User talk:Phlox

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nesting getfact
Any idea why showfacts ahnentree does not work? Example at Herbert III of Meaux (c950-995)/ahnentafel. The sixth generation does not display in the tree, but they do display individually by. In fact, if I just copy the code of the template, it works!

There is no issue with size limits or parserfunctions or anything I could think of. rtol 19:37, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
 * On the face of it, it looks a little baffling. There is a limit to the complexity of a query (for example if you test for a property with 20 different values).  You may be running into something like that.  As I recall, showfact does a lot more than getfact.  I don't know how much I have implemented, but the intent is to display the fact relative to the user's language preferences.  Getfact just returns whatever value is stored in the property of the basepage for that person.  I will make a note to probe for capacity limits when I go back into the showfact code.   23:09, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Nesting concepts
works to find quadruple descendants. This cannot be done without concepts because 4 conditions with 3 nests each is too much.

However, does not work. The quadruple concept is needed to find octuple descendant (Leopold III).

Any suggestions?rtol 11:19, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
 * It looks like an interesting inquiry, but I am not aware of any knowledge I might have regarding what would cause this phenomenon. Although I am very curious about it, I regret I cannot investigate.  Ireally should finish getting the first rev of the refactored facts templates and forms in place.  I did recall seeing that there are diagnostic flags that can be set to investigate what SQL operations are being performed.  I didn't look at your particular cases, but if your syntax is well formed, I would probably start getting very curious about what the engine is doing with these queries. Not sure where I saw this mention of sql troubleshooting in the docs though.   16:17, 8 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I rooted around. #concept has fewer functions and options than #ask, and debugging is not an option for #concept. You can use the word "concept" only once on a Concept: page, so I guess that's where it goes wrong.
 * I had hoped to use concepts to build nested queries, but there is only one nest allowed. rtol 20:05, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Q:
What I have to do for transfer all of that information to genealogy.wiki.com?
 * Интересный. An excellently executed site.  I particularly like the chart.  I am guessing that this is a php extension?


 * If I did the transfer, I personally would use pywikipedia. I do not recommend it to others because it is tedious to use.  However, it is also possible to export as XML from that wiki, then transform the xml via a scripting language or word processor macros into a format suitable for familypedia.


 * Thanks for the pointer. This is very interesting indeed.  I am confused by the article counts, I see there are 88K pages, but "За исключением них, есть 754 страниц, которые считаются полноценными статьями. "!  This seems strange.  Can you estimate the number of persons in the database?   20:26, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Проблема в том, что новые участники (получив статус администратора) стали хозяйничать и влазить в чужое родословное дерево искажая информацию. По этой причине мы решили перенести всю свою работу (по составлению родословного дерева рода) в другое место.
 * I see. Since your site is CC2.5, I might at some time create an importer from Rodovid if there is high quality material there.  However, I have a mountain of work already.


 * It appears that Rodovid has disabled export as well as the ability to directly view the contents of articles. This means that it will be more complicated to transfer material than I indicated earlier.  I am sorry I cannot be of greater assistance.   03:09, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Genealogy:Multilingual messages
I get a permission error when I want to translate Married? to Verheiratet?

BTW, I recall translating a lot of these terms before. Can't recall where they are saved though. rtol 12:12, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Here's one I did: Translations:fm-birth/nl rtol 12:14, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
 * The real messages are in the Mediawiki name space.  I set up the multilingual messages pages so that anyone could change them.  To do this, the messages would be stored temporarily in the Translations pseudo namespace and later copied via bot to the Mediawiki name space.  Since no one besides you and a few brief uses by others used this, I switched it temporarily to edit mediawiki namespace directly so that I could quickly establish new messages.


 * The bad news is that it is not a simple matter of setting it back to the translations namespace to add your names. The tables have a capacity problem.  You will note on the bottom of the first page that existing messages like fm-mother do not display.  That is because it has ran into processing limits.  So the whole scheme has to be refactored.  I do think we want to have everyone be able to add/correct the messages, so I want to stay with the translations: pseudo namespace scheme.  Anyway, if you want to add these, you could clone the current pages and set it to Translations rather than mediawiki prefix.  Or you could manually correct the url after getting the access error to the mediawiki page.   These names are beginning to stabilize, but a lot of them are obsolete and require no translation.


 * You are welcome to try and refactor the thing yourself, but I am pressing on with completion of the main templates so we can get this puppy to alpha release status.  16:22, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Copied message from Request for adminship
This is copied from an archived thread. Bold editors often offend, but it is our choice whether we are offended or whether we assume good faith (Ga uit van goede wil). In particular, I am concerned about the content of this edit.


 * It is my opinion, that if an user in a discussion removes a part of the arguments of the other user, then there is no good faith

---
 * Extract from: Request_for_Adminship:_DeGraffJE:

Fred, I understand that you have been trying to get things organized with the Babel templates. However it is true that we generally follow wikipedia rules and guidelines, and there were some toes that you may have inadvertently stepped on when editing User pages.


 * Every new contributor receives an automatic start of his user page, but that template is not actual en must be improved. I proposed a renewal. But nobody gave a reaction. So I changed that message then in the user page, this has nothing to do with changing an used userpage, these were unused userpages.

The WP guideline about Editing someone else's User page is not present in the Dutch version of Wikipedia, but roughly translated:

"Als een traditie, Wikipedia biedt ruime breedtegraad aan gebruikers om hun user space als zij dat nodig achten."


 * that translation is very bad and not to understand, just as the translation of my dutch text in the relevant article. I understand the english text good, the dutch text should be traditioneel geeft Wikipedia aan gebruikers alle ruimte om hun gebruikerspagina in te vullen zoals zij dat zelf willen. I see that the right to edit the userpage is not absolute exclusive, but it is tradition to intervene as little as possible. That makes the point: there are rules. There are interpretations of the rules. There are persons who are flexible with the rules and there are persons captured in the rules. I know you as a person who is very flexible with the rules, but also using the rules if that is necessary. I remember me that you thought there was a conflict between Richard Tol and me and you proposed to (inter)mediate. In fact there was no conflict but a discussion and we dutch don't be carefull in this matters and say what we have to say and find each other in a solution, we call that: we are straight through sea. In english is this perhaps not to understand, just as our: now comes the monkey out of the sleeve (doesn't exist in english I think, but Dutch is a richer language than english and has among others more variation in words).

There are other guidelines your most recent post here is in conflict with, for example wikipedia:nl:Wikipedia:Bijt de nieuwelingen niet,
 * I am sorry, but I am not aware of a fact that I was hostile to any newcomer!

and wikipedia:nl:Wikipedia:Geen persoonlijke aanvallen.


 * I am sorry again, but I did no personal attack, I did research and comment to content and behaviour, what was in my opinion not right for a future admin and then I didn't mention the fact that that person doesn't use person infopages, because it is my opinion that Familipedia is still under construction and not fully ready to have contributors for genealogic persons. There are still so much differency in personpages to be unified to a new standard that it will last sometime before there is a new definitive standard I think.

I personally have strong emotions on many issues and I understand it is difficult to adhere to wikipedia:nl:Wikipedia:Koel blijven.


 * I have to admit that I had a moment of weakness and I did not stay cool when I wrote Ik hoop niet dat we dit gezeik houden met DeGraffJE (I don't hope that DeGraffJE continue this shit discussion) but the content was further without emotion and straight based on facts, except the phrase re the LDS church.

I realize you may not be aware of these implicit guidelines because some of them have not been copied and adapted to Familypedia. However I cannot say this strongly enough. It is completely irrelevant whether a contributor has different religious views than we do, or whether they contribute to other sites.


 * I agree with you that the religion of a contributor is most times completely irrelevant. I had a conflict with a LDS admin, bureaucrat and sysop of WeRelate and I am blocked now 1 year for vandalism there. In the behaviour of DeGraffJE I thought to recognise the same pretentions and lack of neutrality. I asked;Is not that a coincidence? and I concluded the same background could not be coincidental. That was perhaps wrong done.

Really, what William Allen Shade (Elrondair) said earlier seems quite true. This looks like a personal conflict.


 * I don't see this as a personal conflict. I don't know DeGraffJE and never before this we had a communication which each other. It is just that I know that the attractivity of a site can completely disappear when the site has the wrong admin(s).

Perhaps it is best to wait a week before either of you posts anything more on this topic. Apart from the admin request process, perhaps the two of you can take this time to resolve these differences in an amicable fashion. How does that sound? 17:55, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes it sounds good, positive is that DeGraffJE withdrew his request -- Fred Bergman 07:30, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I am still with Elrondair. It looks personal and from what I saw on a quick scan of edits, there were breaches of behavior guidelines.  As you noted, the community here is very flexible with rules, but it is also true that DeGraffe had a prima facie case for what is called an administrator incident dispute on wikipedia.  Regardless of the apparent flexibility, anyone who has a legitimate case based on breach of guidelines can bring them to an administrator.  If the administrator agrees the behavior was in breach, then this can result in a warn, block and eventually a ban of the other contributor.  Administrators are to carry out the will of the community, and if someone subjected to administrative action feels that there was abuse of power, then they can bring it to a review by other administrators.  This is a time proven process.


 * As to your point about LDS affiliation. Specific instances of bias or deception are relevant, affiliations are not.  While we are flexible with guidelines at familypedia, we also are very serious about tolerance.  The basis of your point was that DeGraffJE was a member of the LDS church and that fact in itself had some bearing on his request for adminship.  Well, it doesn't.  Neither does it matter what the person's gender, race, nationality or sexual preference is.  DeGraffJE was open about his history on WP, and there should be plenty of edit history there to reveal whether your hypothesis about bias is correct or not.  Yet you did not base your case on demonstrating bias but on the basis of his membership in a group that holds views you do not share.  I know it is time consuming to make the case, but if you cannot then all you have is suspicions based on on your profile of who you think would be an offender in the future.  This does not assume good faith.


 * The point that DeGraffeJE was a relative newcomer also was irrelevant. There is no pecking order based on numbers of edits and simply because someone has made large numbers of edits or is an administrator does not entitled them to make newcomers feel unwelcome.  Newcomers are encouraged to be bold and make changes ad DeGraffe did, and they should not feel compelled to be deferential to others based on edit counts or administrator status.  That can be a hard pill to swallow sometimes as newcomers often are mistaken.  At the end of the day, Wikipedia has demonstrated that it benefits by bending significantly to make newcomers feel welcome.  We should do the same.


 * Thanks for your attention to the guidelines. I hope that no one brings a dispute with you to an ANI resolution process.


 * 16:53, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

I wasn't aware of the wikipedia rules, I followed my intuition. If you are convinced that I acted the wrong way according the sphere at Familypedia and you are convinced that DeGraffJE could be a good admin, then I will public apologise and nominate DeGraffJE for admin, without opposition. I shall stop activating new users at their userpages, improving and actualising userpages Fred Bergman 05:56, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
 * If DeGraffJE is nominated again, I think you should make up your own mind about his qualifications as admin. He possibly would be a good admin, but I did not fully investigate his credentials and claims, so I hadn't yet decided.  If everything checked out, I probably would have supported.  I was not swayed by anything you wrote because there was not any factual evidence backing up your suspicions.


 * I didn't investigate all of the statements made by DeGraffe about the disputes with you, but if he requests it I shall. From the edits I did look at, I saw you did make personal attacks, and you did fail to assume good faith.  We can't have that here.  DeGraffe also erred when he accused you of vandalism in his edit summary, failing to recognize your good faith in trying to improve our tracking of contributor language abilities.


 * Please continue to be bold and make improvements to Familypedia. I admire your enthusiasm, but be aware that we do by and large follow wikipedia guidelines for behavior.  I recommend you familiarize yourself with them.  If you overstep those guidelines, then administrators are required to take action if complaints are made.


 * Thanks for your attention to this Fred. I hope things work out ok between you and DeGraffe.


 * Regards, 06:28, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

for your information
-- Fred Bergman 12:42, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Nominate for Adminship: DeGraffJE
'''I had a discussion with Phlox, concerning my opposition against the request of DeGraffJE for Adminship. That discussion made me aware of the fact that there are Wikipediarules, which also have to be followed at Familypedia. According that I acted the wrong way. For that reason I apologise to DeGraffJE and, I nominate him again for the Adminship, because he was so polite to withdrew based on my incorrect behaviour and then I will be so correct to repair the situation.-- Fred Bergman 06:14, 17 August 2009 (UTC)'''

Sjabloon:Persoon
Thanks ! -- Fred Bergman 20:12, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Chickamauga
Not sure what you're up to now, but I trust it will be something good.

A logical extension is to generate a list of people who were killed here. I noted that we have a number of people who met their end at Battles of Azincourt and the Somme. Would we create a property for this? Property:Died at battle of? rtol 09:43, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Good question. It perhaps is general interest, so I posted my thoughts on this at Forum:Events.   17:33, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Searching ancestors
I am searching for ancestors of the legendary Pier Gerlofs Donia... I know he was a noble man and a rich landowner in the early 16th century. He lived from 1480-1520. He had a son and a daughter, both of whom reached adulthood. I wonder what happened to their decendents, who they were and where they lived. I heard some of his decendents later on moved to the US, where as others stayed in Frisia or in the Netherlands and others went to Denmark. I made a page to ease my search.

I also wonder what happened to his nephew Wijerd Jelckama. Both are well known folk heroes and historical characters in Frisian history. I want to know who are there decendents and where their decendents live. I am of Frisian ancestry myself, so I could perhaps be a decendent.

I know for a fact that Donia had black hair, a light brown skin and fierce black eyes. He was described as a dark man: I wonder if he was an African man or a Morish man. He was very tall (standing at a height of 7 feet tall) and extremely strong. He was heavy built, broad shouldered and barrel chested. He had large hands and feet and a low voice. He was a frightening man who made quite an impression on his contempories.

He died at the age of 40, as a poor man, having lost all his possesions by that point. The fact that he was of gargantuan size and that he died young could indicate he has suffered from a growth disorder, something he may have passed on the next generations.

His nephew who went by the name of Wijerd Jelckama (1490-1523) was about the same size so it could have run in the family. Perhaps there are still people of Frisian ancestry (or any other) who have a similar appearance and may know more about the faith of these individuals and their decendents? I know Donia's mother belonged to the nobility and I know his ancestors had been knights. I hope someone will respond. Pierius Magnus 12:55, September 11, 2009 (UTC)


 * Very interesting question. Unfortunately, I am the primary engineer on some needed software for the site and so I have very little time to research this.  I have copied your inquiry to our forum and hope someone will take an interest.  BTW- I like the idea of having a 'Featured inquiries' on the home page.   16:11, September 11, 2009 (UTC)

Hope this will help you (whenever you find time): I can tell you my paternal grandmother's name is van Dam. I know she was born in Frisia (Friesland), in Warns 83 years ago (in 1926 I believe). Her father and mother came from the area, yet her grandfather worked in a milk factory in the East of Frisia, and so did his father, they were born in the 19th century. That's about as much as I know of my family from Frisia. Then my mother was born in Frisia, but only half-Frisian. Her mother (my maternal grandmother) was born in the 1940's and her maiden name was Dallinga, which is a Frisian name. One of her grandfathers was a miller (my great-great grandfather). He was born, I believe in the 1860's and his father and grandfather have been Frisian millers so the line is traceable all the way to the 18th or even the 17th century. No Donia's or Jelckama's in the family tree. But possible related in the female line. Pierius Magnus 16:43, September 11, 2009 (UTC)


 * I am more interested in the decendents of Donia and Jelckama then I am in my own link to them! Pierius Magnus 16:43, September 11, 2009 (UTC)

'''PS: Where is your forum located? Could you give me a direct link so I can see the inquiry and any reactions on there? Pierius Magnus 17:18, September 11, 2009 (UTC)


 * Sorry- I placed a forum note at Forum:Pier Gerlofs Donia descendants?. I expect that User:Rtol is the most likely person to know something about this subject.   17:29, September 11, 2009 (UTC)

User:Bergsmit has helped me. However, his search has not given any valuable results. According to his search, Pier Gerlofs Donia had a son in 1454 - the son of Grutte Pier I was looking for, so he said. But that is impossible, because the Pier Gerlofs Donia I am talking about, the famous folk hero Grutte Pier, has been born in 1480 (or around that time) and died in 1480. So the search came up with the wrong people. The man he said was Pier Gerlofs Donia, is, in my opinion, more likely the father of the man I am looking for! I am not looking for someone born earlier then 1480, and someone who died in 1520. So the search still has no results. If Bergsmit's sources are correct (which cannot possibly be the case) that would mean the giant freedom fighter chopping of heads and fighting hundreds of enemies at once, was instead a frail old man well in his eighties... :)

All sources list Pier Gerlofs Donia (Grutte Pier) as born in 1480.

Pierius Magnus 21:39, September 11, 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes. What Fred posted seems to dispute the information in wikipedia.  Your information seems to conform to what is in WP.  Conflicting information like that is not unusual for legendary figures.  I made a response in the Forum concerning one of the sources I looked at from the Wikipedia article.  I provided a link so that you can read it from the dutch.  Translate.google.com is very useful for this sort of research.   It will take some work sorting out the fact from fiction.  Very interesting subject.   22:17, September 11, 2009 (UTC)

Challenged by Categories
Can you take a look at my page for William Newton Burke. I'm trying to establish some sub categories for the civil war. I had noticed that the Civil War category took me directly to units so I tried to create a sub category under Civil War USA for the Confederate States Army with a link to the wiki article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_States_Army below that I wanted to place the unit name. This seemed to me to be a more logical way to approach this. Does this make sense? Did I do it correctly? My goal would be that anyone else with a person in the same unit could easily make the connection.

Thanks for any assistance. --Razinni 12:12, September 12, 2009 (UTC)
 * Let me say that's a nice bit of research you have completed. I have a dozen known relatives on both sides of the Civil war (either from Ohio or Georgia).  Nearly all were left in unmarked graves near the battlefields.
 * First off, concerning the names of things and the categories- observe Wikipedia naming and category structure. There is some variations in conventions, but I would suggest you follow whatever naming is recommended by the Wikipedia Military History project.  That is the best bet for subject matter experts and people who care about the logic of categorization.  My uninformed first opinion is that this list at Alabama Civil War Confederate units seems logical and uniform- appearing to follow the historical names.  Since there is no article yet on Wikipedia for the 60th, I personally would create a wikipedia article named 60th Regiment Tennessee Infantry
 * As for content of the article I see there is an article on the 60th Tennessee at . Do you know if that material public domain/ ok to copy under licenses like GFDL or Creative commons?  If so, wikipedia should have content like that.  The other regimental histories are more sparse.  You will see that many of them follow the same style because they are simple copies from public domain source listed in their bibliographies.  Anyway, if you do decide to create that article, we will have a copy here.  (We will be mirroring all military unit articles here.)
 * Once we have the name, we make the category follow it. The Category for William Newton Burke (1839-1906) would then be Category:60th Regiment Tennessee Infantry.  The category structure would follow wikipedia's structure.  Again, there are variations in standards, but following Wikipedia's lead this would be a subcategory of Category:Tennessee Civil War regiments.
 * Note that much material at a detail level is not sufficiently notable to be included in Wikipedia. For example, the detail of the 17th Ohio Infantry actions at the Battle of Chickamauga is recorded here, but not at Wikipedia.  Perhaps your will find details about the particular actions of William Burke's unit at Vicksburg and can document it here.  It is tougher to come by Confederate unit information, but it has been done.
 * We are working on a more comprehensive solution to organizing this sort of information, but in the meantime if you stick to wikipedia names and category structure, you will not go far wrong.
 * Thanks for contributing to Familypedia's civil war period articles. I think it is a great shame that the histories of so many ancestors are being ignored and worse, lost to time.   17:52, September 12, 2009 (UTC)

Thanks again for all of your help. Can you please delete the page I created for the 60th Tennesse Mounted Infantry regiment it is now all included in the 60th Infantry Regiment page. I also added in the discussion section that I am available to do 'look ups' for anyone thinks they have a relative in the 60th but that actually should include any civil war unit from Tennessee. Lastly, I'm learning as much as possible about Wikis and I really appreciate you taking the time to support me. The key here is the content of course but presenting it needs to be done so others can access it easily.

The family I'm working on is fairly large with a common last name Burke and the variations are everywhere. For each individual listed do they require an INFO page? My original idea was to only build Info pages for the direct Ancestors and not their siblings.

Again, thanks for all your help, I have a good deal of information about William as he was captured at Vicksburg and held in Fort Deleware where he was shot and wounded.

--Razinni 13:19, September 15, 2009 (UTC)
 * Currently, all individuals do require an info page. Within a few months this will no longer be required, and all work you entered into info pages will be moved over to the new easier to use format.  For now, you need to create them.


 * You are correct that ease of referencing information is key. Wikis tend to be informal, but when it comes to what we name things in articles, we all have to be on the same page.  That is why we  rigidly adhere to Wikipedia names for things.  For example names of places should use the wikipedia article name if it exists.  Example: setting birth town to St. Petersburg would be either Birth town= St. Petersburg, Florida  or St. Petersburg, Pennsylvania, or Saint Petersburg.  These names are automatically suggested in a form in the new system, but now must be manually looked up.


 * To give you a glimpse of how our searching will work, I have included a working prototype at User:Razinni/query. It currently only supports advanced search with a highly complicated form, but you can get an idea of the volume of details what we will be able to search on.  Basically every item on the info  page (plus a lot more that info pages never supported) can be queried on.


 * Anyway, just continue along as you are encoding things as info pages. It's a little tricky using the new system so I don't want to get people relying on it just yet.  Hope this helps.

19:49, September 15, 2009 (UTC)

Please advise
Can you please look at this page and tell me what I've done wrong? I believe I followed instructions for creating a surname article but as you will be able to tell it isn't correct. *sigh*

http://genealogy.wikia.com/wiki/Burke_(surname)

--Razinni 19:19, September 15, 2009 (UTC)


 * I assume you pasted some text into the editor from a page that instructed you how to create a surname article.  What is the name of that instruction page?  There is a extra step you must do now.  If you are using the new fancy editor, you have to click an extra button before pasting.  It is the little black square on the far right of the toolbar.  After clicking that, then you do the paste.   19:28, September 15, 2009 (UTC)

sup!
hi do i have to make a user?--118.90.13.168 00:26, September 18, 2009 (UTC)
 * No, but if you do, there will be fewer advertisements, and you will benefit from quite a few of other features. Also, you will be able to set your language preference if it is not english- Various aspects of the user interface are multilingual.   00:57, September 18, 2009 (UTC)

Please advise, photo credit
Hello there! I wanted to add an image to William the Conqueror's page. I've retouched a photo from Wikipedia to make the details more visible. But I'd like to give credit to the photographer but I'm not seeing how to link them. Should I have uploaded it as a version of the original on Wikipedia, and then used that link for Familypedia?

Original: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/13/Conquerant_détail.jpg/450px-Conquerant_détail.jpg

my retouched version: http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/genealogy/images/8/83/Conquerant_détai_lighter.jpg

Thanks, yahna

Yahna 02:25, September 20, 2009 (UTC)

Thank You
Thank you for your help with the photo credits. Good people make my heart warm. English and Genealogy are the only languages I speak. Let me know if you need any photo retouching.

Take care, yahna

Yahna 22:42, September 20, 2009 (UTC)

Thank You
Thank you for your help with the photo credits. Good people make my heart warm. English and Genealogy are the only languages I speak. Let me know if you need any photo retouching.

Take care, yahna

Yahna 22:42, September 20, 2009 (UTC)

Ancestors and descendants
The lists of ancestors and descendants have disappeared. Any hint? set ahn and set dsc have not been changed, and they do not (?) use proporties that had their names changed. rtol 06:01, September 21, 2009 (UTC)
 * I hadn't seen you around for a while so I turned them off temporarily while I was doing some upgrades to articles. Feel free to undo my last edits.    Does this destroy the properties?   06:09, September 21, 2009 (UTC)

This issue of fragility must be dealt with. You have a feature that is interesting to visitors so we need to find a way to store these values persistently. Also, I remain concerned about the inherant N^2 computational complexity of this operation, and suspect that it may well substantially slow down the site. I know you dispute that. I can tell you that the site has been very fast since it was turned off. Anyway- we will work this out. If you don't come up with something, I'll take a look at it before we go around promoting the site as the next best thing since the invention of sliced bread. ;-) 18:55, September 21, 2009 (UTC)
 * Undone. Turning them off does destroy the properties, and rather rapidly so. It also takes the derived properties, like Married: Cousin and the Coefficient of Inbreeding. rtol 17:13, September 21, 2009 (UTC)
 * I was not aware that they are constantly refreshing pages. Last I checked they had a huge backlog on our job queue.  Sorry.
 * All properties are constantly refreshed. When you changed "birth date-y" to "birth year", you wiped out all "age mother at birth" and "age father at birth". They are now being rebuild. The lists of ancestors and descendants are big and complicated properties, but as far as I can tell they behave like all other properties: here today, gone tomorrow. rtol 19:38, September 21, 2009 (UTC)


 * Here's a test. ahn convert has "< 2025". 2025 = 2^10 + 1. If that is changed to 65 = 2^5 + 1, only a first five generations will be displayed. Similarly desc convert has "<11". If that is "<6", only the first five generations will be displayed. rtol 19:49, September 21, 2009 (UTC)
 * Sorry for the multiple changes. It's getting late here. The inbreeding test works on the first five generations of the descendants list (too many nested ifs to test if you married your fourth cousin), so nothing breaks with five generations only. rtol 19:55, September 21, 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't know how to do an objective test for site speed. rtol 19:55, September 21, 2009 (UTC)

Well I must have made realy clobbered your data then. I haven't looked- do you know how many had the ancestor /descendant properties wiped out? I'm sorry for causing the damage.

I understand that what is displayed is limited, but as I recall, wasn't the thing cascading this massive list that has N^2 dimensions? I suppose we would have to do a code review to satisfy my questions, but perhaps that would be beside the point due to a possibly better approach to this sort of exercise of the database. More on that below.

Regarding the fragility issue: The way the code stores results must be fundamentally the same as how it was in June then. Obviously the facts properties aren't loaded with such a "house of cards" approach. Even if I didn't use forms, I would still have a template that loaded up all properties from values stored persistently in parameters. That makes them far less fragile. If anyone damages any of the showfacts templates or there are other conditions such as a database reload, all data is not lost since the facts data is also stored in parameters. I know this seems beyond the realm of possibility due to the way wikitext works but I think there is a solution. If we fail to solve it we are just going to keep having this kind of crash except on a much larger scale.


 * The wipe-out of "age parent at birth" was 90%. The wipe-out of ancestor and descendant lists was less dramatic, as this was done later and the servers seemed busy with something else.
 * If you could show me how to store properties as parameters -- either by pointing to an existing template or by writing a template for a simple one like "age at death" -- I'll replicate this for the others. rtol 05:26, September 22, 2009 (UTC)

Anyway, my thinking on it is only an idea for an idea at this point, but perhaps you have time to explore it it:

It seems to me the way to do these sorts of post processing tasks on the familypedia knowlegebase is not through templates but via javascript gadgets. This direction would also have the advantage of giving you a real programming language and the ability to complex database queries of the knowlegebase. I am messing with SMW phase 1 stuff now, but this is where phase two will go. If interested in exploring this, take a look at the gadgets extension and how I installed the File page ImageAnnotator code. Actually, it is not all that scary- just install FireBug and set some breakpoints and play around. You basically would submit Ajax calls to fetch data from properties for you, then you can do all sorts of intermediate calculations. Beats the crap out of trying to jury rig your stuff in Wikitext templates. Anyhow, in the same way that image annotator saves data, the javascript can write your results to wikitext parameters on the page. 20:20, September 21, 2009 (UTC)


 * I'll be busy with other things the coming months. rtol 05:26, September 22, 2009 (UTC)
 * For age of parents, there is no laborious iteration like what is needed for your ancestors tree, so I'm not sure what advantage there would be to setting it persistently since it will be recalculated rapidly. If 90% was nuked in a day, then 90% should be restored in the same time period. The ancestor tree I can see the motivation to cache it in parameters.


 * Like I said, I think that javascript is the better way to go at this but if you don't have time to figure out the optimal solution, then you could probably fudge it using autowikibrowser.  For the ancestors data, you would have autowikibrowser insert a line at the end of the page:
 * Something like that would set them permanently. If myAncestorsProp exists, then perhaps the set anc template can display parameter data rather than do its normal more computationally intensive process.    06:48, September 22, 2009 (UTC)
 * Something like that would set them permanently. If myAncestorsProp exists, then perhaps the set anc template can display parameter data rather than do its normal more computationally intensive process.    06:48, September 22, 2009 (UTC)

Switched set ahn and set dsc back on, but for five generations only (in ahn convert and desc convert.

Also found your guidance on apostrophe (if you recall that discussion): It is in the documentation of set ahn! rtol 06:14, September 27, 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't know how to test performance. There are many factors, including a less-then-perfect internet provider here in Dublin. Limiting the ancestors and descendants lists to 5 generations should take away much of the pain. For the ancestors, up to 64+128+256+1024+2048/2+4+8+16+32+64+128+256+1024+2048=98% rtol 07:36, September 27, 2009 (UTC)
 * It doesn't have to be complicated. Once, I bought stopwatches for all the engineers in my group.  If it were my routine, I'd use one on an autowikipedia run refreshing 20 pages with it on versus when the templates are off.  If they are roughly the same for the same time of day, then it is a good first sniff test on whether you are introducing a huge performance penalty.  It's only a sniff test though because it does not prove the negative.     07:54, September 27, 2009 (UTC)

Facebook
The secret to getting a Facebook page for a dead person is to have a "fan" page. Here is the secret link to create one, book mark it: http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php. You can create a fan page, or you can create a group. I have groups for my surnames, and fan pages for the individuals. The only problem is you cant change the name, so don't make a mistake or you will have to delete and start again. I have been tending towards "David Emanuel Wahlberg (1882-1949)" instead of just "David Emanuel Wahlberg (1882-1949)" and "Tillie Olson (1885-1918) Wintrone" for married women. Have you been adding to Knol too? --Richard Arthur Norton I 03:04, September 22, 2009 (UTC)

template issues
Thanks for checking on it. I'm seeing the following errors at this page: http://genealogy.wikia.com/wiki/Genealogy_talk:Info_pages/person_article_template Biography: was born,  and is now Expression error: Missing operand for - years of age. Children: Warning- Page "Info pages/info" does not exist. Also it seems to have added a category of "Urancestors" to the template although I've never done anything with that category. Thanks for pointing me to the Form:Person-ex. I'll try converting the pages over and let you know if I get stuck. My concern was I had messed up the template for everyone. Thanks!

Jschulte 20:02, September 24, 2009 (UTC)

I want my name remove from this page. My name is Jo Ellen Tomerlin and I have never given my permission for it to be used with this publication. I am a private citizen and do not want to be associated with these criminals. Remove my name at once. The use of my name is only at the cost of $100,000.00 One hundred thousand dollars per day. Again remove my name from the Henry M Tomerlin web page now.
 * Response on your talk page. user talk:70.190.225.112 06:26, September 25, 2009 (UTC)

Info page creation
I think the showfacts stuff is ready for your use now and there is no need for you to create info pages. Please phase in use of the template scheme used by the articles using template:showfacts person-ex. These for the most part require no double flushing and employ a comprehensive solution to the multilingual problem.

Probably the set ancestor/ descendant stuff need -ex versions to access the new field names. Once everything including the info pages are upgraded, we all be using the same property names. I probably won't be ready to upgrade info pages until late next week.

Okay? ~ Phlox 15:32, September 26, 2009 (UTC)


 * I'll give it a go. I'll probably copy and edit templates, as I suffer from form-aversion.
 * I've used Thurstan's way of working, and this poses no problems for "my" templates. As long as SMW templates is called, things work fine. rtol 07:45, September 27, 2009 (UTC)
 * I edit directly on occasion. Note that Property:Sex Must be set, as it is used as a general test for existence of a showfacts compatible article.  Also, you may trip over some details about legal values that forms automatically enforce.  In some cases you can detect these errors by looking for Yellow warnings in the facts box.  The full list of parameters is maintained at Help:Properties for persons (showfacts).  Yeah-there are quite a few.  I used common repeating patterns for events so hopefully it will be usable enough for manual editors.  Feel free to expand on notes that you think useful.   17:43, September 27, 2009 (UTC)

Forms
((Rtol- I moved your post to Forum:Questions about forms as they are of wider interest) 17:32, September 27, 2009 (UTC)

Peter Stanley 1539-1583
Hi,

I hope that Peter is a descendant of Thomas 2nd Earl of Stanley but the link is tenous at best I have looked at Tudor Place and I can find his sources have you been able to ascertain the Source for Peter.

I have read and reread Burkes peerage and can not find his father Thomas 1515 nor Peter himself if you can provide a source I would be indebited to you.

Regards Linda Challinor 17:53, September 27, 2009 (UTC)Linda
 * (moved to Forum:Peter Stanley 1539-1583) 18:43, September 27, 2009 (UTC)

minor error
I'm using the new format, but copy the page of the parent to the kids and then edit (as this is faster). At first save, I get "error-smwbasepage="" This does not seem to cause any problems, and disappears at the second save. rtol 05:23, September 29, 2009 (UTC)


 * You get that on first form save too. I'm going to heavily revamp the smwpage stuff and it's pretty broken now anyway.  I should probably just hack it to shut off that noise.   06:38, September 29, 2009 (UTC)
 * Green check.svg Fixed. 05:45, September 30, 2009 (UTC)

books and apostrophes
I see you met the apostrophe again. Your notes on how to get around that are on set ahn.
 * It is a pain. Either we tell contributors to use something weird like ~ tildes instead of semicolons to separate items in a list, or we require the renaming of countless pages on multiple wikipedia's that may have an html entity in the pagename.   21:16, September 30, 2009 (UTC)

I've copied all the book templates from Wikipedia. Seems pretty straightforward, but there needs to be a Special page Genealogy:Books. Can you as a Bureaucrat make that or do I need to ask Wikia staff? rtol 20:51, September 30, 2009 (UTC)
 * I would have done this myself earlier but we can't do the books until we have the required extension approved by wikia and then installed.  Until then, the templates will be non functional.  No worries though- I made this request to wikia staff, so it should be in the pipeline.   21:12, September 30, 2009 (UTC)