Familypedia:Person form

Form:Person was keeping us at the forefront of genealogy websites until March 2010. It has not managed to keep up with software changes, and we need to fix it. Wikia staff have made an effort, going beyond the call of duty (because Semantic MediaWiki is made available on a "no guarantee of support" basis). They and the world's best SMW minds have not been able to offer solutions. We have to try ourselves, and the author of the whole system is still alive but not showing any interest.

This project is designed to get the form understood by a few more people and to work on ways of fixing it. I suggest that we break it into workable chunks for discussion. We may even create subpages for specific sections. Opinions and suggestions should be signed and dated so that other contributors see who might have ideas to ask about or at least discuss.

-- Robin Patterson (Talk) 13:04, February 16, 2012 (UTC)

Complete form for reference
Simple form

(If not using Firefox 3, please do not use this form but see Forum:Data entry without using Form:Person.) 

Type or paste the name of an existing article or a new article in the box below.

The examples below the box illustrate Familypedia's naming standard for person articles. For details and further explanation of how to name pages, please see Familypedia:Page names. If you make a mistake, you can rename the article (and its subpages) later using the menu's Rename button.

Caution: if not using Firefox 3 you may lose data and should instead go to Forum:Data entry without using Form:Person and use normal "Edit"

Enter information about a person using this page. Familypedia's form will help you enter what is known about the person. You may return to the form at any time later to correct or add information. Narrative text for the article may be added in the form (in the small edit box near the bottom), but is easier to add later using either Familypedia's free form word processor or standard wiki markup using "Edit" (without the form). After publishing the form, please use the "edit this page" menu item to enter into the word processor so that you may add pictures and headings and format the text as you wish.

Warning- If you have made changes on this form, click a "Publish" button before jumping elsewhere with the buttons below (except "Preview").

'''Note- Please do not use commas, semicolons, or new lines to separate items in lists of partners, children, contributors, etc. Instead use the plus key (+). '''

Breaking into semi-workable chunks
(not easy because more than half of it is part of a single template)

Comments, explanations, and questions can be added at the end of a line or in separate lines, with a few stars to distinguish.

The "noinclude" part

 * This is what users see first on clicking the appropriate item on our menu "Create article" or Form:Person; but they no longer see the "string" bits

Simple form

(If not using Firefox 3, please do not use this form but see Forum:Data entry without using Form:Person.) 

Type or paste the name of an existing article or a new article in the box below.

The examples below the box illustrate Familypedia's naming standard for person articles. For details and further explanation of how to name pages, please see Familypedia:Page names. If you make a mistake, you can rename the article (and its subpages) later using the menu's Rename button.

Finally a table illustrating naming standards

 * Placed below the input box now, because most users won't need to read it every time

The "include only" part

 * This is what users see after entering the page name

Caution: if not using Firefox 3 you may lose data and should instead go to Forum:Data entry without using Form:Person and use normal "Edit"

Enter information about a person using this page. Familypedia's form will help you enter what is known about the person. You may return to the form at any time later to correct or add information. Narrative text for the article may be added in the form (in the small edit box near the bottom), but is easier to add later using either Familypedia's free form word processor or standard wiki markup using "Edit" (without the form). After publishing the form, please use the "edit this page" menu item to enter into the word processor so that you may add pictures and headings and format the text as you wish.

Standard wiki buttons near the top

 * There is some discussion about whether these conflict with the similar standard buttons at the bottom

Warning- If you have made changes on this form, click a "Publish" button before jumping elsewhere with the buttons below (except "Preview").

FP-specific buttons for going to other forms, e.g. children

 * Not working well if at all

'''Note- Please do not use commas, semicolons, or new lines to separate items in lists of partners, children, contributors, etc. Instead use the plus key (+). '''

Here's the core of the form

 * It produces most of what the user sees and can put data into, and most of it gets displayed in the infobox. First two lines are the assorted "general-info" fields at the start; then there are the three main event (BDM) sections, not collapsed; then the "Additional information", supposed to be collapsed but not always doing that recently.

Miscellaneous things

 * That first line may contain a clue to why every browser except FF3 has taken to deleting nearly everything

{{#if:{{#show:{{PAGENAME}}|default=|?sex=}}||

Mini-biography

 * This gets placed at the top of the ordinary part of the page

Children

 * You can move this later so that it sits somewhere down in the free text area.

}}

The free text box
Not much space in 5 or 6 lines for comfortable editing but this is the whole space that's not part of a template. The template:footer is supposed to go right at the bottom; it commonly gets omitted if you are upgrading a page to facts format.

Standard wiki buttons at the bottom

 * They seem not to arrange in rows according to spacing here, but no matter. "Preview" is basically useless and just a nuisance (e.g. saying you haven't entered an edit summary when you have) and has therefore been moved to near the end