularly remember to check.

I have not particularly noticed the issue that Marie describes above, but I'll watch for it now.

Once in a while, it seems that if I have been working through a longer diary, the correct month will come up, but not very often.

I use Windows 8.1 and usually Firefox, but I think this happens in Chrome, too.

Posted January 25, 2016 8:18 PM

U r clever..I haven't realised that its the 31 days bit.Yes also to Marie when you exit to talk or google.I'm in chrome.What other bugs are there ladies while we have the tech guy checking things?I know when looking for a new diary & the notice comes up that you have already done it the list reverts to the first page list which is frustrating when you had been looking at another page..this takes 2 clicks to change pages & still it says you have finished a previous diary.Ooh hard to explain but it lags on which diary you were on.
Ral do you see our completed pages & if so is there anything we/I can change or any bad habits?We can take it..tell us as I'd hate to be doing things you hate!
Also is the dailyzoo person on permanent holiday?Will I still use this hashtag?

Posted January 25, 2016 10:10 PM

by ral104 moderator, scientist

Thanks everybody - I think I'll note the 31 days problem as an issue. It shouldn't be behaving like that.

As for bad habits and so on...I can't say I've noticed anything awful 😄 Minor errors are generally caught by the consensus algorithm, which is based on multiple taggers input, and much of the rest of the tagging is quite subjective anyway. However, we don't tend to get a lot of conflicts when the pages are processed, which suggests everything's working as it should.

I think for now I'd be tempted to use #story instead of #dailyzoo. I know Darren, who did the daily zoo posts, has either left the Zooniverse, or moved onto a different job there, so I'm not quite sure whether anybody else is monitoring that hashtag at the moment.

Posted January 26, 2016 6:12 PM

by 141Dial34 in response to ral104's comment.

Query again with Date Tags. Not sure what is happening to these date tags. I am tagging a Signals Pad. The only date on it is 2nd. No month or year. The year I am working on in the diary of the 2 Battalion Machine Gun Corps is 1918. I tagged this date just as 2nd. Then went back to my profile pages to check something on my previous page and when I returned to the Signals Pad the date had changed to 2nd March 1918. I had not put March in or 1918. This has happened before, when dates have changed from the one I have put in, so I have been careful to check date tags, but this could happen without you knowing the date has changed, particularly if you leave the page for any reason and you do not check. Problem occurs when you leave the page you are tagging for some reason and then return to it. I can only make sure I check the dates entered on the pages I am doing before I press finish, to make sure they are correct. The page in question link is:- http://talk.operationwardiary.org/#/subjects/AWD00039vq

Posted January 27, 2016 9:03 PM

by ral104 moderator, scientist

Okay, I see what you mean, Marie. I'll add that to my list of issues...

I'm having real trouble recreating the 31 days problem, though. It just doesn't happen for me at all in Chrome. I'll check it out in other browsers in a bit.

Posted January 28, 2016 8:54 AM

I use Chrome & it happens to me.

Posted January 28, 2016 9:46 PM

by ral104 moderator, scientist

Okay, I've got it now. It only happens when you're switching from the 31st of that month, not any other day.

Posted January 28, 2016 10:15 PM

by ral104 moderator, scientist

Okay, both of these have been logged as issues now. I'll keep you updated.

Posted January 29, 2016 8:56 AM

by Jan_Greenslade

Another minor problem, some diary dates are bracketed eg 2-8 March: I enter these dates by clicking 2 on calendar, inserting a hyphen and then 8 but sometimes this does not register; it tags only 2 March. I've tried to enter both dates manually but it's not happy about that either. After a few tries it does take the correct dates but I'm afraid I don't always remember to double check so I'm sure some dates are going through incorrectly. Can this please be looked at? Thank you Jan

Posted January 29, 2016 1:28 PM

by ral104 moderator, scientist

@eatyourgreens has put a fix through which fixes the issue Marie raised of incomplete dates not being stored correctly if the diary page was closed before it was finished.

Marie, do you know of any specific pages where this was a problem? I'd like to take a look at the data to see whether it's been affected. Thanks.

Jan, in answer to your post, the best way to deal with dates like that is to place two tags, the first with the earlier date at the top of the relevant section of the diary and the second with the later date at the bottom of the section. That way we can easily see that the information contained within the two tags relates to that time period.

Posted January 29, 2016 2:45 PM

Dates Query: This is the specific page which I mentioned regarding this problem with the link to the page in question Is this the information you require? My earlier message:

Query again with Date Tags. Not sure what is happening to these date tags. I am tagging a Signals Pad. The only date on it is 2nd. No month or year. The year I am working on in the diary of the 2 Battalion Machine Gun Corps is 1918. I tagged this date just as 2nd. Then went back to my profile pages to check something on my previous page and when I returned to the Signals Pad the date had changed to 2nd March 1918. I had not put March in or 1918. This has happened before, when dates have changed from the one I have put in, so I have been careful to check date tags, but this could happen without you knowing the date has changed, particularly if you leave the page for any reason and you do not check. Problem occurs when you leave the page you are tagging for some reason and then return to it. I can only make sure I check the dates entered on the pages I am doing before I press finish, to make sure they are correct.

The page in question link is:- http://talk.operationwardiary.org/#/subjects/AWD00039vq

Posted January 29, 2016 3:24 PM

by ral104 moderator, scientist

Yes, that's great - thanks, Marie. Sorry, I should have read back to see what you originally said.

Posted January 29, 2016 3:36 PM

by Jan_Greenslade in response to ral104's comment.

No problem Ral, your welcome.

Posted January 29, 2016 6:28 PM

Thank you Ral will enter the dates as you suggest from now on

Posted February 1, 2016 12:06 PM

by cyngast moderator

Just wondering if any progress has been made on the calendar issue of it skipping over the shorter months. I mis-tagged at least one page yesterday, and possibly two, as May when it should have been April.

Posted February 5, 2016 6:47 PM

by ral104 moderator, scientist

I know Jim fixed the other calendar issue, but I wonder whether he missed this one. I'll check.

Posted February 5, 2016 10:54 PM

by ral104 moderator, scientist

@eatyourgreens has fixed this now, although strictly speaking it wasn't a fix as such, more just the browsers doing what they were supposed to when presented with an invalid value (a nonexistent date in a month in this case). He's added some code to reset the day to 1 when you choose a new month, which works well for me. Let me know how you get on with it!

Posted February 8, 2016 10:58 AM

by cyngast moderator

Thank you for taking care of this, Rob! I had mostly gotten used to it, but it still tripped me up now and then. I'll let you know how it works.

Posted February 8, 2016 3:32 PM

by ral104 moderator, scientist

Well, Jim did all the work. I just hung around on the sidelines making a nuisance of myself 😄

It's a good fix to have, though - should cut down any incorrect date data we were gathering. Thanks to everybody who reported it!

Posted February 9, 2016 8:47 AM

by cyngast moderator

Well, thank you to Jim then! It's surprising that no one reported this for two years. This project has been running about that, right? I've been here for going on two years and the calendar always skipped those months.

It worked fine for me yesterday!

Posted February 9, 2016 6:10 PM

by ral104 moderator, scientist

Glad to hear it!

Yes, it's funny nobody mentioned it before. To be honest, I'd never even noticed it. Still, better late than never. And with however many hundreds of thousand diary pages still remain, it's useful to keep fixing any issues we find.

Posted February 9, 2016 10:24 PM

by cyngast moderator

Several days later the calendar glitch seems to be well and truly fixed. It transitions smoothly to the next month no matter how many days there are in that month. Thank you again for seeing to this, Rob.

Posted February 13, 2016 8:16 PM

by ral104 moderator, scientist

No problem - I'm glad it's all sorted out. Thanks for raising the issue.

Posted February 15, 2016 9:26 AM

Tagging 47 Machine Gun Company, for the first time I have a diarist who records the time of day for every single event. Until now I hadn't realised how clunky the time field is: most of my tagging time is spent fiddling with minutes and am/pm. If/when there is a rewrite of the software, could we have a much quicker, simpler way of recording the times?: am/pm regardless, I think that we are all capable of translating that into 24hr clock in a simple one 'type-in' field .

Posted August 3, 2016 6:25 PM

by ral104 moderator, scientist

I agree - it is clunky. I find I rarely use it, but I'm sure it would be frustrating for a diary such as the one you're tagging now.

I'll note it down as an issue, but being completely honest I don't see any further development of the interface happening any time soon. At some point, though, we will have to work out how to deal with HQ-type diaries, which don't fit the same pattern as the battalion ones. That would be a good time to generally tighten up some of the issues people have raised.

Posted August 4, 2016 9:20 AM

Thanks, I realise that changes are difficult to achieve other than at a suitable hiatus. As long as it's on the list. Looking forward to the HQ diaries but surely that will be a long time in the future.

Posted August 4, 2016 12:00 PM

by ral104 moderator, scientist in response to fisfiris's comment.

I think so - there are plenty of battalion diaries to keep us busy for the time being!

Posted August 5, 2016 8:39 AM

by Stork

In the 'Person' tag, I'd like 'Casualty- Sick or wounded' to be split into 'Casualty- Sick' and 'Casualty- Wounded.' There's a big difference between someone who catches the flu and someone who gets blown apart in the middle of a battle.

Posted August 21, 2016 8:37 AM

by cyngast moderator in response to Stork's comment.

I think so, too. I always look at it from the standpoint of a researcher who has finally found their father, grandfather, husband's great-uncle, etc., and the data shows "sick or wounded." I'd certainly want to know which it was.

Posted August 21, 2016 4:19 PM

by ral104 moderator, scientist

I agree that would be a useful distinction, and one we'll note for any future development.

Don't forget, of course, that the researcher will be able to link through to the page their relative was mentioned on, and so ought to be able to get all the detail that way.

Posted August 22, 2016 8:51 AM