From WeRelate
Features
- Share information with your relatives about your ancestors.
- Automatically create pages for all your known ancestors by uploading a GEDCOM file.
- Collaborate with others on the same webpage to completely document a person's life.
- Include dates, places, life histories, diary transcripts, images, and source documents--pretty much anything you want!
- Link individuals to their parental and spousal families through family pages.
- Automatically generate pedigree charts and pedi-maps.
- Merge your person page with duplicates to build a single tree on WeRelate.
Frequently asked questions:
What is a person page?
- Person pages are specially formatted wiki pages that are designed to contain historical information about a deceased person. You can create person pages for each of your ancestors, using those pages to record dates, places, stories, and more. Each person page has a talk page that serves as a message board for genealogists researching that person.
How do I create a person page?
- Person pages can be created automatically or manually. If you have recorded genealogical information on your computer, you can automatically generate person pages for all your known ancestors with a GEDCOM upload. See the GEDCOM help page for more assistance. If you need to make a person page from scratch, consult our Person pages tutorial. It contains easy step-by-step directions for creating a person page manually.
Can I create person pages for living persons?
- We recommend that pages for living people not be created. If created, pages for living people should connect to pages for non-living people. Pages for living people found in uploaded GEDCOM files are created only if they belong to families with one or more non-living members.
- Pages for living people may only contain the following information: the word "Living" for the person's given name, the person's surname, their gender, and the families to which the person belongs. Pages for living people may not contain any other information. For example, the person page for a deceased person named "Miles Mock" might be entitled "Miles Mock (1)" and contain information on his gender, birth, marriage, death, etc. The person page for a living person named "Miles Mock" would be entitled "Living Mock (1)" and contain only gender information and the families of which Miles is a member. If someone was born within the last 110 years and has no listed date or place for death or burial, we will assume they are alive. Death information is required to post additional information about these individuals.
How do I find a person page?
- If you know the page's exact title, you may go directly to a person page by clicking on the Admin tab in the blue menu bar at the top of any WeRelate page, then clicking on Browse Pages. Choose either Watched pages or All pages and then select Person from the namespace menu. In the title field, type the name of the person page exactly as it appears on WeRelate, including the person index number (e.g., Daniel Phillips (1). Even if you don't know the exact title of the person page or the index number, you can type just the first portion of the title and it will bring up a list of results displaying all person pages that begin with those same words or letters.
- Alternatively, if you have the Family Tree Explorer open, click on the Edit menu, then on the Go to Page menu item, then enter the namespace and title as above.
- You can also try searching all person pages by clicking on the Search tab in the blue menu bar and then selecting Person from the Namespace drop-down menu. Type in a name, place, or keyword, and click "Search". See the Search tutorial for more information.
How do I create a relationship between one person and another?
- While each person has a Person page, people are linked to other family members through the family page, which is a wiki variation of a Family Registry that usually contains the name of each spouse, their marriage info, and a list of their children. For example, on the person page for Daniel Phillips (1), there is a link to his parents' family page (Family:Daniel Phillips and Ella Grey (1)), as well as to the family page for him and his wife (Family:Wayne Phillips and Willie Haynie (1)).
- Both person and family pages are automatically created and linked when you upload a GEDCOM. If you are creating person pages manually, follow these instructions (especially steps five and six). Basically, you will include the family names in the correct edit boxes, click on the red links this creates on the person page, and edit the blank pages to create, and link to, the family pages.
How do I edit a person page?
- While on the person page, click on the Edit link at the top of the page. Change or add information, click Show preview at the bottom of the page to preview your changes before saving, make further edits or changes if needed, and finally, click Save Page.
How can I upload an Image from a Person Page?
- Some people like to add photos of people to their respective person page. See: Images Tutorial for instructions on how to do this.
Who can edit a person page?
- Because person pages are wiki pages, anyone who is logged into WeRelate can edit person pages. This makes collaborating with other researchers easier. If you choose to watch a page, you will be notified via email everytime that someone edits that page.
- If you are worried about someone changing your data and messing up your research, remember that all versions of all wiki pages are archived. First, use the TALK page on either the page in question or on the User page of the person who made the changes, in order to discuss the nature of the problem. (You may want to review Wiki etiquette before doing so.
- If you decide it is appropriate to return to a previous version of the page, return to the page in question, click on the History link at the top of that page, find and open the correct previous version, then click on the Edit link at the top of that page, and click Save page at the bottom of the page.
Where do I include LDS ordinance information?
- This can only be done in the Family Tree Explorer. Click here for more information.
How do I represent names with foreign language characters?
- You have two options if you are running Windows:
- Click on the Start Menu, then Accessories, System Tools, and Character Map. From here you can select any character, copy it to the clipboard, and paste it into your document. You can also see the Alt-NNN sequence that you can use to type that character.
- If you work with international characters a lot and you use Windows XP, you may want to set up your keyboard so you can enter them easier by typing a ' (for acute), ` (for grave), " (for umlat), ~, or ^, followed by the character you want to modify. For example, once you've set up your keyboard in the manner I'll describe, you would type a " followed by an O to produce Ö. Here's what you do: click on the control panel, then on Regional and Language Options (it's in the Date, Time, Language, and Regional Options category), then on the Languages tab, then on the Details button, then on the Add button, then select a Keyboard Layout of "United States - International". Click on the Language Bar button and make sure that the first, third, and fourth checkboxes are checked. Click "ok" to close all of the dialogs. Now close or minimize all windows. You should see a tiny "language bar" window somewhere on your desktop. Click on the "-" in the upper right-hand corner to move it to your taskbar at the bottom of the screen. Now click on the little keyboard icon in your taskbar. This allows you to switch between your normal US keyboard and the new international keyboard that you just added. If you click on the international keyboard, the '`"~^ characters have the special behavior of modifying the next character you enter as described above. If you click on the regular keyboard, they go back to their normal behavior.
- If you are working on a Mac....
General information
Titles for Person pages
- In a wiki environment, each page-- no matter what kind it is-- must be unique. Therefore, a WeRelate person page title has three parts:
- the wiki namespace (in this case 'Person: to differentiate it from other "spaces" on the wiki (such as Family:, Help:, Special:, etc.). See namespace for more about namespaces.
- the name of the person (in Firstname Lastname order)
- the index number (an automatically generated number that the WeRelate wiki software gives to the person page in order to distinguish, for example, one John Smith from another.
- If you've used the Add:Person form to create a person page, WeRelate's software will automatically generate a page title, using what you entered in each of the First Name and Last Name fields, and adding a unique index number so there won't be multiple instances of John Smith (1).
- While you have the option of renaming a Person page, please keep the format of Firstname Lastname. (The system will add a unique index number; more on this below.). Please do NOT:
- include middle names or initials
- include titles or suffixes (Sir, Lord, Reverend; Jr., Sr., III).
- There are other places on the Person page for you to enter such information. For example, to create a page for Captain Robert Harold Townsend III, enter "Robert" as the given name and "Townsend" as the surname. There will be an opportunity to enter the other information later.
Why the Rules?
- Many documents, sources, and references refer to your ancestors only by their given names and surnames. Your cousins may not be aware of middle names, nicknames, or titles. It is less confusing if page titles are limited to only the given name and surname.
- For instance, suppose I didn't know my great grandmother's middle name or title and you did. We could easily create duplicate person and family pages without ever knowing it, because the pages would have different titles if you included her middle name. Keeping the page titles simple reduces duplication and keeps us on the same page.
- Keeping it simple makes it easier for your cousins to identify common ancestors and collaborate with you.
- Because of names such as "St. John," "de la Vega," and "Von Monfrans," the match/merge function considers all words after the first space as the surname.
Person index numbers
- Many persons have the same given name and/or surname. Some even share the same middle names, nicknames, or titles.
- For instance, there were six men named Lewis Green Caddell, all contemporaries of the same small frontier town and buried in the same cemetery. As they share similar birth and death information, it is difficult to tell them apart. WeRelate adds a person Index number to make each one unique. So, "Lewis Caddell (1)" has a separate page from "Lewis Caddell (2)", and so on.
- If you are adding a person for the first time, do not use a person index number. WeRelate will give your person a unique person index number the first time you save.
- When adding a person who already has a person page on WeRelate to a list of children on a family page, remember to include that person's index number. If you don't include the number, the system will assume that she/he is a new individual and assign another index number.
- In addition to person index numbers, WeRelate also uses family index numbers to classify families. Click here for more information about family index numbers and how to use person index numbers on family pages.
Pedigree charts and maps
WeRelate automatically generates sortable pedigrees, pedigree maps, timelines and family detail reports from the data on your person and family pages. Click on the More link at the top of a person or family page, then click on Pedigree-Map to view. See Help:Pedigree-maps for additional help.
References
The WeRelate referencing system allows you to completely and precisely document any and all information you want to share. Including detailed source information, digital images of documents and family photos, and helpful research notes makes it easier for you to collaborate with other researchers. By properly documenting your research, you contribute to the virtual genealogical community. See this tutorial lesson on entering references for detailed, step-by step assistance. Also, check out Help:Source pages and Help:Images.
Related Pages
