User talk:Robin Patterson

(See archives:
 * User talk:Robin Patterson/archive 2005-04 to 2005-10
 * User talk:Robin Patterson/archive 2005-11 to 2006-10)
 * User talk:Robin Patterson/archive 2006-10 to 2007-06)
 * User talk:Robin Patterson/archive 2007-06 to 2007-09)
 * User talk:Robin Patterson/archive 2007-09 to 2007-10)
 * User talk:Robin Patterson/archive 2007-10 to 2008-11)
 * User talk:Robin Patterson/archive 2008-12 to 2009-06)
 * User talk:Robin Patterson/archive 2009-06 to 2010-06)

Dan Farnworth
Thank you Robin sir...the page I created for Dan Farnworth, it needs the biography in the main section..but I don't know how to that..thanks man!

I need this adding in the main body of the page > "Dan grew up in Longton. Along with his family, they've climbed a few mountains in the Lake District, these include Helvellyn and the ranges around Buttermere. Alot of their recreational time spent in the Lakes was for the fun of hiking and sight seeing. He often go-karted at his grandad's field down Marsh Lane, who along with Dan's maternal grandma, lives in Walmer Bridge. When he was 10 he got into the 2nd Longton St. Andrews Scouts football club. His favourite football team is PNE, he has been to watch their games many times.

Dan was introduced to the sport of DTL shooting in England at the Dolphin Inn in Longton, at the age of 6. His dad bought him a Belgian .410 bore shotgun, he used this up to the age of 9. His next gun was a 20 Gauge shotgun, this improved the pattern of his shot and was easier for him to use, as he was older and more capable of handling a larger gun. At the age of 12, he and his family emigrated to Canada. Dan and Ian joined Peterborough Skeet and Trap Club. Ian bought him a Stoeger 12 gauge semi-automatic shotgun. He continued to use this until he was 15 years old. At the age of 15, his dad bought him another gun, an over and under break-action Winchester shotgun.

His dad has won many high-gun shoots at Bywell Shooting Ground near Morpeth, England. Dan and Ian compete in the Quinte League, it includes shooting clubs from around the Bay of Quinte. In 2008 and 2009, along with his dad, Dan competed in the Canadian Trap Shooting Championship in Hamilton, Ontario, for the juniors team, sponsored by Winchester.

His mum is Jan, she was born in Penrith, Cumbria, her dad was Peter Harry Wilkins, owner of the Agrikem crop spraying plant. Dan's dad, Ian was born in the farming area of Scorton. Dan has a sister named Samantha, she is an aspiring artist, born in 1996. They have had many animals, previously they have owned: horses, guinea pigs, goats and hens. They now have 3 dogs and 2 cats. The Farnworth family have two Arctic Cat snowmobiles, which they ride frequently on the Victoria Rail Trail. Jan worked in the Natwest Bank in Preston and Lancaster, Lancashire and has served many famous people, including: Kenny Baker, Victoria Wood and Victoria's ex-husband Geoffrey Durham. Ian has rallied alongside Colin McRae and Richard Burns. He raced with many cars, including a Ford RS200. "

THANKS! ! ! {24.137.41.9 15:18, June 30, 2010 (UTC)}

Hello sir, I had to protect my Dan Farnworth page as user "92.16.41.39" had vandalized it almost beyond functional readability, he had added disgusting comments and sexual remarks. So please, could you make sure he is seen to about his behaviour, it really is appauling... {Dwf 19:37, June 30, 2010 (UTC)}

Thank you so much sir, that really improved the look of the articles, I'm so happy with your changes, I owe you so much man, thanks...best contributor you are mate, thanks! --Dwf 14:24, July 1, 2010 (UTC)

Henry and Judith
Note that we have a template Notable family. This picks up notable ancestors and descendants, in a uniform style, and is much preferred to ad hoc, manual edits. rtol 14:01, July 2, 2010 (UTC)

Margaret McDermott (c1860-)
Your Margaret McDermott (c1860-) caught my attention due to the Wisconsin properties. I searched out a census for her and her parents so you can have more specific birth dates..., Hope this helps, Lanica 14:24, July 3, 2010 (UTC)

How?
How can I edit this page? Because when I click on edit on form or edit this page, there on appears sensor!--Station7 07:20, July 7, 2010 (UTC)

Regarding this edit:, I see your note about restoring the line with Robert Hope Hester, but that line is also in the SMW table below right? So the DPL table is redundant, no? If there is some purpose to the DPL stuff, I have no problem, but in this case the DPL not providing any additional information, and the info it provides is inferior.

I also think I saw some tech notes about the wikia guys wanting folks to move away from DPL due to performance issues at the server side.

Robert Hester 17:45, July 7, 2010 (UTC) (test user mode Phlox)

Minor edits
I'm sorry about that. What you say makes perfect sense and I will start doing that today. Lanica 13:26, July 15, 2010 (UTC)

Template for dates
I fixed info date. See January 1.

At the moment, it shows births, deaths, and first weddings. (I'll see about all weddings.) It also creates properties, so that we can check whether certain days are more popular for weddings than others.

Feel free to change the lay-out or suggest additions. rtol 21:56, July 19, 2010 (UTC)

Editing
So is what I did on Quebec ok? I wasn't sure if that was a relevant focus for that page, but I thought it would be interesting... SSDGFCTCT9  天皇陛下萬歳！ 02:55, July 26, 2010 (UTC)

Ok, I'll add a few things about common family names and whatnot. SSDGFCTCT9  天皇陛下萬歳！ 13:23, July 26, 2010 (UTC)

Oh, thanks for the list! I'll look a few things up. By the way, is this signature suitable? It's just that on other wikis, I tend to use a template, so I made one here. SSDGFCTCT9  天皇陛下萬歳！ 14:24, July 26, 2010 (UTC)

Do we only make articles about famous or significant people, or can we put just about anybody? SSDGFCTCT9  天皇陛下萬歳！ 17:14, July 26, 2010 (UTC)

Of course, I just wasn't really sure. SSDGFCTCT9  天皇陛下萬歳！ 14:10, July 27, 2010 (UTC)

So, I made an article of myself - Philippe L'Espérance (1994 -). Is that how it works, in general? Sorry if I'm asking too many questions, just looking for guidance... SSDGFCTCT9  天皇陛下萬歳！ 01:08, August 14, 2010 (UTC)

Thank you very much. I will be working on articles for my parents shortly, using the same kind of structure. SSDGFCTCT9  天皇陛下萬歳！ 03:41, August 14, 2010 (UTC)

Re: Coincidence
Yeah, I am starting to add my family to the wiki and noticed on the Spanish language home page a   at the end that stuck out like a sore thumb - so I looked at the page and it appeared to me it could be removed so I did (or did I miss the opening    to it), and messed up the page? But it is good to see / hear from you, if you get back into Ikariam you are still a Bureaucrat there, and always will be. -- 23:26, August 13, 2010 (UTC)

be-taras
Hi there,

I'll escalate the be-taras issue to the support team, apologies that it's not working well.

- JeskaD 16:58, August 17, 2010 (UTC)

Update - it should be working now. Thanks again! -- JeskaD 18:14, August 17, 2010 (UTC)

Ancestry
I'm working towards a more elegant and robust solution for tracing where one's from. See roots and Nicolaas Simon Korver (1856-1922)/roots. rtol 05:55, August 19, 2010 (UTC)


 * Ancestors from blank now seems to be fixed. rtol 06:00, August 25, 2010 (UTC)

Place properties
Both locality and infobox UK place set up properties for places. Of course, the properties have different names. Can you kindly make a decision which names are better? Thurstan slightly prefers those by Phlox in infobox UK place. rtol 10:11, August 20, 2010 (UTC)


 * (discussion moved to forum)

New Features Wanted?
Hello!

I'm pulling together a list of 3-5 new features that would be helpful for the continued success of Familypedia. These could be something small like a new template form or something more integrated into the site, such as a new background theme or logo. It could also just be a list of "pain points" that you've had that we could design a tool/feature to help alleviate. Please let me know as soon as possible on my Talk page!

Cheers, JeskaD 20:42, August 26, 2010 (UTC)

Forms Fixed?
I'm hoping this means the form issue you were having is no longer (please let myself or Tim know if this is not the case). I'm still curious if there is anything else new feature-wise that could help with your day-to-day editing of the wiki or maybe help to engage new users or even something to make it easier for admins. This could be in the form of either a Wish List (things you'd love to do but aren't currently possilbe) or Pain Points (things that currently don't quite work the right way or are work arounds) Please do let me know if you or any of the other admins have anything, would love to work with you to get them done.

- JeskaD 18:41, September 2, 2010 (UTC)

Ermengarde, Jaume, Bretislaus
The query is fine. Jaume M Schulte's properties are assigned to Ermengarde. I guess that is because the servers are largely down. See also the problems with Bretislaus III of Bohemia. rtol 18:04, September 7, 2010 (UTC)

Default language
Do you, by any chance, have your default language set to French? When I look at the children of Mary Howell (1782-1854) (a page you created), I see "Birth: February 17, 1816 à New Jersey, United States", but when I create pages, I see "in" rather than "à". I think this is a bug in our language support. Thurstan 22:18, September 22, 2010 (UTC)


 * I do. It must be a bug as you say. We probably need to find all of the places where String is used and the places where it should be used but isn't. Is your "Preference" en or en-gb? — Robin Patterson (Talk) 00:35, September 23, 2010 (UTC)


 * I am set to "en": I am not offered "en-gb" on the dropdown list. Thurstan 04:45, September 23, 2010 (UTC)
 * Ah. Indeed, it is not on offer. (50 million people speak it but it's not offered, while languages that under a million people speak are offered. I suppose that's good in principle.) I'd better note that change in Phlox's essay. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 05:07, September 23, 2010 (UTC)

Arbuthnot marriage
Sir William Arbuthnot 2nd Bt married 26 August 2010 Louise (Alexandra Mary) Barry in London -- Arbuthnot

New Look Coming to Lifestyle
Robin,

Hiya! I just wanted to check in and remind you that starting tomorrow (October 6,2010) all anonymous viewers of your wiki will see it with the new look. It looks like you've already found the Theme Designer to prepare your wiki for the change over. If you haven't seen it already, we've created a Transition Guide with tips and best practices in the Community blog or my announcement for Lifestyle admins has even more tips.

As always, please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Cheers,

JeskaD 18:37, October 5, 2010 (UTC)

New Look Feedback
Thanks for passing the feedback and potential bugs over to me, I've escalted them to our internal team.

Aolso, if you find any other bugs, don't hestitae to file them by going to Special:Contact so our support team can coordinate them into the larger list!

Cheers, JeskaD 18:06, October 7, 2010 (UTC)

John of Gaunt
Is it just me, or is John of Gaunt's page now inaccessible? Thurstan 21:22, October 14, 2010 (UTC)

Hello Robin. Thanks for your valued help. I'll get the hang now I'm using Firefox, it was Chrome that threw me ;-(

Kind regards hartleyfamilyorguk

Lilian May Yardley (1889-1960)
please delete this person, reason duplicate, middle name wrongly spelt

thank you

Hartleyfamilyorguk 19:59, October 20, 2010 (UTC)

Display issues
The reason that pages are not displayed properly is because the servers are clogged up by Thurstan. He's current actions are time consuming and computationally intensive. There is a simple alternative that would free up his time and the shared servers. I've pointed that out to him on a number of occasions, but he sticks to his plan. rtol 06:01, October 22, 2010 (UTC)


 * Sorry for being unclear. I saw your question on Thurstan's talk page about display issue, and thought I'd answer. The issue is not categorization. The issue is that ThurstanBot tries to save many tree pages per hour -- and for no reason. rtol 05:19, October 23, 2010 (UTC)

Birth Info... Link to mother...
Robin,

I cannot figure out why my page has my mother as a link in red when there is a page for Kathleen Murphy (1940-). In the source view it does seem to be right. How would one get rid of the incorrect link to a non-existent page for my mother and replace it with a link to the correct page?

Regarding location information, such as for a birth, I'm not sure if I should enter city by itself, or in that field enter City, State. Then there is a field for Province/State/Country. I wasn't sure whether to put my state in there and then put the country in the Nation field or how people are doing this. I guess it just seems important to be consistent.

Thanks,

Brucewhealton 08:31, October 22, 2010 (UTC)Brucewhealton

Claus Meyer (1874-1955)
Can you roll back the edits in this page to my last edit. Larry C. contacted me to let me know he deleted most of my information while he was trying to add some of his own. THis is an admin function, right? Not something I can do myself? Thanks, Lanica 16:35, October 24, 2010 (UTC).

Edit facts
http://familypedia.wikia.com/wiki/Claus_Meyer_(1874-1955)

It seem like I'm having problems doing the simplest things. I'm thinking that I may be using "save page" incorrectly. What is the difference between the "save page" at the top and at the bottom? I can only hope that I am getting better at using "undo." Please check the above link.

Is there an advantage to using Firefox over IE?

Larry C. 22:25, October 24, 2010 (UTC)

Katie
http://familypedia.wikia.com/wiki/Katie

Robin, I moved up to Firefox and things working, far from perfect, but better. Feel free to delete "Katie. I know I did a lot of extra editing but I was tired of losing it all while using IE.

The Claus Meyer_(1874-1955) has a sibling form but no form for children. Can you help me with that? Hopefully I will get to the point where I don't need assistance.

Thanks for all your help, assistance and advice.

Larry

Larry C. 19:58, October 25, 2010 (UTC)

Slideshow instead of Widget
(copying over from my talk page in case you missed it!)

Hiya! The "Widget" functionality that was being used to display the slideshow was part of our soon to be deprecated Monoco skin and will not work as part of the skin. All you need to do is use the "gallery" button to add a slideshow and it should be fine.

Let me know if this isn't working!

JeskaD 01:40, October 26, 2010 (UTC)


 * If I notice a "gallery" button I may use it. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 11:48, October 26, 2010 (UTC)

How to Insert Gallery or Slideshow
Howdy! The gallery/slideshow button is available whenever you are editing a page. To insert a gallery or slideshow, just click the button in the editor and following the prompts. More information on how this works in our gallery and slideshow help guide.

If you prefer, you can instead use wikitext to add galleries, more information on how to do that here: http://help.wikia.com/wiki/Help:Galleries_and_slideshows/wikitext

Good luck! - --JeskaD 19:23, October 26, 2010 (UTC)

Re: Your first article
Thanks for the compliment! It was really just experimental, but I'll try to have that data on my parents for you soon. I have several Wikias I'm trying to start up at the same time, so if it takes a while, please understand. Thanks. TheLastWordSword 19:03, November 2, 2010 (UTC)

View
Yeah, it looks mixed up to me, too. It looks like all the headings and titles are source... Lanica 15:03, November 14, 2010 (UTC)

SMW Help
While i'm twittering my thumbs for SMW to come back to life on my wiki, I was looking at other smw sites and noticed some issues. You could use: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Replace_Text to replace "formedit" Also, | }} is the same as, which could GREATLY reduce the size of some templates that reuse code. S im A nt 20:52, November 16, 2010 (UTC)

Suggestions
I'm getting worried about the lack of progress.

Can you plead with Phlox to come help us?

I would also plead with Wikia that they roll-back the recent "patches". Whatever problem they were supposed to solve, they created too many new ones.

The alternative is rather painful. As no-one understands Phlox' templates, we would basically have to start all over again. rtol 06:30, November 21, 2010 (UTC)

Translations
This is no time for soft measures. Something is seriously broken. We need to get the basics working again before worrying about fancy stuff. rtol 23:04, November 26, 2010 (UTC)

Images
I cant figure out how to upload images. Where is the button hidden now? --Richard Arthur Norton I 20:31, December 5, 2010 (UTC)

Hi there i was just saying can you improve my new wiki website its called http://itvwikis.wikia.com/wiki/Special:WikiActivity that will be a great help.

Thanks for the welcome and responses
So, when setting up the fields for Persons, one cannot know how many children a person may have. How is that handled on the forms?

66.57.62.106 12:47, December 24, 2010 (UTC)Brucewhealton

image formats
On 27 December 2010 03:05, Robin Patterson <[mailto:Robin-P@slingshot.co.nz Robin-P@slingshot.co.nz]> wrote: If you know how to turn screenshots into files suitable for uploading to a wiki, please see http://familypedia.wikia.com/wiki/Forum:Some_publicity_for_Familypedia#Screenshots_urgently_needed

Robin, try installing Gimp (http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html). Then open Gimp and use it to open your bitmaps. Use Gimp to save the files in any of the many formats it supports. Gimp is a free software alternative to Photoshop.

Hope that helps.

DuncanNZ 21:46, December 27, 2010 (UTC)

John Miller's Will
Hi Robin,

Thank you for your response to John Miller’s will. I am having a hard time navigating Familypedia. I didn’t know how to edit the will or move it to a better location. Do with it as you will. I thought it would be beneficial for Miller researchers. Also, thank you so much for citing me as a source. Nothing irks me more than someone copying my information and not citing properly. I have other wills and other sources of information, but I am hesitant to post them or update my tree.

Cheers,

Stephanie

Radwan Dąbrowski-Żądło Family -- Deletion
Hi Robin,

Thanks for your reply.

I asked for that deletion for several reasons:

01) The intent of that article was to be encyclopedic, not genealogical, and therefore on Wikipedia.

02) There were two deletion nominations of that article on Wikipedia.

03) The article survived the first deletion nomination.

04) The nominating administrator assumed foul play, since he lost round one to someone he considered a neophyte, so he bid his time while seething.

05) He, considering himself a GodKing, canvassed a Wikipedia lynch mod he corresponds with regularly, and they reached a consensus the article should be deleted. That's my opinion, perhaps I'm wrong given I'm biased in this regard.

06) After deletion, the result was a nasty and lengthy deletion review, and in the course of that review, someone (I have no idea who) took it upon themselves to upload the article, along with the accompany pictures, to this site, misinterpreting the purpose of the article to be genealogical.

07) That's not the purpose of the article, and the two photographs uploaded here, which I requested be deleted, upon consideration of points brought up in the deletion review, should not be on the Internet.

08) "Radwan Dąbrowski-Żądło" is an incorrect and very irregular form of the name, never used, except here incorrectly, hence my request for deletion of that redirection link. In the interests of historical accuracy, I do not think "Radwan Dąbrowski-Żądło" should appear in Google or other search engine results. It's widely promulgating a confusing mistake. There's already enough confusion regarding things Polish.

09) "Żądło-Dąbrowski z Dąbrówki h. Radwan" is how the name appears in armorials, and how Polish scholars currently refer to the name.

10) I'm not adverse to having a link from Wikipedia to Familypedia, where this article is concerned, hence the current link to Wikipedia, but having to maintain two separate versions of the article would lead to inaccuracies and omissions.

11) You can view the deletion debates here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%C5%BB%C4%85d%C5%82o-D%C4%85browski_z_D%C4%85br%C3%B3wki_h._Radwan

12) I hope you don't read it. It's all rather boring and sordid, full of accusations of bad faith and disreputable motives (the usual fare), although I tried to put up a valiant fight and vanquish what I saw as the dishonoring of Wikipedia's core principles.

13) I'm at your mercy, so I kindly request again the deletion of the redirect link containing the improper form of the name "Radwan Dąbrowski-Żądło."

14) This is all might be very tedious, and perhaps that redirection link was already deleted, if so, disregard all. I never know with websites, caches, and technical glitches.

I Thank You for Your Time and Consideration -- Fpjohnsmith 12:40, January 8, 2011 (UTC)

Questions 1

 * with Robin's replies interspersed for convenience

Dear Mr. Patterson,

I am new to familypedia, being directed to this site by Mr. Norton. and am still struggling with the mysteries of the site. I have understood how to write articles and how to load up pictures.

I have some questions regarding the site and in order to avoid errors I take advantage of your offer to help newcommers.

1. I am surprised that I missed the site until now, especially as it has been active for at least 4 years. Do the names of this site show up in on-line searches using Google or other search engines? If not, outsiders who might be interested in some persons or genealogies might never find them.
 * All text, and particularly page names, has a good chance of appearing in a Google or Yahoo search, and can be in the top few hits if the word or phrase is not very common. I'm sorry you hadn't found us sooner. (And some of us old-timers are "still struggling with the mysteries of the site"!!) — Robin Patterson (Talk) 01:00, January 17, 2011 (UTC)

2. What kind of articles are acceptable to Familypedia. Is it only groups of persons who are related, or can it be individual persons who are more or less notable? Examples. In the article Maria Filotti who was an actress, there are various authors of plays in which she took part. Would it be correct to load their biographies into Familypedia? Familypedia seems to accept articles on places - for instance New Hampshire. Would it be correct to load articles on places mentioned in the Maria Filotti article?
 * We hope to have an article about every person who has ever lived and about every place where they were recorded as doing anything. We already have thousands of "place" articles, so check before writing one. For much of what you may want to write, see Help:Copying from Wikipedia. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 01:00, January 17, 2011 (UTC)

3. When loading pages from Wikipedia, the colors of the links (red or blue) seem to remain as they were in Wikipedia, even if the linked articles are not in Familypedia. Should the articles on related subjects (such as the schools attended, the professions etc.) should also be loaded into Familypedia so that they can be accessed the way they are in Wikipedia. Mr. Norton advised me to include a w: in front of the name, which apparently makes a link to Wikipedia. I tried this in the Maria Filotti article, but it does not work.
 * Richard is one of our most prolific contributors but isn't infallible. "w:" works on a WikiMedia site, but here it means "Wikia". For a link to Wikipedia, you need the full "wikipedia:". For professions and schools, a link to Wikipedia is probably best rather than creating a page here, but we do use most of the same categories as Wikipedia, some of which cover professions and well-known educational institutions. (I don't know the answer to the "link color" question. Maybe you could start a forum article about it.)— Robin Patterson (Talk) 01:00, January 17, 2011 (UTC)

4. Familypedia is a multilanguage site. How can articles in different languages be loaded and linked. Assuming I would like to have a version of the Maria Filotti article in french, german, romanian or esperanto, can this be done, having these articles somehow linked. Or is the system set up so that I could have an article of Maria Filotti's son, Ion Filotti Cantacuzino written in romanian, and of her grandson written in french, which are interlinked?
 * Our system of multilinguality (intended to work as it does on Wikimedia ) isn't well developed yet, but it's on the agenda. See Familypedia:Multilingual articles. The answer to your second and third questions in this section is "yes". — Robin Patterson (Talk) 01:00, January 17, 2011 (UTC)

5. Are articles containing full family trees also acceptable in Familypedia, so that the genealogy can be easier to read than by going up and down the parents-child relationships or are such family trees reserved for genealogy sites such as Ancestry, My Heritage or others. An example of such a tree in Wikipedia would be The Filotti Family.
 * Such articles are acceptable and welcome. See Filotti (surname), which you are welcome to expand to include the Wikipedia material. But our setup goes beyond that, allowing the creation of "/tree" subpages that are created automatically joining individuals who have their own pages here. It's suffering some glitches at present, as you may deduce from recent Forum items, but worth persevering with. See Charlemagne/tree, which used to be magnificent but now needs some links fixed, and John Bellamy (1803-1873)/tree, a recently-created page that works. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 01:00, January 17, 2011 (UTC)

I hope to be able to contribute efficiently to Familypedia and would also like to know how I can be of any use.


 * Welcome again!!! There are probably areas of the multilingualism where your skills might make a huge contribution. (I enjoyed reading Maria's list of plays, many of which I had seen performed at the Globe Theatre in Dunedin, back in the 1960s, and a couple of which I had performed in.) — Robin Patterson (Talk) 01:00, January 17, 2011 (UTC)

Thank you in advance for your help

Andrei Filotti Afil 21:08, January 16, 2011 (UTC)

How can I delete?
1. I know I did something stupid.

I followed your advice to register as in the engineering section - which appears to be quite new. I loaded my user page and found out that the babel templates are not activated in the Engineering section. I started to upload them, but I misprinted the title, which I entered as =Template;User en= I loaded the correct template with the colon instead of the semicolon, but haven't got the slightest idea how to delete the wrong one. I assume that the babel templates should be active in the Engineering section too. But I don't know if I should load them - which I can and have done experimentally with the User en template - or if it should be done in another way.

Afil 02:40, January 21, 2011 (UTC)


 * I'll have a look at your "Template;User en" (and delete if no use - something only administrators can do) and at what language templates are there on Engineering. It's actually a fairly old Wikia site, like Familypedia, and probably doesn't have the newer standard Babel templates (which were developed after these wikis started). But if you feel like copying from Familypedia to Engineering, where there is no equivalent, that should be just fine. I can add any related categories, etc, that may still be required. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 14:15, January 21, 2011 (UTC)

Starting articles with the form
2. I might just ask a second question. I seem to have difficulties in starting new articles with a form. When the article is completely new I cannot load the form. If I access the article - after it was created - with a form, I get the form but I cannot save or preview it I am probably doing something wrong but I don't know what. Afil 02:40, January 21, 2011 (UTC)


 * Are you using Firefox? If not, or even if you are, another look at the "Guidelines" may help - that's the page you reach from "Help: Creating articles" near the top of most pages. If still having problems, you're not alone: try our help desk. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 14:15, January 21, 2011 (UTC)

Learning Familypedia; my articles
Robin,

I wonder why on my article about myself, it says that I am 0 years old.


 * That may be part of a new problem (as you will have noticed if keeping up with the forums). Put a link to that article on your user page so that people can find it more easily! — Robin Patterson (Talk) 08:02, January 29, 2011 (UTC)

Can you offer me any tips on learning how mediawiki samantic forms are setup here? I think this would be a good way to learn about semantic forms but seeing how things were setup on this site. The names of fields, the thinking behind the overall design and how this was setup, so I could do something like this on my own wiki.


 * I don't know much of that. User:Phlox did most of it. Find his blog and subpages. And (as think I've suggested before) study Form:Person and the templates it uses. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 08:02, January 29, 2011 (UTC)

I do have some family on facebook, is there a way to share my pages here on facebook? Has anyone thought of adding those share buttons?


 * I have a "Share on Facebook" link on one of my toolbars. I forget where I got it; maybe from Facebook. There's also a "Facebook Connect" section at the end of your preferences. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 08:02, January 29, 2011 (UTC)

Oh, and how do I get emails when there is a message on my talk page?


 * Check your "Preferences". (Link in the menu headed by your name next to the logout button near top right.) In the first batch there are email options. Mine look like this:
 * E-mail confirmation: Your e-mail address was authenticated on 2008-06-08 at 00:35:16.

Enable e-mail from other users Send me copies of e-mails I send to other users E-mail me when a page I'm following is changed E-mail me when my user talk page is changed E-mail me for minor edits Reveal my e-mail address in notification e-mails Enable receipt of HTML emails Send me information about Wikia news and events


 * I've checked the boxes for most of those options. You can choose yours and change them if ever any seem to be a nuisance. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 08:02, January 29, 2011 (UTC)

Thanks,

Bruce

Questions 2
Dear Mr. Patterson,

I hope I am not doing too much mischief and that I am not giving you too much trouble. I slowly get more familiarized with the procedures of Familypedia.


 * Andrei, you do much less mischief than most newcomers! And little trouble to help you in the right directions. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 00:54, January 30, 2011 (UTC)

However, for the time being I have the following questions, and would appreciate your guidance.

1. The showfacts biography template seems to ignore the places of birth, death and marriage. It also shows the death by unknown causes, though I seem not to be able to identify where I could indicate the cause of death in the form. Other users seem to be encountering the same difficulty in the way the form understands the names of the places.


 * I noticed that, as soon as I added it to one of your pages. So I reported it on Forum:Template:Showfacts biography. Someone will find the answer soon, I'm confident. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 00:54, January 30, 2011 (UTC)


 * Cause of death needs the Advanced form, sorry! (Because it's used in the mini-biography, I would prefer it to be in the simple form. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 01:23, January 30, 2011 (UTC)

2. The instructions concerning the showfacts children indicate that the names of the various children issued from the same marriage should be separated by a colon. Actually this should be corrected as a + sign is required. This is misleading. I now know how to do it, but other users might also get confused.


 * I had either not noticed or forgotten that; semicolon was the early joiner, which was found to be not ideal and was therefore changed after a few months; the instruction you found has clearly not kept up; I'd better fix it. The "plus" is the only joiner mentioned on the main guidance page, to which we try to direct all readers. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 00:54, January 30, 2011 (UTC)

3. I am not able to find out how names can be added into a tree. The tree only has the blank rectangles. This seems to happen to trees of other users.


 * Yes, that's another very recent mystery, reported on Help talk:Tree page. I hope we can fix it very soon. In case you've never seen how good our tree pages can look, see the bottom image on Forum:Some publicity for Familypedia. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 00:54, January 30, 2011 (UTC)

Sorry for the inconvenience and thank you in advance for your help.

Andrei Filotti Afil 22:32, January 29, 2011 (UTC)

Lindauer
Oscar_Arthur_Moritz_Lindauer_(1815-1866)

Do you know how to search through the Alsace birth andmarriage records? I have been trying to find Oscar there.


 * I don't even know where to find them. Question copied to Forum:Records of Alsace. Robin Patterson 22:39, January 30, 2011 (UTC)

Given names subcategories
I created subcategories for various given names. I was notified by user:rtol that this is not correct. Given names should have articles such as Maria (given name) but not categories. I labeled the new subcategories of given names for deletion but do not have administrator privileges to actually delete them. Afil 21:11, February 1, 2011 (UTC)
 * Replied on Afil's talk page. Robin Patterson 06:26, February 7, 2011 (UTC)

Categories
Dear Robin

I am not sure that I understand the logic of the Valid name categories. According to me they should be part of a tree.


 * They probably should be, but that's not clear to me (as I noted on a talk page several months ago). Robin Patterson 06:26, February 7, 2011 (UTC)

Top category
1. The first category is Valid name - county. This should include subcategories as Valid name - county - placename.


 * Problems. a. At present if we look at the subcategories we have subcategories for the counties of all the states of the USA plus for the counties of Romania. As no other countries are included, it creates the impression that Romania is a subdivision of the USA. It might look better if we included counties of the UK and the various provinces of Canada.


 * Counties of other countries should be included. One already is. But general users won't be looking at that category often if at all. Those of us interested enough to look at it will mostly realise that it is seriously incomplete and is not an implication about which countries might be part of others! Robin Patterson 06:26, February 7, 2011 (UTC)


 * b. The category should not include any articles. At present it also includes besides the subcategories articles of the various counties of Romania. Those should not be here at all.

Second level
The second level of subcategories are the ones which show the County and the placename (example Placename- county - Tennessee or Placename - county - Romania.

These should also not include any article. They should only have as third level categories the names of the Counties. For instance, there should be a category for Anderson County, Tennessee or for Buzău County, Romania. However, the articles concerning these counties should be included in the third level subcategories and not at the second level.

Third level, etc
3, Articles should be included only at the third level and not at higher levels.

Example. Both Buzău and Buzău County articles (as well as any other articles regarding localities in Buzău County such as Râmnicu Sărat) should be included in Category Buzău County and not in the categories of the higher level of the tree.
 * Small disagreement: Buzău (city) and the other localities should be (as three are) in Category:Settlements in Buzău County, and it is now in the county category. Robin Patterson 06:26, February 7, 2011 (UTC)

Category Buzău County as well as the categories for other Romanian counties should be subcategories of Valid Name '- county - Romania. but not of validname - county.

Category Valid name - county - Romania as well as all other categories at the level of nations and only those should be included in the category Validname - county.

There should be no shortcuts in which some levels would be skipped,


 * That's a commendably purist approach, but shortcuts make editing easier, so I don't encourage their removal at present. When our system is nearly complete, we will probably be able to cut out hundreds of such skips with a bot. Robin Patterson 06:26, February 7, 2011 (UTC)

Would you agree on such a tree? I would implement this if you concur with this.


 * In principle I agree. I'm delighted that you are willing to help build the structure. However, creating 40-odd categories of the same type could be quicker with a bot after several of us have agreed on what the category pages should contain (e.g. something like Ctycat). Robin Patterson 06:26, February 7, 2011 (UTC)

Country level
I would also welcome your comments on what to do at the country level. Should we, for the time being, also create some new categories for counties of other countries so that Romania is not a lone outsider listed along with the 50 states of the USA?


 * It's not a complete outsider: see Category:Valid name- county- Lower Saxony. I'm surprised that nobody has done the UK counties, but, as you may have seen from a talk page, there needs to be a clearer set of guidelines before many of us will be keen to do much more work on it. Robin Patterson 06:26, February 7, 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your help

Andrei Filotti Afil 20:09, February 6, 2011 (UTC)

Sensor
Sensor pages were never broken. The magic work no longer works, which means that we can't see what the sensor page does anymore. rtol 06:56, February 10, 2011 (UTC)

Help With My new Wiki.
Hi just to let you know i tryed to get rid of the links from wikipedia but my computer is having a problem. Do you know who created Familypedia. Can you help me inprove my wiki site i created its called http://animalplants.wikia.com/wiki/Animals_and_Plants_Wiki thanks that will be a great help. can you help me put a wallpaper and an advertisement into Animals and Plants Wiki to help my new wiki to be popular, because my computer keeps on going to channel php. thanks Quinser's

Uploading animated files
Dear Mr. Patterson,

I am attempting to upload an animated file for the illustration of the article Yugoslavia which was copied from en:wikipedia. The image is Breakup of Yugoslavia.gif. However, I was able to get only the first image of a series of successive images.

From wiki commons I get the following information

Page url

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Breakup_of_Yugoslavia.gif

but I still cannot find I way to load them into Familypedia.

There is also a possibility of linking Familypedia to Instantcommons. The procedure is indicated in http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:$wgUseInstantCommons and would theoretically enable Familypedia to access directly the images from Wikicommons, without uploading all of them, as I am trying to do. However I think that an administrator should decide if this is acceptable or not for Familypedia. I would kindly ask you to help me upload the indicated file and also to decide if direct links to Wikicommons are acceptable. Sincerely Andrei FilottiAfil 05:15, February 15, 2011 (UTC)


 * I copied the above to Forum:Animated files and Instantcommons. I know very little about images, though I think we did have some animated maps here once, and the above one seems to be working. I'll have a look at Instantcommons; it may need host approval. Robin Patterson 05:30, February 15, 2011 (UTC)

Re:Brife Response
You Said

"I can't understand what sort of advertisement you want and I don't understand what links from Wikipedia anyone would want to get rid of."

Im only trying to be polite the links from wikipedia i transfered to familypedia, I want you to get rid of List of Inventors and List of Astronomers i've asked Rtol is well to help me. and the advertisment for animals and palnts wiki is help us edit the Endangered Species around the World.

Anyway there a man I seen from St Peters Church in Cardiff, United Kingdom he just looks like you.

Quinser's 07:22 17/02/2011


 * I'm pleased that you are trying to be polite; you are succeeding. But being polite needs to come with explaining yourself. I still have no idea what you mean by "can you help me put a wallpaper and an advertisement into Animals and Plants Wiki". Nor have you explained "links from wikipedia". (Have you created more categories in that wiki yet? It needs them.) Robin Patterson (Talk) 08:48, February 16, 2011 (UTC)

Template Ahnentafel compact 5
I was looking at the Ahnentafel templates. You had posted a few years ago a note on the Ahnentafel 5 template, asking why it does not work.

Actually it does not work even for wikipedia. The difference between Ahnentafel 6 and Ahnentafel 5 is that 6 works even in cases when some of the names are blank, like in your example, while for Ahnentafel 5 it does not work.

I went to through the computer program and found out that Ahnentafel 5 was programmed differently than 4 or 6 (which accept blank names, as you can see in the examples for these two templates. I am in the process of reprogramming the 5 in the same manner, so that all are consistent and can be used in a similar manner.

At present, most of the programming is done, There are still a few glitches in the lower part of the template, which I hope to solve tomorrow. Unfortunately programming takes time. Afil 06:47, February 20, 2011 (UTC)


 * Thank you! It is a useful template for cases where not all of one's ancestors have wiki pages. Robin Patterson (Talk) 09:51, February 20, 2011 (UTC)

Ahnentafel
I completed all the templates for Ahnentafel-compact from 2 to 6. I also included the instructions for the talk pages in all of them. I hope I got the categories right. They all work and each has an example in the talk page. However, some errors might show up, even if I hope this will not happen. If notified about such I will try to correct them.

A word of caution, which might have to be posted in the talk page. They work with Firefox, and apparently with Chrome (though I have not tested them all). But they do not work with Explorer if some names are missing.

You might also consider some changes in the template documentation. First, probably the instructions in the talk pages would be better placed in a documentation page for each template. Second, even if you keep the general documentation page, the 1 generation ahnentafel should be eliminated, because there is no template for it and it basically would contain only the name of the person.

I am not aware of the difference between the Ahnentafel and Ahnentafel-compact templates in Wikipedia or here. For the time being, I expect that the compact version will satisfy our immediate needs. Please tell me if you want me to do anything more in this matter.

If you consider that the compact5 template works, you might want to eliminate your talk comment that it is not working.

Sorry it took so long

Regards

Andrei Filotti!Afil 03:16, February 21, 2011 (UTC)


 * Many thanks, Andrei. Didn't seem to take long at all, compared with the time it has been sitting there not working. I agree that there should be proper standard documentation pages (as with many of our older templates, which were created long before the documentation system was well developed). I'll look at that, add a browser warning, and check the categories now. Robin Patterson (Talk) 09:04, February 21, 2011 (UTC)

Maria Scruggs entry
Please note that the entry Maria Scruggs (c. 1933) should really be headed Maria Pachi. Pachi is her birth name. Also I hope that you will agree that having the birth year in the entry's title is awkward and is not typical of the other entrys on the site. Please consider making these changes as reflected by the wishes of the entry's subject herself.

Thank you ever so much,

Jill

Complaning about my articles
Hi im only trying to be polite I putted the question marks there because I do not know when there born.

what name shall I change the article Rtol said to put the first & Last name and the date & Death they were born because he wanted me to put it there.

I really don't have time to do it because I have a really busy life in my hand's.

Im getting a bit upset about you and Rtol are complaining to me that every article seems always wrong all the time. Quinser's 09:33 25th February 2011

Ahnentafel documentation
The reason I deleted your words from Template:Ahnentafel-compact/doc is that they are wrong: this template has no browser dependancy, no relation to SMW and no default values: if you type etc, you will not get a tree (try it!). Thurstan 05:34, February 27, 2011 (UTC)

Navbox
Dear Mr. Patterson.

As you have worked with the Navbox template and a warning is also posted that users should refrain from modifying it, I am contacting you with the request to look at Template:Holy Roman Emperors which uses the Navbox and works in Wikipedia but not in Wikifamily. The problems seems to occur with list2 as the template works if list 2 is tentatively eliminated. Could you give me any suggestions on how to deal with the problem without messing up the template. Regards Andrei Filotti. Afil 06:37, February 28, 2011 (UTC)


 * Please call me "Robin".


 * It's months since I did anything much with navboxes, mostly the county ones. Hard work! Richard Tol is probably our expert on Holy Roman Emperors. I think that this is another matter that is best on a forum, because at least three of us are interested in the answers, and there may be some other expert who knows even more than Richard or I do.


 * I'm copying most of this to a new Forum:Holy Roman Empire. Robin Patterson (Talk to me) 08:01, February 28, 2011 (UTC)

Response to Your Welcome
Thanks for the welcome, Robin.

I realize that I have already made many mistakes. I am a bit frustrated because I do not have Firefox, and so I cannot use the editing forms. I already noticed some of the things that you pointed out in your message to me and already corrected them. Thanks for adding categories. KAmbrose 03:59, March 5, 2011 (UTC)

UPDATE: Thanks for everything. I downloaded Firefox and am having success with it. I can see that I still have a lot to learn. Thanks for all your help and input. KAmbrose 12:32, March 7, 2011 (UTC)

Family categories
Articles on members of a family are tagged in a category for the family name, i.e. Category:Smith family. However there are inconsistencies. In some categories family starts with a capital F, in others with a lower case f, i.e. you could have Category:Smith family and Category:Miller Family.

If you would like to have a unified system, it would be wise to do so while there are still relatively few such categories.

You could take following decisions:

1. Leave things as they are, not minding the inconsistency. No further action would then be necessary.

2. Prefer a unified approach with one of the two alternatives which should be generally applied. In this case, the categories which do not comply with the recommended solution should be changed accordingly. As far as the old unrecommended categories are concerned you could advise that the old, incorrect version be deleted, or that a categoryredirect label be posted.

I have no preference but would like to know what I should do. Regards. Andrei Filotti Afil 01:26, March 9, 2011 (UTC)


 * See Forum:Family categories --- Robin Patterson (Talk to me) 02:03, March 9, 2011 (UTC)

Titles in names
Pls recall that the agreed standard is to have names without titles. Principe and principessa are titles. rtol 13:48, March 11, 2011 (UTC)

Categories
Sorry for my mistakes. I will be more careful in the future.

Thank you also for the clue on the lists above the edit buton. I had missed their utility.

I would however draw your attention on some inconsistencies which make the use of the lists slightly confusing.

In the Death place you are sent to the Category: People by death country, where you find some countries: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, The Netherlands. However other countries are missing from the list. Now, this is a subcategory of Category:Death by country which contains other countries such as France, Germany a.s.o but not others. New Zealand and Australia are in both. I would list all the countries in the Category People by death country so that whoever uses the facility can directly find the category he is looking for, and not fumble around trying to find it.

The same goes for People by birth place, where some countries are not listed in the People by birth country. Thus if you are looking for Burundi, India, Thailand or New Zealand you first have to find the appropriate continent.

With your permission I would make the appropriate corrections.

Afil 20:00, March 16, 2011 (UTC)

SMW again
Hi Robin,

It seems that Wikia is again experimenting with SMW. Can you kindly ask them to give us a warning and request our feedback? The good news is that a complex property like ancestors seem to working a little bit (as opposed to not at all for the last couple of months). The bad news is that the forms are all messed up and that simple properties like order of charlemagne have been wiped. rtol 16:18, March 18, 2011 (UTC)


 * I've contacted them. I guess that the problem is that the latest version of MediaWiki (installed on March 17) is incompatible with SMW. rtol 06:35, March 19, 2011 (UTC)

Hi. I am finding Familypedia confusing and difficult to use.

Recently two of my contributed articles stopped linking to each other, although they were linked before. The editing form for people also seems to have stopped working. KAmbrose 23:16, March 20, 2011 (UTC)

Broken Links
Thanks for your reply and for your encouragement. It seems that I can fix the broken link by re-entering the linked page.KAmbrose 03:04, March 21, 2011 (UTC)

Self
yes. they will get second names shortly. 91.104.3.196 10:46, March 24, 2011 (UTC)

Self
yes. 2nd names will be provided shortly. Arbuthnot 10:57, March 24, 2011 (UTC)

Willing to learn ...
Ok ... how do I access the template (form)? I'll use in the future ...

Also, where is the info pulling from on several of the Cowan pages that says "Ancestors were from the United Kingdom." How is "United Kingdom" defined? Isn't that overly broad?

Cowantex 17:06, April 10, 2011 (UTC)

Belcher patriarch and family
Hello Robin,

I am a Computer illiterate and am having problems just getting started. Reading instructions and understanding their meaning is beyond me. Charles Ernest Belcher is my G/father and he is firstly the father of Caroline Maggie Belcher (1870-1951). So I would like if possible to use him as the basis of creating a Family Tree with him as the figure head. He was married three times and my father was born of eight children to his third wife.

My e-mail address is :johbel@three.com.au and my telephone number 02 62586741 mobile 0427586741.johnbelcher06:44, April 17, 2011 (UTC)06:44, April 17, 2011 (UTC)Johnbelcher 06:44, April 17, 2011 (UTC)j06:44, April 17, 2011 (UTC)Johnbelcher


 * E-mailed reply. See grandfather's "descendants" page. -- Robin Patterson (Talk) 02:34, April 18, 2011 (UTC)

Redirecting Arbuthnot
Sir John Arbuthnot, 1st Baronet mis-redirects. Arbuthnot 16:03, April 17, 2011 (UTC)
 * It was the hyphen. Your first try was getting close. -- Robin Patterson (Talk) 02:34, April 18, 2011 (UTC)

A Genealogy Ontology
I found this website that you might find interesting. It had occured to me that since we have FOAF, friend of a friend, as a Semantic Web vocabulary then it only made sense to create a vocabulary for Genealogy. I think it would be a good idea to standardize how we specify properties. I often wonder what are the property names or the predicates used on sites like this - actually I'm not aware of other sites that combine the Semantic Web and an easy tool (wiki) for creating family tree or ancestry sites. Using forms here and because of templates much of the underlying properties, or annotations are hidden from the users.

So, please check out this site:

http://jay.askren.net/Projects/SemWeb/

Let me know what you think about whether this should be discussed on any particular mailing list, such as the SMW list. I guess that would be most appropriate. Isn't there a list associated with this site?

Thanks,

Bruce

Brucewhealton 03:04, May 2, 2011 (UTC)BruceWhealton


 * OK, I've read some of Jay's site. He gives no contact detail, so we don't know if he's still around. His wife's blog is the same, with the last entry seeming to be about a year ago.
 * Does seem interesting. He and Familypedia might be able to help one another. His various conversions from GEDCOM to other formats may be useful, though I expect he's not a puioneer there. But until I know how to contact Jay I don't have any idea where his projects might be discussed.
 * Property names are all in the property namespace. Not hidden. Help:Property, in its first paragraph, tells any interested user where to find them.
 * The automated welcome message that was probably the first thing on your talk page has a link to our mailing list.
 * -- Robin Patterson (Talk) 10:38, May 2, 2011 (UTC)

"New" Familypedia
Is there any plan to provide templates so as to more easily add/edit information? I found the "old" familypedia daunting but the "new" familypedia appears to require a degree in computer programming to use. Unless it is made easier, I'm afraid I no longer want to be a contributor or find it it useful and will probably delete my infomation if I can work out how to do that. yttaiga Yttaiga 14:07, May 2, 2011 (UTC)

Birth and death dates
You have recently corrected the title of one of my articles where, not knowing the birth year of a person I replaced in by a question mark. I am not objecting but in order not to repeat the error (this happens in many of the articles I have posted until now, I would like to know what the rules are.

Questions:

1. If the birth year and or death year are not known, do I simply omit it or put a question mark.

Examples (?-1501) or (-1501)

(1501-?) or (1501-)

(?-?) or (-) or   or nothing

2 Is there any difference between a person who is still living and a person whose death year is not know?

Example Does (1941-) mean that the person had died and the death year is not known or that the person is still living.

3. If the year is known with approximation the year is preceded by the letter c

Example: (c1500) and not (c.1500) or (c 1500).

In case the before and after is required, is the date preceded by the letter a and b or aft and bef

Example (1501-a1550) or (1501-aft1550)

(b1500-1579) or (bef1500-1579)

Maybe the rules are stated somewhere but I was probably not able to find them.

Regards

Afil 05:28, May 31, 2011 (UTC)

Van or van
The were two identical names, one with Van and the other with van. I don't know which is better, but as we are talking about father and son, there is no reason for a different spelling. I did this because Wikia differentiates between capital and non-capital letters. Afil 00:43, July 5, 2011 (UTC)


 * So you had no evidence on which to change what someone else had written. Better to leave the page alone in such a case? You say "there is no reason for a different spelling", but, without knowing which was "better", you had no reason for choosing to change one. Maybe I'll check with other descendants of Henrick. -- Robin Patterson (Talk) 05:23, July 5, 2011 (UTC)

Coefficient of inbreeding
The CoI is wrong because Wikia is messing with the code again. They changed the permitted depth of query (query-within-query-within-query-...) and as a result the CoI template returns nonsense.

I've been waiting for them to change the code again, but my patience is beginning to run thin.

I know that SMW is "not supported" by Wikia but it's been more like "sabotaged" recently. rtol 09:06, July 12, 2011 (UTC)


 * Do turn it off in SMW templates if it's bothering you. I used it as a check on Wikia, but I can do that elsewhere. rtol 10:35, July 12, 2011 (UTC)

Now working down the Arbuthnots the numbers seem to be getting higher. Makes me wonder whether the formula is treating people with no known parentage as having a "0.5" or "1.0". How else would one explain "Coefficient of inbreeding: 1.00925" (as on Sir William Arbuthnot's sister's sensor page)? I think I'll turn it off as suggested. -- Robin Patterson (Talk) 03:58, September 25, 2011 (UTC)

Language-related categories
What I am trying to do is to put some order into the categories.

The SpecialPages section indicates that there are over one thousand categories which are missing - i.e. which are not linked in any way. The situation is made worse by many articles in which the categories have been copied idiscriminately from wikipedia, by the images which have been copied with the Wikicommons categories which are different from Wikipedia and by the fact that some Wikia categories are different from the Wikipedia ones. I have succeded in practically including the required links to the categories which include 3 or more articles and have reduced the unlinked categories with 2 articles to about 600. My goal was to gradually eliminate all of these.

On the other hand, there are numerous categories which are not linked to any article and which, I assume, have been included in Wikia only in the hope that somehow, somebody will use them. This is also the case for the article you have quoted. I deleted it because there was no article who used this category and, as Wikia:Familypedia is written in English, I do not see how it would ever include an article written in Japanese. If it would, the article would be included in the Japanese language section - which theoretically could be created sometime. The similar language categories do not indicate when or how the categories should be used.

I do not find that the concern of putting order into the categories is a lot of fun and would gladly direct my efforts towards other concerns. But if nobody does it, the encyclopedia will gradually become more difficult to use. Afil 00:37, July 13, 2011 (UTC)

Settled and established
Dear Mr. Patterson,

I do not want to upset anybody nor to change the rules of Wikia and if I did something wrong, I strongly apologize.

What I am attempting to do is to put some order into the Categories of Wikia. You may have notices that there is a long list of Wanted categories which includes the categories which have no links. Until now I have been able to eliminate all the wanted categories which were linked to more than two articles (except for the ones which have appeared in the last days) and the number of wanted categories linked to two articles has diminished to under 200. It is not a very amusing exercise, but somebody has to do it.

What I have found out is that there are conflicting ways in which the categories system is used. Many of them are due to changes from Wikipedia others are due to different ways in which Wikipedia and Wikicommons use the categories. I am not a fan of Wikipedia and consider that most of the changes made in Wikia are benefic. I definitely consider that "Counties of Idaho" are better than the Wikipedia "Idaho Counties". Unfortunately, many of the categories have been transferred from Wikipedia without implementing the changes to the Wikia system, which I am attempting to do.

In the case you are raising, the basic issue is that the Wikipedia categories such as "settlements established in ..." has been changed in Wikia, sometimes to "settled in ..." sometimes to "established in... ". While both categories coexist, established is used more frequently. As the category applies not only to localities, but to "organizations, places and other things founded or established in ..." (I did not invent this definition), established seem more comprehensive. We can say that Canada was established in 1867, but hardly that Canada was settled in 1867. For this reason I preferred to use established.

I agree that settled is not identical with established, though established could also include settled. I have nothing against using both categories, but a rule would be necessary to indicate, where and when each should be used. At present this is confusing. I agree with your example (even if in the settlements template there are the categories est1, est2, est3 etc. included). I could come up with another example Sitka, Alaska where the article says: "The area was originally settled by the native Tlingit (Kolosh) Indians. Old Sitka was founded in 1799 by Alexandr Baranov". The article had the category "Settled in 1799", which basically contradicts the statements of the article. This is just to show that there is a confusion in how the categories are to be used.

Generally, when I replace a wikipedia category with a wikia category, I leave a categoryredirect statement. I found them in Wikia but I found them useful, especially as other contributors might not be aware of the differences and it is a simple way to indicate what they should to. In any case it is easier than to have pages of instructions on what is required.

Until the matter is settled - I have no preference, as long as a consistent solution is adopted - I will refrain from changing the settled in categories and will not make any more categoryredirect statements for these categories.

I hope that this takes care of your concerns.

Sincerely

Andrei Filotti Afil 21:22, August 9, 2011 (UTC)


 * OK, see Forum:Settlements and establishments. And people are all welcome to address me as "Robin". -- Robin Patterson (Talk) 05:15, August 10, 2011 (UTC)

Template
Dear Robin The template you are mentioning, as well as many other similar ones, are templates which are used - according to me in many cases without proper justification - to flag problems which some Wikipedians think they have identified in articles posted in Wikipedia. Some consider that parts of articles should be expanded, some consider that the references are insufficient, some indicate that the references are simply presented as a bibliography and not as footnotes and many others. Some but not all (as in the case of the history template you are mentioning) indicate when they have been flaged. There are frequent cases in which the templates have been posted in 2007 - 2009 and nothing has happened in the mean time, i.e no wikipedian has taken the trouble to take action on the matter, at least to confirm that the suggestion is correct or not.

I am firmly of the oppinion that we should not transfer those maintenance templates when we copy articles from wikipedia. In the articles I am transferring and even on those I am revising I generally eliminate these templates. First of all, the standards of Wikia are different than the ones for Wikipedia (for instance regarding references). The scope of Wikia - which is concentrating on genealogic issues - is different from Wikipedia's scope. There is no intention of having Wikia be a mirror copy of Wikipedia. Going into more basic issues, the template you are talking about is used in many cases to flag articles about the counties of America or the districts of India, considering that the data about the history of these entities are insufficient. At present there are over 3000 articles in Wikia which are using this template. It would be wishful thinking to assume that in the near future, the few active contributors to Wikia will concentrate on developing the history of all the districts in India and counties of the United States. Second, while articles on these geographic units are useful in Wikia, as they present links to the places where persons have worked, have been born or have died, an extensive presentation of the history of these units has no real genealogical value.

I would therefore advise that the template you are mentioning and other similar ones be not transferred from Wikipedia. If there are articles which need additional information with genealogical value, we should use the judgement of out own contributors. To make sure that the recommendation of adding historical information is generated by Wikia contributors and is not the result of an automatic transfer from Wikipedia, the best solution is to develop our own template, so that whoever encounters it will know that it is the recommendation of one of our contributors.

Sincerely

Andrei Filotti Afil 05:21, August 11, 2011 (UTC)

History
Dear Robin,

Even before your response I rechecked and became aware that the template is specific to Wikia. I have refrained from any other unwarranted deletions of the template. My concern is that the final scope is to improve the content of the articles, and am therefore unsatisfied by the mechanism in itself. The template indicates that something is missing. How can we ensure that gradually we get the missing information added to the various articles?

I want to assure you that in no way do I have the intention of rocking the boat. If I contribute to Wikia, I have the moral obligation to do my share in improving Wikia in whatever way I can. It is too simple just to add some articles on issues in which I am interested and leave the hard work for others. I do not have any other ambitions.

Maybe I did not find the best ways to help. As you are one of the pillars of Wikia and have a much more extensive experience in dealing with the problems of Wikia, I would welcome any suggestions on what I could more efficiently do to really help. I don't believe in confrontation and hope that whatever actions I took, were not interpreted as such. So I am willing to follow your leadership and think that any attempt, as a newcomer, not to recognize the tremendous efforts which were necessary to develop Wikia to where it is at present, would be wrong.

Sincerely

Andrei FilottiAfil 02:51, August 12, 2011 (UTC)

Wierdness on the wiki
This person, Ellen 1975, http://familypedia.wikia.com/wiki/User:Ellen1975 made an edit on one of my pages. Gave someone a second name I didn't know about. Seemed perfectly plausable because I didn't know that person at all really. I left a polite message asking if she was related because I didn't know the second name. Finally came back in to have a look at it again, went to Ellen's page and first noticed her pic is labelled 'me in 1889'. Ok, maybe typo. Clicked on 'view photo details' and found the same photo is used on more than 100 pages. User pages. They all have the same photo. My first thought is it's some idiot training people to use wikis and they all use a pic that has been provided but it's also a huge enormous red flag that all the edits by these people aren't real. I wonder how much more of this crap there is on here? I've undone the edit on the page of my aunt but someone needs to undo the edits on all the pages these morons have damaged.

Jayoval 21:22, August 13, 2011 (UTC)

That's a default image??? Use the logo! Or something generic! How confusing is that? Lots of sites use a default image and it isn't a pic of a real person.

27.32.48.153 20:06, August 14, 2011 (UTC)


 * As I said in reply to Jayoval, it was a default image for a while (ending in October 2010), and those people probably didn't see their user pages and cannot therefore be treated as morons. The caption should be enough to alert anyone to the unreality of at least part of the presentation. Anyone who wants to change them all to File:Placeholder, as used on new pages now - see User:Kenlukus for example, is welcome to do so. -- Robin Patterson (Talk) 07:50, August 25, 2011 (UTC)

"Burials" or "Buried"
Should our categories be called "Burials in ..." or "Buried in ..."? I thought the latter is analogous to our "Born in ...", "Died in ..." etc. Thurstan 06:35, August 25, 2011 (UTC)


 * The latter is indeed in line with some of our deliberate departures from Wikimedia. However, in this case the difference is slight (with only one more character to type) and we have only six "Buried" but a screenful of "Burials" and both Wikipedia and Commons have (at least at higher levels) "Burials...": see Category:Burials by country. I'm willing to change the six if we (to preserve harmony, simplify copying, and encourage a prolific newbie) agree on that. Note that it is currently "Burials in" for a settlement or territory etc but "Burials at" for a cemetery or other burial ground: useful and natural-looking distinction, I think. We could copy most of this discussion to a forum for easier reference, with links to and from Forum:Cemeteries and Semantic MediaWiki. -- Robin Patterson (Talk) 07:39, August 25, 2011 (UTC)

Categories
Dear Robin

I have completed the work on the categories and - except for new entries - there are only isolated categories (having only one article) - which are not linked to the other categories.

If you want me to, I can continue maintaining the categories. Otherwise I will work on other projects, provided I get an understanding on how familypedia works so that I do not continue doing stupid things.

Regards

Andrei

Reply to First Time
Thanks for your message. I dont know your friend, but I can add people going back to about 1250 that may interest him

I can confirm that Andrew, Frederick and Charles were joint owners of a woolen business named "Avison Brothers". I am a descendent of Frederick, my gg grandfather

Barry Avison aka BazzaDeaf

81.96.98.167 18:09, August 31, 2011 (UTC)

Robin, I saw where you were looking for info on William Lockerbie Thomson. His brother, Hugh Mair was my Great great grandfather. We have a family group with alot of info and photos on myfamily.com.

If you would like to see them, let me know and I will get you on the site.

Joe Kirkpatrick198.207.222.134 18:41, October 5, 2011 (UTC)

[mailto:joekir49@yahoo.com joekir49@yahoo.com]

hi there

i didnt edit page

twas looking around .. i have the family in main tree.. re india and connections

laura

William Reierson Arbuthnot and Mary Helen Anstruther connection

Ronald Reagan
Some time ago you created the article Ronald Reagan (1911-2004). After that the article Ronald Wilson Reagan (1911-2004) was created about the same person. This article has several linked articles: /tree /descendants /biography etc. I have tried to transfer some of the linked articles to the Ronald Reagan (1911-2004) which you have created. The descendants and biography articles are there but they do not show in the bar of the main article. I am probably doing something wrong.

Maybe you could look at the problem. In any case, as we are talking about the same person, we should have only one article with the apropriate links (tree, descendants, biography etc.) and not two. I have chosen the title you have created but have no preference regarding the title to be selected, as long as there is a single one.Afil 21:29, October 28, 2011 (UTC)

I have fixed it to redirect to the older version (Ronald Wilson Reagan (1911-2004)). Thurstan 21:37, October 28, 2011 (UTC)

Dear Robin,

I must object to the procedures which are used in Wikia. In the case above, I was attempting to eliminate a duplication which existed for some time in Wikia. This implied the selection of one of the two coexisting alternatives. If Thurstan had a different opinion he could have simply informed me about it instead of blocking my access to some of the articles without informing me of what I was doing wrong. Is there any way in which we can use civilized ways of communicating instead of taking punitive measures which I do not understand.

Are there any rules of civilized conduit in Wikia or do we apply the law of the jungle?

I am extremely upset about such procedures. Maybe I was wrong in trying to work with Wikifamily. I have had some contributions to Wikia and do not understand why some of the contributors are entitled to take arbitrary measures without any explanation. I do not want to have any kind of dispute, but would like to know how such conflicts can be solved without escaladating.

Andrei

Thank you for your message. The entire issue is due to a communication gap. At present it is old history.Afil 05:19, November 18, 2011 (UTC)

hi

sorry i have nt been working on tree or sites of late because i have been sick again\

this time shingles in the eye\

picture of me re eye on facebook

Wikipedia attribution
Is there a standard template we use when we migrate a biography from Wikipedia to Familypedia? Richard Arthur Norton I 21:03, November 30, 2011 (UTC)

Help needed
Dear Robin,

I tried to do something quite simple, i.e to copy the Template:President of the Senate of Romania from Wikipedia to Familypedia. The result is that for some reason I cannot read the file I copied. The system simply gives no output. This is valid also for the file Constantin Bosianu (1815-1882) which uses this template. I did not include the file names in brackets because I was afraid of screwing up your talk page too.

I get the same results with all browsers I tried: Firefox, Explorer or Google Chrome.

What am I doing wrong and how can I get rid of this problem?

Thank you in advance for your help.

Andrei Afil 06:03, December 12, 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your assistance. It works now.Afil 21:08, December 12, 2011 (UTC)


 * I didn't achieve anything, as far as I know. Thurstan seems to have fixed things - http://familypedia.wikia.com/index.php?title=Template:President_of_the_Senate_of_Romania&diff=next&oldid=697954. I wonder whether there are many other templates that should have the same treatment; if there are, we should create a help page or an addition to some other page. -- Robin Patterson (Talk) 23:35, December 12, 2011 (UTC)

Forumheaders
I have reverted the deleted Forumheader.

My point was that if a forum is suggested in 2007, such as Talk about the Seraikela Kharsawan district and nobody has anything to say about it, I simply do not see that anybody is interested in this forum. Assuming somebody is interested in this Forum, the existence of these Fora should be clear and contributors should be invited to participate. I am contributing to Familypedia for nearly a year and have probably been one of the most active contributors. However this is the first time I ran across such a Forumheader and even then I did not understand what its scope was. Will anybody ever participate in such discussions. And even if somebody does, will there be somebody else who answers, as a forum implies a debate?

On the start page there is a Forum window which opens several subwindows such as Help desk, Water cooler, etc. Not the slightest indication that there are various subjects open for discussion.

How are the subjects which justify a forumheader selected. A very short look at the list shows that the subjects are mainly settlements, counties or districts from the United States and a selected few countries. Why only those? Why not also settlements or other territorial units from France, Germany, Poland, Russia and Egypt? Why do we have fora only for geographic units. If this is a site specializing on genealogies, why is the main topic not that of families who have their trees in Familypedia?

Maybe the answers to these questions are somewhere. But if they are they are not easy to find.

Therefore it is difficult to understand why we have hundreds of forum topics with no inputs at all on the talk pages.

Afil 03:14, December 18, 2011 (UTC)

Uncategorized categories
I may have contributed to some of them but not on all.

If you look at the existing ones, some definitely should be deleted:


 * some are simply carried over by copying from Wikipedia, such as "Articles lacking in-text citations" simply because Wikifamily does not require in-text citations. This is also valid for "Articles with obsolete information", "Articles to be merged", "Articles with trivia information", "References cleanup" a.o. If there are no articles for which these categories are used I do not see any reason for keeping them,

I really think that such categories are not useful in Familypedia.
 * some are hardly required and have been carried over mostly from wikicommons with various images. Such as "Chicken in heraldry" or "red, blue, white flags".


 * Some are incorrect, such as People from Switzerland which should be People of Switzerland (which is the form applied by Familypedia for all other countries and which exists already in Familypedia.

They should be deleted, but I cannot do it myself as I do not have administrator privileges.

Some are remains of the discussion we had about naming the categories simply Settled (or established) in... or Settlements established in .... or States or Territories established in... My understanding was that the acceptable categories for Familypedia were Settled in .... or Established in .... But I agree that the discussion has not led to any conclusion.

There are however categories which need further categorization such as Churches in Bulgaria, Marginal Seas of the Atlantic Ocean or others. There are however many uncaracterized articles which are not categories.

I was trying to put some order in the categories. But I have not been active in this field recently, because I do not want to disturb anybody. Just tell me what you want me to do, if anything, or tell me to keep away and not touch categories.Afil 03:52, December 18, 2011 (UTC)

Dear Robin

I posted the discussion on uncategorized pages as you have recommended.

But the selection of the hydroelectric plants category as potentially uninteresting is really a low blow under the belt. You chose the category which refers to an article about a hydroelectric plant in whose construction I was myself directly involved. It may not be the greatest plant in the world, but as a young engineer I helped building it.

Take this comment as a joke. I know there was no mischief meant. But my involvement in the construction of the plant is true.

Afil 19:12, December 19, 2011 (UTC)

Merry Christmas
Merry Christmas to you too Robin. And Happy New Year. It is nearly a year since I started contributing to Wikifamily. I hope I was not too much of a nuisance. Anyway I enjoyed it and if it is OK with you I hope to continue in 2012.

And I like receiving messages from you. It makes me feel less a stranger in your collectivity.

Again Merry Christmas

Andrei

Response
I also agree that including all the "established" into a single category is far from being the best solution. I did not invent this but simply applied a solution which had been implemented before and which I followed for consistency. The present solution is far from being the best and a decision should be taken on what should be done in Wikifamily. However, one of the problem which we are facing is that in Wikifamily we use information taken partly from Wikipedia and partly from Wikicommons. Each uses a different way of defining categories, and they are conflicting. They cannot both coexist.

In cases such as populated places, Wikifamily seems to have adopted settlements. I have no preference for any of these (well maybe I prefer settlements but that is besides the point. But if until now thousands of categories have adopted "settlements", accepting "populated places" for a few new ones makes little sense. Categories are necessary to anybody who is looking for certain information and is not aware of the title of existing articles. If they are not consistent, there is no reason to use them at all.

In our previous discussion you raised the question of the difference between settled and established, which I understood and I have not done any changes regarding there categories.

For the time being I am using the system which seems to have been applied by my predecessors for naming various categories, regardless of the fact that they comply with Wikipedia, Wikicommons or have been specifically designed for Wikifamily. For other cases, I generally use Wikipedia (except for cases where there are obvious errors in Wikipedia, when I omit such links).

I am willing to participate in any forum or discussion regarding these issues and to follow any rule which is established or which you prefer to adopt. If you want to revert from the unique established to different ones, I have no objections as long as we find a way to change the existing categories to the new ones. If you prefer populated places I again have no objection, as long as we find a way to change the existing settlements to populated places. I am only trying to be consistent. That's all. Afil 01:17, February 10, 2012 (UTC)

Persons
I have requested some advice from Rtol on the information regarding births, deaths and marriages in various localities. I have since discovered that you had also created a separate page to deal with this problem. As you have also sent comments on this matter to Rtol, this is just to inform you that I have responded to Rtol. I agree that a discussion on the matter would be advisable.Afil 02:06, February 14, 2012 (UTC)


 * Good. I got an email saying you had commented on rtol's talk page. -- Robin Patterson (Talk) 02:50, February 14, 2012 (UTC)

Valid name
I have contacted Thurstan with some questions on the Valid name categories. However he has indicated that these categories and their use has been initiated by Phlox who seems not to be active any more.

However some questions remain unanswered. I am not sure if these categories are in use any more and if any action regarding them is required. I have the feeling that Phlox is not active any more. Any suggestions?

Afil 02:23, February 14, 2012 (UTC)


 * Those categories are important for people such as me who use the input form. They facilitate autocompletion. No action regarding them is required or at present desired, as far as I know, though some of the documentation could be better. While I'm still active, I can look after them and I expect others can if necessary. Ask me questions about them if you like - possibly on the talk page of the highest-level one would be the best place, so that anyone interested is likely to see. (I have been trying to interest Phlox in resuming active service.) -- Robin Patterson (Talk) 02:50, February 14, 2012 (UTC)


 * I posted the questions in the Talk Page of Category:Valid name- nation as recommended. Afil 02:17, February 15, 2012 (UTC)

BDM

 * See Trnava. The little command should be turned into a template once we agree on a name for the subpage. bdm is fine with me. rtol 06:18, February 14, 2012 (UTC)

Ferenc Cseszneky de Milvány et Csesznek
Dear Robin, Some time ago you posted the article Ferenc Cseszneky de Milvány et Csesznek. I have run across another article Count Ferenc Cseszneky de Milvány et Csesznek regarding the same person. This is just to inform you so that you take the appropriate decision on how to merge the articles. If I used my judgement, I would not use the title of the second one, but this is up to you. The information in both articles is incomplete and could be completed from the site. Therefore the years 1876-1924 should be added to the title according to Familypedia standards.

I can merge the two articles, make the appropriate corrections and complete the information, but do not want to do anything which would not be acceptable to you as author of the first article.

Regards Afil 22:45, February 23, 2012 (UTC)