WeRelate talk:Proposal for on-line genealogy

Rodovid [12 October 2009]

I would like to know what users of WeRelate think of the Rodovid engine. It features GEDCOM import and automatic tree generation. If you are interested, Rodovids creator Baya is open to a merge with WeRelate.--Bjwebb 15:12, 14 April 2006 (MDT)

A problem with Rodovid, and Wiki software generally it seems, is that the search function is not up to snuff. A good pedigree search needs name variations, before/within/after birth/death/marriage date searches, spouse name, etc. (see, e.g. WorldConnect Advanced Search) Imagine trying to use a free-text-based search on that database - it would be unusable for any even remotely common name.--Amelia.Gerlicher 16:59, 11 May 2006 (MDT)

Good advice. so you're saying that the search function over the wiki pages would need to be similar to WorldConnect's, not just text search. That's a little extra work, but it makes sense.--Dallan 22:58, 11 May 2006 (MDT)

Did anything come of this discussion? I love Rodovid for its multilingual community, but they have not managed to build anything like the interface tools and helper scripts that WR has. Metasj 01:05, 9 October 2009 (EDT)

Nothing ever came of it. While we're in beta we've focused solely upon building better interface tools and not on making the interface multi-lingual. When we get out of beta (sometime next year) I think we can spend more time focusing on multi-lingual capability. Several people have offered to translate the texts. It's just that I wanted to get the basic functionality in place first.--Dallan 19:29, 12 October 2009 (EDT)

Upward sync

After reading the current version of the proposal, it seems pretty clear how the wiki page information would be downward synched to the personal pedigree, but it's a little unclear to me how the information added or edited in the personal pedigree will be upward synched with the wiki page information; the user might not understand that the changes are getting uploaded to the wiki pages and how those changes have affected it.

But it seems like we need to figure this part out; if we don't, we would still have the problem of having different users working on different versions of the same information. --Npowell

There are three possible approaches:

• Every time I make a change to my personal pedigree, that change is immediately saved to the server's disk. This is similar to how PAF works today - changes to the pedigree are immediately saved to disk. Whenever a change is saved to disk, it is also propagated to the wiki page. If there is a "conflict" with the wiki page - that is, someone else has edited the wiki page since I last "sync'd" my pedigree with the wiki, then I am shown the differences between my version of the person (including my latest edit) and the wiki version of the person, and asked to incorporate my changes into the latest version of the wiki page.

Problem maybe, if I have edited several people since last contact with the Web?? (I hope this doesn't muck up your formatting; maybe more subheadings are needed here!) Robin Patterson 16:18, 17 April 2006 (MDT)

There are two cases where you might have edited several people since your last "sync":

• you exported a gedcom file, edited it off-line using your desktop genealogy application, and re-uploaded it to WeRelate,
• we're talking about one of the two approaches below, where the changes you make aren't copied to the wiki immediately but wait until you press a "sync" button.

In either of these two cases, I'm imagining that when you press the "sync" button, the system would present a list of everyone in your pedigree who you had changed or where the wiki pages had changed since you last sync'd. From this list you could review the changes you had made to your pedigree before they were copied into the wiki pages, and you could review the changes made to the wiki pages before they were copied into your pedigree. And I suppose you could prevent some changes that you had made to your pedigree which you didn't feel ready yet to publish to the wiki from being copied to the wiki pages, and you could prevent wiki page changes you disagreed with from being copied into your pedigree until you had reached an agreement with the wiki page poster.--Dallan 21:42, 17 April 2006 (MDT)

• We think of pedigrees like Word documents, which must be explicitly saved in order for changes to be preserved. There is a "save pedigree" menu option in the pedigree manager that I can click on periodically that saves the changes I've made within my browser to the server's disk. If I don't call that function, my changes are not saved (just as when I don't save a Word document, my changes are not saved). Updating the wiki pages happens when I save my pedigree to disk. For each person I have edited, one of two things happens: (a) if nobody else has edited the wiki page since I last sync'd with it, my changes are applied to the wiki page automatically, (b) if someone else has edited the wiki page since I last sync'd with it, I am again shown the differences between my version of the person and the wiki version of the person, and asked to incorporate my changes into the wiki page.
• The wiki pages aren't updated until I explicitly "sync" with the wiki. I can save my pedigree to disk (using either option 1 or 2), but any changes I make aren't applied to the wiki until I press the "sync" button. At this point, the same process happens as in option 2 -- changes I have made to people whose wiki pages that haven't been modified since I last sync'd are applied automatically; changes to wiki pages that have been modified since I last sync'd are presented to me and I am asked to integrate my change manually.

In any of the above approaches, if there is a conflict (i.e., others have edited the page since I last sync'd), but the change I made is to a different field/event than the fields/events that others have changed, the system could provide a simple one-click way for me to copy my change to the wiki page.

Question: Which of the three approaches seems most natural to people?--Dallan 21:11, 15 April 2006 (MDT)

Family display

Definitely want to be able to display a whole family, ideally three or more generations, with more than just the names; other sites do it. I'm not fussy about format: FTM's "Outline Descendant Tree" format might be the simplest and would be OK, but an hourglass style would be better. Robin Patterson 16:18, 17 April 2006 (MDT)

We could present a number of different navigation views in the interactive on-line pedigree manager. We have just as much flexibility with that application as your desktop application. I'm imagining that most people would view their pedigree information using this pedigree manager. When looking at other people's pedigree information on the wiki pages, it would be easy to show a wiki page for each person, and we can also show a wiki page for each family. Showing 3 or more generations on a wiki page is more difficult because displaying the page would involve reading information off of several wiki pages, but is do-able if you think it's important.--Dallan 21:42, 17 April 2006 (MDT)

Extent of "pedigree"

I presume "pedigree" is here used in the broadest sense to include any siblings, cousins, and anyone else in a gedcom (ie the same as I upload to WorldConnect from time to time)? Robin Patterson 16:18, 17 April 2006 (MDT)

Yes, everyone in your gedcom. The hope is that you would like the on-line pedigree manager so well that you would use it frequently and wouldn't just upload from time to time.--Dallan 21:42, 17 April 2006 (MDT)

Family and Person pages now, but when this

The new Family and Person "sneak preview" is great; I was just wondering how far this is through development.--Bjwebb 12:34, 12 November 2006 (MST)

Things are moving along. We've started work on gedcom upload. But before making upload available we wanted to gather feedback on the family and pedigree page format. Gedcom upload and an online family tree manager will be available early next year.--Dallan 22:34, 12 November 2006 (MST)