Lives of the First World War launch - February 2014

[David_Underdown]

streathamandy - here is P G Boswell https://livesofthefirstworldwar.org/lifestory/423045 - you have to remember that many medal cards (particularly for officers) show only the initials. If you can't find someone, put less detailed infromation in, or use wildcards.

Doctord84, go to the support forum, via https://livesofthefirstworldwar.org/faq (also ahs email contact details etc) or click the little question mark symbol in the bottom righthand corner of the screen. I presume you ahve checked your spam folder etc?

[IanA]

I am more than a little irritated by this site. I have managed to post photographs of my grandfathers (without any proof at all that they are my grandfathers - I could have posted pictures of Mickey Mouse) but cannot add dates of birth or death without going through some form of 'official' site which requires money to be spent. I have researched both men and have dates, places, where wounded, etc, etc and am unable to add this info as 'facts' need to be "referenced to a source of evidence". I am on the point of giving up.

[spof]

Ian

Ignore the "official site" asking for money. For one thing, it won't have Scottish birth/marriage or death certificates. They are only on Scotland's People. I'm not familiar with Scottish records but aren't they called extracts rather than certificates?

If you have an official record of these events, you can either scan it and upload it then cite dates from that. If you don't want to do that, do they have some type of unique reference number? Then you Add an External Reference and select Copy of Official Record and fill it in from there.

Otherwise, find him on Scotland's People (without paying for the record again) and use that link as a source. This post will show the options

http://1914-1918.invisionzone.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=202150&p=2088246

As long as you can show a source (and it doesn't matter if someone coming along later needs to pay to access it) you can add the information.

The final option is to include it as Personal Knowledge. It won't show up in the boxes on the main page but it will be part of his story.

[IanA]

I see what you're saying, and thanks for the response, but I am still irritated (understatement) by the site. It is not at all user-friendly and the chap in my avatar was my grandfather - I knew him, I played with his medals, I remember his death. To be honest, I'm not sure whether I have a copy of his death certificate - I've a feeling I don't, I've got lots for those ancestors I didn't know personally - but I am the source. First hand. I have his silver war badge but I'm not allowed to add the 'fact' of the number because I don't have a 'source'. If the site continues along these lines it will end up a pale reflection of what it could have been.

Ian

[E Wilcock]

"Posted Yesterday, 09:49 PM

If the correct battalion is shown on the medal card, simply click on Medal Index Card link, scroll down to unit and rank and edit it there."

I am away from our computer and my files. However I am unable to do this correction as suggested because the version of the medal card available to me on the LGW site is their text transcript giving the wrong battalion. My own PRO image of the medal card was acquired through a sub to ancestry whichI have had for many years and indeed I have recently not renewed a far newer sub to find my past.

Home again - I went to the site from our computer but failed to make any alteration or addition to the military unit. I tried to do as suggested above. No editing screen opened up and the name and unit already listed was greyed out. I have resorted to e-mailing the site owners - suggesting they need some routine way for us all to notify the errors in the transcriptions and index list.

I understand that if I upload personal photos, letters etc, there will be no charge to the public to view them. However I am still uncertain about the situation if we linking external (free) sites. I have for instance published on line the Diary of Reginal Pridmore. If I link his diary to his name on Lives of the FWW, will that link be viewable and clickable by anyone who looks for Pridmore (he was an Olympic sportsman) or only by subscribers to the site?

[spof]

Home again - I went to the site from our computer but failed to make any alteration or addition to the military unit. I tried to do as suggested above. No editing screen opened up and the name and unit already listed was greyed out. I have resorted to e-mailing the site owners - suggesting they need some routine way for us all to notify the errors in the transcriptions and index list.

I understand that if I upload personal photos, letters etc, there will be no charge to the public to view them. However I am still uncertain about the situation if we linking external (free) sites. I have for instance published on line the Diary of Reginal Pridmore. If I link his diary to his name on Lives of the FWW, will that link be viewable and clickable by anyone who looks for Pridmore (he was an Olympic sportsman) or only by subscribers to the site?

If you use a link to the online diary or any part of your website, that will be viewable by anyone. If you post a link to a record on Ancestry then they will need o be a subscriber to see the original record but can read whatever you have posted on the site from it.

[spof]

I see what you're saying, and thanks for the response, but I am still irritated (understatement) by the site. It is not at all user-friendly and the chap in my avatar was my grandfather - I knew him, I played with his medals, I remember his death. To be honest, I'm not sure whether I have a copy of his death certificate - I've a feeling I don't, I've got lots for those ancestors I didn't know personally - but I am the source. First hand. I have his silver war badge but I'm not allowed to add the 'fact' of the number because I don't have a 'source'. If the site continues along these lines it will end up a pale reflection of what it could have been.

Ian

Ian

I have an awful lot of sympathy with your viewpoint about being user friendly or not as I share some of it. The trouble is trying to fit a set of known facts that needs to be accurate with the more 'narrative' aspect of family history. Also, unlike family history where you find a source to a fact this project makes you find facts from a source.

Having seen online family trees that don't have the standards set by IWM on this project just leaves the whole thing ready to become a waste of time. Remember the old user submitted IGI Index? Or the family trees online where people get married before they were born (my favourite being my gt gt grandfather being 58 years old when his own father was born!) This is why there is the fact area and personal knowledge area.

If you want to post or PM me the SWB badge number, I can send you the link to it on Ancestry and you use that as the source.

Glen

Here is a simple guide to adding information from a record (aka "How the user guide should have been written)

http://barnsleyhistorian.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/lives-of-first-world-war-finding-your.html

[purley]

I spent hours the other day trying to make sense of the site without success. The search engine does not allow you to specify what you are trying to find - only to put in names and find hundreds with the same name and no way of differentiating unless you happen to know his regimental number. Why on earth could they not have used the current CWGC method of finding people? Restricting information to official records is plain daft if you want to get people to contribute. In a brief post it is really not possible to offer a proper critique but it became obvious to me that the fundamental analysis of the system is flawed. The key objects in the system are people, places, military units and events and sources provide links between these objects - you do not start off with sources unless you have a method for resolving duplications and establishing that the man named T Jones in one record is the same as Frederick Thomas Jaynes in another official record. As others have pointed out there is lots more information about other than official records which have a high error rate anyway. What a pity!!!!

[E Wilcock]

Thank you SPOF.

I have just spent some time trying to enter my Uncle Edgar Gollin's date of birth. I also failed to enter the Brigade numbers in which Pridmore served.
Day Month and Year and have completely failed. I know the birth registration index info. But presumably encountered the same as others here - I couldnt put in his date of birth or date of death, even tho I know the sources.

I watched the film and read the instructions but keep getting to a dead end.

Now I long ago when the project was first announced, decided I would put up most of the info I have about Edgar Gollin, but I am getting nowhere.

I am a Cambridge graduate, an experienced historical researcher and hold our family archive. And I like to think I am competent at using IT for genealogy. So if I am defeated by this site, and have wasted a whole evening on Edgar Gollin and Reginald Pridmore, I am not optimistic about the general public.

We need to be able to enter facts and give the evidence as (for instance) registration of birth or birth certificate, without having to open up web pages. But it seems one cant just paste in a link.

We need an instruction sheet telling people exactly what to do : 1,2, 3 etc, to enter the facts they know about their relatives.

And we shouldnt be confronted with more choices about sources than are absolutely essential. For instance Edgar's date of birth and education are in the Clifton College Register -

My OH thought it would be interesting to look at the members of the Oxford New College Rowing Eight in which my grandfather was a member. But since I cant even enter the info I have already researched on Pridmore, and am giving up for the moment, it doesnt seem a practical project.

I am now going to stay away from the site till September or October by which time I hope it will have become usable by your average person like me.

After all, it is possible to generate and upload a website providing public sources for any genealogical data, the citations being in text format and not requiring one to link an on line image.

[E Wilcock]

By the way Glen, thank you for the link. If I had read this earlier, I might have made some progress!

Glen

Here is a simple guide to adding information from a record (aka "How the user guide should have been written)

http://barnsleyhisto...nding-your.html

[AndrewHadden]

Thank you David.Have found Percy Boswell,Lucky enough to have his photo at home-same one as on the site,but signed "with love,from Percy".Rescued it from the wall of a local junk shop.

Have noticed that my correction to Augustus Gregory has now kicked in,and is publicly viewable.,which is reassuring..

Another blitch I've noticed- for example,when citing a printed reference,and being asked to cite the location that the book was read,kept getting an invaliid message.Eventually realised was because i had used a full stop.Had this same problem in a couple of other places.The sort of people who consult books are the sort of people who have been brought up to finish their sentences with a full stop.Presume for today's computer programmers it wasn't on the syllabus!

Still going to plug away and give this new site the benefit of the doubt,and hope it beds in soon-the principle is excellent Andy..

[Tunsilk]

E Wilcock

I am now going to stay away from the site till September or October by which time I hope it will have become usable by your average person like me."

Sounds like a very good plan.

David

[David_Underdown]

There are usability issues, but the key thing to remember is that you have to add a source (and you can add personal knowledge, but it is necessarily treated slightly differently to sources that can be reviewed by others) before you can add anything to the life story, or select a source that has already been added, and add facts that can be found in it.

A few things to consider, how often have we seen family stories given on these boards which turn out to be almost completely wrong?

For BMDs, try using http://www.freebmd.org.uk which is a crowd sourced transcription of the the GRO indices (for England and Wales).

For things like full stops, remember that there will be a degree of automatic formatting of what you put in, don't think of it as adding a sentence. If it really offends you, raise it on the support boards - at one point you couldn't include any numeric characters in the titles of references which was a problem when you wanted to put an issue number of date in! That was changed very quickly.

You also have to rememebr that it's very difficult to prove who you are, or why your information should be trusted, which is why there is the emphasis on soruces (it's rather like editign Wikipedia in that sense). In order to be accurate and a trusted resource int he long term, it neesd to be possible for other people to check where the information has come from.

[sarahbenson]

Is anyone else having problems adding facts from sources? eg I have saved down a 1911 census, but when I go to "add facts from sources" page, and click "age", nothing happens. The video shows a drop down menu on the right, but I don't get that.

I foolishly paid the subscription, because the A to Z list of resources looked wider than on ancestry, so I'm frustrated I can't add accredited facts

[spof]

Sarah

If you have the reference for the census page? For 1911 it will start with RG14. If so have a rad through this blog

http://barnsleyhisto...nding-your.html

and substitute the census reference for the GRO one.

Glen

[stevem49]

I joined the other day and after a few minutes decided that if they want the info online, they can bl***min buy my history. A mere mortal who knows little of WW1 will have no chance and I detest being sent to sites which want my money.

Steve M

[sarahbenson]

Glen

That's a really good blog, but doesn't solve my problem - I don't get a drop down box when I click the little arrow!

Sarah

[spof]

You need to Add an External Reference called something like 1911 Census first. Then the Copy of Official Document option.

Have a look at this man's page https://livesofthefirstworldwar.org/lifestory/1921563

[sarahbenson]

Thanks for the suggestion, but I have successfully added both External References and Official Sources (ie from within Lives, because I am a mug and paid the subscription). What I cannot do is add facts from those sources. For example, if I select the census entry in the example you gave me, if I click the arrow next to the "name" prompt, I get a drop down box. If I click the arrow next to the "age" prompt, nothing happens.

[Hollytree]

Having looked at this forum's comments, and on other forums I am a bit concerned that perhap IWM has 'sold out' to perhaps a largely profit seeking company, also their terms of service are a bit worrying.

"How we use content created by users:

You keep the copyright in any content that you create or publish on the website. However, by publishing it you are giving IWM and its group companies (which means us and any subsidiary and/or parent company of ours that might exist in the future) a non-exclusive, perpetual, transferable, sub- licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use (including editing, adapting or modifying the same) your content for any purpose and on all media no known or hereinafter invented. You agree not to object to our use, or any use by our group companies or partners, of the material that you create or publish on the website and acknowledge that we may not accredit you as having produced the material. Here are some examples of how we will use content you generate:-

• to add it to life stories and make it available to other all website users
• to make it available on other websites owned or operated by IWM and those that it is in partnership with;
• to allow other users to download, print and save copies of your content for their private and non-commercial use;
• for promotional purposes, such as marketing and advertising;
• to help us improve our product and service offerings, including undertaking background searches;
• to form part of the life story database that we build linking user content to records and datasets we hold;
• to make it available to internet search engines;
• for other services provided by IWM group companies or its partners."

Am I being paranoid?

Anne

[spof]

Thanks for the suggestion, but I have successfully added both External References and Official Sources (ie from within Lives, because I am a mug and paid the subscription). What I cannot do is add facts from those sources. For example, if I select the census entry in the example you gave me, if I click the arrow next to the "name" prompt, I get a drop down box. If I click the arrow next to the "age" prompt, nothing happens.

That's strange. I get the option to add a new age. Do you have a link othe man you are researching but it sounds like there is a bug or browser issue.

[IanA]

Ian

I have an awful lot of sympathy with your viewpoint about being user friendly or not as I share some of it. The trouble is trying to fit a set of known facts that needs to be accurate with the more 'narrative' aspect of family history. Also, unlike family history where you find a source to a fact this project makes you find facts from a source.

Thanks Glen. I can see that you are bending over backwards to be helpful here. Like some others, I think I will go away and come back after a while to see if it has improved. I have to say that I was immediately suspicious when I saw the partnership with the commercial 'family history' site but it may be that I'm just an old cynic.

Ian

[spof]

Anne

Luke from IWM has just posted a response to someone asking that same question

http://support.livesofthefirstworldwar.org/forums/245307-discussion/suggestions/5916055-you-want-my-data-yet-expect-me-to-pay-for-giving#comments

[sarahbenson]

Glen

Here's a link to one I'm remembering

https://livesofthefirstworldwar.org/lifestory/1345591

I've been able to add his full name but that's it. I have all the info via reseach elsewhere, so could try to add it all as completely unsourced info, but that seems to be missing the point of the site!

Generally, I think the site isn't really clear what its purpose is - ie whether it's a means of commemoration (which I think is a good thing) or whether it's a way of finding out your ancestor's WW1 story (for which there are other sites that do it much better, although possibly at greater cost. )

Sarah

[spof]

Through your subscription you've connected a GRO reference for his birth so you can add a year of birth.

What other records do you have? BMD? Census? Wills? Links to records on Ancestry/FMP etc? Documents you hold can be added as a copy of a n official document. If you have saved a link to, say, his MIC on Ancestry, use the website option.