Welcome to The Great War 1914-1918 wiki. If you have arrived at this page wondering what this site is all about, this is where you’ll find the answer. First and foremost, this site is dedicated to all the service men and women of the Great War who fought for the freedoms we are fortunate to have today. This site is also a transcribing project, bringing the present-day reader a glimpse of the Great War through sources contemporary with the War. Here, you can store copies of old books, newspapers, magazines, and media relating to war; a digital database that anyone can contribute to. Read on to learn more.
The idea for this came about when writing articles on our sister project, The Lonsdale Battalion. Initially, including supplementary information to the main articles seemed to be one that would impart greater substance to an already expanding database. At first, this seemed like the natural way forward until the project expanded to include whole transcriptions of unrelated material. It was soon evident that the project was becoming too disjointed from its original objectives. This realisation spearheaded the separation of these projects where they could be focussed on individually, each with their own specific outcomes.
Outcomes and the future
With every new project there needs to be a defining set of objectives, aims and goals to steer any project in a forward direction. There will always be room for improvement, a project forever open to be developed and refined, to improve the quality of the material and ensure it maintains its validity as a useful, interesting and reliable resource. Below sets out what this project hopes to achieve over the next few years.
Objectives
- Transcribe original, interesting, and informative publications that are no longer in copyright.
- Include user-based articles and/or subpages to supplement transcriptions;
- Upload a variety of images relevant to the above, or as standalone images based on a set of subjects. These can then be included within the transcriptions and articles, or even as galleries;
- Reference source material where necessary;
- Revisit and if possible improve upon previous content;
- Create a navigable category structure to aid browsing and cover a wider variety of searchable subjects;
- Where necessary, create templates to enhance the form and readability of transcriptions and articles;
- Provide help documentation for the community;
- Include an On This Day listing of events that change daily;
- Create a concise index and database of military words and phrases from the period;
- Provide a reliable bibliography of sources used throughout this site;
All of the above are in continuous development.
Aims
- Ensure that high quality images are uploaded and stored in an accessible and adaptable manner. Please note, some images will depict death in various forms. This could be disturbing to younger viewers, and so caution is advised;
- Ensure all uploads conform to the terms of use, and licensing is used consistently and correctly;
- Ensure transcriptions and supplementary articles are appropriate, informative and grammatically correct;
- Broaden the category structure and improve navigation and browsing;
- Administrator/s assist the community whenever possible via documentation and answering any queries in a timely manner that might arise;
- To ensure the site does not deviate from its original purpose and its eventual goals.
Goals
The long-term goals are:
- A collaborative community working together...
- To produce an informative, engaging and educational resource...
- Built on an extensive scope of transcriptions, user articles, and images encompassing a wide-ranging spectrum of subjects.
This site is...
A transcribing project
Our mission is to provide informational-based text documents and media files relating to the Great War, delivering transcriptions of genuine publications contemporary with the war. Publications from this period, 1914-1918, including many from the immediate post-war period, are out of copyright and can be made freely available. This project aims to provide transcriptions primarily from the British and Allies point of view, however, sources included from the Central Powers will provide a much broader scope from different points of view.
Where transcriptions are concerned, and for consistency, we aim to include place names as they were used, and subsequently published by the British at that time. In some instances there will be a brief introduction including any present-day spellings, ensuring the reader is given accurate information contemporary with the war, and their present-day literations.
Please note: As with any publication, errors and omissions are entirely possible. This is also mirrored with the transcribing process. Where this may be the case, and the error and/or omission can be identified, we encourage the reader to improve upon any of the content on this website (not including user or system pages) by either reaching out to us via our contact us page, or editing the page directly themselves.
A place to write articles
Alongside transcriptions, articles written by site members may be included. If there are historical inaccuracies within a transcription, a separate section or sub-page may be included to articulate these differences with regard to what may have been accurate then, but has since been proven otherwise. This is the perfect platform to provide a space for writing supplementary information to a transcription.
A place for uploading media
Many transcriptions will include images relating to the subject. Images can be inserted into transcriptions and other article pages. They can also be used in galleries to convey almost any subject. These can be uploaded providing the appropriate licences are used. We mainly use the {{PD-UK70}} licence, but this is not inclusive for all types of images. Some images may require a specific type of licence to allow them to used on other sites. Some may be public domain, others may be Creative Commons. If images are included from the Wikimedia Commons repository, clicking on the image will pull the data and licence information directly from there (see image).
Contributors may upload images as long as they are not copyrighted to an organisation or individual. Some copyright material may include specific permissions where uploading is allowed given certain provisions are met, for example, the Imperial War Museum and their Copyright and Re-use policies. Importantly, always seek permission from copyright holders before uploading any media you believe to be in copyright. If in doubt, do not upload.
A place for contributors
Anyone is welcome to join and contribute in any way they like, be it a single edit to correct a spelling error, through to transcribing an entire book, and anything in between. We are interested in including quality publications covering a variety of subjects, as long as ALL transcriptions are out of copyright. This includes the war period 1914-1918, anything with relevance preceding that period, and up to 1923 (100 years ago).
There are literally thousands of books and websites about the Great War, many established sources offering a plethora of detailed information, scrutinised and written by scholars in their particular field of study. Contributors here are not expected to have extensive knowledge about the Great War. We are interested in people with an enthusiasm in this area who are willing to help out in any way they can, working individually or as a collaborative team. The best way is to jump in and have a go.
This site is not...
Wikipedia. Whilst the software used to create The Great War wiki is the same as that used by Wikipedia, it is not the intention of this site to mimic it. Projects on The Great War wiki are not meant to be strictly encyclopaedic. Wikipedia already has an extensive, well-written, and incredibly detailed collection of articles dedicated to the Great War, and as a result this site does not need to align itself to that particular model. Our model is entirely different and will continue to focus on transcribing, with the addition of smaller, easy to digest articles that assist the transcriptions.
Admittedly, there are similarities to Wikisource, which includes a large amount of transcriptions, some interesting ones from the Great War period. We do not intend to follow the conventions they use, however, there are some templates in use there that do make formatting the text a lot easier. A small number of these have been employed here.
A billboard for advertising. This site is hosted by Wikitide.org. Advertising is not part of the Wikitide platform, who prefer editorial independence. Ads can be intrusive, pose a security issue and not least, incredibly annoying, so you won’t see any ads on any part of this site. For more information about what Wikitide is and the people who run it, see the help centre.