The Scottish Military Research Group - Commemorations Project

john burnett · Joined: 29 Jan 2007 Posts: 790 Location: Fife

Just found out about this.

http://www.twgpp.org/index.php

apanderson · Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2008 5:04 pm Post subject:

This is the successor to another site which went by the wayside not that long ago - it used to be called the British War Memorials Project. I believe there was a bit of a disagreement between sone of the folk who ran the site and Steve Rodgers, one of them approached CWGC to see if he could run this new site alongside theirs.

You'll notice that it's completely independent and that copies of all photos require a 'donation' of £3 for an e-mailed copy, £5 for a hard copy.

Anne

David McNay · Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2008 5:46 pm Post subject:

Lesley Robertson · Joined: 02 Jun 2007 Posts: 4

Everyone is entitled to their opinion. On the other side of the coin, I'm one of their volunteer photographers. The project is affiliated with CWGC (and linked from their website) and they provide the databases we work from to find the various graves on our "patch". CWGC even make space available for TWGPP on their stand at exhibitions such as the "Who Do You Think You Are" Fair.

I don't think anyone makes money from the service. As they say on the website:

"As with all facilities of this nature there are costs to be borne to maintain the Server, IT equipment, processing images, post, stationery, DVD's plus a plethora of other outgoings not normally considered. Although the project is run in association with the CWGC we are not funded by its Royal Charter and have to find these funds ourselves to maintain this service. Volunteers cover their own costs in enabling the photographs to be taken and give time freely."

Even the people running the admin for the system have day jobs. It's certainly never been suggested that people can even claim their costs!

apanderson · Posted: Tue Jan 26, 2010 2:31 pm Post subject:

Hi Lesley,

I was a volunteer for years (pre being linked to CWGC) and what made me stop 'instantly', was that after submitting thousands and thousands of photos, not to mention updating countless spreadsheets, one day I put in a request for a copy of a photo I knew they had on file. (Just one!!)

I was asked for the 'donation' and to be quite honest, not only was I taken aback, but was quite sickened.

That was it for me I'm afraid.

All the photos I donated are now duplicated here and on the War Graves Project (albeit some are missing thanks to my Photobucket account needing sorted out Confused

).

Our Projects need a certain amount of funding too - all of which the 'core' members pay for quite willingly as it's really quite a minimal amount.

As for the spreadsheets given out to volunteers, they are a straight copy (pretty much) from CWGC's database - so anyone could, if they so wished, do the same.

I appreciate that it can be the first port of call when folks are trying to trace family members or carry out any sort of military research etc., and it obviously runs remarkably well having the affiliation to CWGC. We try to put a lot more effort into things by cross referencing as much info as we can between War Graves and as many War Memorials as we can. Yes, we include CWGC info - but often we can add much much, more and sometimes even correct wrong information held by CWGC (e.g. grave lair/plot numbers, mis-spellings of names etc.)

We don't try to compete with anyone - our intentions were and are to create a (mainly) Scottish database where all/any information would be available for anyone to search/copy/whatever. The sad part of that being that we ended up watermarking photos as we discovered they were ending up on various sites being carried off as someone else's work. Anyone can copy any of the photos (watermarked or not, that's up to the person uploading them in the first place), but should higher resolution/non-watermarked copies be requested - no payment is sought - not even a donation.

At the end of the day, as you quite rightly said, we're all perfectly entitles to our opinions. (Some a bit stronger than others! Laughing

)

Anne

Lesley Robertson · Joined: 02 Jun 2007 Posts: 4

I must admit that I hadn't seen the two systems as competing - SWMP one is much more focussed than the other.