User talk:Rtol

Haeremai, welcome, talofa, Willkommen, bienvenue, welkom
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I and others would like to know how you discovered this site.

Robin Patterson 14:41, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia's content policies
Much more stringent than ours. Please feel free to add the whole of a certain WP article! If other people wrote some of it, its origin should be acknowledged with Template:usedwp. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 02:09, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Maiden names
Some of your female relatives seem to have page names that use their married names. In another divergence from Wikipedia, our standard is for birth name, which is what a number of genealogy programs recommend too. No problem showing both names near the top of the article, and having such a person in two surname categories. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 02:09, 5 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Corrected Rtol 08:30, 5 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Good man. That will greatly reduce the chance that another relative might duplicate work by creating another page by a different name. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 12:45, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Using hndis
Here is one of your rewards for using info pages: Simon_Korver. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 12:45, 5 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for that. My family is not particularly imaginative in naming our children. Rtol 13:07, 5 December 2008 (UTC)


 * You're too modest. They honour their ancestors. Anyway, you can use Category talk:Similar person names to create more of those pages to help your relatives sort out who's who. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 11:08, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Surname categories
Please note that SURNAME CATEGORIES should have nothing typed in them except , which links to matching ARTICLES (for origin, meanings, main families, variant spellings, etc.) See Help:Surname. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 14:25, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Got it. Thanks for bearing with me. Rtol 14:37, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Forum:Netherlands subdivisions
I've started Forum:Netherlands subdivisions. Please have a look and say whatever comes to mind. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 01:49, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Robin. It would be easy to copy a list of municipalities, but I'd rather have a table with (1) name and link to Wikipedia, (2) born in, (3) lived in, (4) married in, and (5) died in. I had a look at other countries' subdivisions, but there is no clear policy on this.

Introduction text for category pages
I believe that the prime function of a category is the automatic listing of subcategories, ordinary pages, and media. The editable portion that precedes them should be fairly short, to minimise scrolling by people who want to see the lists.

So I've moved your nice google map from Category:Born in Winterswijk to the Winterswijk article. I'll probably do the same to others if I see them.

Great work you seem to be doing.

— Robin Patterson (Talk) 15:37, 26 January 2009 (UTC)


 * No worries. I'll get the Netherlands municipalities into shape following the example of Schermer. Rtol 15:40, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Template:alsoWP
I think I noticed you had a Template:wp on a page of the same name. Won't work the way you may have meant: it redirects to Wikipedia only if our wiki does not have a page of that name.

To link easily to a WP page of the same or similar name, use Template:alsoWP - generally right at the top, so that it will sit at top right. (I don't bother with it for pages copied from WP with the acknowledgment links at the bottom, but a link at the top too won't hurt.)

— Robin Patterson (Talk) 15:45, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Place-related categories
Rapid progress you are making!

Please see Category:Born in Hoorn. I added Category:Hoorn. Any place big enough to have a "Born in" category is big enough for its own category.

I wonder if you would like a little help creating shortcuts along the lines of Template:b-uk. See Genealogy:County navigation templates. Typing |, with a couple of placenames dragged in (from elsewhere in the page) after the pipes, would be a lot quicker than typing People born in wherever and so on. You can probably do it all yourself, but I'm moderately familiar with the variations required for the different circumstances.

The UK series may take very little adaptation. They would need the "CuriousFox" reference removed, because it covers only UK (and USA to a limited extent). Not sure about the Wikipedia link - but it will be OK if Wikipedia has categories such as "People from North Holland".

— Robin Patterson (Talk) 10:46, 30 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks Robin. Rapid progress would be made if more people would abandon their "my family only" proprietary websites.


 * I'll try and build a template. Never done that, so there's a challenge. Rtol 11:02, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Many templates, including nearly all in that county series, have been "built" just by tweaking copies of other templates. You could: Those mysterious things with triple curly brackets, which I half mastered all of three months ago, are wiki shorthand for "here insert parameter number ..." (where a "parameter" is whatever was typed after a pipe in a template, and refers to the second one, and so on. Now it's past my proper bedtime, so I'm signing off for a few hours. I will get an email alert eventually if you edit this page or my talk page. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 13:12, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) open the edit box of Template:D-uk (which I suggest for starters because it is simpler than "B-uk"),
 * 2) copy the whole page,
 * 3) paste it into Template:D-nl, and
 * 4) adjust whatever needs adjusting (which won't be much),
 * 5) save it, then
 * 6) test it on a couple of pages you're familiar with.

Wow, a flood of them! I'm a good teacher and/or you're a good learner!

At a higher level, you may like to note the additional template and category I have given to one of your category pages:

http://genealogy.wikia.com/index.php?title=Category:Born_in_Gelderland&action=history

And have a close look (with mouse hovering) at the new image on Category:North Holland. Very pleasing, I thought. Now someone should copy the other dozen...

— Robin Patterson (Talk) 02:57, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, looks good. Thanks. I'll add the other provinces as I go along. Rtol 06:36, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Approximate dates - decades, etc
Please see what you think of this: http://genealogy.wikia.com/index.php?title=Category:Died_in_c1794&action=history

Maybe the subject could be put on a forum to see who agrees with either method and what range of other ideas there may be. Then we might devise a template for an agreed structure, to save a lot of typing time.

— Robin Patterson (Talk) 12:56, 21 February 2009 (UTC)


 * This works for c1794. It does not work for c1790, or bef1790, or aft1799. That's why I put them in with the actual year.


 * A template is a good idea, and easy to do. Rtol 14:18, 21 February 2009 (UTC)


 * 1790 is the next step in complexity. I suggest that years ending in 9, 0, or 1 go into both decade categories. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 23:27, 21 February 2009 (UTC)


 * See Template:B-c. This puts people born around 1580 in a subcategory of born in 1580. The alternative is to convert the parameter into a string, replace the last digit with a zero; unless the last digit is a 0 or a 9, in which case it needs to be place in two subcategories involving the second to last digit as well ... Too complicated for me. Rtol 09:50, 22 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Thank you for the template. Please have a look at it and go to its documentation, where I have put a query in a comment. Please also see Forum:Approximate dates - decades, etc, where I appeal for help with possible extra complexity. AMK152 and Thurstan are among those who may be able to help. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 13:21, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

You've broken it
Please see my squawk at Template talk:Info categories/BirthPlace

Thurstan 08:57, 23 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Sorry. Undone. Rtol 09:04, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. If you want a single field to use to generate the "Born in" category, you can just use "Birth state". On my TODO list is to write some documentation about which fields of the info structure are for display (and so can contain markup) and which get fed into templates to generate categories etc (and so can't contain markup).

Thurstan 09:26, 23 February 2009 (UTC)


 * That would be excellent. Each line of the tabs template should have a brief comment about whether it should or shouldn't have links. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 14:17, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Template:Tabs person
I TRUST that you have achieved a fair degree of competence with complex templates. http://genealogy.wikia.com/index.php?title=Template%3ATabs_person&diff=226119&oldid=202861

Not looking very hard at what you achieved there, I can only guess that it's to do with subpages. Have you checked the discussions about tabs templates?

Best of luck!

— Robin Patterson (Talk) 14:13, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Hi Robin,

I learned from breaking Thurstan's pages, and tested this on a number of pages. Seems to be faultless. Rtol 18:10, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Netherlands websites
Hi! Would you like to have a look at this site and say whether it's worth a link or even a whole page here?

http://netherlands.favos.nl/

— Robin Patterson (Talk) 06:10, 6 March 2009 (UTC)


 * A link would be worthwhile. It's a portal of online archives per municipality. Ideally, we'd need to link every municipality directly, but this is a good start. Rtol 08:24, 6 March 2009 (UTC)


 * So, a bit like the county pages of Cyndi's List? Deserves a page of its own where we can maybe list what town pages we have, each with a direct link to the "favos" page? — Robin Patterson (Talk) 14:26, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Ireland templates
You should have been putting your new templates (ire and nl) into suitable categories, and leaving instructions with them, as for D-uk and the other originals. No hurry, I suppose - but copying the categories from the originals would have saved time.

And is there any practical difference between d-uk and d-ire? They look the same to me but "ire" takes more time to type! Maybe you are a loyal republican now and don't want to call something Irish by a name that includes "uk"? Fair enough.

Keep on racing - but please use more categories!

— Robin Patterson (Talk) 14:22, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Working on that as we speak.

Can't have a UK template for Ireland, not if you want to engage the Irish. Rtol 14:25, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Template:EventPlaceCat
I noticed you had used Template:EventPlaceCat. I'm not sure if I knew it existed; it wasn't in a category and I doubt if its author publicised it.

Anyway, I've expanded its documentation, mostly for beginners, but you may glean something useful from the extras. If you think it's faster than the method I use (noted at the bottom), you can use it for businesses, cemeteries, and settlements as well as events.

Someone may feel inspired to do an equivalent that has "of" instead of "in", for use with most of the categories mentioned on Genealogy:County navigation templates.

— Robin Patterson (Talk) 04:00, 8 March 2009 (UTC)