Lives of the First World War

I find the site quite complicated to use and very nearly gave up, though for a different reason: The initial information on my father, on the opening page which gives his name, dates and regiment, gleaned from the medals card, and put there by the IWM itself, misinterpreted the information on the medals card and put his regiment as Headquarters Staff. This was totally wrong; he was in the Essex regiment from the day he was commissioned, in 1916, to the day he retired, in 1945, and was intensely proud of the regiment. He was a member of the Headquarters Staff for one short year after he'd been severely wounded on the Somme and repatriated. I tried to correct the regiment myself, but couldn't so asked for help. Eventually, after four sets of queries, each one a bit more desperate and each one answered by a different person reeling off the same rigmarole that didn't work, I got a reply from a boss lady. She gave me a new set of instructions. They also didn't work. So I wrote her a slightly irate letter, showing her exactly, through copies of the relevant parts, how her instructions failed me. The patronising tone of her final letter filled me with fury "I have altered the section on your behalf which I think you have been referring to" but I controlled myself and merely thanked her. On my behalf, my foot. They put the wrong information there in the first place, not me. And "which I think you have been referring to" - how could she be so thick and not know exactly what I was referring to. I made it clear enough.

 

Gillian, after a series of frustrating replies to communications with an energy supplier I asked "Are you a human or a machine?". The reply was a slight variation on previous responses. So I assumed it must be a stupid,stubborn,etc. Human !
I have given up rather than write anything rude.

 

I've only skimmed the posts on this topic (Lives of the First World War) so forgive me if I missed the answer to this one. Having found the "raw" record for my Great Grandfather I have found two or three entries under the "Search the Official Records" tab that definitely relate to him. I haven't looked at either the transcript or original because it appears I have to pay to do so which, as others have commented, is entirely lacking in any logic. Or have I missed something or is my browser not rendering it properly? (I've tried different browsers so I think it's not that). There seems to be no way to attach the Official Records I've identified without having to pay to see them first. They can't be selected, no button appears; it's all very frustrating. I have a great deal of information about my Gt Grandfather that I'd like to add, much of it already in the public domain, but the process seems convoluted and tortuous. And to add insult to injury they expect us to pay for things we already know? (I know that's been mentioned by several, but I'm adding my indignation to the pot!). Has anyone cracked this thing?

 

Thanks Alexander. Simples maybe, but still sounds pretty tortuous. I'll have a go by following your instructions and hope I don't throw in the towel. Life's too short, as my Gt Grandfather discovered for himself in the first few days of the Somme.

 

That had occurred to me, but I guess I was hoping that having entered it all (well to be honest not all, but much) into Family Historian I wouldn't be starting from scratch again. Wishful thinking, and perhaps to be viewed as a longer term project to do in odd moments as a memorial to my Gt Grandfather, for whom I always felt rather sorry. And now I know from his Service Record exactly how brief his military service was and, no doubt, how unprepared he was to fight in the trenches (and too old) it's not inappropriate putting in a bit of effort to create his story as that memorial.

 

I cannot but feel that 'Lives' has gone wrong somewhere here. I keep looking at the discussion pages on the site, and time after time someone makes the same point, about paying to add info to a 'Life' - and the site administrators keep making the same response. It is obviously not clear. Excellent idea that Peter should spell it out in a NL, where it will reach a lot of readers, but really the people who run the 'Lives' site should address it.

In order that (I hope) people viewing the Lives I have built up do not have to pay to see the info I have attached, I am putting up links to e.g. FreeBMD, FreeReg for basic facts. For those who died, the CWG site sometimes has personal info, as well as the death details. And for the men from Sheringham who died, someone has gone to a lot of trouble to gather together info from the military records onto one site, for which I am providing a link, and this may be true for other places. If this works the way I think it might (!) future users should be able to view sites NOT marked as 'officialrecord' without paying to view.

 

Tim, I got an email saying that as a thank-you for beta testing I was getting 3 months' sub free. Presumably this is what the message here refers to. And since they don't have my credit card details, they can't take any money, so the 'paid' sub will lapse in 3 months.

 

email sent 7 may, entitled 'This is just the beginning'

includes
"We're giving all beta testers a three month subscription to become a Friend of Lives of the First World War, for free. This will be applied to your account over the next few days, so you'll have three months' unlimited access to all the premium record sets and can keep working on your Communities.
Of course you can continue to use the site after that period for free, without these extra benefits, if you do not wish to subscribe."

 

That's a very kind offer Tim. When I get back to my own computer I'd very much like to take you up on it, so far as the Official Records entries are concerned. Many thanks.

 

That seems a good idea to me - but what guarantee is there that these "unofficial" sites will remain, or that if they do the URLs you link to will remain unchanged in perpetuity? If this is supposed to be a project that saves information as a permanent memorial it seems a bit perverse that the State owned department running it (I presume the Imperial War Museum is still state owned) should be confusing the picture by trying to do two things at once - creating a crowd sourced memorial but also raising revenue. And if users are doing their best to avoid the payment side and thereby prejudicing the longer term reliability of the data then I think it's going to be a mess.

 

I'd be interested to hear opinions on Lives of the First World War's Terms and Conditions.
Particularly Non official record information that I could contribute.

It says:

You must not publish something that you do not own the rights in (including copyright) (or do not have permission from the rights owner to publish).

I have permission from people to put information they gave me on my website, but it is a different question about reposting it on livesofthefirstworldwar.org without asking them if it is ok. I obtained this information years ago and have lost touch with some of the people who gave it to me. In one case the person is now not in best health and I wouldn't want to hassle them about copyright etc.

Also...

The Terms and Conditions say you are giving DC Thomson or any associated companies full rights to use it "for any purpose and on all media known or hereinafter invented"

Could this data end up being sold back to users instead of being freely available. DC Thomson are FriendsReunited aren't they? "Full rights... for any purpose... all media... even that which hasn't yet been invented!"

Or is this pretty standard for Ts and Cs and am I worrying too much?

Here is an extract from their Terms

 

Jonathan, I agree they are trying to do at least 2 things simultaneously. Much of the negative feedback on the forums on the site is from people making the point that they are doing the work and/but either (apparently) paying to do so, or relinquishing ownership/copyright of their material.

However, I don't quite follow you on the argument that putting links to 'free to view' sites is prejudicing the quality of the data. For one, thing, for at least some of my personal lives, there is a lot more info on the web than offered when you search 'Official records' on the 'Lives' site. I can offer you my relative Arthur Herdman as an example.

If someone who put a link used it to add dodgy data to the site (which may be what you fear) I am pretty sure that the records are checked by moderators, and would probably (?) reject them. (Can another beta tester comment on this, please? Thanks. L)

Regarding the FreeReg/FreeBMD sites, I think they are fairly likely to stay put, but obviously no guarantees. The content of these sites is (I think) pretty reliable, certainly better than the average 'put together by amateurs' site.
I am putting links to e.g. transcriptions of church records of baptisms on the FreeReg site, and I don't believe anyone is going to do much better, other than through an image of a scan of the actual entry.
The FreeBMD site gives (I believe) the same info as the 'pay to view' site that 'Lives' connects you to. I don't see why a potential viewer of my 'Life' should have to pay to see such info, which is otherwise freely available.

Your comment about unofficial sites may refer more to the likes of the Sheringham Roll of Honour page, which was in a local way trying to do what the new 'Lives' site is doing. It doesn't have the rigour of this new initiative, but I can only applaud the effort that someone has put in.

If future visitors have any knowledge of family history, or of websites in general, I would hope that they will understand that some sites are more authoritative/reliable than others. But I would guess that someone who is searching for some record of a great grandfather, and finds him on the site, will click on every link, free or not.


(Incidentally, I have 11 pages of men I am remembering and have so far found only one where someone else has connected information other than the medal index which acts as the seed. I think there is a lot of basic spadework to be done, in getting these soldiers' entries in a state where a searcher can recognise them. )