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)

unrelated thanks
Dear Robin,

I'm writing to thank you for providing a missing piece of a puzzle in a kindly suggestion you made on the blog "Loopy Mummy" in 2006. My father, now 70, of Christchurch NZ, remembered a fragment of a verse of the kids' song "roll up, stagger up" (etc) which none of the rest of us knew: "Adam was the first man, or so we all believe". Your post provided the rest of that missing verse.

It's interesting to note the evolution of these um, "naughty" songs over time and distance. I grew up in Dunedin in the seventies - eighties and noted some minor differences between the chorus I learned, and yours (hide versus park one's beer behind the door), but an overwhelming similarity between the two when contrasted with American versions of the song I found on the internet.

If you can recall any other particularly memorable verses, please drop me an email at krnntp@gmail.com!

Best - KR, now in the USA

French
Hi Robin,

First of all I am pleased to talk to you since I have been reading carefully all the comments you made on my contributions to the site. It is taking me a while to figure out exactly what I am doing wrong, especially on reference matters, but with your help things are now getting clearer.

After a bit of struggling with ways to make my contributions exploitable in french and english I came to the conclusion that it might be impossible. First of all, the names of places are different in french and english. That was my first concern. I see that you are adding the suffix (fr) to the french pages but I foresee it might become extremely time consuming to keep a parallel page in french, not saying almost impossible to find them in a regular search.

Also, the accentuation might be a problem as well. I am struggling here myself with an english keyboard to make sure that all words are spelled correctly, with proper accents. I can only imagine someone not too familiar with this particularity of the french language trying to find a relative. To my mind, this way of spelling is irrespectful for an english speaking user, inside his own english site.

But the worst problem I had so far is when I told my relatives to look at what I did and the pages appeared only in english, apart from the text that I wrote. It seems that part of the pages will appear in french only for someone who is logged-in to the site having specified french as the main language. For the non-logged-in people the site remains in english. It is not really useful for french readers.

For all these reasons I have created my own french wikia. It is called fr.wikia.com/wiki/Familles. I know I will struggle quite a lot to set it up properly but I am ready to spend the time to do it. I wish you will allow me to use the same format as yours so both wikia can be linked together. I am not interested of building something parallel to yours. I know that there are many french canadian who emmigrated to the states, even a lot in my own family, and it would be nice if I can refer all the english links to your site. It will still take me a bit of time to get acquainted with the wikia format and to build all the templates and it will not be before a while I can do any links. I am confident that at that time this thing can work if you will allow me. I see that you are involved with many wikis but so you know, if you have time for another one you are very welcome.

Thanks again for your help so far. I will still be working on your site to make the requested corrections.

Regards

Serge Beaudet

New user
Hi Robin,

Thanks for the friendly welcome that you posted to my talk page! First, let me answer your question: I discovered this wiki because a few days ago I had the brainstorm that a Wikipedia-style genealogy site would be a fabulous thing - a way to incorporate structured data about people and their relationships, interesting narratives, and critical analyses of sources, while allowing active collaboration (over the years, I have tried many genealogy software packages and online sites, and found none to be really satisfactory). After spending some time thinking about how such a wiki might be set up, I googled "genealogy wiki" to see if it had been done before... leading me to this site!

I'm still experimenting to see whether this will fit my needs, but I am impressed with the structure that you and the other admins have created here, especially the info templates. This is the first time I've contributed to a public wiki, so learning about how to use templates and so on has been a steep learning curve... I've found much useful information by random-walking through the documentation, although sometimes I find it hard to find a given piece of information again!

I have some specific questions that might be more appropriate on other pages - they are general enough, I think, that I will put them in forum posts.

Bruce Kendall 05:59, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks
Afraid I don't read things on here as much as I should. I just plug away. Only saw today that someone didn't like my color scheme (from over a year ago). Hopefully my new template version will be ok. I change my old pages as I run across them. Been going pedigree gaga since I ran across the code on someone's page. I will try to read things more often. Thanks Will 06:47, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

and it all connects together....
Tamar Jane Rose (1865-1923) is 2nd cousin 3 times removed to Olive Lillian Sparkes (1893-1965) who married Cecil Reginald T J Forlonge (1886-c1946), ?who is a distant cousin of Robin Patterson? (sorry, I didn't have the energy to put all that on the chart).

Thurstan 10:55, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm not back
I just got an email cemetery inquiry as I do from time to time and thought it easier to create: http://genealogy.wikia.com/wiki/Palmer_Cemetery,_McCormick_County,_South_Carolina,_USA than to explain it to this person some other way. I don't think I messed anything up big time, but I'd appreciate it if you'd double-check. I have been out of it for a while, and likely not to be back for a while again. I can summon the energy and focus for little things (with the help of 1500 mg of Vicodin), but then things seem to unravel. If you need to reply or otherwise get in touch, it's best to email me. Hope you are well.

Cheers, Zeph   Zephyrinus 21:43, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Cheers mate
I have been a little involved in other matters and feel rather guilty about not returning to help out. If there are any pressing bot runs or other things that sorely need fixing, leave me your top list at my talk page. Thanks Robin - ~  Ph l o x  01:51, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Ok. I dropped a note to him.  I am pretty happy with the way things turned out on the politics front.  It may take a while to get things straightened out.  Hey- I forgot where you lived- somewhere up on the north island?  - ~  Ph l o x   05:57, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Harriet Brown (1833-1913)
Hi Robin

Thanks for fixing up the page. Hopefully I will improve as I go along. I have made of few more pages going off Harriet's that are probably incorrect too. I have made two pages for Harriet's son Kenneth because the oringinal year of birth I had been given for him was incorrect, and not being able to update the URL I made a new page instead. Is it possible for you to delete his record with the birth year as 1908? I also made two pages for his daugher Valerie,(correct spelling) as I spelt her name incorrectly as ValArie when I first entered it in. Is it possible to get rid of that page too? (121.223.195.211 19:17, 24 February 2009 (UTC))

harriet brown (1833-1913)
Hi Robin I sent an early message but think I signed off wrong with the tildes. can you let me know if you got a message regarding Harriet and her son Kenneth. If not I will send it again. Beverley 19:28, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Hi Robin,

I am in England, Staple Hill, Bristol, about 25 miles from Uley where my branch of the Baglin's lived for centuries, and just a few minutes walk away from where they set up a 111 acre farm in the 1850s.

The reason I'm up early is that I'll be in Birmingham today on business, and I have to catch a train at the crack of dawn, so I don't want to be in bed and risk not getting up on time.

Anyway thanks for you help. As you may have noticed I've put in a lot pf practice on the Thomas Baglin article and expanded the Baglin name article a little too; so over the weekend I can move onto his children and go from there.

A couple of questions

1. I've made reference to place in the article e.g. Uley, Cam etc, which are local villages covered in Wikipedia. I assume I would make a link to each of these from the article itself rather than treating Wikipedia as external links to be listed at the bottom. I've already added Uley as a Wikipedia link on Thomas' page.

2. When uploading family photos of ancestors (which were taken decades before any of us where born) obviously I can't declare I took them myself, I assume they would be clasified as public domain?

If you do check the page out for Thomas Baglin and have any tips or advice I'd be interested in your feedback.

Arthur Nathanville 04:36, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Newspaper Photos
Can I ask whether a newspaper photo of a relative taken over 50 years ago is public domain or not e.g. should we or shouldn't we upload such photos of our relatives if we have a copy?

Nathanville 15:38, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Delete Duplicate Record
Hi Robin, I accidently created a duplicate record again e.g.

Ernest Raymond Russ (1929-?) Ernest Raymond Russ(1929-?)

I would appreciate it if you could delete the second, unwanted record, or let me know how it's done?

Also, thanks for introduction me to this site; it's given me a good chance cross reference old data which has highlighted facts which were not previously too obvious. For your information I've just completed the main family branch on my mother's father's father side, and once I've added a few Russ's I can start on my mother's father's mother's line before going onto my mother's mother side of the family, and eventually reaching Thomas Arthur VC (real name Thomas McArthur). Nathanville 02:35, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Moving Articles, &Co.

 * Robin's responses interspersed with the standard indents

1. Thanks Robin, I took your advice and moved the duplicate page to the wife of his father - Ivy Daisy Violet Hazel (1884-1962) but now notice there's no surname index for Hazel?
 * See below. R

2. Also, some of my Articles, which I shall be starting on shortly, will need an index box on the page; are they easy to insert into an exisiting article page?
 * "Index box"? If you mean "infobox", the sort you get on an article that has an "info page", yes. Thurstan has been doing several of those every day lately. R

REPLY to R I'm not sure I do but it looks useful. What I mean is on some article pages for an individual, near the top, is a table that lists the contents on the page, and has hyperlinks to each heading further down the page e.g. for easy navigation on the page!

3. Thanks for your feedback, I guess that IT being my profession and my hobbie helps. And I do find the Wikia language a lot easier than some computer languages which I've needed a basic understanding for in the past. I never really got to grips with visual basic, although I did become fluent in Malard Basic many years ago, and I find html quite easy.
 * I was once fluent in Commodore Basic v3.5. Then Commodore stopped making computers. R

It also helps that, on my mother's side all my immediate blood relatives were middle class and therefore I have a wealth of family history to add to the article pages.
 * I had both sides like that; makes more work for descendants but more history than chart in the result. R

4. Yes I intend to go back to Multiply and give them a nudge, but not while the iron is hot, I thought I would let them ponder first and have another go later e.g. I've kept a copy of the blog so that I can go back to it; I would like to get John on Multiply interested as he's quite computer literate and has his own genealogy website.
 * Maybe it's time for me to tell them you seem happy here and to give them a link to your contributions! R

REPLY to R - Thanks, There's also another blog on Multiply, in the Lost Ancestors Group, which I got Linda to start; these users are having difficulties with this site so I thought I would plug it with some of my experiences and tips etc; bit by bit to keep the topic live.

5. I notice that some articles are copied from Wikipedia to here e.g. Uley; should the Thomas Arthur VC article be moved over ready for when I create an Article on him as Thomas McArthur (real name), as he is quite a close relative of mine that I have a lot of family history on, which is not on Wikipedia; or should I just make a link to him on Wikipedia when I get around to doing that article.
 * I firmly believe in using Wikipedia articles and adding genealogy to them - as for my g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-gt-uncle Oliver Cromwell (and deleting a little if they are places, such as detailed weather statistics and current sports teams). Use usedwp.

AMENDMENT to MESSAGE.

Just noticed that Ivy Daisy Violet Hazel has eneded back in the RUSS surname list. Therefore I assume I should move the page again, but to someone with Russ as a surname?

STET last message - I've succesfully moved Ivy Hazel's page away from the Russ listing. All that's now needed is a surname index for Hazel.
 * I presume/hope you did that by changing the surname in Surname. If by "surname index" you mean "surname category", you can create that: see top of page. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 23:36, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

REPLY to R I'm not sure, but when I opened the article for Ivy Hazel I had a message that her /INFO page was missing; so I created one and everything seemed to then fall into place! - N.B. As I develop the family pages here, I'm adding appropiate links back to them as appropiate from my main website, again from the appriopate webpages. Which I find useful, for quick access for myself, and hopefully others.

Arthur Nathanville 15:34, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Ivy Daisy Violet Hazel
Further to our discussion, I did a seach and found this redundant /info page -

http://genealogy.wikia.com/wiki/Ernest_Raymond_Russ%281929-%3F%29/info

which redirects to Ivy Hazel's page, and perhaps explains why the message said an /info page didn't exist when I first opened Ive Hazel's article page, and why subsequently I created a new one?

Therefore, what should we do with this redunant page at -

http://genealogy.wikia.com/wiki/Ernest_Raymond_Russ%281929-%3F%29/info

Nathanville 08:54, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Blank Tables
Hi Robin,

I have to go and cook the tea now (evening meal). However, I just started on an Article page for George Burgess (1829-1905) and would like to put the following into a blank table on the page. Is that something that's easy to do?

YEAR BUSINESS ADDRESS 1862-1862 8 Lower Arcade 1863-1864 2 Lower Arcade 1869-1870 38 Upper Arcade 1871-1875 20 Lower Arcade 1878-1878 13 Lower Arcade 1879-1888 23 Upper Arcade<BR> 1889-1901 8 Lower Arcade<BR>

Nathanville 17:39, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

New Surname Index Required
Robin,

Found a brother of Thomas Baglin (1725-?) started by someone else so I added their mother Mary Peglar so that the two brothers can be linked. However, there is no surname index for Peglar yet.

http://genealogy.wikia.com/wiki/Mary_Peglar_%28c1705-%3F%29

N.B. Peglar's and Pegler's belong to the same family e.g. Mary Peglar's father was Pegler not Peglar - I don't know if this is important in the surname index e.g. variations in names?

Arthur Nathanville 01:30, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Surnames Articles and Category
Robin,

I tried following your instructions (copied below) but obviously did something wrong e.g. I now have an Article page for Peglar created but not a category and therefore the Peglar surname is still not in the surname index. I also seem to have the details of the category in on the Article page?

Can you please give guidance/help to put it as it should be e.g. Peglar with variant of Pegler etc.

<i>Surname categories and articles Arthur, you can create any surname category you like. We have about 3,000. Rootsweb Surname List has a million surnames. So please help! It's easy.

At the bottom of your Pegler or Peglar page I presume you now see a link to its category. Probably in red unless some keen helper has already done it for you. Whatever colour it is, click it.

If the category has been created, it should have a link to the matching article and a brief explanation; read the explanation then follow the link. If it has not been created, please read the "sitenotice" near the top of the screen, starting with "Please note that SURNAME CATEGORIES ...". Once you reach the article page, you should see or can produce quite a lot of material, nearly all made from pasting in a template found at Template:SurnameArticle/doc. If you're creating the page, the only essential is to drag the surname down to follow "Surname =".

If nobody has beaten you to it, you can add the ar/er variant spelling after "Variant1 =".

Save and admire. Then click on the variant spelling and repeat the whole process for that surname. Did I say it was easy? </i>

Nathanville 07:17, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Squidoo
<i>Robin said: - "Early riser again, I see! (Do you really have a day job?!) And still tinkering with that five-star article.

I've created a Squidoo page. Any expert user is welcome to improve it. Check out the rankings of that FamilyPedia lens! "</i>

REPLY:- Yes, I'm not an early riser by nature, I'm what's called a 'night owl, but at the moment I'm keen to get the hub of my family on FamilyPedia e.g. all my direct ancestors, where possible, back to at least my Great-great-grandparents, in some cases further; where I have the 'family history'. Once done I can then catch up on the mounting of emails, mostly genealogy related; I get about 30 a week about my family tree and try to update the tree on my Nathanville website www.nathanville.co.uk about once a month via GedCom; it keeps me busy.

Tinkering with the 'five-star article'; I was trying out various was to get the 'contents box' to sit at the top of the page without it screwing up other content when viewed at different IE7 window sizes e.g. full and sized.

Yes I do have a full time job (in ICT); 5 days a week, 37 hours per week flexi time; at the moment the job demands travelling once or twice a week, going into the office a couple days a week and working from home one or two days a week, so the actual hours are very varied! Reference the 'Ralph (WOOTTON) OATEN' you mentioned. He's at the pinnacle of the Oaten family, over 700 names on my family tree, linked to the Burgess side of the family through marriage via the Stickler line. The Oaten's is the pet project of Gordon Oaten. Once I've completed my hub on FamilyPedia I intend to let Gordon know about this place and maybe, if he feels confident enough he might have a go at putting some of his Oaten's on the tree - I know he has plenty of history on them.

In fact soon, I'll go through my archive of genealogy emails and contact as many people as I can from them and let them know about this site.

Will do; I'll just grab a coffee and then have a look on Squidoo before getting back to my FamilyPedia pages.

Nathanville 05:35, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Squidoo
The Article itself is great. http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Robin_Forlonge_Patterson

Attract more people to your lens, and keep them there: -

1.	Join as many Genealogy Groups as possible e.g. apply to join mine at: -

http://www.squidoo.com/groups/victorian

2.	Add a picture to the lens title so that it feeds through as an icon to any listings on Squidoo e.g. people are more likely to click on a lens in a search list if it has an icon.

3.	Where you have web addresses make them hyperlinks by adding the html code in the module e.g. like the sample below (but without the opening and closing speech marks.

“<a href="http://www.nathanville.co.uk/index.htm" target="_blank">Nathanville Web Site</a>”

A ‘Link List Module’ has a text box at the top, allows you to include as many urls as you like with a full text description of each one, without having to use the above html code.

4.	Add a ‘Poll Module’ somewhere at the bottom of the lens.

5.	Also add a ‘Links Voting (Plexo)’ allows you and others to add web links and vote on them.

6.	Plenty of RSA/RSS modules to choose from e.g. Google Blog Search. In all of them you can add genealogy as the tag, or try wikia etc.

7.	For more pictures at the bottom you could use the ‘Flickr Photos’ Module and let Flickr choose using genealogy as the tag.

http://www.squidoo.com/lensmaster/new_workshop/nathanville uses all of the above.

8.	If there is any Wikipedia article you would like to include then add a ‘Wikipedia module’ near the bottom of the lens.

9.	If you have any blog site that generate RSS e.g. your Multiply page does, then you can add a ‘RSS: Add your blog’ module at the bottom of the lens; I use one for my Multiply pages on several of my Squidoo lenses.

If you get stuck with any of the modules or can't find them then please let me know. Nathanville 06:39, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Baglin Family
I don't know if you noticed but someone else added a couple of Baglin's a few days ago, father and daughter. The father being the brother of the Thomas Baglin (1725-?), so I've since linked the two families via their mother Mary Peglar (c1705-?); although I don't have any history to add to this other line.

Small World!

Nathanville 11:31, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Layout of Page
Hi Robin,

If you get a moment would you have a quick look at Lillian Maud England (1879-1958) and let me know whether you think the layout is ok, or suggest any tweaking!

If you're too busy not to worry, it's not too important.

Nathanville 17:06, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

New user responds
I found this site while I was looking at the history of the Edward Doty article on Wikipedia. A link to Edward Doty (bef1600-1655) on the Familypedia had been deleted from the article, but I was able to recover the link and follow it. I have a lot of genealogical data collected over many years and the wiki format looks to me like the best way to share it. Thanks for pointing out the spaces around the hyphen in the subpage titles. Actually the main page title had an inappropriate space...anyway it's fixed now. Next I will start using info pages.--DennisDoty 00:56, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Inputbox improvement?
It is not clear to me that the extra features amount to much. What I feel is needed is a way of creating an article by specifying on a form the person name, YoB and YoD (as 3 seperate fields), and having the code behind it create the title for you. This helps prevent the creation of articles entitled "John Smith (1870-?)" whose first text says "John Smith was born in 1869 and died in 1912", as well as all the variants. These seem to be the things that first-timers have trouble with.
 * "John Smith(1869-1912)" and
 * "John Smith (1869 - 1912)"

Thurstan 11:08, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Moving Date
Hi Robin, how do I move a date, and keep everything neat, and ensure all related Articles stay linked e.g. Edwin Stickler (1842-1867) was born in 1844 not 1842? Last time I tried I mucked everything up, if you remember!

Nathanville 16:49, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Disambiguation
Robin,

You helpfully set up disambiguation pages on Baglin's, I now have a load to do on Stickler's including double names if that can be done e.g. Thomas Arthur. I have the template but where do I apply it e.g. I need a new blank page to put the template in and should I be aware of anything else that coulde cause problems in edit and save of the template?

Nathanville 03:42, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Persons /info page
Is there a bug on the system at the moment?

I was trying to change some date on the info page Nehemiah Baglin (1730-1801)/info for Nehemiah Baglin (1730-1801). And each time I save the info page and go back to the main article the links for his parents, and spouse are gone. Even if I go to edit and then save without physically making any changes to the page the same thing happens?

Nathanville 17:09, 18 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Sounds bad. It may be a bug. Ask more recent editors. I'll be back here after morning shower. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 22:24, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

(see also Forum:Problem with info templates)

The problem /info pages has been fiddled with at the bottom, with " " broken out into a line of it own (so adding a spurious "new line" to the values returned by "get"). Compare successive revisions:
 * http://genealogy.wikia.com/index.php?title=Nehemiah_Baglin_%281730-1801%29/info&oldid=226850 (Revision as of 17:46, 7 March 2009 by Nathanville)
 * http://genealogy.wikia.com/index.php?title=Nehemiah_Baglin_%281730-1801%29/info&oldid=230035 (Revision as of 03:42, 19 March 2009 by Nathanville)

I can't find where the change was made and who did it (it is the same sort of damage as the last bot run did to various templates, by fiddling with where the "category" operations occur). Has there been some sort of "stealth" bot run? Or was one of the "models" changed?

The quick fix is to delete the "newline" which occurs before the last " ".

The "proper" fix is to convert (at the bottom of the /info page):

back to

as it was originally.

Thurstan 04:44, 19 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Here, I think, is the edit that moved it out to the bottom (possibly in the misguided belief that it is important to have categories right at the bottom):
 * http://genealogy.wikia.com/index.php?title=Nehemiah_Baglin_%281730-1801%29/info&diff=next&oldid=226850
 * — Robin Patterson (Talk) 05:03, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

I tried the suggestion above but it didn't work? Nathanville 08:29, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Hi Robin,

I see the death dates for Nehemiah Baglin (1730-1818) has been corrected, thanks. But you seem to have the same problem as me e.g. if you look at the page, the links for father, mother and spouse in the info box are no longer working?

Nathanville 10:34, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

I just fixed Nehemiah Baglin (1730-1818): the other trap that people may be falling into is that if you change the /info page, and go back to the main page, it occasionally does not update. You have to check by going into "edit" for the main page, and look at "preview". If that is now fixed, then you have to purge the cache. I thought of all this because that's what I just had to do with Nehemiah Baglin (1730-1818).

Thurstan 11:04, 19 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I suspect that you were actually just fixing Llewellyn/info. At the same time as I was. You did less, and finished first. I may not bother finding my work and grafting it on. Tell you what, though, I'm still puzzled about all those square brackets. Did you actually do something for them apart from cache-clearing? — Robin Patterson (Talk) 11:20, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Here is an example of the problem: Samuel Doty (1679-aft1746) Comparing the infopage Samuel Doty (1679-aft1746)/info with its edit page, I see the template that assembles Date of birth from month, day, and year has dropped the birth year. The info page as edited looks okay, but the info page as displayed using Template:info shows this problem. The puzzle is that info pages added prior to yesterday don't display this problem. DennisDoty 11:51, 19 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Dennis, I'll have a look at your Samuel, but Thurstan and AMK152 are the experts at present. You were right to bring it up on a help desk forum. I may copy some of the above to that. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 12:05, 19 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Robin, Thanks for cleaning up Samuel Doty (1679-aft1746). Did you see the problem? DennisDoty 13:14, 19 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Robin, A further thought: The problem probably relates to the new contributor section at the bottom of the new person layout, because that was what changed when the problem began. But why would the person layout affect the info page layout?  Maybe we are dealing with two problems. DennisDoty 13:30, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Robin,

I had to change the burial details for John Burgess (c1789-1844) because I had them in the wrong field, now the [[ brackets are in the parents and spouse fields as with other persons articles. DO we know yet how to resolve this problem?

Nathanville 15:15, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Please see my new addition to Forum:Help Desk DennisDoty 15:27, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Category Tagging
I noticed that a page you added yesterday, Anna Gordon Forlong (1873-1926)/info, has the extra line,, at the bottom that one gets when category tagging is enabled. When I look at Anna Gordon Forlong (1873-1926) the info data appears scrambled. Do you see the same thing? Maybe you did this purposely as a test. Also yesterday AMK152 made some changes to info pages I have been watching, and they also became screwed-up with the extra line, which I had to remove to fix them. So, we need to get the word out to all users that they should disable category tagging. DennisDoty 09:39, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Robin,when I look at the edit screen for Anna Gordon Forlong (1873-1926)/info, here is what I see at the bottom of it:

}}
 * Genealogics pid     =

If you don't see the bottom line, I would suggest you click "code view" at the bottom of your screen. If you have category tagging enabled you should see this code-view button. When you click it a box opens which has the category:Info pages in it. If you have followed me this far, I would suggest that you go to the editing tab on your preferences and disable category tagging. If I am correct, you will then see the bottom line on your edit page, not in a code box, which no longer displays. If you then enter another new info page, it should come out right. When you have time, please give this a try and let me know what happens. I could still be confused about this new category tagging thing. DennisDoty 11:57, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

User:70.104.110.6
Is there any way you can get this user to read her talk page? I already sent an email, but no response.

She has interesting information, but the format is less impressive. Rtol 12:19, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Established email contact. Rtol 08:17, 24 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Marianne is an elderly lady with bifocals (her words). Her contributions will continue to require editing by others. Note that her IP address keeps changing. Rtol 06:29, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Cat
Robin,

I've just reused that Baglin page you were kind enough to set up for me, now I'm confident in disambiguation; moving the page to The Not So Famous. However, I'm sure in the back of mind that Articles should be put in categories and sub-categories etc? If this is the case I'm not sure how it should be done and into what category/sub-category such a page should go?

Nathanville 20:28, 23 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Short answer: yes. I've given it two. And deleted the NOTOC. But have you really run out of Baglins to disambiguate? If not, you're making work for yourself because each one will require you to replace "Brown" by "Baglin" four times. You're a great worker, so I guess the extra exercise will be fun; and there is the advantage that you will always get the latest improvements to hndis. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 02:54, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Not finished with the Baglin's yet, I like history and I've got plenty more Baglin's and others with stories to tell; I also like to link e.g. to see the thread between people and generations which in itself often tells a story. Now I've got my immediate family on, well over 60 people I think, mostly Baglin's and Stickler's it's a lower priority but a task I'm working on when I have the odd five minutes e.g. I've compiled a list of Baglin's complete with historical notes which I can work through systematically over time.

And yes, once I'd done a few disambiguates for the Stickler's, even using hndis a few times I found it no hassle.

Nathanville 05:38, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Henry II
Nothing wrong with establishing the lineage of Henry II, King of England (1133-1189). However, he is the great-grandson of William I, King of England (1027-1087), and User:Elrondlair put a lot of effort into creating William's lineage. I'd say we'd be better off focussing on the lineage of a few key historical figures, and then use templates and transclusion to combine trees and or show branches. Rtol 12:05, 24 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Fine. I'll ensure that we link up. I was not planning to do much more than put links in Marianne's text then create info pages gradually from the bottom so that they (including a recently-ennobled half-black key historical figure) can all have semi-automatic Ahnentaefel that include it. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 12:17, 24 March 2009 (UTC)


 * See . I guess that transclusion is less intimidating for creating and editing than templates, and the difference in use is a semicolon. Rtol 14:59, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Ancestors of Barack Obama
I notice from Talk:Martha Eltonhead that the line of descent from Edward I is "not proved": perhaps the relevant ancestors should be moved to a "not proved" section at the end.

Thurstan 20:41, 24 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Sound good to me: perhaps we could leave the "not proved" ancestors where they are, and somehow "grey them out" with a "not proved" tag beside them. Of course, I am more pessimistic than you: I expect that if they have been called into doubt, then they will never be rehabilitated. But we can't just delete them, or someone else will repost them at some point.
 * Thurstan 02:12, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Spouse 2 not showing?
Robin,

1. Why for this person's Article Bridgitt Baglin (1761-?) isn't Spouse2 Nehemiah Baglin (1765-1801) and their marriage details not showing in the /info box to the right of the page.

2. Also, Bridgitt has a third spouse/children entry but the /info boxes only allow for two marriages. Any suggestions how this should be handled?

Nathanville 05:15, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

My personal info page layout
In my help desk comment today I suggested an info page format without comments. I have made such a page in my user page for my own use. I know that you would like the comments to remain for later editors, but my typing ability is so poor that if I must cope with comments, I will end up entering a lot less information. DennisDoty 23:48, 29 March 2009 (UTC) Yes, it is easier to leave comments than delete them, but with the info page creation button on my user page I can create the page without comments in the first place. DennisDoty 00:14, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Peize
Bestandsgegevens: ap van der kaap, peize means Information in database: AP van der Kaap, Peize

The Peize wiki is a mix a of a social forum and serious info, with little structure. I would tread carefully. Rtol 05:33, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Correction. In this context Bestandsgegevens: ap van der kaap, peize means Source: AP van der Kaap, Peize

Person not showing in surname list!
The person Ellen Clerke (1864-1947) does not appear in the surname list, http://genealogy.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Clerke_%28surname%29

Any reason why?

Nathanville 05:53, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

b-uk etc getting documented "properly" at last
Good to hear. I have been holding off creating Category:Born in Pucklechurch, Bristol and Category:Died in Woodstock, Illinois etc. Do you want me to use b-uk and b-us etc for towns etc (as I have used b-aus etc in NSW), or should these be done differently (perhaps another template?). Thurstan 03:15, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Another Marianna
User:Bergsmit is Fred Bergman at Siegfried van Holland (985-1030). I'm afraid that wiki is beyond the average 60-year-old. This is quite a remarkable family tree though. While Siegfried was nobility, his son was gentry, and they are commoners since 1300. Anyway, I'll try and get this into shape. Rtol 07:07, 29 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Into shape indeed includes sorting the language. I'll stick to Dutch on their message pages as the whole thing seems intimidating enough. Rtol 09:33, 29 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the edits. I'll stick with the modern title Count of Holland, and put in a note that prior to 1101 the current title was Count of Frisia west of Vlie or Count of West Frisia. This is because the old titles do not mean much anymore. The Counts of West Frisia fought for three centuries to conquer what is now West Frisia!

Indeed, user Bergsmit is Fred Bergman, you can ask me all what you want to know ! Bergsmit 21:29, 29 March 2009 (UTC) http://www.stamboomforum.nl/profiel/1644

What is the meaning of ''Another Marianna '

Thanks
Hello Robin ! It seems to be that you are still more perfectionist then I pretend to be, I thank you for the improvement to my pagesFred Bergman 06:33, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

SORRY !!
I'm very sorry, Robin. I saw there was no infopage and I found one, I thought without person page, and I was wrong ! Excuses ! Fred Bergman 11:38, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

(WeRelate is having problems. I have read some of its watercooler.) — Robin Patterson (Talk) 11:44, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Problems at WeRelate
I don't think there are important problems, there are always people who wants more than is necessary ! I understood (I am still monitoring them) that the new system is a very important and good improvement, but it takes more time for the person who is uploading his gedcom without control in advance. If there are duplicates and the uploading person did not see that in advance, then the uploadproces stops and asks to merge or to cancel the upload of the meant duplicate. Many duplicates ? much more uploadtime necessary! that is logical in my opinion. Until now was the free gedcom upload 5000 persons and the garded upload in talk with Dallan. Dallan has agreed the maximum uploadsize, I don't know how many persons now. But the old system had the problem that new users uploaded 5000 persons and again and again with small differences, but they never answered the proposals to merges their own duplicates. I was a volunteer to merge duplicates of these abandoned pages and I merged more then 60.000 pages within 2 month. The new system has the goal that this never can happen again. I did not dislike the old system, because I learned a lot from doing that. I made 1 big mistake by merging Adam and Eve (in my opinion is it impossible to connect these persons with living people now and is it impossible that they lived 4000 B.C, because people with tools, thinking people, exists more then 100.000 year) to give my comment Bullshit, Phantasia Halluciana, for that reason was I blocked there. Before I was blocked I had already removed my comment and cooperated to repair my mistakes. After that I was first blocked for 1 month, later by an other admin infinite and at the end by Dallan for 1 year. I don't agree with that, but I don't blame Dallan and the admins, I think they work for a religious organisation and have to this. I didn't know that, else I had not done that. But I told Dallan after the first 1 month block, it is to unblock now or I return never. So he could know that his reducing from infinite to 1 year is for me the same. I had no intention to profit for my own genealogy, it was just hobbywork. I enjoy to see how old familylines developed en I enjoyed the puzzles finding right descendants and ancestors. Fred Bergman 12:16, 4 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Thank you for that. It explains why you are here despite the praise you give to the WeRelate system. I agree that their problems are probably not very important. We here are trying to avoid having such problems in the first place. When we get our GEDCOM system working, it will check for duplicates immediately, just as Yewenyi's program was doing. The uploader will have to look at each page, but it should take only a few seconds. (You may have noticed from a recent Watercooler discussion, and later edits, that we accept Adam and Eve but with a caution that the info has not been verified!!!) — Robin Patterson (Talk) 12:42, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your understanding, I like it to let people do what they want to do if they don't hurt anybody else. Perhaps you did see that I also here worked at the Adam page, I uploaded an image and a selfmade template for wikipedia. Also if a person doesn't believe in Adam and Eve he can make it more beautiful and improve it. The same is when you write a book re aliens. For me it is hobby, slow or fast. But at werelate there was more time for the hobby itself. Dallan was pennywise and poundfoolish to block a mad man working so hard to solve his duplicateproblems ! Fred Bergman 12:58, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks
Thanks Robin for taking the time to look at my new pages. I am very new to the site and hope to improve the articles as I go along. Because my time is limited, I am trying to uplad what I can at the moment, and will concentrate on refining them more when I have more time on my hands. . This is a great place for sharing information about ancestors that people are resarching at the same time. Cheers, and thanks for the ratings. Eramophla.

Mega work
Hello Robin, I want to start new pages and improve old pages with adding /info pages to the person pages. From a personpage I go to a new or old /info page by typing /info in the address. Is there a way to do this faster ? I have to use the new standard info template, but where can I find a good one, my infopage has been improved by anybody, but since then, there appear not removable(?) templates check AFN page and Genealogics Person ID [1] Genealogics - Leo van de Pas http://genealogics.org/getperson.php?tree=LEO&personID=, so I cannot use this template anymore for duplicating. The way I will work is as follows. First link personpage to my genea database or copy my genea database to the person, second templates to person and person/info, third geneadata cut and paste to person/info. Is this the right way ?

Talk:Johanna Elisabeth Maria BEIJENVELD 1879-1965 (deelpagina)
Page looks quite good You have done most of what you should, if not all.

The comma in the "Married" category is something I have seen before; I will investigate.

I think that there should not be a table of contents; did you delete a "NOTOC" that you were not asked to delete? I'm not sure if it matters. But when using templates it is wise to leave untouched anything you do not understand.

Now please consider adding the round brackets for dates in article names and links to them. That is affected by one program feature.

— Robin Patterson (Talk) 10:10, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

okay, thanks again ! Fred Bergman 10:20, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

(Fred, you have deleted too many things. Leave them alone unless certain that they spoil your page)--(Talk)

I added it again: http://genealogy.wikia.com/wiki/User:Bergsmit/templates#Advised_START_.2B_BASIC_TEMPLATES_for_new_PERSON.2BINFO_pages thanks again and again ! Fred Bergman 10:45, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Specific proposals
I am not trying to set some sort of new standard. When I started on New South Wales, there was one template: Template:Navbox Ausdiv, and it probably couldn't have had a less specific name: is it for states, counties, regions, electorates, districts etc? My assumption was "all of the above" (since I only had a choice of one template to use anyway). There were no "town" templates at all at that point. Then you asked for the regions to be sorted separately from everything else (I can't find the discussion offhand!), so I created aus-reg template to fix that. What is the standard pattern? Do you want me to create an aus-town template? (I would prefer aus-settlement, since some of these places are villages, or even just a bend in the river, and will never be towns: a lot of my ancestors were rural folk). In particular, I am saying that I don't know what the standard pattern is.

As for the problem of the "Born in XXX, YYY" categories, I think the "algebraic solution" is now broken, if the "standard" for the Netherlands is just "Born in <Town>". I support the idea of /info page fields called (for example) "Birth place category", "Marriage place category" and "Death town category" (let's be honest and explicit with the names!), and for the Netherlands they will have values like "Amsterdam", and for Australia values like "Walcha, New South Wales". This will also have the advantage of shifting most preople out of "Born in New South Wales". The disadvantage of this approach is that we now have to explain to people that the format of this field differs between countries. However, I would prefer to explain to people "Code 'Marriage place category=Amsterdam'", rather than have to say "Code 'Marriage state=Amsterdam', because 'Marriage town=Amsterdam' doesn't work". In fact, re-reading this paragraph, I think we have reached the point where we should start documenting standards for how these things are done for different countries (at least for the small number of countries with non-trivial activity). Thurstan 03:40, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I proposed a while ago to use town/city/hamlet, province/state, country to standardized for all. However, some people have changed these. I think this is the biggest thing that needs to be settled, expecially with automatically generating it from info pages. I think this has gotten too disorganized. We have articles, categories, templates, and forums for place names, but we don't have a standard as to what to name them. Once we solve this issue, I think we can make a standard template for nav boxes of ANY location as well as ONE infobox for ANY location. - AMK152 (talk • contribs) 03:52, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

I uploaded with success a GEDCOM file to Familypedia !
experiment with gedcom: importing images gives the possibility to upload GEDCOMS. It is mentioned as accepted (Maximum 10 MB, accepted types: png, gif, jpg, jpeg, ico, ogg, pdf, xcf, svg, mid, jl, odt, ods, odp, odg, odc, odf, odi, odm, ged), so I tried this little file, with success. But the second step I could not make. It doesn't open as image, nor as page or else, ATTENTION: a warning was given: (this file is: 2 kB, MIME-type: unknown/unknown) Warning: this files has possible a programmcode, which can hurt the system. This warning doesnot matter. These files doesn't have danger, these are special textfiles. But you have not installed at Familypedia a GEDCOM viewer. I have one from Mudcreek and that one also compare files and shows duplicates. If you can install such a programm, then you have the possibility to unpack GEDCOM and to find duplicates ! -- Fred Bergman 19:28, 5 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm copying that to a more public forum. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 06:51, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Hello Robin. There are also programms giving the possibility to open gedcoms, to campare persons, and to merge persons, all seperate steps to be taken by the person who compares. Fred Bergman 07:00, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Mediawiki extensions
I think that adding the Ahnentafel to the standard person page is a good idea in theory. However, it is a bad idea in practice, since we hit the "#ifexists" limit too quickly. However, I notice that there is a "Mediawiki extension" which add variables to pages (see http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:VariablesExtension). This would enable the Ahnentafel template to be written so that there are fewer redundant accesses to /info pages (and, I hope, reduce the number of "#ifexists" calls). How do we request that this extension be installed for this wiki?

In the same vein, can we request that the "#ifexists" limit be raised for this wiki? Thurstan 04:59, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the welcome
I've been on wikipedia for awhile (under a totally unrelated ID), and a colleague there told me about this one. I gather that "notability" is not an issue here, and if that's true, then I could post information about my family tree which other relatives could add to. If I've got that wrong, please let me know. If I get really desparate, I'll read some instructions. :) Brian Knight Bishop 19:04, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Martha Eltonhead
Sorry. I saw the dates on her info page and added them without thinking while fixing the link from her dad. Rtol 07:08, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Links from WP
I did study the template and give it a /doc page, and I'll be writing about that elsewhere on this wiki if I don't fall asleep on the job.


 * Thanks for that. The current template has one drawback: You have to type "Louis_the_Pious" rather than "Louis the Pious". I look at our, but I could not discover the secret of the space. Rtol 17:48, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
 * See project talk:Wikipedia. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 05:25, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Gedcoms in Dutch
No worries. Most of the stuff is translating the installation instructions into Dutch, and breaking them up into smaller pieces as Fred has not much programming experience. I will adjust the manual once he has succeeded. In the meantime, can you have a look at Klaas BALTUS (?-?)? It's been generated by the software, and we'd better make sure it is done right before Fred's 10,000 are unleashed. Rtol 06:10, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I wasn't wanting to know about Gedcoms in Dutch but I don't mind. Klaas B sounds like great progress, so I will look. (Fred's 10,000? His SMALLER one was over 30,000.) — Robin Patterson (Talk) 06:20, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Don't worry! I have the possibility to make gedcoms as small as I want. So I start with a gedcom for 1 person, then 1 family and slowly expand to bigger gedcoms Fred Bergman 06:39, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Broken it
I've broken Genealogy:Info pages/Parameter tutorial. I created "info pages/info" putting info on sources in, but this gets repeated and it calls itself. The new page should be deleted immediately. Rtol 06:30, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Template:Living
Thanks for the tip. I will use the shorter version from now on. Bill H 01:50, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Languages
You might like to classify Henrik Gotthard von Buddenbrock (1648-1727) (if you know what language it is in: I don't). Thurstan 11:17, 23 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Swedish rtol 12:04, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Oddities
Well, I have just noticed something odd (which might just be my local environment), one of which may be due to your actions, but they do seem similar: I do think these changed later than your change (ie after your change, I did see an /info page as it used to look), but I can't be sure. Do you see these, or is it just me? Thurstan 11:55, 23 April 2009 (UTC)
 * The box around the display when I look at a "/info" page has disappeared, as has the background shading.
 * When I do a compare from a "History" tab, the coloured background (grren, yellow, grey) has disappeared.
 * Seems it was just his environment. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 05:39, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

KdG what does this mean?
Short name =Alijd Jansdr van Hodenpijl (c1343-bef1434) this isn't short, but full and long


 * |Surname =van Hodenpijl
 * - |Given name =Alijd  |Given name =Alijd Jansdr, thisn't a given name, this is a patronym, adjustment telling who is the father


 * - |Short description = KdG this means retrieved from the site with lineages of Charlemagne K(arel)d(e)G(rote) www.kareldegrote.nl Fred Bergman 15:22, 25 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Responses either on Fred's talk page or the new forum about Dutch patronyms. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 05:39, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

32,000
Yesterday we had more then 32,000 articles. Now 31.850. How is that possible ? Fred Bergman 05:30, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Deletions, I suppose - check the log - or removal of internal links. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 06:01, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Where can I find that log, removal, intern links ? Is it possible that first every personpage that I gave my image with usernamelink counted, but that afterwards anybody or Wikia cancelled this counting ? Fred Bergman 06:41, 28 April 2009 (UTC)


 * http://genealogy.wikia.com/wiki/Special:Log/delete (which you can sometimes find in "Recent changes") - nothing there to explain it. Must be some changes to pages. Probably those pages that you altered: I've not looked at more than one of them. Did they have internal links before? If not, it is possible that Wikia has changed the definition. No worries! Biggest Wikis will be OK again in a couple of days. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 07:04, 28 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Some pages allready had a link or an image, but these pages did not count, only the pages counted that I gave new image and link. Fred Bergman 07:10, 28 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Now 31.937; I can adjust 63 quick personpages with link, but I fear the counter is set back again tomorrow ! Fred Bergman 14:26, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Info bot
Hello Robin, Richard and I discussed the possibility to start with a person page and then use a bot to make a new info page direct from the personpage, that immediate automatic has the surname, given name, full name, years of birth and death at the right place. Richard thought that it was not allowed, without permission of central wikia to make such bot. Do you know if this is allowed ? Fred Bergman 14:22, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * No reason for me to keep this to myself; see Genealogy talk:Bot policy. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 15:59, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Requested extensions
I requested that wikia central dudes enable the following extension on genealogy. It is used by several other wikia including psychology:

Semantic Mediawiki.

They may ask you if it is ok. This may allow us to have forms that would help ordinary people access info pages. We will need it enabled to see if this is so or not. It also allows semantic searches, such as searching for a person located in a particular geographic area. Somewhat useful for us, no?

I also requested them to look into supporting extension "link attributes"- this is useful for microformats- allowing us theoretically to interact with other internet applications. Very experimental, but something may come of it. - <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x  01:08, 30 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Sounds like progress. See File:Smw-quick-reference.png. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 04:17, 30 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I played with it for a few hours and I couldn't break it very much.  More here.  Robin, I am very excited.  I was writing about the semantic wiki stuff a while back but you know, this may well be ready for prime time.  I am cautiously optimistic that this can be moved over to in the coming months.  If folks agree that we want to make the jump, I'll do the bot runs and help folks convert templates.  There may be a few hiccups but well worth it.  Worst case, we revert everything and we are back to normal.  - <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x   08:56, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Info articles
Fred, I'm not at all pleased to see your continued changes to the layout. I suspect Thurstan agrees with me. We may not be alone.

Our standard layout starts with a fairly full name of the person and a brief description - the normal way to start an article about any person. Your layout is starting with a biography then poking the short description below it.

We also provide for two wiki-standard headings that are almost certain to be required in every person page eventually: "See also" and "External links". You are cutting them out, making considerable work for the people who will later want to use them.

If you and Rtol would like that sort of arrangement to apply to Dutch-language articles, please write a proposal on a forum and I may be happy to see it. But they should not apply to English-language articles without much wider discussion.

Kind regards

— Robin Patterson (Talk) 06:47, 1 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I can accept a fixed layout, but I allready told you, I am a newbie and I am not yet familiar with the wiki software. I cannot always see the quick development of different standards here. Advantage is that the whole database personpages here is very small and I see, working in the database, many old pages with total different layout and templates. As soon as there is a definitiv layout with templates without bugs, you can fix that and together we can transform all the old pages to the new standards. I have all my persons in controllists and can systemetic follow and change all according your wishes. Fred Bergman 08:01, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Human disambiguation
You may have noticed some talk about hndis pages. The wiki will benefit from having more of them - hundreds more now, and thousands more later. Fairly easy to create even if your English is not as good as Rtol's!

We could have hndis translated into other languages, particularly Dutch (to use with "your" pages). Is that a good challenge for you?

Kind regards. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 10:14, 1 May 2009 (UTC)


 * sometime ago I made 1: Jacobus Bergman, but it was too much work ! Better is to make a bot for producing these pages. Next week we go with our camper drive "de friese elfstedentocht", so I am back again 11th of May Fred Bergman 10:21, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Gedcom
We finally managed to get the Gedcom translator to work on Fred's computer. More tests should improve the quality. There are two versions: a source code for those with some programming experience, and an executable for others. In order to get this to other people, I would need to upload .java and .zip files. Would you know how to do this? The alternative is that people send me an email, but that is not really what I had in mind, or that I put things on an external server somewhere. rtol 19:52, 1 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I was driving by and couldn't help overhearing.
 * .ged uploads are allowed now. How about sourceforge or google source for hosting your java project.  That way folks have access to all prior versions, a way of communicating about bugs, etc etc.  I think wikia discourages .zips as are a bad idea because nefarious individuals could use them to park virus data or other creepy stuff on our site.
 * btw- I don't imagine the new changes will impact your gedcom thing. Just get stuff into Info, and then we will map it over to the new Semantic scheme.  So just ignore my fiddling with the new stuff.  However, if you notice that there is data in the Gedcoms we need to be picking up, please create a page somewhere that lists examples, with pointers to example uploaded .geds with the problem.  As for converting the java thing- the new structure won't be known for quite a while.  By and large, property names will mirror the old ones.  Dates don't have y/m/d separations, it's just one value and it accepts it in multiple formats Month first, day first or ISO8601 YYYY-MM-DD etc etc.  - <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x   22:09, 1 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Great work from both of you! Yewenyi told us he ought to put his work on SourceForge some time. My SourceForge membership might at last be attached to something that's not a game! I await developments with considerable interest. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 23:49, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Deletion of (?-?) Pages
Please delete the following person articles and corresponding info pages:


 * Valentine Clemens Hunsicker (?-?)
 * Elizabeth Hunsicker (?-?)
 * Margarita Hunsicker (?-?)

Also:


 * Jacob Clemens Hunsicker (?-?)

Please let me know on my talk page when this is done so I can change the links to hndis pages.Bill Hunsicker 16:02, 2 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I understand. I will change them into redirect pages. Bill Hunsicker 02:22, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Completed. Bill Hunsicker 02:53, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Template talk:SimilarPersona
Uit GenealogyGa naar: navigatie, zoeken Interesting experiment, Fred. But how are people going to find it if it's listed under "B"? — Robin Patterson (Talk) 13:03, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

I did not know I made this. I tried this, but I saw no result, so I thought nothing happened !

I am preparing my holidays now, so it seems best to delete this now !Fred Bergman 13:20, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks from Leah!
Thank you for all your help Robin! I just noticed the new message, I am getting used to getting around in a wiki, my experience prior to this has been very limited. It's a bit intimidating at the moment, but I am learning!!!--Leahkleylein 00:02, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

How I discovered the site
You asked in a message to me how I discovered this site. I believe that you had posted a link to it at some point in your twitter account. I found people in twitter to follow by doing a search on "genealogy" and then if they seemed to have similar interests, I followed them.--Leahkleylein 12:45, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

How the new thing works
This article employs the SMW extensions for all input George Spencer Geer (1836). I don't have support for all the fields yet, but this will give you an idea of the kind of UI that is possible. Note the "edit with form" on the toolbar. Click that and you can edit all the fields known to man for that person. At the bottom of the page, I have a collapsed edit box that allows the user to edit just selected items (like if they were only researching baptism records, they'd click baptism in that box. When an article is first created, the user is not bombarded with every choice possible.  Instead I give them a pared down list.  Click on the wife or children redlinks to see an example of that.  At the bottom of the page you will see a Facts list with the equivalent of all the info page fields displayed.  This can be turned off if desired on a per page basis.

As I said, not done yet by any stretch of the imagination, but this gives the general idea of how this mechanism works. It's a little bit of voodoo, but the docs on the semantic mediawiki site will explain what I am up to - <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x  10:16, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Are you running win 98, xp, or vista these days? - <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x  09:26, 10 May 2009 (UTC)


 * No. Never was, as far as I remember, unless I had 98 many years ago. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 10:49, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
 * So what operating system are you using? - <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x  17:59, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

(undent) Help:Semantic MediaWiki/demo query-range - <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x  07:47, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Re: Hoorn: Oh Robin, you are such a dude.  - <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x   04:35, 17 May 2009 (UTC)
 * It might be interesting if we could take the families that are well documented and post similar genealogy links at Facebook. My account is somewhat illegal as Alpheus is a tad bit on the dead side.  I think their terms of use agreement requires living participants.  Not sure on that, didn't read the fine print.  - <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x   01:53, 19 May 2009 (UTC) 01:52, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

NN
NN=Nomen Nescio, which is "I don't know the name" in Latin. I copied this one from another site without thinking. My convention is to call someone son, daughter or child (or fils, fille, enfant when dealing with someone from France, etc) which has slightly more info than just unknown. Happy to change my convention. rtol 11:27, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Photo Updates
Hi Robin,

Just a quickie; I’ve updated several photos yesterday e.g. http://genealogy.wikia.com/wiki/File:George_Burgess_aged_70.jpg However, the individuals Article Pages are showing the original photos not the updated ones. Is this a purge thing, server synchronising issue or do I need to re-upload the new images as 'New Images' rather than updates to old ones?

You might be interested to know that I’ve now added about 160 individuals from my Nathanville genealogy website to FamilyPedia.

Nathanville 06:00, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

I've checked the image help page and there's no mention about updating photos. Therefore, it might be easier just to upload the new images as 'New Images' rather than a new version of an existing Image and make the relevant changes in the Articles where they're used to point to the new images!

Nathanville 07:12, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

I've just found a couple of dozen photocopies of photos which where originally scanned in electronically over ten years ago. As technology has significantly improved since then I've rescanned them to get much better scanned images. A number of them are already on FamilyPedia but I've given up on trying to update photos on FamilyPedia because regardless to what I do the original uploads always feeds through to the Article pages and not the newer images, which is a shame unless you've heard whether this problem is being looked into!

Nathanville 16:00, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Languages
One should indeed be logged in to have preferences.

It would help, however, if the main page would make it very clear that, once registered, one can work in Dutch or French. Many amateur genealogists are elderly, and English is a deterrant.

In Dutch, one could add a sentence like "Merk op dat, zodra U ingelogd bent, U Uw taalvoorkeur op Nederlands kan instellen."

And I guess the main page should be translated, with flags at the top. rtol 08:16, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Double redirects
From GenealogyJump to: navigation, search The following data is cached, and was last updated 08:16, 20 May 2009.

This page lists pages which redirect to other redirect pages. Each row contains links to the first and second redirect, as well as the target of the second redirect, which is usually "real" target page, which the first redirect should point to.

WP:WEB (Edit) →‎ WP:WEB →‎ WP:WEB

Fred Bergman 12:15, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Two points about your brief note on my talk page: — Robin Patterson (Talk) 12:27, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) Double redirects are very little problem now because the software generally updates them fairly quickly
 * 2) The example is out of date since I restored it to its original form, which points readers to a Wikipedia page. One cannot have automatic redirects to another wiki, but the same symbol appears.

okay ! every day I repair the double indirects, but now I understand that isn't necessary ! Fred Bergman 12:42, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Marianne's contribs
Marianne has asked that her remarks be deleted from the talk pages. Pls do so as soon as all the genealogical information is stored as it should. rtol 05:13, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Died in ...
Why are you creating Died in Place pages? There is Category:Died in Place already, a page on Place that refers to Died in Place, and a Category:Place that has Died in Place as a subcategory. This is just duplication of work, and makes looking for the information more confusing. rtol 11:41, 22 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I see. Template:Navbox create the red link. There is no reason why, and I cannot turn it off, not even in the customised Template:Navbox nl. rtol 12:42, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

block period
Hello Robin, you are to soft ! this should be blocked for at least 1 year, but better infinite. Than he has to beg you to are allowed to come here and you can discuss with this person.

''13:57 (Block log). . Robin Patterson (Talk | contribs) blocked 122.167.85.82 (Talk) with an expiry time of 1 month (anonymous users only, account creation disabled) (Removing content from pages)'' regards, Fred Bergman 12:19, 22 May 2009 (UTC)


 * See Genealogy:Blocking. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 12:43, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Vandalism may, however, have been accidental and should usually be enquired into in case a legitimate user made a mistake, didn't realise it This wasn't a mistake that not was realised, 1 month is nothing, 1 year should it be at least. A legitimate user can always tell you to be in an internet cafe and that can be checked I think ! Fred Bergman 12:51, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Forum:SMW
Thanks for collecting that together. At first this may be a little incomprehensible/ overwhelming for most folks, but much of the preliminary information I have been talking about is of interest to people interested on how the engine of this car works. If we are successful, most contributors will see that from the perspective of the dashboard, it is simple. - <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x  16:41, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Alternate theories
I can just imagine the imbroglios when familypedia gets really big. Whooboy. Well- at that point maybe we will have enough technical help so that we can put in the "theories" support that I discussed early in the 2009_05 notes- the kind of approach that the Master Genealogist application uses where merges are not mandatory, and you have what sophisticated genealogists dream about- a way of comparing dissimilar theories without requiring them to be integrated with each other. Of course, it is far beyond what weekend genealogists are interested in, but the data model should support the theory model.

First things first. For the interim, we can encourage people to maintain local copies of their version of the data. One way of keeping a local copy of their information would be to do some sort of interconnection with an open source application like GRAMPS. Then Familypedia provides the services portion for the common database where the collective data is shared. How we handle resolving conflicts in the collective data is the tightrope. In this phase, the goal is to first seek to establish the "Most likely" lineage. We can do other theories several different ways- some of the approaches I noted earlier. For now, we have heaps of challenges in the first step of presenting high quality articles for one view of the ancestors, let alone many views of the ancestors, so I am deferring any comprehensive solution to the question. - <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x  17:40, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Is your reading knowledge of dutch suitable for this?
Stamboom Forum » Actualiteit Fred Bergman 21:28, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm leaving
Hi Robin,

Now that I know how the site works, I see no real advantage over WeRelate.org, so I'm staying there.

cheers,

Enno

P.S. the citations of my messages on the Dutch stamboomforum were put here without my permission, so I like to have them removed. Can you do that? Thanks! --Borgsteede 11:02, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Charlemagne and sorting
Thanks for those pages.

Note that "sort = birth date" instead of "sort = birth year" overcomes the problem of sorting on a string.

Note also that you can use a * instead of the ahnennumber (just in case you tire of sorting out the exact relationship, say at generation 40). rtol 09:17, 1 June 2009 (UTC)


 * * would get you all descendants, of course (I'm learning still). The ahnennumbers of generation N are between 2^N and 2^N+1. Phlox is working on a forloop so that you don't have to repeat the same code. rtol 09:24, 1 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Or "between 2^N and 2^(N+1)-1". Yes, I think even the readers will get tired of those headings eventually. And the "#ask" will presumably go beyond the limit soon. But I hope Phlox spends little time on such peripheral tweaks; he and you have real work to do!!! The heading relationships are actually easy: just insert "father's" etc in every second heading after doubling each section from the previous generation and upping the numbers to x2 and x2+1. That gives me an idea: if I insert "father's" and "sons'" before doubling, I will have every second heading correct and need only the female replacements, which will be slightly easier changing "fa" to "mo". — Robin Patterson (Talk) 10:07, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

multilingual docs
Yeah, they need to be updated. I have not made a complete set of new templates using smw but once I do we will know more of the details so that they can all be documented properly. Because the new scheme uses forms and can autoload new articles with necessary templates, this will be a lot more simple than the prior system. It also is more flexible.

We are starting summer break so my progress is sluggish- I am off on many expeditions of explorations at the zoo, aquariums and museums for the next week. Were you always living there when your kid(s) were growing up? Nice spot because of the museum and arboretum in Wellington- being able to pop over on the ferry for an outing in the wine country of the south island, and then you could always get up to Rotorua. I fixed that locality article you started. Normally these would be entered using the From:locality. It will be more automatic so that folks will get the form as a default on a redlink, but it is not at all ready yet for use by civilians. It is still a rough sketch, but the technical structure seems to work. I have not attended to the cosmetics. - <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x  16:58, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

We Relate
In the future, they may be using more of our code. However, he is somewhat painted into a corner and will have some interesting challenges if he does. Anyway, I was curious about the same similarities you commented on and am insistent that terms of GFDL be followed. Possibly he sees some marketing disadvantage to acknowledging the existence of Familypedia or that he relied on some of our content. It's kind of silly because the notice could be buried on the template page which no one reads. - <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x  16:59, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Please give me this right!
It is impossible for me to rename/move my wrong named pages if I have to wait each time 5 minutes to do the next two persons ! Handeling tegengehouden Uit GenealogyGa naar: navigatie, zoeken Als maatregel tegen spam is het aantal keren per tijdseenheid dat u deze handeling kunt verrichten beperkt. De limiet is overschreden. Probeer het over een aantal minuten opnieuw.Terug naar Special:MovePage.Fred Bergman 18:14, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Ancestry of Hermann Billung
Have you looked at Hermann Billung (?-973) (and my message on his talk page)? It seems there is a mismatch between the English and the French versions of Wikipedia about his ancestry. I noticed you mentioned taking questions to the medieval genealogy newsgroup for arbitration. Since I don't do newsgroups, would you please take the question to them? In particular, are Billung IV von Sachsen (900-967) and Ermengarde de Nantes (900-?) (descendant of Charlemagne) reliably attested? Did he really have a brother Wichmann Billung (916-967)?

If we can get a concensus, then someone should fix Wikipedia (one version or the other). Thurstan 07:30, 8 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Father and brother are not disputed. Mother is. The German and French Wikipedias seem closer to source, and Hermann Billung's meteoric rise to power is more likely if indeed he was related to the emperor. rtol 07:19, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Charlemagne's descendants
I raised this at the Forum, but I repeat it here for your benefit. The autocat of Descendants of Charlemagne (Generation N) takes too much server time; and it puts some people in five or more generations so that this dominates the display of categories. I therefore replaced the autocat per generation with a general autocat, which is now percolating through the site. Lists and count per generation can readily be made with SMW (cf. Generation 7) so no information is lost. SMW of course also takes time to propagate, so we have a temporary loss of information until the new system is in place. rtol 07:19, 9 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Manual categorisation is not an option, as you would have to re-do it over and over again as links are added. Autocat is switched on again, but as "Descendants of Charlemagne" -- this will take a few weeks to propagate. SMW will do the display per generation. The sorting is on Phlox' to do list. rtol 10:07, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Renaming lots of pages in short time
I don't remember (if I ever knew) how to move more pages per 5 minutes than are allowed by the spam control. Contact Wikia. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 00:04, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Another possible help: get them right at first. Grietje BRUNT 1741-1822/info obviously needs changes. I wonder what is your method of creating pages. It could be easier to change them at source before creating an article and its info page and having to change both (and some of the info page parameters). I had all my family file capitalized on an old program because it would not capitalize them when displaying. Then I switched to Family Tree Maker, which has capitalizing as an option. So I have changed most of the names to lower-case; one at a time, but doing all of one surname so that I just pasted the new version into each. Much easier to paste into websites now. Maybe your source file - or a copy of it - can have the same process. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 14:38, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Finding back all alternative names of my database

 * in my programm, www.geneaweb.org/bergsmit, I have 75,000+ persons, but perhaps only 25,000 bloodrelatrives and the coldsite: married to new relatives, families in law. All known relatives to my family I gave capital surnames, the others not connected to one of my trees or pedigrees not. Only my relatives I want to bring in here, they all have capital surnames. When I am looking for my relatives at Familypedia I look for the same name as I have at geneaweb. So, because I start entering the same name, and afterwards redirect to the norms of familypedia I can always find back my relative. Looking for Karel II der Franken 823-877 I will find now Charles the Bald (823-877) as an example ! Fred Bergman 14:49, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Александров

 * The content (text) isn't from Russian Wikipedia!
 * Nobles of Russian Empire print 1798-1862 (Obshchii gerbovnik dvorianskikh rodov Vserossiiskiia Imperii, nachatyi v 1797m godu).

Matthew of the Elsas
Recall that SMW takes time to propagate. rtol 05:35, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Medieval Genealogy
Regarding your message to me, I'm a bit ambivalent about Wikia in general, and about this project as well. I am simply not seeing the excitement and traction needed for the project to take off. Also the quality of articles here so far has been a little lower than I would have hoped. I think that Knol has a broader appeal and wider exposure. That's why I suggested it. As well it's backed by Google which can't hurt. Wjhonson 03:03, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Problem reports
ProblemReports Hi there, did you know that some of the users of this wiki have reported some problems? You can view them at Special:ProblemReports. Its a great system for users to mark pages with various types of problems to bring them to the attention of admins (like you). Often they are about the subject of the wiki, and only someone from the wiki can make the knowledgeable decision on how to fix the page.

Its a fairly simple system to use. You can click the magnify glass icon to show the reported problem for each ticket. The icons on the right change the status of the report. The green check mark icon is for "Fixed", you use this if you read the report, and changed something on the page to fix the reported problem, (or deleted it, if its a vandal/spam report), or anything that "Fixes" the problem. The red X icon is for "closed", this is for reports that are false/jokes, or things that are not really a problem. The yellow triangle will mark a report for need help by Wikia Staff, it is used when there is something wrong with the wiki that you cannot fix here with editing pages, such as menus not working, or skin problems, or anything beyond your control. Use it sparingly, as there are many wikis, and our time is limited, but dont be afraid to use it either, we dont want you to have a broken wiki for too long. The last icon is for returning a report back to an open or 'Pending' state if you accidentally used one of the first 3 icons.

If you are using the Monaco skin, there is a ProblemReport widget you can add to your sidebar, so you can see as soon as problems are reported. If you have any other questions, feel free to ask on my talk page, I'll be glad to help you help your wiki. --Uberfuzzy 16:41, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

ancetry? sound painful
Category:Wikians with ancetry from Scotland

Spot the deliberate mistake! Thurstan 06:47, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Familypedia times
I was thinking you might like to take over the editorship. This might be a good mechanism for outreach to genealogy folks who still are kind of paper based. - <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x  07:45, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Rich Text
Hi Robin. If you meant the Eneble rich text editing, it was already uncheked. What exactly is ahppening with my pages? thanks

category tagging.
I have not been following the difficulties with category tagging, but I am a little confused by the guidance being given to folks on the problem. Don't we want to tell the folks to uncheck the "Disable Category Tagging" box in preferences.edit? Doesn't that prevent it from unwittingly damaging info pages (which I presume is the problem)? - <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x  04:56, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Monique van Haren (1958)/info
Do you have Monique's permission to put her details out in public? — Robin Patterson (Talk) 13:13, 30 June 2009 (UTC)


 * SHE BELONGS TO THE FAMILY TREE OF RICHARD TOL AND AN ANONYMOUS REMOVED ALL INFORMATION OF THE INFOPAGE WITHOUT EXPLANATION I THOUGT --Fred Bergman 14:20, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

I saw both of the edits that person made, removing info. I can quite understand someone not wanting to see her own information on this site. Or protecting a friend whose information was here. I suggest you talk about it with Rtol. Definitely not a case where I would block a contributor except maybe for a very short period. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 14:33, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

'''::Volgens de wet kan elke persoon die zonder toestemming voorkomt in een stamboom online van de eigenaar een onmiddellijke weglating eisen, voor hem/haar en de minderjarige kinderen.


 * If an user has published private information regarding your family and you don't agree with that, you may email the file owner directly in order to suggest the removal of your data and the data of your minor children.'''

According the Dutch law on privacy a person is not allowed to remove information about him, he has only the right to ask the information about himself and/or minor children to be removed. The publisher is then obliged to remove that information. If the publisher refuses this, then the commander has to go to court. Own action is in the Netherlands forbidden ! --Fred Bergman 14:42, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Come back soon, please
I hope your wikibreak is not too long. But it is well deserved. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 11:28, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
 * It is summer here, we go a long weekend with our camper enjoying "Deventer op stelten" streettheater

2011 we hope to rent a camper in New Sealand for 2 month travelling--Fred Bergman 11:51, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Thank you!
Hi Robin,

Thank you for your words of encouragement - yes, once I found how to use the "Create info page" and related articles I was off and running!

I see what you mean regarding the Marriage tag - I've updated a couple and will work the rest soon.

One question I have is with regards to maiden names vs. surnames. As you might have seen I've been putting (maiden) names in parens and using married names as surnames. Your advice regarding the usual/standard method used here would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks again for your help!

Blhotka 20:22, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Our SMW statistics
One reason we have lost values is that now "ahnentafel" and "descendants" are not set by info categories. Thurstan 07:08, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Indeed. I restored this, as well as the inbreeding and descendency tests. The descendants list and the Ahnentafel require re-saving every page in a particular order (old to young for the Ahnentafel, young to old for the descendants list). Switching off set ahn and set dsc for only a few days implies that we can start anew. rtol 15:13, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

CSV limit
See Life expectancy at the very bottom. SMW allows for the creation of a comma-separated file (that can easily be manipulated in MS Excel, in this case to make a graph of year of birth v age at death). However, only 500 rows can be downloaded. Phlox says this limit was set at installation, so I need to discuss this with someone at Wikia. Can you kindly point me there? rtol 22:21, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
 * No, I didn't say it was set at installation. I said that I suspect it may be configurable.  Please research the setting in semantic mediawiki documentation.  Once you know what the variable is (if this indeed true), then we may proceed with getting the request to wikia.   00:26, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

AWB
AWB is marked as minor. rtol 12:06, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Graphs
Can you kindly put in a request that Google Charts for MediaWiki be installed? It is the same technology as what's behind the pie chart on Genealogy:Statistics/SMW tidbits but with code that is far easier. rtol 06:22, 15 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I contacted them. I thought, mistakenly, that only administrators and bureaucrats could talk to them. rtol 09:37, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Revert of alsoWP with less justification than Phlox thought necessary
"Might" be on WP is a weasel word as explained on the AlsoWP talk page. It is unacceptable for an encyclopedic reference and is against WP guidelines. Please support your position why this is not on the case on the talk page of AlsoWP. 08:25, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Think about it. It's like saying you are "kind of" pregnant. If there was an external link on wikipedia that said some other site "may" have an article on the subject, the link would last about two seconds before an experienced editor would delete it without comment. I can't say this any more delicately. It's a junk link with the weaselly non assertion that there "may be a link". 08:39, 19 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I have been thinking about it, off and on for months. I hope you examined the edit summary so as to see the stated justification for the reversion. Clearly a better expression is needed while still avoiding what you did, which was making several dozen or hundred pages say something untrue (a much worse crime, guaranteed to put off some new readers). I'll put some ideas on the template talk page. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 12:31, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Can you give specific examples of the classes of articles that would be untrue? Are they all of the form people from placename?  If so, what are the patterns of the article names?  Do they all belong to specific categories?   16:49, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
 * The two classes that spring to mind are the hndis pages and the county-related categories, about which I have said more on the  alsoWP talk page. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 12:28, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
 * That's a case of a junk link. The contributor does not know that there is anything on wikipedia for person disambiguation pages, and in the vast majority of cases there isn't one.  Even a "Search Wikipedia" link would be filler.  Seems to me the solution is to delete AlsoWP from those pages, and add it only when a link is known.   17:35, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

User pages
Interesting things you are doing there. Some of it was overdue. Just take care, please, not to make anyone feel that their privacy is threatened!

— Robin Patterson (Talk) 12:54, 22 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I only use information they used theirselves also. I try to stimulate persons to contribute and I think it is usefull that persons can find fellow contributors from their own country.--Fred Bergman 12:59, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

category redirect.
"Fred, #REDIRECT is not designed for categories. Please leave well alone and don't do any more like this: http://genealogy.wikia.com/index.php?title=Category:Streefkerk_Surname&diff=0&oldid=219195

— Robin Patterson (Talk) 12:51, 22 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I try to improve category mistakes, but how do I change the wrong name of a wanted category ?

Wrong is (born,married,died,etc in) America, existing and right is United States--Fred Bergman 10:19, 23 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Use category redirect (as I had done on that example) so that nobody tries to re-create the category. But each page that is currently wanting to be in that category must be edited to put it in the correct one; bots can help do several category redirects in one session, I think: check with User:AMK152 or rtol. Thank you for making an effort! — Robin Patterson (Talk) 14:16, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Main page in Dutch
"Fred, please see http://genealogy.wikia.com/wiki/Forum:Main_page:_Familienforschung_und_Genealogie-Wiki#Dutch and add a comment."


 * You can count on me. I will cooperate to translate to Dutch, but tomorrow I leave again for a short camper trip.--Fred Bergman 10:01, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Charlemagne
While set order of Charlemagne can be done manually, it should not. Humans introduce error, and as information percolates so do the errors. Restoring the damage would be a lot of work. rtol 06:41, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't remember ever using it myself. I've not kept up with the changes in that area. I guess I should study it anyway. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 10:51, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Template:Welcome
Fred, why have you categorized it as "outdated"? — Robin Patterson (Talk) 12:42, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Hi Robin !
 * as you obviously saw, I am busy to try improving this site and then I discover things that look double or outdated. I changed this to outdated because I see almost every day a new version:--Fred Bergman 12:49, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
 * [[Image:180px-Sasha Kopf's Celtic knot ring.jpg|right|160px|thumb|Sasha Kopf's Celtic knot ring]]

Haeremai, welcome, talofa, Willkommen, bienvenue, welkom
Hello, and welcome to Familypedia, the Genealogy wiki! We volunteers hope you can continue making contributions to articles and/or discussion and other improvements.

If you are new to Wikia or wikis in general, a visit to Help:Contents will be well worth while. And all intending contributors, even those experienced with wikis, will get something of value from that page because our "Help" pages are much more than an editing guide.

You could check out the "Community portal" for an outline of some of the main features, links to pages that tell you how to edit, and the link to a guided tour of selected pages that illustrate ways you may enjoy using the site.

Please consider adding a "Babel" template to your user page, if you have not already done so, so that others know which languages you are comfortable reading. The site is basically in English but there is no prohibition on other languages and we have ways of linking to translations. We already have, for example, over 100 kB in Spanish, dozens of pages in French, and a little Russian and Norwegian, with easy ways of linking languages.

A good place to start each visit is the "recent changes" page, where all edits and their authors (anonymous or signed-in) are listed. Bookmark it, maybe. (And help delete spam - unpleasant but a fact of life.)

There's an email list system used to get messages to all listed members: see Genealogy:Mailing list. "Traffic" is not high, so you will not risk flooding your inbox by joining.

You're invited to add your name to a category for your country - see Category:Contributors and create a category if yours is not there.

Discussion of any aspect of the site, and enquiries, can be made through the Forum or on the "discussion" page associated with each article. Sign and date your contributions there (by typing " ~ " or clicking the "signature" button), so that readers know "who to talk to" and whether your message is probably still of current interest. If you write on a user's "talk" page, that user will get an alerting message on next visit.

It would be good if you could indicate on your user page how you discovered this site.

Please leave a message on my talk page if you think I may help with anything! -- Moli.wikia (Talk) 12:47, 18 August 2009

Mistaken edit to the Info_pages/person_article_template
Hi Robin,

I'm a new user struggling with the learning curve. I seem to have edited the following template thinking it was an info sheet for one of my pages. I tried to undo it, but don't think I did so correctly.

http://genealogy.wikia.com/wiki/Genealogy_talk:Info_pages/person_article_template

Please help me straighten it out. I realize this could be a big deal since it's a high-traffic template. Jaime Schulte