New CWGC website

[stiletto_33853]

17 hours ago, reesy said:

With this new CWGF they have setup (and which they'll need to fund) I wonder in what direction they are heading. Will they end up making money from this venture and then the combined governments withdraw some or all funding?

 

Reesy,

I think you are on the right track, notice the CWGC supporters area at £30 per annum. If this is intended as the viewing area for these images then it sort of defeats the object of developing a site to get schoolchildren more enthusiastic and is yet another money grab, using taxpayers money to do the initial work, you just could not make it up. 

Lets hope they are somewhat better than the Friends of The National Archives for everyone's sake. This group recently claimed to have sorted out the officers files, well thats not my experience, sure they have added christian names which makes matters a little easier searching. However, many a file has say three officers files combined in one file, papers from two officers all mixed up and erroneous Regimental listings, i.e. over 100 Rifle Brigade Officers files in December 1914 Army List alone listed as Connuaght Rangers, so much for the claim.

 

Andy

Edited 14 September , 2017 by stiletto_33853

[Guest]

1 hour ago, stiletto_33853 said:

 

Reesy,

I think you are on the right track, notice the CWGC supporters area at £30 per annum. If this is intended as the viewing area for these images then it sort of defeats the object of developing a site to get schoolchildren more enthusiastic and is yet another money grab, using taxpayers money to do the initial work, you just could not make it up. 

Lets hope they are somewhat better than the Friends of The National Archives for everyone's sake. This group recently claimed to have sorted out the officers files, well thats not my experience, sure they have added christian names which makes matters a little easier searching. However, many a file has say three officers files combined in one file, papers from two officers all mixed up and erroneous Regimental listings, i.e. over 100 Rifle Brigade Officers files in December 1914 Army List alone listed as Connuaght Rangers, so much for the claim.

 

Andy

 

      Andy- Call me suspicious and paranoid, but I am beginning to smell the unmistakable scent of rattus rattus. Have a look at the "Lives of the First World War" threads and what IWM want to do with the stuff they have- It's all beginning to make sense in a conspiratorial way- IWM- Give us your pics and docs., then licensed out to WGC-and me,thee and Joe Public get charged for what we have already provided for nowt.

[RaySearching]

 

      Andy- Call me suspicious and paranoid, but I am beginning to smell the unmistakable scent of rattus rattus. Have a look at the "Lives of the First World War" threads and what IWM want to do with the stuff they have- It's all beginning to make sense in a conspiratorial way- IWM- Give us your pics and docs., then licensed out to WGC-and me,thee and Joe Public get charged for what we have already provided for nowt.

Oh ! Not unlike a photographic project I won't mention

Please donate all your headstone photos so we can put them behind a donations paywall and charge joe public for a copy 

 

 

Ray

 

[John_Hartley]

5 hours ago, BillyH said:

so even the newspapers of the period sometimes made mistakes.

And so do modern day authors!

 

In one of my books, I have a photo of a man. I was entirely confident that I knew who he was. That was until someone else looked at the photo and spotted things that should have been obvious even to me that confirmed it could not be him.

 

And no - I have no idea either how the man came to be misnamed in my files or, indeed, who on earth he actually was.

Edited 14 September , 2017 by John_Hartley

[stiletto_33853]

 

      Andy- Call me suspicious and paranoid, but I am beginning to smell the unmistakable scent of rattus rattus. Have a look at the "Lives of the First World War" threads and what IWM want to do with the stuff they have- It's all beginning to make sense in a conspiratorial way- IWM- Give us your pics and docs., then licensed out to WGC-and me,thee and Joe Public get charged for what we have already provided for nowt.

Cor,

Nothing like a good old conspiracy theory However The IWM made no bones about it being charged for after 2018 and I am sure Brightsolid will want to make money, Ker-Ching! One of the reasons I have not put anything up on the site. The IWM and copyright, hmmm that would be a good subject for someone's thesis, ho hum.

Should the IWM or rather Brightsolid get involved with the CWGC then there is a problem as quite a few pictures I have seen there are most definitely not right, similar to Ancestry Family Trees. Hell there is even my family tree on there done by a relative in Australia with not one picture captioned accurately. I am afraid this is the problem with family folk lore. We have seen on this site and other sites people claim this is a photograph of so and so, to be proved wrong.

 

Ray, with you on that one, one of the reasons I have spent a long time photographing the headstones in my area of interest (Belgium 95% done, France about 75%) as I do give a good few families help with their relations of which a vast majority of them know nothing about their relative.

 

John, very true.

 

Andy

[johnboy]

I have not seen any soldiers pics on CWGC  yet. have any been posted? or am I ahead of myself

[thetrenchrat22]

from an earlier post

The CWGC’s new website will have a facility to upload photographs against individual casualty records but this is not available at the present time.  We intend to launch this function in the next couple of months

I
>
>

[johnboy]

So a lot of fuss here about something that has not happened wait till it starts getting pics...

[ss002d6252]

Time will tell what the CWGC site turns out like. I'm sure it will be well discussed over the next few months.

Craig

[RaySearching]

4 hours ago, John_Hartley said:

 

 

In one of my books, I have a photo of a man. I was entirely confident that I knew who he was. That was until someone else looked at the photo and spotted things that should have been obvious even to me that confirmed it could not be him.

 

And no - I have no idea either how the man came to be misnamed in my files or, indeed, who on earth he actually was.

 

John

You could post the photo on a new thread the, forum pals like identity challenges

 

[David_Underdown]

On ‎11‎/‎09‎/‎2017 at 11:47, laughton said:

Our concern over here on the other side of the pond is the broken links, even within the UNKNOWN REPORTS submitted to the CWGC. For example in our report onf 2nd Lts. Clark and Noon we have the CWGC link:

 

http://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty/744543/CLARK, ERNEST VAUGHAN

 

which now gives us a 404 Error page.

 

If you search on the new site the link is:

 

https://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty/744543/clark,-ernest-vaughan/

 

In this case it is merely the dropping of the hyphens in the link. Those that have hundreds and perhaps thousands of links in their research documents are toasted!

The old links were always a bit weird, and technically not valid URLs as spaces should not appear in a valid URL (they should be replaced by %20 ) - they would often be broken by automatic recognition of links as that would stop at the first space.

[Medaler]

Well, I have been favoured by a reply from CWGC.  Here it is for your thoughts and comments...........

 

Thank you for your recent comments regarding our new website and search capabilities.

The subject of crowd sourcing information is, I agree, one that is potentially fraught with troubles. We recognise that there are pitfalls both in terms of the validation of information submitted to us and obviously the reputation of the Commission. However the strategic decision stands and it is therefore a question of when and how it is instigated rather than if. This has been reiterated internally by senior management. The devil, as in so many cases, is in the detail.

The Commission remains committed to the principles laid down in it's Royal Charter but is also looking to raise its profile and more proactively engage with the public. The ability for members of the public to upload information is seen as one way of doing this. There will I am sure be further announcements in due course. Watch this space!

In the meantime if you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to get in touch.

Yours sincerely,

[Guest]

5 hours ago, Medaler said:

The Commission remains committed to the principles laid down in it's Royal Charter but is also looking to raise its profile and more proactively engage with the public. The ability for members of the public to upload information is seen as one way of doing this. There will I am sure be further announcements in due course. Watch this space!

 

     Worrying:

 

1)  "more proactively engage with the public"    Does this translate as "charge more money" ?  My bet is "Yes"

 

2)  "The ability for members of the public to upload information is seen as one way of doing this".    Which is vastly different from other members of the public being able to access it for free.

 

      Some clear statements about charging/ not charging, in-house or contracted out  pronto, I think

[Medaler]

 

     Worrying:

 

1)  "more proactively engage with the public"    Does this translate as "charge more money" ?  My bet is "Yes"

 

2)  "The ability for members of the public to upload information is seen as one way of doing this".    Which is vastly different from other members of the public being able to access it for free.

 

      Some clear statements about charging/ not charging, in-house or contracted out  pronto, I think

If they had "engaged with the public" at the time, many of the dead would have been repatriated, and all of the headstones would have been different - I dare say that tens of thousands of the lads would never have had headstones at all. Set against a past which has seen them stubbornly, but correctly, defending the integrity of their database (even when we all know that there are some errors within it), it now seems that they are opening the floodgates by allowing the addition of new media to corrupt what they have.

 

Just my 'umble opinion, but I am really concerned by the implications of this.

 

Mike

 

 

[clk]

Hi,

 

Taking it away slightly from the topic of conversation. I wonder if In general terms they would consider the forum as a specific interest consultation/reference group. I appreciate that the forum isn't geared up to formulate a quasi joined up reply, but wondered if they might be persuaded to post on the forum themselves, and invite views and representations from members that have a keen interest in their work, and may wish to comment on the direction of their proposed (future) developments.

 

Regards

Chris

 

Edited 19 September , 2017 by clk

[johnboy]

i think one or two membersare to do cwgc and post/ I suppose they can only express their own views and not those of cwgc/

[RaySearching]

19 minutes ago, clk said:

Hi,

 

Taking it away slightly from the topic of conversation. I wonder if In general terms they would consider the forum as a specific interest consultation/reference group. I appreciate that the forum isn't geared up to formulate a quasi joined up reply, but wondered if they might be persuaded to post on the forum themselves, and invite views and representations from members that have a keen interest in their work, and may wish to comment on the direction of their proposed (future) developments.

 

Regards

Chris

 

 

Brilliant idea 

 

Cannot see it happening though as they would certainly take some flack 

 

Ray

 

[BillyH]

1 hour ago, johnboy said:

i think one or two membersare to do cwgc and post/ I suppose they can only express their own views and not those of cwgc/

 

eh?

 

BillyH.

[johnboy]

two posters on this thread give the impression they are to do with cwgc.

Edited 20 September , 2017 by johnboy

[charlie2]

On 8.9.2017 at 12:31, charlie962 said:

I sent a question on this to CWGC last night and this am received an acknowledgement, an Enquiry number and an indication of response within 10 days. Very efficient so far.

 

Charlie,

Did the CWGC respond to your enquiry?

Charlie2

[charlie962]

1 hour ago, charlie2 said:

Did the CWGC respond to your enquiry?

Charlie

 

They did respond very promptly and it was my mistake.  The registration record was still there! They also said that:

 

It would be highly unlikely that any documents would be removed from our internal archives, if you have a copy of the document in question, we would be able to confirm the situation.

To clarify, our archives contain the Graves Registration Documents - Graves Registration Reports (Finals); Grave Registration Documents - Registers; Headstone Documents - Headstone Schedules (Originals) (the first page); Headstone Schedules (Originals) (the second page).  These are the same documents that are shown on our website.

 

Charlie

[Stuart T]

On 08/09/2017 at 06:26, mandy hall said:

Thanks Phil and Ray for confirming, links are still working, wasn't brave enough to check last night after the last time the website was up graded.

 

Mandy

The previous style of links ("Find-war-dead" with the name at the end or only the part of it up to the number) may well still work but the "original" style (with "casualty_details" and just a number) do not.  When the "original" was changed to the last version, they were able to reinstate the forwarders but have apparently forgotten this time.

 

Also, why the pre-occupation with Initials OR Forenames?  Any other search engine takes them together and will return appropriate results.

 

Lastly, isn't it annoying to try clicking (on a desktop) anywhere on the entry to find that the only live link is the silly arrow right over to the side?

[charlie2]

11 hours ago, charlie962 said:

Charlie

 

They did respond very promptly and it was my mistake.  The registration record was still there! They also said that:

 

It would be highly unlikely that any documents would be removed from our internal archives, if you have a copy of the document in question, we would be able to confirm the situation.

To clarify, our archives contain the Graves Registration Documents - Graves Registration Reports (Finals); Grave Registration Documents - Registers; Headstone Documents - Headstone Schedules (Originals) (the first page); Headstone Schedules (Originals) (the second page).  These are the same documents that are shown on our website.

 

Charlie

 

Charlie,

Many thanks. Either the CWGC is wrong or I‘ve lost the plot (which can‘t be ruled out). I‘m sure that the „Finals“ are missing for Level Crossing Cemetery Fampoux and of course I never bothered to download them. I‘ll write to them myself.

 

Charlie

[Stuart T]

I now find (desktop) that you can only view small photos of the cemeteries with big arrows on them.  You can neither view nor download (right-click + save) the originals.  Awful for building up a file on a man.

[laughton]

There is a solution but it takes a few steps. Here is an example:

1. Get the picture you want, in this case I used Ovillers Military Cemetery.
2. In Google Chrome, right click you mouse when it is over the photograph with the big arrows you mention.
3. A "pop-up" box appears and the bottom item should say INSPECT (see image at the end of this post)
4. On the right side a new box will appear with the CODE for the image - see BLACK ARROW.
5. Hover your mouse over the blue code for CemeteryImage.ashx? and you will see the URL.
6. Right click your mouse over that code and select either "Open in new tab" or "Copy link address" which in this example is:
   https://www.cwgc.org/find-a-cemetery/cemetery/60800/ovillers-military-cemetery/CemeteryImage.ashx?id=20099
7. That link gives you the full screen image without any arrows - voila!
8. If you want to get the other images, leave the screen open with the two components and move the BIG ARROWS on the part showing the pictures on the left side of the filmstrip. When you come to the one you want you right click on the image again and select the line that says INSPECT once more. The code in the box on the right changes to the image and you repeat step 6 again.
9. If you want to speed up the process, just make note of the image numbers for all the pictures (2099, 2098, 17897, 17896) and change the number at the end of the line in the new tab that you had opened.

This is just the first crack at solving this problem. I may be able to refine it, as we did for downloading the COG-BR files, etc.

 

Here is a refinement already - I tried the same process in Mozilla Firefox. With that program, RIGHT CLICK on the image with the BIG ARROWS and a different box appears from the one in Google Chrome. You should now see a option called "View Background Image". If you select that, you get the image in full screen immediately. A much simpler process.

 

I tried Microsoft Explorer and it may be like the Google Chrome process, but I did not go any further. Opera appears to be the same as Chrome.

 

Edited 23 October , 2017 by laughton
inserted wrong image! Fixed now.