The BBC People's War Archives- Adding insult to injury ?

Search function has been missing for ages. Ron and I have been moaning about it for a while, don't get him started, one of his pet hates and mine too :wink:

If you type into google, bbc people's war/56 Recce, it comes up with the stories of 56 Recce
(so bbc people's war/whatever unit or theatre you like). Or even someone who contributed to the stories ie. bbc people's war/Ron Goldstein

Do you know what I mean or is it as clear as mud . That's how I do it anyway

Thread about it here
http://ww2talk.com/forums/topic/46950-the-bbc-peoples-war-archives-adding-insult-to-injury/?hl=%2Bbbc+%2Bpeople%26%2339%3Bs+%2Bwar+%2Bsearch+%2Bfunction#entry554008

Lesley

 

I suspect somebody at the BBC has done something with the "People's War" website and not for the better. Shortly before posting this I have checked the front page and it does not look as it used to, nor provide a link to the various categories.

As someone who put a lot of unpaid hours on the project on behalf of the people who lived through WW2 I hope this is just a temporary measure!

With concern,
Jos

 

I tend to use Google's site filter in their search box:

site:http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar searchstring

 

Knowing that the BBC war series would be subject to "Budget Cuts" - when I joined the present forum - I transferred all my personal

details to this and my input can be found in BLUE under my signature on each posting…

Cheers

 

A further problem is that a number of items have been allocated to the wrong category, so that a search by category will not necessarily bring up all the items which logically belong to the category, and may well bring up items having nothing to do with the category.

 

I'm just glad I saved all the relevant stories into my bookmarks long ago.

 

Hi Lesley !

I see you say:

"Search function has been missing for ages. Ron and I have been moaning about it for a while, don't get him started, one of his pet hates and mine too :wink:"

Dead right, of course but the BBC are not apparently listening.

I remain

Disgusted of Cockfosters

 

Ditto that ...

... though the "http://www." bit is redundant (possibly even counterproductive by limiting the protocol to HTTP ?) so "site:bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar" will suffice as the first search term and, of course, Google's search syntax is far richer than Auntie's ever was !

:twocents: Steve

 

Have you tried accessing any of the articles in the last few days? I am now wondering if all the articles, photographs and other information has been deleted from the BBC website .... ? The articles and photographs that have been collected, written and posted for this project should remain freely available for others to use.

Fortunately I donated written copies of the local articles I wrote up for the project to the County Archives. That way if all else was lost then in the years and centuries to come there would still be a research trail for anyone wishing to find out about what happened during the war years would be able to do so.

The BBC actually closed the "People's War" project for new postings just as I was getting 'warmed up'. In fact I would say there are more people wishing to either tell either their own or a relative's wartime experiences nowadays than there was about 10 years ago.

Following on from the "People's War" project, I was able to carry on with some of my own research. The resulting articles of some of this research I am still able to post to another website, independent of the BBC, which was created when the "People's War" project was closed by the BBc. The founders were the "People's War Gang of Four" (Site Helpers). They will be known to regular users of this forum (i.e. Peter G, Ron Goldstein, Tom Canning and Frank Mee). So thankfully other researchers can still find these post-"People's War" articles on the 'web' (link below).

Link to 2WW Blogspot:
http://2ndww.blogspot.co.uk/

 

Hi Jos,

I have five or six. I've just checked them and they are all there, although the format presentation has changed in line with the latest home page.

Here is an example:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/82/a2218682.shtml

Best wishes

Steve

 

Checking the articles I posted to the "People's War" website I now find only a small number of them can be accessed and the appearance on the screen looks poor. However, for most of them all that comes up when clicking on the relevant link is:



Error 404 - Page not found



This might be because:

• You have typed the web address incorrectly, or
• the page you were looking for may have been moved, updated or deleted.

Please try the following options instead:

• Use BBC search above to see if it's available elsewhere
• Use our site index

 

I have just tried accessing the "People's War" website and have found it now seems to be working as the BBC updated it after February 2012. Whatever had caused the problem with accessing some of the articles now seems to have been sorted. So far, so good.

As Lesley and Ron have already mentioned earlier, the site-specific search engine for "People's War" articles has been removed some time ago. It has not been reintroduced during this most recent work. The incorrect categorisation of some of the articles has not been resolved either (e.g some articles set in Lancashire have been categorised as London).

 

"Disgusted of Cockfosters" : see post 27. Spared a thought for him today.