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Forums: Index > Help desk > Help improve the help pages



Sometimes newcomers ask questions that are already apparently answered on the Help pages.

Assuming good faith, we who have been here longer realise that such newcomers haven't totally ignored the "Help" buttons but haven't actually found the right page. Or they tried "Search" on an obvious keyword but that function was having one of its bad days and didn't cooperate.

Please drag yourself away from those fascinating relatives and stimulating programming challenges for half an hour, to look at the questions you and others asked or were afraid to ask and see if you can help us oldies pinpoint the probable reason(s) for your failure to find the answers soon enough.

You may list them below as main headings with brief explanation. You may instead, or also, use the Talk page of a Help page to point out difficult parts of it and any pages it should additionally link to, and/or to offer ideas of why you couldn't find the page when you were looking for something on that subject.

Your humble though not always obedient servant, -- Robin Patterson 12:28, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Not knowing one needs help

Hi Robin! Erm, okay, so maybe I didn't look at the help first... but in my defense, I didn't know I needed help.

Let me explain... I fear that due to a bad rap given Wiki's by the media, there is a certain expectation that Wiki's are disorganized and ungoverned...

So I fear folks come into this Wiki not knowing they need certain kinds of help. Of course, if I couldn't program in Wiki, or had some issues with logging in, I'd go to help... but I wouldn't think that Naming Conventions is a thing I'd find in help... Indeed, I wandered off to the community zone to find the answers to that, thinking (rightfully so) that the community would have been chatting about this, and if not, then I could start the chatting (Which I did).

I think that there is a certain feeling that there is a difference between the operation of the Wiki (And Help), and the content of the Wiki (And the community)... This might simply be my feeling on the matter...

More emphasis on naming conventions

Anyway, I think the most vital thing here is naming conventions, as noted earlier in my posts in the forums, without a naming convention, two trees which should be linked could pass each other like ships in the night... I think it should be in big, bold letters on the very front page :D... Naming conventions. Everything else can be fixed by other researchers later...

I think to start, something on the Main Page, right up at the top that says something like "We love to have everyone's contributions, but please note the naming conventions before adding your trees to avoid duplication of effort!" or something like that really close to the top, easy to see. The great thing is that Genealogists are all about connecting their trees to other folks' trees (It means less work! :D), so I think most folks will be more than happy to join convention. I know it's a little confrontational, and maybe there needs to be a little rewording (I'm all for a very militant, draconian, start shooting people with lasers and whipping them sort of enforcement... but that's only because I've struggled with too many poorly kept trees in my time... thus... um... maybe you should skip that recommendation of mine... or just use lasers... :D). well... that would be about my 1 yen... Aabh 00:59, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Difference between operation and content

I would like to add my 2 euros to Aabh's 1 yen. Specifically I concur with Aabh's comment that there is a difference between the operation of the Wiki and the content of the wiki. I'm experiencing this very much as a newbie here. I see these kinds of help needed:

  1. General help about wiki's generally (i.e., not specifically about GenWikia and the use of this wiki for genealogical purposes)-- i.e., introduction to how the whole thing works, the philosophy behind it, then getting down into the nitty gritty of what the various "codes" mean.
  2. Using THIS WIKIA for the sharing of genealogical information-- how best to think about, set up and maintain pages to which you contribute genealogical/historical information.
  3. Using THIS WIKIA to FIND information about your family, history, etc...

These three types of help are very distinct, and I think y'all are doing a better job at #1 than at the other two. Or at best, you overlap #1 and #2 and it's sometimes confusing.

Jillaine 19:47, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

"By Jove she's got it". Wikipedia has more than one Help category. See Wikipedia:Category:Wikipedia help - 21 subcategories(!) and 41 pages. Our Category:Help has only 9 subcategories, with 61 "articles" (plus a few that are not in cat:help but are in one of its subcats) - over three times as many articles per category as WP has, which may be a pointer. I think we should make a more obvious or definite move in that direction. Our Help:Contents has part of such a move with its grouping of types of help, but there's clearly scope for much more of that grouping.

Robin Patterson 05:21, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Jillaine's three types of help

Tentative headings, with current categories and pages that seem to fit under them (based on their current contents).

1 - Help with Wikia mechanics

Suggested name Category:Wikia help

2 - Help with contributing information

Suggested name Category:Contributing help

3 - Help with finding genealogical information

Suggested name Category:Searching help

Further discussion

Other pages not called "Help:..." could be added above (but we have to draw lines eventually - or every page would end up listed because it could help some reader or contributor). There's a lot of overlap. Jillaine's distinctions may be hard to recognise. I see no harm in having some of the more useful pages put into all three of the "Help" subcategories we could derive from the above. Could we use a fourth? Or more? Wikipedia:Help:Contents has thirteen groups of help types, most linking to subpages of that page, which contain grouped lists of links like the above. Robin Patterson 12:01, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Suggestion of having no help here but having it all on a Central site

My Dear Robin, before going nuts and copying everything from WP (unless I'm too late in this word of caution), I would ask if we really should have any help pages at all. Most of them I think we can get rid of, or at least move: I've mentioned this idea before, but you know, me being ill and all, *I* certainly am not one to undertake such an undertaking: Even now I'm talking in circles. Sigh.
What about a general Help Wikia. All Wikias can then just point to that Wikia instead of each Wikia having to reinvent the wheel each time, over and over again. Robin, my dear sir, you, yourself, are involved with psych, government and this wikia, right? Do you really want to copy all of the WP help pages to each of those three wikia?
Time for me to take another Vicodin and head back to bed. Sorry to stick my nose in here without thorough research first. Cheerio to all, Zeph. Zephyrinus 20:52, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
That's one approach, and it has some validity. It was applied for the first couple of years of Wikia, with each new site having no inbuilt help but the occasional advice to look at the Central Wikia help pages. What happened? Newcomers asked established members how to do things - questions that were answered in full on the Central Wikia or Wikipedia help pages. So - since early this year every new Wikia gets a startup package containing a dozen help pages and several other useful pages. Some of us believe such pages are worth copying to an individual Wikia so that new members don't have to jump from one site to another. I'm perfectly contented copying such pages to Psych, Govt, Scotland, NZ, Cities, Civilization, India, Australia, and a few other Wikia sites, and copying some more complex help pages from Wikia or Wikipedia to more serious sites such as this. Takes much less than a minute to copy a page to here; probably saves much more than a minute of newcomers' time eventually. Good luck with the Vicodin! Robin Patterson 03:25, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Good news - a separate dedicated Wikia Help

w:c:Help - but it won't help with genealogy-specific problems and it will probably have as little traffic as the old Central Help pages had. Robin Patterson 09:30, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Even better news: as some of you will have noticed in recent weeks, Wikia help is now magically added to every Wikia site, supplementing anything we already had. Some of the stuff I and others copied in the dark ages should be deleted. That leaves more time for us to improve the "How to get the best out of THIS site" pages (Jillaine's groups 2 and 3). — Robin Patterson (Talk) 06:16, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Even MORE notes (These after the initial edit)

Okay, so I love the redesign on the main portal! :D I like the clear help information in the beginning, that should help a lot on getting people started.

However, I am still seeing a flaw in not alerting people there is a naming convention in place... I know it sounds a little abrupt, but I really think there should be something really early on about naming conventions. Like:

Welcome to the Genealogy Wiki! This is a place where we all get together and work on our common Genealogy. Before adding your trees, please note that there are naming conventions in place here to prevent duplication of work.

The only reason I say that is that it could be just one link that could make the difference between my tree linking into Joe Smith's tree and before we know it we have 10 records that are all Almost duplicates, that'll have to be excised and deleted.

I know we have been talking about people checking every possible iteration of name before adding an ancestor, and with trees of 15 or so people, that might be feasable... but I am afraid that most of us have trees in excess of 1500 records... and you can't check every single one of them... it already takes me 10 minutes a record to put them in (And that's assuming they have no strange information). I'm looking at putting in 250 hours just to get up to speed...

Now, before I continue on this thread; what is the real threat to the Geneology database? I mean, am I just being over sensitive? What happens if we have two Joe Smith's, one called Joe Smith (1800-1850) and the other called Joe Smith (1800 1850)... with all the associated ancestors following the same path (So there are two sets of 50 or so records, one set with a "-" and the other without)? Is this a real problem? Or am I simply being too sensitive to this whole thing? Aabh 05:55, 17 July 2007 (UTC)



Nice set of observations. Re: Nameing Conventions---we can add something to the main portal, or elsewhere. One of the main problems we have is knowing and understanding, the specific things that are needful. Its not always obvious where people will go astray, and where a helpful pointer might be placed that will save everybody a hassle. So I appreciate your pointing this out.

Re: Duplicate articles---The key point is that duplicate articles dealing with the same person can hide out under slight variations of the article title. Some of those variations occur because people don't always follow the conventions (ie, including spaces between the "-" in the dates). Sometimes they occur because people have a different opinion about the DOB or DOD---perhaps someone will give the dates as "(1754-1821)", but someone else will give it as "(c1754-aft1821)". Or perhaps someone will want to insert a by name, ie, "John Walker (c1735-c1817) aka Indian Killer".) (When I started working the wiki I liked to use these bynames---mostly because I was dealing with a number of folks with similar names, who were often being confused. Had I to do it overagain, I'd not go this route. The reasons being a) makes for a long title, especially when you add subpages, and b) makes it hard for searches to find.

You question is "Is this really a problem, or am I being overly sensitive?". It depends on the perspective. Some folks REALLY want only a single article for each person---a la Wikipedia protocol. I don't thank that's a problem myself, and the Wikipedia protocol doesn't exactly apply here anyway. I believe it unrealistic to think that everyone is going to agree on basic person data. Different people will show different mothers' and fathers, not to mention spouse's, children, DOB's etc. Just check ancestry's database---you'll find no total and complete agreement on almost anyone. Yes, there probablly is only one "right answer"---but which one is it? Yes, there are ways to prove which one is "right", but there just are not a heck of a lot of folks following the professional standards that allow such discrimination. So, until we have universal acceptance of something like the Standards of Proof, we are going to have some duplication of articles.

Currently, that's not much of a problem, but that's because relatively few people are using the site. Once that changes, we can expect some conflicts between articles, and I imagine that there will be some duplication---some of which will be incidental ("I didn't realize there was an existing article about a particular person") and some deliberate deliberate ("i know there's an existing article about this person, but I don't agree with it").

I imagine that eventually we will have a bot that will seek out such duplications, and disambiguate them, or perhaps flag them to the authors to think about merging them. Many problems of this sort can be resolved with a proper discussion of alternative interpretations. If someone were indeed following the "Standards of Proof", this would be automatic---one of the standards of proof is that alternative viewpoints be interpreted, and an explanation provided as to the thinking for accepting one perspective over another.---but again, most folks aren't really into that kind of precision. (I might add that some (many?) view ANY disagreement with their personal views as personal attacks. In other cases people have minds like a steel trap---once an idea gets in there, it will never again see the light of day. In those circumstancs, finding a meeting of the minds is not usually possible. "Hardover" positions can not usually be modified.

So, no, I personally don't think you are being overly sensitive. There is a potential problem here, and its something that has been discussed at some length, offline by various parties. One the otherhand, its a problem that has solutions. Not sure what those solutions are at the moment, but when the problem comes up, I'm sure we will work something out. IN the meantime, I wouldn't worry too much about creating duplicate articles. If doing a search to be sure that a given title does not already exist is becoming onerous, perhaps the best choice would be to let that go. After all, if you DO hit on an already existing article, and duplicate (exactly) an existing title, the system is gong to immediately flag it for you anyway. (It won't let you create an exact duplicate). Of course, you may be creating a duplicate under a slight variation in name. All of the more reason to follow the naming conventions as they minimize that potential. Bill 12:08, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

As is common, I disagree with nothing Bill has said above.
Since Aabh wrote first above, I have emphasised at least one occurrence of the idea that people should try to follow the naming conventions. Doubtless one of us three will add another in a prominent place - "early" (whatever that means - people can read wikis in any order they choose!).
We have visual checks on duplications: all of them apart from those mentioned above are categories. If you put "your" people in the standard recommended categories for surname, birth year, and death year, then find them in those categories (mostly not too enormous yet), any near-duplicate is likely to appear fairly close to your person in at least one of those lists.
Can you handle java? If so, please see whether our GEDCOM page is any help: it links to a page with a name like "Loading Gedcoms", which explains with how most of our first 3,000 articles were added, several per minute.
(Long past my proper bedtime again.) Robin Patterson 15:55, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
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