Familypedia:Watercooler

Creating entries

See Help:Contents and Genealogy:People Template.

New Namespace for Names

I am thinking we should set up a separate Namespace for names and have individual names for them. That way, we can have categories for family names, given names, Muslim names, Persian names, male names, female names, and so on.—iFaqeer (Talk to me!) 20:10, 3 Mar 2005 (GMT)

That sounds interesting. But please explain a bit more. How would they relate to other categories? Couldn't they just be articles, maybe with lists linking to specific names? (That would make it more likely that people would find them in a search.) Robin Patterson 06:18, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

Having done some thinking since, I agree with you. I like the way, say, Khan looks now.—iFaqeer (Talk to me!) 02:57, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

Mailing List

The mailing list for this Wiki is Genealogy-l and is at: http://www.wikicities.com/mailman/listinfo/genealogy-l —iFaqeer (Talk to me!) 19:19, 7 Mar 2005 (GMT)

Babel templates, showing languages understood by contributors

Two of us now have coloured boxes at top right on our User pages indicating which languages we have any working knowledge of. I recently fiddled with the formatting so that the header was better balanced and the little boxes fitted properly inside the big one (on my screen anyway). An anonymous contributor has now very kindly fixed up the code a bit more. There's no universal foolproof coding yet, so any further improvements may be most welcome.

See Genealogy:Babel templates and its discussion page.

Robin Patterson 01:38, 27 Jul 2005 (UTC)

(the above was shortened in August after being copied to Genealogy_talk:Babel_templates)

I believe the Category:User es-1 Category is incorrectly setup. It is reported as a sub-category of Category:User es; but, the content of the category page incorrectly states that it is for speakers of German. Shouldn't German be identified by ISO code DE? --ChristopherMcIntosh 08:48, 4 Jan 2006 (UTC)

List of contributors

Because of the wikicities structure, there seems to be no easy way to list those who contribute to this wikicity. Or have I missed something? Unless there's a better place, how about Genealogy:Contributors? Robin Patterson 23:34, 31 Jul 2005 (UTC)

Administrators

Currently only one active genealogist is an administrator here. Anyone who would like to be given the extra facility that goes with being a sysop or bureaucrat may edit Genealogy:Requests for adminship.

Dealing with spam

Most of our responsible contributors look at the list of Recent Changes. Spam is removed when seen. And, as noted in a recent message from Angela, it should then be reported at http://www.wikicities.com/wiki/Talk:Spam_Blacklist. Robin Patterson 00:33, 10 Aug 2005 (UTC)

Please login whenever practicable, because that makes less work for those of us who check the recent changes for spam. Robin Patterson 22:58, 31 Aug 2005 (UTC)

Submission to Cyndi's List

I've applied to have this site listed with the other quarter million! See http://www.cyndislist.com/thanks-n.htm. Robin Patterson

Great idea, Robin. I hope it gets listed. Let us know if it does. Jtc 12:42, 17 Aug 2005 (UTC)

Here's the entry on the August 16, 2005, page of http://www.cyndislist.com/new0805.htm :

GENEALOGY - The Free Encyclopedia Anyone can list their research on this cooperative "Wikia" site: details on worldwide subjects and individuals — historically significant people and everyday people. MediaWiki software makes searching, entering data, and linking easy; and categories automatically list subcategories and articles. Active contributors from multiple cultures and regions.

These used to take over a year to get onto the main listing. I thought she was catching up, but I fear not: http://www.cyndislist.com/whatsnew.htm

Robin Patterson 02:00, 21 Sep 2005 (UTC)

Still there, still saying "... Wikicities ..." ... Robin Patterson 07:27, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Including us in the Wikicities Tour

I have not worked out how to do it yet, but I'm starting a page called Genealogy:Wikicities tour/Create a new tour stop with a copy of the Central Wikia instruction about it. Robin Patterson 01:05, 7 Sep 2005 (UTC)

It works:

Tour

Do a brief tour as part of the Wikicities tour system. Then you can suggest pages that we should add to it. I won't make you do the donkey work!! But I plan to make clear instructions for what is actually fairly easy. Robin Patterson 12:22, 8 Sep 2005 (UTC)

Now the TourBusStop?

While we are refining and embellishing our Wikicities tour, I think we could try to join the outside organisation of TourBusStop. Possibly NOT appropriate for individual wikicities: see discussion at WC Central.

Starting page, if we can do it, can/should be Genealogy:TourBusStop (where I have copied and slightly adapted the required page)? However, a look at the existing wikis suggests that it is absolutely necessary to have it in the main namespace as TourBusStop. Need to enquire further.

Any other comments/warnings/help before someone dives in?

Robin Patterson 22:46, 11 Sep 2005 (UTC)

GEDCOM conversion

Weary of manually converting my html pages into pages for this site, I have taken an easier, if somewhat less elegant solution of writing a program. As I only started it two days ago, it is still somewhat crude and is not picking up all of the gedcom details. If anyone else is interested I can supply the program. I really should publish it properly on sourceforge, but at the moment that seems like a lot of effort. If any of you are interested in the program, with somewhat limited support, you can contact me. Yewenyi 11:01, 12 Sep 2005 (UTC)

Could be very useful for some people. My family stuff, however, is on Family Tree Maker v 3.4 at home and uploaded to WorldConnect now and again, so I just paste or type from the latter for my new entries here after using the person's nearest relative as a starter for the page. Robin Patterson 22:24, 12 Sep 2005 (UTC)

Ok, I'm convinced. The vast quantity you just slammed up here was quite impressive. I'd be interested in seeing this code. We went from ~600 legit pages to almost 1,000 more than that in no time at all. Very nice. Jtc 07:38, 18 Sep 2005 (UTC)

Might have a bug. Check out http://genealogy.wikicities.com/index.php?title=Category:Minty_Surname&rcid=5201. It's a surname page about Minty, but contains a link to Bagnall instead of Minty. Jtc 08:02, 18 Sep 2005 (UTC)

You are right about this one. As I use copy and paste, perhaps I accidently pasted in the wrong one. Early on I was copying and editing. Only later did I write some code.

Too many entries? Ok, I know it's probably bad to suggest this, but this may be able to create more entries per day than is good. This 'Recent Changes' list only allows 500 entries to be seen, but this swamps that. There's no way now to see all the recent changes because there were so many. I'm not sure about the right solution. Jtc 08:02, 18 Sep 2005 (UTC)

His program is marvellous: a new page every 25 seconds or so, for the half-hour I counted. But Jerrod, if you want to be good with that program it may pay to get really proficient in manipulating the address bar. Next time you reach that "500", look up and change the "500" near the end of the address bar to something bigger. (I thought you got a "Next 500" option anyway, but I see that you don't. Wikipedia doesn't either. Probably because, for that page in particular, it's a bit of a drain on the server, so the managers want to make it available only for people who are so keen that they go to the trouble of editing the address bar.) (8-D Robin Patterson 12:38, 18 Sep 2005 (UTC)

Loading Gedcoms is a page I have created to show more than perhaps belongs on this page. I will include some screen shots and the code. It is still a prototype and I cannot convice it to run stand alone. I need to get out that Java manual to work out what I am doing wrong.

GEDCOM importing is a must if you want the volume of data you are looking for (for technical-oriented people not familiar with GEDCOM, think of it as the XML for genealogy – in fact, GEDCOM 6, the XML version, is in draft mode). People interested in contributing the family trees of “ordinary” people most likely already have that data in a genealogy program and will be unwilling to manually copy it elsewhere (not to mention the transcription errors likely to creep in if they do). GEDCOM 5.5 (pre-XML) is the current standard that most or all genealogy packages support.

However, if you let contributors submit vast quantities of data using GEDCOMs, you might end up with a bunch of unlinked family trees – and there are other web sites (such as RootsWeb) that already do this. Adding a few links to Wikipedia articles will not really add much value over RootsWeb. So the only value would be if you would strongly encourage people to match their contributions to existing ones (merging all information about one person onto a single page), so that the family trees are inter-linked. This is, in fact, where Wiki technology adds benefit – by allowing people to link their family trees together, and include reasoning for why they believe that one John Doe is the same person as another John Doe (or split them apart again if they have evidence to the contrary).

I plan to send an e-mail to I Faqeer with more suggestions around this.

We were the 5th-biggest wikicity in September

3.5 MB according to http://www.wikicities.com/wikistats/EN/TablesDatabaseSize.htm

Thanks, Brian!!

Robin Patterson 05:18, 10 Oct 2005 (UTC)

Multipurpose names, such as "Adam"

We have a page for the original "Adam". OK so far.

Soon, however, someone with an interest in that first name and/or the matching surname may want to create a separate article about it, along the lines of "Khan" and "Ferguson". Which one gets the plain single four-letter word as its page name?

Can we make a universal "rule" for it (to minimise confusion and rewriting)?

See separate new page Genealogy:page names. Robin Patterson 00:27, 20 Oct 2005 (UTC)

Was a rule ever created for this? Because the decision is "upon us" as they say, with the recent creations of more single-name pages. My suggestion is Adam (Bible) or Noah (Bible) As a further note, I suggest that someone may eventually want to do a page for Jesus, and that, I suggest, should be named Jesus (Bible), since "Jesus" ("hey-ZOOS") is a Latin name that could be confused with the Biblical one, the same as other Biblical names could be. - Nhprman 20:35, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Wouldn't a Jesus page be more accurately named Yeshua bar Yosef haNotzri (4/5 BC-30 CE), since you generally call people by the name their parents gave them in genealogies, rather than by some anglicized version of that? --Briantice 16:29, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps, but 99.9% of people seeing that would have no idea who that is, so the entry would not be at all useful. in addition, "(ca. 4 BCE-30 CE)" may be a better, more standard, way of displaying the dates. The proper name should, of course, be one of the first things mentioned in the article. - Nhprman 20:01, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Couldn't you set up a redirect to allow "Jesus (Bible)" to get you to "Yeshua bar Yosef haNotzri (4 BCE-30 CE)"? There are all sorts of issues connected to this particular example (for instance, why 4 BCE-30 CE, when if we're taking the Bible as primary source, as I'd expect we'd do for constructing the Adam-on-down ancestry, I'd expect 1 CE-33 CE, or perhaps 1 AD-33 AD), but the issue of a person being born with one name and having another name that they become more well-known by is a general one. Wouldn't a redirect be a good solution for the general issue? -- TomChatt 07:37, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

It's not a Biblical error which led to the incorrect dating in the Gregorian calendar, but a Church error. We know now that the date given by the Gospelwriters, referring to the census and the people in governance, that the Gregorian calendar miscalculated the date of Yeshua's birth. We also know from the Babylonian Talmud that 40 years before the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple (70 CE), God stopped accepting the azazel sacrifice (atonement), as it is there recorded that the crimson cord around the neck of the azazel (scapegoat), which had always turned white as a sign of God's acceptance, ceased to do so in 30 CE. I agree with the redirect idea. That would be the best way to treat this, I believe. --Briantice 08:18, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

I also agree with the redirect idea. It's a good solution. The dating is problematic, since no firm date is accepted, and anything regarding that *particular* individual's information is going to be controversial, unless handled correctly. It would probably be best to leave any dating off this particular entry. That said, ca. 4 BC is now accepted by most scholars and many religious people who study and care about such things. - Nhprman 00:35, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Hey, guys, you're doing well there, but this discussion was already threatening to be too big for the Watercooler when I added my (obviously not clear enough) request last year: "See separate new page Genealogy:page names" - Please copy some of the above if you like, and continue the discussion, there, and create some new talk pages for specific people whenever discussion gets to be more than a couple of paragraphs! Robin Patterson 05:44, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Downtime for conversion to MediaWiki 1.5

4am Saturday 12 Nov (UTC) - 5pm in New Zealand probably about 2pm in Sydney. See http://wikicities.com/wiki/MediaWiki_1.5

Robin Patterson 23:26, 11 Nov 2005 (UTC)

A Better way?

I suspect this site is not taking off as it could do because starting a page is too difficult and time consuming. I also see a problem of names clashing: there must be many John Smith (1950-?)!

I suggest scrapping the template format and just allowing free entry as on Wikipedia. I suggest that every individual should take an Identity derived from name and full birth date (Y,M,D) eg. Smith Peter Paul 19500605 In most cases this would be unique, but if not then add A,B,C etc to the end.

To start an entry for this enter Smith Peter Paul 19500605 into Search. Then, if not found, click to create the page, as in Wikipedia. Then enter any text freely, incorporating other Identities such as Mother:Smith Mary 19001230. Nothing else needed, no forms to fill in, the Wikilinks just light up as they are recognised! Any number of distant known relatives could be listed on the page, and would link if their page was present. All other info would be optional. With a bit of extra software, a tab could be clicked from any page to create a 4-level tree graphic instantly (by recognising the Mother:/Father:/Sibling:/Offspring: headers. --Lindosland 23:05, 7 Jan 2006 (UTC)

Well, the template is just a suggestion, and it's a good tool to use when creating new pages. People can certainly make any page they want, in any format. Then it's up to the sysops to either make the updates and corrections, or not as they choose.

I came here looking for a surname, Putnam, and it's not here. So, I'm looking for a way to tie it in. I know that one of the Putnam lines is a cousin of Ben Franklin, who was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. We'll get there eventually.

And I like the naming standard, personally. I think we'll have disamb pages, just like Wikipedia, as we grow, but we'll eventually get those worked out. Don't worry too much about it. We can do redirects whenever necessary.

Chadlupkes 19:27, 12 Jan 2006 (UTC)

Looks like I'm going to have to find a way to link it in from here. So, let's start with Ann Putnam (1679-1716) Chadlupkes 00:49, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

As I've just said, "Perfectly good start!"

But I think I see part of one of the problems Chad and Lindosland are referring to. Evidently not enough prominence has been given to the flexibility and the optional nature of the recommended template. I'll work on them. Robin Patterson 02:29, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Admins

Hello, folks!

I have been a little slow on the Genealogy side for a while. By way of introduction, my passion is genealogies from non-European roots; places where detailed work hasn't been done. Like India, the Muslim World and all; and haven't been able to follow up much. Will try to get back into it.

One thing we do need is more Admins. Please see: Genealogy:Requests for adminship.

—iFaqeer (Talk to me!) 21:11, 12 Jan 2006 (UTC)

Template, etc, proposals

Places template

Please visit my User page for a proposal for a town and city template ("Genealogy:Place") in G-Wiki, arising from my recent conversation with Robin Patterson. If this was an article, rather than a template, I'd "be bold" and simply create it, but I'm deferring to older Wikipedians and other frequent editors here. Thanks in advance for your input! Nhprman 05:05, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

I think the Place template will be very helpful. Among other uses, I can imagine a wiki-style community-maintained equivalent of Cyndi's list for place-specific resources. One suggestion: make it very clear in the template that page names should be complete. I don't know how many times I've been reading through other people's genealogy records and found references to places such as "Newport, Lincoln". Um, what state? What country? --TomChatt 07:57, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Tom, I agree up to a point; but don't overdo it. We don't need "Handsworth, Birmingham, West Midlands, England, United Kingdom, Europe". If in doubt, I'd use the Wikipedia pagename. (By the way, does "<em>" have any advantage over "''"?) Robin Patterson 06:08, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Now (since 5 months ago actually) we have Genealogy:Place Template, so please go there, improve it, and use its talk page ad lib. Robin Patterson 06:08, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Place categories

How about setting up places as categories, under which Family Name categories can be connected as subcategories, with the people entries that fit there connected? See Category:Grafschaft-Bentheim, Prussia for an example of this. -Briantice 22:54, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Brian, I'm sorry I missed a few days. We already have Category:Places. Please integrate with your excellent additional place categories! (If there has been some duplication, we can work it out.) Robin Patterson 06:08, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Rodovid.org

I am interested in what you are doing here, but thought you might be interested in Rodovid.org another family tree wiki, which has automatic tree generation and GEDCOM import. It is also trying to become a wikimedia project. You comments on this project would be greatly appreciated. --172.214.9.154 20:50, 24 March 2006 (UTC), (User:Bjwebb on Wikipedia, Meta and Rodovid)

Hi again. I noticed I recieved no reply. Rodovid would be interested in merging with the site you have here, what do you think?--172.200.178.107 13:51, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

WOW! I'm really impressed! I haven't been here in a while due to limited time, but having a form like that to enter information would be a dream! Robin, check it out if you haven't already. I really think Wikia should jump on this before Wikimedia does. Chadlupkes 22:41, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Merging Rodovid with this site could be quite interesting. As I've been starting to work with this site, I realize that it provides half of what I've been missing. A wiki like this is a perfect forum for the collaborative work of genealogy, but what's missing here is the benefit of structured data, such as can be used to automatically generate a variety of useful charts (descendants, ancestor trees, ahnentafels, etc). A combination of the structured data (editable by everyone, with revision history, talk pages, etc) like Rodovid has plus the free-form narrative offered here would be a winner combo. -- TomChatt 07:57, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Records, Repositories, and other things other than Persons

Is this site only intended to have pages for specific Persons using the Person template, or is it appropriate to create other related pages? One thing I'm thinking of is a source record, especially of the sort not publicly available, for example a personal letter or diary written by an ancestor. I'd like to have a separate page where I can put a transcript, image scan, and other info relating to such a source. What would be the appropriate way to name such a page? Some possibilities:

• Diary of Joseph Bloggs (1812-1888)
• Joseph Bloggs (1812-1888) (diary)
• Joseph Bloggs (1812-1888) / Diary
• Record:Joseph Bloggs (1812-1888) / Diary

I'm new to this Wiki thing, so I'm not familiar enough with whatever protocols (as well as technical ramifications) there may be concerning namespaces, use of parenthesis, use of other special characters like '/', etc. in page names. Also, I don't know how this fits in with any intended ontology for this wiki. I notice there's been a "Place" template introduced, which is a good thing. There are a number of other entities that may be relevant (I'm thinking of the GENTECH data model as a guide.) Another useful entity might be "Repository", for example, "Records of the New Amsterdam Dutch Church", a page which describes what sort of records are available, where they're available, what condition they're in, any special notes on interpretation, etc. The source citations on Person pages could refer to Repository pages and save having to repeat a bunch of common information. -- TomChatt 07:57, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

A slash in a page name creates a subpage. Has its uses. Try one. Round brackets are no problem - just another character. Repository pages are a great idea - go for them! Robin Patterson 07:41, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Note about names and birth/death dates

Can I just leave a brief note here about naming articles about people? It would be wise, when naming, to use birth/death dates, when known. "John Brown" as an article name, for instance, is a problem, since it could be any one of hundreds of John Browns. However, [[John Brown (1854-1903)]] narrows the pool considerably, lessons confusion, and makes it easier to browse. - Nhprman 18:34, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

I think that's a good convention to follow. But I wonder what to do about forward refs to articles that don't exist yet, especially when you may not know birth-death years yet. Suppose I'm doing "Joseph Bloggs (1831-1896)" and that article makes reference to his father James Bloggs, about whom I don't know anything yet other than his name (e.g., I had some "Joseph, son of James" ref). In writing the Joseph article, should I (a) not make James a link, (b) link to "James Bloggs", (c) link to "James Bloggs (?-?)". If we do (b) or (c), how much does the Wiki software automatically help us out? I notice on Wikipedia that if you look for an article by some name, and they have several articles with the same name, differentiated by parentheticals, you get a "disambiguation page". Does that happen automagically when several articles have the same name not counting the parentheses? Or do those have to be manually crafted and maintained? (This is the sort of thing we should work out ahead of time, before the project really scales up and the trees actually start to connect!)
TomChatt 07:34, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

I think it's manual at present, but see below. And no harm in putting a John Doe link in at any time, with or without "(?-?)". Robin Patterson 07:41, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Disambiguation

Now that several contributors have touched on aspects of disambiguation, it's great that one of the new ones has made a positive move to deal with it. Please see Template talk:Disambiguation and let's carry on that discussion there. Robin Patterson 07:41, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Admin

Just made Nhprman and Robin Paterson an Admin. Sorry about the delay.

Please welcome them in their new roles. Roles that they, in large part, will help define--with the rest of us nudging them all the way. I know they will help make the Wiki much bigger and better.

Your no-longer-lonely-Admin and Founder, --IFaqeer 09:39, 14 July 2006 (UTC)