War Diaries Talk

Why is OWD Talk so much more active?

  • DZM by DZM admin

    Hi OWD guys,

    I'm wondering if you might have some insight into why Operation War Diary is so active... by my judgement, it's probably the most active Talk of all current Zooniverse projects.

    What's different here? What has worked really well? Why do you enjoy commenting here so much? If you do any other Zooniverse projects, is there a way in which OWD Talk is different? Or is it just the nature of the project itself that encourages more chatting and discussion?

    Obviously, I'm trying to learn what this Talk does right so that I can be sure that future projects' Talks (and the eventual unified Talk system) apply those best practices to encourage as much conversation as possible.

    Thoughts are hugely appreciated; thanks for helping Zooniverse and being a part of OWD!

    Posted

  • HeatherC by HeatherC moderator

    I think the Project overall is so active because of the timing of this happening with the centenary. Certainly we noticed a surge in new taggers over the period coinciding with 11 Nov recently. (armistice anniversary)

    As to why Talk is so active - that might be because there are a lot of quite specialist areas in these diaries that people want to know more about? I know a lot of people come here due to personal family connections with WW1 and maybe that inspires them to want to know more?

    Be very interested to hear what some of the regular taggers think!

    Posted

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

    I agree with everything you say Heather. This project is amazing. Although the diaries can be so sad following the men through the Great War, they give you an insight into what the men suffered, especially those like myself, with family who served, the diaries open our eyes to what they all went through. Tagging the places has improved my knowledge of the Western Front. I also think the project is good, because of the interaction and talk with other Citizen Historians and Moderators - it makes you feel part of a good team.

    Posted

  • cyngast by cyngast moderator

    To give credit where it is due, I think that the enthusiastic participation of both Heather and Rob have a lot to do with the success of Talk here. I get answers to my questions promptly and my questions and comments are always treated with respect. I have to echo marie.eklid above in her comment that I feel part of the team.

    I have had a lot of questions because, as an American, my perspective on WWI is very different and my knowledge of the British army was virtually non-existent before I joined OWD. (My knowledge of the U.S. Army in WWI is also very limited.)

    I've thoroughly enjoyed this opportunity to work on the Project. I have a degree in history but never used it professionally, having wandered off into editing, writing about cars and teaching young children. For me, this chance to work with original documents, even in a digitized format, is like a dream come true!

    Posted

  • wildcatjenny by wildcatjenny moderator

    Hi DZM,

    I agree with everything that has been said so far. Those who care about history are natural diggers and delvers. This includes Heather and Rob - and, as cgastwein@aol.com points out, they work tirelessly to encourage and support the Citizen Historians.

    The War Diaries are part of a historical legacy that has yet to be fully examined. I think we all take very seriously the fact that we are tagging the names of real people. We are documenting their comings and goings during a dramatic and painful period of our history. When we finish, the information we find will be readily available to their descendants. Of course we want to help one another to get the job done and do it right.

    wildcatjenny

    Posted

  • cyngast by cyngast moderator

    Wildcatjenny, I'm sorry I forgot to include you! I'm not sure if you have ever directly answered any of my questions, but I have read your responses to questions from other Citizen Historians. You're knowledgeable and very patient with answering the same questions many times over.

    Posted

  • wildcatjenny by wildcatjenny moderator in response to cgastwein@aol.com's comment.

    Hi cgastwein@aol.com,

    Thank you so much for your kind words! But, please be assured that I took no offense and did not feel left out.

    I am one of a number of mods and admins who contribute when and where they can. But Heather and Rob have each dedicated a huge piece of their lives to this project and have a depth of knowledge I can not pretend to.

    I, like you, feel it is a privilege to be working on this project and as a member of such a fine team.

    Keep Tagging!

    wildcatjenny

    Posted

  • ral104 by ral104 moderator, scientist

    Thanks for the kind words, everybody 😃

    I do agree that this is a project that lends itself well to a team ethos. In terms of keeping forums active, I think the single most important thing is to have mods who are there and active - Heather and Jenny in particular are an absolute boon to the project, both in terms of responding to queries and organising the forums into a usable resource. We're incredibly lucky to have them.

    When you look at activity, are you also counting object comments? Because of the nature of the info we're tagging, people may feel inclined to comment on individual pages more than they might in other Zooniverse projects. We've also been active in pushing the use of hashtags as a complementary resource to the main data set, and that generates a lot of comments too.

    Ultimately, we do want this to be a team effort and we don't want to limit people to only tagging the info we specify in our set of standard tags. I think it's fantastic that so many people get more actively involved beyond the main tagging activity and it's resulted in a project far broader and more interesting than initially envisaged.

    Posted

  • SarahtheEntwife by SarahtheEntwife

    I agree -- there's a lot more "story" to look at and more things to talk about even on pages where the unit is doing something fairly routine.

    I also feel like this is a bit more accessible to non-experts than some of the astronomy and other science projects. I can look at galaxies and tag their shapes and such, and the whole point of the project is that this is actually useful even if I don't have any in-depth knowledge of why this particular pattern indicates a past galaxy merge or whatever. But other than the threads for posting particularly nice images, the actual discussion tends to be way over my head. Whereas here, even if I don't know a lot about a particular subject, I have the right background knowledge to understand the explanation.

    Posted

  • josiepegg by josiepegg

    I have also done some tagging on Condor Watch, and while that is also a worthwhile project there is only so much you can discuss about condors.

    I think the difference here is the human interest and the sense of discovering new aspects that you want to share with everyone else. It seems good to be investigating the lives of all the men who were in the war and not just the ones who died.

    Posted

  • DZM by DZM admin

    Thanks for all the feedback! Some really good comments and ideas here.

    We're definitely emphasizing to science teams and moderators the importance of having a regular presence on Talk. I'll try to keep in mind what we can do to align other projects to these ideas (as much as possible,) too. Thank you!!

    (If you have more ideas, please leave them below, too!)

    Posted

  • ral104 by ral104 moderator, scientist

    It's not strictly on topic, but I've been wondering about building links to other Zooniverse projects (this could be applicable more widely within the Zooniverse). I've been thinking a lot lately about the ways in which Operation War Diary might develop. An obvious thing is to broaden its scope, to include not just Western Front diaries, but other Fronts, RFC/RAF and Royal Navy logs. That got me thinking about Old Weather, and whether or not they might already have tagged the sort of info we'd want for ship's logs. If they have, there's no point in us duplicating their work, but it might be a nice opportunity to tie two projects together. Perhaps we'd also have info they might be interested in. It could work through into Talk, with areas where people from both projects could discuss the two together.

    Posted

  • DZM by DZM admin

    That sounds to me like another good argument for building a more unified Talk system... a place where two projects could more easily collaborate, where appropriate. Good thought!

    Posted