I have had a go at getting Gemini to produce a full list of all 139 sites achiving that sort of objective There are 2 different numbering systems in use (pre and post inscription!) and it wasn't easy.... it adds to 139 but i haven't checked every last location. I then asked Gemini to identify the nations buried at or commemorated at each and to produce a "statement of significance" for each (Architecture, Sculpture, anyone famous etc etc). And finally to assign a "tier" of significance .. We could argue for ever but I was reasonably impressed with the assignment across 3 tiers
Tier 1 = 23 "Iconic"
Tier 2 = 59 "National/Regional"
Tier 3 = 57 "Tactical/Local"
Some of those in tiers 2 and 3 certainly have their interest but the Significance Text allows them to be assessed reasonably quickly.

It has produced a spreadsheet which I have "improved" a bit. It does not render well on the forum and I will send it to Els for her to put up if she wishes. For your info these are the 26 Tier 1 locations with ref numbers, locations etc
No/ Code/ Region/ UN ID/ Site Name/ Tier/ Nations/ Full Significance & Architectural Features
1 AR11-1 Artois 51 Vimy (Pylons) 1 CA Canada's National Memorial. Twin white limestone pylons; land "granted in perpetuity" by France.
2 AR16-1 Artois 60 Lorette Necrop. 1 FR Largest military cemetery in France (45,000 graves). Center of French national mourning.
3 AR16-3 Artois 60 Ring of Rememb. 1 ALL Elliptical ring listing 580,000 names from all sides in alphabetical order without rank.
4 AR19 Artois 91 Richebourg 1 PT Portuguese National Cemetery. Manueline Gothic style; honors the "Battle of the Lys."
5 ME03-1 Meuse 3 Douaumont Ossuary 1 FR/DE Heart of Verdun. Lantern tower overlooks a vault containing co-mingled bones of 130,000 unknown French and German soldiers.
6 ME03-2 Meuse 3 Douaumont Nat Necrop 1 FR Vast necropolis holding16,142 identified graves. Definitive image of French sacrifice with endless rows of white crosses.
7 ME13-1 Meuse 22 Nécrop Nat de "La Maize" 1 Fr Cemetery for soldiers killed at the Butte de Vauquois. A ridge hollowed out by 519 mine explosions. Preserved "Swiss cheese" of craters and tunnels.
8 ME21 Meuse 46 Meuse-Argonne 1 US Largest US site in Europe (14,246 graves). Masterpiece of landscape design with a massive chapel.
9 PC01 Artois 94 Neuve-Chapelle 1 IN/PK Indian National Memorial. Circular enclosure with Ashoka Column honoring the missing.
10 SO01-1 Somme 77 Thiepval Mem. 1 UK/SA Largest British memorial in the world. 16 interlocking arches bear names of 72,246 missing.
11 SO02-1 Somme 80 Noyelles Chinese 1 CN Primary site for Chinese Labour Corps in Europe. Headstones in English and Chinese.
12 SO04-1 Somme 86 Beaumont-Hamel 1 CA Newfoundland National Memorial. Bronze Caribou bellows over preserved 1916 trench lines.
13 SO06 Somme 88 Villers-Bret. 1 AU Australia's National Memorial in France. Designed by Giles Gilbert Scott.
14 SO10 Somme 111 Delville Wood 1 ZA South African National Memorial. Shaped like the Cape Castle to honor the 1916 defense.
15 VO02-1 Vosges 105 Hartmanns. 1 FR/DE "Mountain of Death." High-altitude crypt and altar overlooking mountain trenches.
16 WA08 Wallonia 135 St. Symphorien 1 UK/DE Most poignant site on the front. Contains first and last British deaths. Built by Germans on Belgian land; a unique site of total reconciliation.
17 WA10 Wallonia 116 Ploegsteert Mem. 1 UK A massive circular colonnade designed by H.L. North, guarded by two majestic stone lions. It commemorates over 11,000 soldiers who have no known grave in the "Plugstreet" sector.
18 WP01 Flanders 65 Langemark 1 DE Known as the "Student Cemetery," it memorializes the myth of young volunteers sacrificed in 1914. It features the Kameradengrab (comrades' grave) containing 24,917 burials and Emil Krieger's haunting bronze sculpture of four mourning soldiers.
19 WP04 Flanders 68 Vladslo 1 DE Home to the world-renowned "Grieving Parents" sculptures by Käthe Kollwitz. The site is a masterpiece of 20th-century mourning art, where the statues look toward the grave of Kollwitz's own son, Peter.
20 WP10 Flanders 118 Essex Farm 1 UK/CA The site where Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae wrote "In Flanders Fields." It is significant for its preserved concrete Advanced Dressing Station (ADS) bunkers, which still show the cramped conditions of the wounded.
21 WP14 Flanders 123 Vancouver Corner 1 CA Features the "Brooding Soldier" statue, a 35-foot granite memorial with the head bowed in grief. It marks the spot where Canadian troops faced the world's first large-scale poison gas attack in 1915.
22 WP17 Flanders 128 Tyne Cot 1 UK/CW The world's largest CWGC cemetery. Built around captured German pillboxes. The Great Cross is perched atop a central bunker as a symbol of the ultimate conquest of the ridge.
23 WP19 Flanders 133 Menin Gate 1 UK/CW A "secular cathedral" of memory listing 54,395 missing. Site of the nightly Last Post Ceremony, a tradition unbroken since 1928.

I came to this topic to reply, but Solivagant has beaten me to it.
What I wanted to say is that although it certainly is interesting to highlight the "best" among the set, these WWI memorials seem to have been selected very carefully and they include a lot of "equal" highlights. Certainly more than 5 or so. Solivagant uncovered even 26 of them, a list worth keeping/showing indeed.

"Down" to 23 now as i started double checking Gemini's identification of the locations.... sometimes it has assessed on the basis of the battle rather than the cemetery! As a result 3 have been downgraded from 1 to 2 or 3. But that isn't the issue .... any can easily be adjusted once we have a proper understanding of what they are. The main thing is to have a short, clear and correct understanding of what EVERY location offers. There are a number of "minor" ones certainly among the 139 but even they can spring a surprise e.g AR06 Fromelles (Pheasant Wood) was only built in 2010 (Connection??)

Some interesting ones I wasn't aware of are emerging .... this one for instance in the Vosges... I dont think anyone has reviewed?? Gemini assigned Tier 1 - correctly I think?

I am also trying to add a web link for each location to supplement a description

Sorry I'm a bit late replying, and I think my point got muddled a bit by propossing some specific locations (which was to some extent a secondary focus), so perhaps this is more of a general map issue than core zone mapping of WW1.

I was just wondering if there was some way of visually drawing attention to more intersting/ satitisfying visits/ significant parts of multi location inscriptions.

If I leave aside the First World War one for a moment and think about the Pile Dwellings, the maps at the moment don't guide eyes to locations that provide a more satistfying visiting experince, such as Molina di Ledro and Fiave, or the museum next to Unteruhldingen-Stollenwiesen. The information is there for people to find them (community perspective/ museum locations) but opening up the map the visual clues aren't instantly obvious, and it takes a bit of work to peice it all together.

In regards to the OUV all the points are equally as important and currated, but as a visitor the experince of a site could be wildly different visiting one location compared to another. I would think it mostly is of use in the sites we list with more than 50 locations (St Petersburg is a bit of an exception there I think as there is a clear focal point)

I'm not sure if there is an entirley elegant solution (something bolder for locations picked out as highlights in the community perspective perhaps?) or if as the discussion here suggests, making value judgments on equally inscribed locations risks becoming too prescriptive.

In coming Sunday's blog post I will show an example on how we could move forward with this topic, with the WWI WHS as an example. It is based on the work Solivagant (and Gemini) did, translated by me from a spreadsheet to various elements on the website. Let's discuss further from there and then.

But still, I am not convinced that the WWI WHS needs eyecatchers, or a top 5 or so. It is by definition a WHS where the components are fairly equal and a visit to any (maybe barring 10 or 20%) will bring you something.

Our assumption is that others (Pile Dwellings, Mediterranean Rock Art) are less equal, but actually we do not know for sure unless we do an exercise in Tier 1, 2 and 3 like Solivagant did for the WWI. The Beech Forests for example have some weak components, but my assumption would be that they are also more equal.

Thanks for transfering this over Els.

Yeah perhaps the First World War site isn't the primary example for this as the selection was rigorous, but I look forward to seeing the blog post on Sunday as a potential example.

I must admit the issue mostly came from me trying to find the locations I visited on a school trip in 1997, and finding it tough to pick out Vimy and Thiepval on the map.

I think my idea would be like giving slight visual clues on the maps, in a similar way to how we pick out key locations in the community perspective in the introductory text, not necessarily saying these are the best, or it isn't a visit until you have visited this, more that a more satisfying general visit can be gained from these sights.

I'm not sure what is technically feasible, but my initial thoughts would be along the lines of the icons being one/ some/ all of the following:
-a different hue/ colour,
-marginally larger,
-less oppacity,
-a thin border/ shadow

or perhaps a different Icon, though I think that would be my least prefered option to start with.

As a reminder, this is the list with serial sites with over 50 locations, for which this could apply:

https://www.worldheritagesite.org/connections/serial-sites-with-the-greatest-number-of-locations/

Hmmm, this is something I was also brooding on. I would even raise the stakes with a more radical quest: finding just one location per site as its "presentation". Probably meaning it is one location both satisfying to visit and clearly conveying the OUV. I am also thinking of practical applications, such as in the WHS app when toggling off the multiple components and leaving only one: now it simply is the number 1, with a strange effect sometimes (like being eccentric to all the other locations).

Now, specifically for WWI memorials, I am not convinced they are all equal. They each tell something, but some stand out, especially among batches of similar typology. Also in the ICOMOS files there are some critics about choices deemed haphazard, or at the very least non homogeneous; they would have excluded most non-cemeterial monuments, for example. But think of all the cemeteries around Ieper, many are very similar to each other and not so enticing for a visit, but it seems they were inscribed in block.

Looking at the list of the 23 by Gemini/Solivagant (Geminivagant? Solimini?), I would argue about some. Focusing on Belgium, also because I didn't visit many of the others, I would:

- keep only: St. Symphorien (S tier f you ask me, and pretty unique layout), Vladslo (representative of German sites with moving piece of art), Menin gate (focus of the region and place of living memory), and maybe Tyne Cot. The brooding soldier is interesting but probably more "local", as Gemini puts it.
- add: Loncin. Poignant place, monumental in its rough way, it is representative for one of the most relevant moments of WWI, the violation of Belgium's neutrality.

Of course some "normal" cemeteries should be in this selection, but probably they can be best chosen from the French side.

Then again, I agree with Els that any visit will give you something, and the more you visit, the more your insights will improve. I see it actually the same for pile dwellings, birches, etc.

Since it can go on the subjective side, could we envision, beside any "top" sites, to let each member indicate their favourite location, and so get a map of preferences?

But now, I am waiting for tomorrow's blogpost :-)

Interestingly this was one of the sites which ICOMOS wanted to be REMOVED from the Nomination!!!! 58 of the 139 if it had had its way.......If the politics and vagaries of the WHC had not intervened we would only be discussing the merits of 81 locations.....
"After careful examination of the component parts, the additional information provided by the States Parties, the observations of the ICOMOS technical evaluation mission, and the in-depth exchanges within the ICOMOS World Heritage Panel, ICOMOS considers that the following component parts would need to be removed from the nominated serial property...........
Component parts that only reflect national values. These are:
Belgium:
WA01 Fort de Loncin
FL03 Crypt of the Tower of Yser"

I have published the blog post Guide to the WWI memorials already to keep this discussion alive.

I think we all agree that it would be great if we could provide more guidance to (first-time) visitors of complex WHS with over 50 components. They are so overwhelming, you don't know where to start. I had some offline chats with Solivagant over the past few days as well on this topic, and I agree with the goal he came up with: "Our aim is that they shouldn't miss something because of a lack of knowledge."

The casus comprises two main questions:
1. How can we select these components, and is making a selection always possible?
2. How can we present the selection best on this website?

As a topic starter, I have presented part of the results of Solivagant's exercise (helped by AI) to categorize the WWI memorials into 3 tiers depending on "importance". His results were in a detailed spreadsheet. These results are shown:
- In the blog post, which I'd want to link to from the community perspective of the WWI site page
- On the maps (country and site), adding the short descriptions from Solivagant's spreadsheet and the newly gathered photo set. So when you plan to visit a certain region, you can see from the pop-ups which ones appeal to you the most.

Maybe we could start by discussing the WWI example, before moving on to other WHS (which are different). Would these measures help you chosing components to visit? And what could be improved?

Looking at it now myself, I think I could have included T1, T2, T3 (to show the tiers) in the description field in the pop-ups.

I think I get the point of marking "primus inter pares" locations. We have the primary flag. We could extend that feature.

Selection criteria for me:
T1 Primary / Anchor A "Must-See." Fully conveys OUV and could stand alone.
Example Hadrians Wall at Hexham.

T2 Secondary / Connective Vital for the "Serial" logic; provides the necessary link.
Example Antoines Wall, Utrecht (below the dome)

T3 Ancillary / Vestigial Minor contribution; provides geographic or thematic "completeness."
Utrecht Roman fort on the outskirts.

T4 Out or in doubt No contribution. Visiting here will not convey OUV.
Limes around Osterburken. Dots in the ground.

* Option: We could rate the locations and make this a community choice. Rating scale would be 1-3.

I am going to continue with this one. Solivagant started with a full-scale inventory of all components, getting to know them a bit better than just their names. This resulted in the short, two-sentence descriptions that have now been added to all 139 WWI components on the map. In combination with the also newly added photos. So if you find yourself in an area with 5 components, it is easy to see which ones appeal to you the most and you will know what (which sculpture etc) to look out for when visiting. I find this extremely useful and want to keep adding those, no matter how the discussion in this topic will go.

Then the selection itself. It used a 3-tier system, which was useful for this one, but maybe not so much for others (and criteria for the selection will differ as well). I don't think we can fully go to the system nfmungard provided in the previous post, but I do like the idea of a tier 1 of components that could hold up on their own. Those would also warrant an eye-catching element on the map.

As the selection was primarily made by an AI tool (fed by a knowledgeable human), I think it would be good also to measure its outcome against what has been said before about those components by people who visited. This can be taken from the reviews (and maybe in the future by location rating). I do think the added value of this step, beyond the challenge itself, lies in a stronger focus on the visitor experience.

The outcome of such a challenge on the WWI memorials is here. All sites mentioned in the best / most impressive categories are also within the Tier 1 selection: https://gemini.google.com/share/b1bb2144f7e3 (Douaumont Ossuary (Verdun), Tyne Cot Cemetery, Langemark German War Cemetery, St. Symphorien Military Cemetery, Menin Gate (Ypres), Vimy Ridge (Canadian National Vimy Memorial), Notre-Dame-de-Lorette (The Ring of Remembrance))

So at least we are not missing out, the only criticism about the Tier 1 list of 31 maybe is that it is too long. As can be seen from the blog post, a region like France Northwest has 12 Tier 1 sites alone. Could they all hold up on their own?

I think there is something in this.
It is somewhat hard to work out visually on our map how many WHS Spain has. It is 50, but looking at the map we show 2,976 locations.

This means a user can't pick out individual sites such as Elche, La Lonja in Valencia or Atapuerca as they are swarmed by Mediterreanean Rock Art or Camino de Santiago locations.
If I was planning a trip our current map of Spain wouldn't be a useful tool to try to find a nice region with lots of WHS to visit (and on the spain map it makes the page very slow on my devices).

I'm not sure what the actual solution is. I used to like the old official Google Earth file where primary sites were shown in size 10 and additional locations as a size 2 (though I don't think that would help with load times)

What about the possibility to switch?
By default everything like now, and when I switch to the reduced version, then I have only 1 location of the multiple WHS and no TWHS and no FTWHS.
But I have no idea how much work this switch would be...