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From Aug 2006 - Nov 2013 WeDig provided a live forum for diggers & fans of Vindolanda. It has now been mothballed and will be maintained as a live archive.

Here you will find preserved 7 years of conversation, photos, & knowledge about a site many people love. Vindolanda gets under the skin. (Figuratively and literally as a volunteer excavator!) It's a place you remember, filled with people you remember!

Thanks for 7 great years!

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We Dig Vindolanda 2.0
Topic Started: Sep 25 2008, 09:43 AM (2,004 Views)
SacoHarry
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Hello all!

If you can believe it, www.wedigvindolanda.com has now been live for over 2 years! I wanted to say a big "thank you" to all of you. Your posts, pictures, insights, discussions, and all have made a fledgling idea into a success.

But it's time to be honest -- the site is showing its age, the limitations of the hosting service, and the limitations of its moderator. :D With the 2008 season over, it seems a good time to sit down and think how to take it to the next level. I want it to be more interactive, simpler to navigate, more informative, more thought-provoking, and plain more fun.

Vindolanda has catapulted our understanding of a distant world. Every year it brings together hundreds of folks from all ages & walks of life who share a common love. It's a place that forges friendships and leaves amazing memories in people's minds. The landscape holds thousands of years of personal stories. And in many ways it holds a history of archaeology itself. The record of scientific excavation at Vindolanda goes back nearly two centuries!

I want this forum to reflect all of that. I'd like to see this become a place where a person can get a true feel for it all: from Roman construction techniques & fort design, to the story of archaeological advances, to the types of finds & soils a new digger can encounter, to what's on the menu at the Twice Brewed Inn and who won last week's Pub Quiz.

A tall order, and maybe too much to hope for. But I'd rather at least aim higher than lower!

It's early days. I do have some specific ideas. But the things I don't know far outweigh those that I do. I don't even know what I don't know yet. :D But in coming days & weeks I'll be listing out thoughts, and what's needed to make them happen.

The thing is, this is -your- site as much as it is anybody's. So I'm eager for as many ideas and as much help/collaboration as you all are willing to offer. There is no such thing as a bad suggestion. Nor is there any need to hold back criticism. What works? What doesn't? And if you have development skills you can bring, please don't be shy. And tell your friends, spread the word. Let's see just what wedigvindolanda.com can be.

More to follow. And thank you again!
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Justin
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First of all a BIG well done and thank you to you Harry! Although I'm sure I speak for everyone when I say we appreciate it, I suspect very few of us know or understand all the hard work that you have obviously put into the site to make it as good as it is - and it is very good indeed!

Secondly I can't believe it is over 2yrs old already. That is actually very scary! When you spend most days in ancient Rome/Britain I suppose modern time just disappears.

So come on everyone, especially those of you with hidden talents in web design and all things internet. How are we going to help this fella take the site to the next level?

Good work Harry and good luck with a revamp
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laura the great
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make it like a blog!!!! its too formal, everyones too scared to post comments cos they might look silly. :D i could never look silly tho...
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laura the great
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u should also have a proper gallery. the feedback is goin well.... CMON PEOPLE.
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Andy
Dr Andrew Robin Birley
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I would add my voice to the general hubbub here as well, and ask all of those www.wedigvindolanda.com members who have web design skills to consider offering their services or advice to Harry if they feel that they can do so. Having a concept is good but in an ideal world we would want to make the thing look pretty as well.

As for content: here is a thought, a section of 1 week excavation diaries would be fun, a format where members could load up their thoughts / pictures from day to day during their week on the excavation. This could be very useful as a historic record in its own right and fun to look back on or read about other peoples experiences.

Andy
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brypop
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Brypop
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I like that idea Andy. Michaels photographs have been very good this year in showing how the excavations have been progressing and this would be an ideal place for him to continue that good work in the future. It would be really good to get more people involved in posting their experiences of working on site.

Another thing that could be encouraged is people giving thoughts on other places they have visited whilst up in Northumberland, museums and other sites along the wall and beyond.

Bryan
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SacoHarry
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Hey all. Thanks for some great ideas. Laura, you're right on. We need a proper gallery. When I signed with this forum host, it was with the impression that they were working on one. But 2 years later, I think I'm done holding my breath. :D

Andy & Bryan, I'm totally on board with weekly excavation diaries. A fantastic historical record, & a way to see the site unfold live. Michael's pics are amazing; it'd be nice to have a spot where progressions like that were easier to access. The question is: how do we motivate folks to post? A big problem is site access. The public computers at the Twice Brewed are run by the county council, and they block all forums, including us. I think a big piece of the puzzle is making it easy, easy, easy for people to get at a computer and post whilst they're digging. Is there any room for a cheap old laptop or two onsite, if somebody had an old one they'd donate?

A part I can work on is making the forum as simple & straightforward as possible to negotiate. I'm going to look at ways to organize the "stuff" on the screen so that it's easier to see where you want to go and how to get something posted. And I want to pull extraneous things out to their own pages. I want to create a more proper Web site. The forums will still be the key focus, but things like news, links, excavation reports, photo galleries will get their own pages. I want to declutter the actual -forum- bit. Keep it tight & tidy & inviting, and a place where people & threads won't get lost.

Andy & Justin, you guys are fantastic about posting here and staying involved. As much of that as you're willing to keep doing will only help make the site better. I also think it'd be brilliant to get an occasional post by Robin & Pat on their experiences, Barbara with some neat tidbit of what's happening down in the conservation labs, the folks down in the Museum with a fun story or two. I figure, best case, this site could become a repository for a kind of collected experience of the place. Again, possibly aiming too high but worth a shot.

Anyway, that's about where I'm at now. Any & all ideas, keep 'em coming.
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Badger
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I do not think that many people are afraid to post comments for fear of being silly. Silly is ok. But we have all taken to heart the advice about being circumspect on what is found, when and where. Perhaps an element of hesitation carries over elsewhere.

What would be really fun to see would be something along the lines of SimCity...
A video that showed over time the building, razing, rebuilding etc of Vindolanda, from the initial mud huts (I envision a couple of peasant types who look like Andy and Justin herding goats), to the approach of marching troops (lets have a Centurian who looks like Micheal leading them), on towards multiple wooden forts, the two stone forts, to the final post Roman scene (I see Andrew as a pious monk and Justin as the local warlord).

If this could be laid over a real topographical representation it would be great. If areas of current excavation could be highlighted somehow it would rule.

Sounds simple enough.....

But of course, only because I know naught about programming.

Tim Wolter
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SacoHarry
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Hey Tim. I love the idea. When I first started wedig, I downloaded some trial software that could "terraform" buildings, trees, grass, and lay it on terrain using satellite info, so the dimensions would be perfect. And once it was done you could make a "movie" just like that, amazingly realistic. Unfortunately the full software was crazy-expensive and the learning curve crazy-steep. So I never went anywhere with it.

But even without that kind of detail, I definitely would like some kind of 3D thing to show the site over time. Something that's clickable so, say, you want to see the Antonine HQ: first you go to the Antonine time on a timeline slider bar, then mouse-over until you see the "Headquarters" screentip, then click and a screen would pop up describing a bit of what's known about it and how it might have looked. Lot of work. -Lot- of work. But it'd be a blast.

One thing that's simpler is this free 3D object creator software called "Art of Illusion." You can put together a pretty good picture of a samian bowl without a lot of work. I think it'd be fun to create a page that has various 3D pictures of the types of pottery that you can find on-site. That's something that I think is within my grasp, and it might be fun & useful for diggers to have. I'm going to be working on it over the winter.
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Kate 13
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Kate F
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I like all the ideas, especially the one about all the participants at Vindolanda from Head Honcho to the cleaners taking part along with the diggers to build a truly fascinating record of our time on the site. In my blog I have posted about my own excavation experiences at Vindolanda and elsewhere and it would be good if the new site could link into people's own blogs too. Some one out there must have an old laptop that could be used on site for instant updates over teabreak!!!

Justin as a warlord - the mind boggles, but if you can do that one Harry, I'll eat my pink hat!!!

Keep up the fantastic work. I have no programming skills, but if you need help, users testing new format etc, count me in.

Kate ;)
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Sue Munro
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Where have those two years gone?!

It is great to have a site like this so that we can keep an eye on what is going on when we're not actually there to see it, although I don't envy anyonve the task of design and aministration!

I have to say, sometimes if I'm in a rush I don't catch all the new bits of info until well after they've been posted.

Perhaps fewer links might be simpler to navigate, or less areas such with headings like gallery, diggers blogs, local news, fundraising, news from the Trust or something like that. Just a thought for technophobes like myself...
Sue :blink:
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Andy
Dr Andrew Robin Birley
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Some nice ideas but one I would like to knock on the head right away from the Vindolanda Trusts perspective is the entire organisation logging on and blogging all day. We are all too busy making the organisation work to be knocking off work to write blogs all the time. Other issues, the site does not have wifi, so the laptop in the shed is at present a no starter............ otherwise all good, sorry to be a kill joy. Lets try and get the basic mechanics right before we re-invent the wheel. :-)

Andy
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SacoHarry
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Andy, I am shocked, -shocked-, that you guys aren't sitting around waiting to write posts here every night! :D

Seriously, I've always considered anything the Staff writes here to be a bonus -- a well-received, much-appreciated bonus. I do want to create a corner of wedig for staff to leave essays/vignettes. And I'd like to encourage it. I think that's valuable. But it'd always be there as a friendly option, with nothing further expected or implied.

I think we've still gotta look at local access as being a big stumbling block. If it's too hard at the end of a long day to find a computer to leave a post or a thought, then nothing I do in recreating the site will help overcome that.

Sue, I totally agree. The forum threads are a bit balkanized now, I think simpler will be better for sure!

Everybody, please keep the ideas coming. The more I know about what people want, the better WeDig 2.0 can be.
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Andy
Dr Andrew Robin Birley
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great.

Of course, the internet problem will not be as big a problem once the study centre is up and running, as it will hopefully have wi-fi, which will be avaliable for all those who book in to use the study centre :-)

Andy
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laura the great
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*cough* facebook *cough* when i was in 5th year at school i ran a site for all my friends when we were all headin off to uni to keep in touch well before myspace n facebook were about. it was £20 a year and it had a gallery and a forum and pages for quizzes, private members etc. since that was 7 years ago now im guessin u must be able to get the same kinda thing for free these days. somethin simple and fun. and private. rant over.
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