Portal talk:Cemetery

Some relevant discussions from other places [5 August 2011]

• WeRelate talk:Watercooler/Archive 2008#Standard for cemeteries? [4 January 2008]
• WeRelate talk:Watercooler/Archive 2008#Image Annotation [4 January 2008]
• WeRelate talk:Watercooler/Archive 2008#Cemeteries [12 June 2008]
• WeRelate talk:Watercooler/Archive 2009#A Crazy Idea to Improve Our Cemetery Pages [20 March 2009]

Small tweak [20 March 2009]

Nice to see another portal being created!

One small note - in the beginning of the code, {{portal should read {{portal (without footer). The portal template is being used for the Namespace portals, and the portal (without footer) template is being used for all others. I see I didn't add this info to the template page - so I will add that when I get a chance.

Thank you!--Jennifer (JBS66) 15:43, 20 March 2009 (EDT)

OK, I made the change. I still sort of like having those links to the other portals, though, and I like the look of the footer and especially having the "Questions? Concerns? Leave a message on this talk page" line. Maybe we could have a template with a footer for namespace portals, and one with a footer for everyone else, and another with no footer at all. Another thought is that for non-namespace portals we could instead of having a link to all the other namespace portals just have a link to Portal:Portal or something similar, which would help people to discover other portals.

Thanks for your feedback! --JoshHansen 16:13, 20 March 2009 (EDT)

Good point about the "Questions? Concerns? Leave a message on this talk page" text - I added it to the Portal (without footer).

The way Dallan figured we would have users discover other portals, is through the use of Category: Portal. The category is added to the templates, so the portal pages will automatically show up on there.

Regarding the footer, or links to the other portals: I think we were trying to keep Namespace portals distinct from the other portals. The whole topic of portals didn't really go very "public" though - so it's a matter of seeing how the concept develops.

Let me know if you think of any other improvements!--Jennifer (JBS66) 16:28, 20 March 2009 (EDT)

How best Leverage Offsite Cemetery resources [21 March 2009]

After reviewing the watercooler discussion, I came away liking this idea a lot:

I could see creating a Category for each cemetery, giving directions, visiting hours, etc., and then adding the pages for people buried there to that Category.

Said Category page could also have explanatory text that links to external existing pages (such as internment.net or find-a-grave) for that specific cemetery. This way you're leveraging the existence of existing sites already out there, while at the same time helping people link their individuals to cemeteries AND helping werelate users find likely cemeteries for them to review for other family members, etc. -- jillaine 08:26, 21 March 2009 (EDT)

I kind of like the idea of a category for each cemetery. It makes a lot of sense to have an automatically-generated listing of everybody buried there. The only issue I see with it is this: the category will become the place you go when you want a listing of the individuals in the cemetery. But the Place page for the cemetery would contain all of the the extra information like the map and photos and stuff. What you really want to see is the photos of the cemetery and a map of where it is, along with a list of people interred there. We could put some of that additional information on the category page for the cemetery, but I don't like that idea since a cemetery in reality is a Place much more than it is a Category.

I know this is crazy-talk and sort of a tall order, but I've been wondering if it might be smart to have a special Cemetery namespace. Cemetery pages would be like a Place in that they have a physical location and would be part of larger entities and would show up in the popup menu when you're typing in a place name, but they would be like a Category in that the page itself would contain a list of all the pages linking to it. I guess a problem with the category-like features would be that the cemetery would then only list people for whom a WeRelate page exists, which would eliminate a lot of the usefulness of having a page for a cemetery, since we want people to be able to discover things they didn't already know. This is one way that simply having a list of names on the cemetery page and linking to the ones for whom a page exists has an advantage (like in the Lizemores cemetery example).

All that said, I see no harm in creating cemetery-specific categories right now, especially since most cemeteries have no manually-transcribed list of burials. So in the cemetery categories we'll have the cemetery's Place page and then the Person pages for people buried there. Does that sound good? If we have a manual transcription we can just put that in the text of the Place page.

Yes, and good point about linking to the offsite pages. I think it's fine if we have the links on the category page for the cemetery, but let's also be sure they make it on to the cemetery page. That's sort of duplicating effort, which only goes to show that the cemetery Place and the cemetery Category really need to be able to be combined into one someday. But for now I think it's reasonable.

Thanks for your thoughts, jillaine! --JoshHansen 14:19, 21 March 2009 (EDT)

Now, I admit, I haven't followed this thread all that closely, but I'm wondering about the category idea. The information that you are speaking of (a list of people buried in that cemetery), would be fully apparent from what links here on the Place page. Wouldn't creating separate categories be redundant?--Jennifer (JBS66) 17:51, 21 March 2009 (EDT)

Yeah, I wondered about using "What Links Here", too. I think a pretty good reason for using categories instead is that categories can be put together into a browsable hierarchy, whereas what links here can only be gotten to directly from the page itself. --JoshHansen 19:13, 21 March 2009 (EDT)

Why not just edit the Category:Cemetery_name page and add the place information and other links (including photos, etc.)? I do that elsewhere with surname in place category pages. -- jillaine 20:38, 21 March 2009 (EDT)

I'm betting that putting that stuff on a Category page will end up simply duplicating what's on the Place page. In a broader sense, developing all of the information about a cemetery on a Category page makes all of the located-in, type, latitude/longitude data less structured and explicit. I vote that we keep everything focused on a Place page and point people to the cemetery's Category for a listing of linked people.

There really needs to be special Cemetery namespace. The fact that this article was created so a cemetery transcription could be more easily accompanied by links to surname categories (as is easily done in regular Articles) is further evidence of this.

--JoshHansen 01:07, 24 March 2009 (EDT)

Interment.net [31 March 2009]

I've imported a list of existing Interment.net pages into some user pages at User:JoshHansen/CemeteryList. I'd like some feedback on my instructions and form letter since they're a pretty rough cut, still. The idea will be to manually email a few people asking for permission to post their transcriptions to WeRelate, and see what kind of a response we get.--JoshHansen 20:14, 31 March 2009 (EDT)

Another possible approach [4 August 2011]

Years ago WeRelate actually started out as a genealogy web crawler - like a "google for genealogy". The only vestige left of that beginning is the "Web" option on the Search menu. I've been thinking about possibly starting up the crawler again late next year. So if cemetery pages were linked to the corresponding transcription pages on other websites, we could conceivably crawl the transcription pages and create a searchable index of cemetery transcriptions. Similar for obituaries. Just a thought.--Dallan 11:18, 9 April 2009 (EDT)

Glad you mentioned obituaries, because I think that is where the real information lies, not just the headstone at the burial site. That's why I'd like to see corresponding obituaries incorporated into our cemetery pages (a lot of work, needless to say). The problem with obituaries is that most newspapers archive their obituaries after a week or a month or so (then charging a fee for access), or transfer them to a commerical hosting site like Legacy.com. That's great if you are looking for a specific individual -- not so great if you want to link to multiple obituaries enmasse. Find A Grave comes very close to what I'd like to see incorporated at WeRelate, but not sure if that is possible or preferential.--BobC 13:21, 9 April 2009 (EDT)

It is quite interesting how many cemeteries remain to be added to WeRelate as judged by looking at recent obituaries which indicate interment location. For instance, for obituaries listed at DelawareOnline.com on as "Recent Obituaries:Today" on 3 August 2011, 6 of 10 persons added were interred in cemeteries not listed in WeRelate. --ceyockey 23:23, 3 August 2011 (EDT)

Considering that cemeteries weren't directly imported into the WeRelate database like other places and that users were discouraged from creating Place pages for cemeteries for a long time, I think we're doing a fair job of covering cemeteries. Could we make more progress? Certainly. But the only way we can do that is for everyone to start adding more cemetery pages. -- Amy (Ajcrow) 06:28, 4 August 2011 (EDT)

Listing states on the portal page [9 May 2009]

Should we continue to list individual states on the portal page? If we bring it up to date, it is going to make for a very long page. Wouldn't it be just as efficient to just have the link to USA, which then shows links to all of the states? Just a thought. --Ajcrow 20:14, 6 May 2009 (EDT)

You're right that at the current rate the list will become impracticably large. But I do think it's kind of cool to list the states on the front page since it could give people an idea of the scope of the resources available. Maybe instead of listing the states using a bullet point per state, we could arrange then in a grid using two-letter abbreviations instead of full names of states. That way we could fit them all in without taking overly much space. --JoshHansen 15:51, 7 May 2009 (EDT)

That's a good idea. If we did a grid, we wouldn't even need to use the two-letter abbreviations. It would probably be better to use the full name of the state anyhow, since people outside the U.S. may not be familiar with the postal abbreviations. (Of course, there are a fair number of people in the U.S. who don't know the postal abbreviations!) --Ajcrow 16:25, 7 May 2009 (EDT)

I agree with your first observation that the USA link on the Cemtery Portal page already takes you to the category page which fully identifies all the US states included or categorized in the cemetery category. This is done automatically, which is probably a much better use of time, space and resources, as the Cemetery Portal Page has to be updated manually and could become cumbersome with the identification of all US states -- which as I stated, is redundant. Your further comments are welcome.--BobC 05:35, 9 May 2009 (EDT)

As I've been thinking more about this, the more I agree with my first thought. If we list the states, why aren't we listing the Canadian provinces, or subdivisions of any other non-US country? But, if we would do a grid with all 50 states, I think it would be better to create it after we have at least one cemetery in each state so that (1) we wouldn't have any red links and (2) we could create the grid once and be done rather than having to edit it every time we bring a new state online. --Ajcrow 09:26, 9 May 2009 (EDT)

Perhaps once we have a more thorough collection of cemetery pages we'll restore the links to highlight what's available. For now this is reasonable. Thanks for your work on this. --JoshHansen 16:19, 9 May 2009 (EDT)

Standardizing cemetery pages [27 March 2010]

Should we strive for some standardization of cemetery pages? For example, I've noticed that some pages have a heading for "External Links" while others call it "Resources." The way that the links are phrased are all over the place, too. I'm not saying that it has to be cookie-cutter, but I wonder if a more standardized approach would make the pages cleaner. I don't think it's a high-priority issue; I'd rather see us get more pages with more info <g> But as we're adding pages, perhaps this is something we should consider? Just thinking out loud here :-) --Amy 11:04, 27 March 2010 (EDT)

Possible external cemetery suggestion [2 June 2010]

Hello Bob,

I would like to suggest this site http://geonames.usgs.gov/ . Search Domestic, then chose category or just type in the name of the cemetery. I find it a VERY useful site. Debbie Freeman --DFree 15:41, 2 June 2010 (EDT)

Outstanding resource -- thanks for recommending it! I'll add it to the external list. It's also now in my Internet Favorites list as well. --BobC 15:48, 2 June 2010 (EDT)

Help instructions for creating cemetery pgs [11 February 2012]

Can someone add instructions for adding a link to Find-a-Grave on a new cemetery page. I will be adding so many pages and need to learn how to do this myself. I found the template but how do you find the cemetery number to put in the template? I just created Place:Cypress Hills Cemetery, Brooklyn, Kings, New York, United States and it needs a link to Find-a-Grave.--Janiejac 11:19, 5 February 2012 (EST)

I didn't know we had a template and just put links on the pages I did. But for your need, I went to FAG and looked for your cemetery. Then look at the URL for the page. You will see CRid=64319 in the link. --Judy (jlanoux) 11:43, 5 February 2012 (EST)

And you can find more information about linking to Findagrave at its source page Source:Find A Grave and you can find out how to include Wikipedia at the Wikipedia source page Source:Wikipedia. --cthrnvl 19:31, 10 February 2012 (EST)

I am an a descendent of James Campbell Sr. born in 1723,married to Mary Ann Moorehead. I would like to know where he was born? [5 March 2012]

--Sonny 10:35, 5 March 2012 (EST)

James Campbell Sr. Born 1723,married to Mary Ann Mooreherd.I am a descendent.I would like to know where James was born? [5 March 2012]

--Sonny 10:39, 5 March 2012 (EST)