User talk:Dallan/Archive 2007

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some feedback

Hello Dallan, this is Steve lewis here. As you can tell from my work on my web material, I am fairly new at this. I am sure I will get through this but be patient!

Hi Steve, I also appreciate your patience with the site! Don't hesitate to ask questions; they help us improve the quality of the website.--Dallan 10:39, 16 April 2007 (MDT) 
Just noticed that the name of Margaret Rinehart is spelled incorrectly on her page even after I corrected it! What gives?
Reply on User talk:StevenLewis--Dallan 09:26, 18 April 2007 (MDT)

Intro:

My name is Barak, I am a 25 year old guy from Israel. I am researching my Jewish Ashkenazi + Norwegian + Swedish roots.

My family tree, unlike most family trees.... is quite unique... I know for certain of 27 generations back (over 857 years back) and in the last year I found out that I might be able to trace back over 80 generations, 2000 years back, and that there might be a chance that I am a descendent of ancient celebrities such as Mark Antony, Boadicea and Prophet Mohammad..!!!

That's very cool!

how is that possible you ask ...?

Well.. Back in the 1980's, my now late Norwegian grandfather, which was into researching his own Norwegian roots, got an expert in the field from his home town to study his family tree and see how far he would get.. He managed to get back as far as Sverre Sigurdsson (1150-1202), one of the first kings of Norway.. Even though most Norwegians today are in one way or another descendents of that king, my grandfather was excited about managing to proving the links through the official historical church books kept. My grandfather had a slight problem back then though - producing a big enough family tree chart to visualize his discovery would take him ages. So all of the information he gathered laid back in his office in a pile of boxes and gathered dust. After he died in 1998 my mother inherited the boxes but she never got to open them up and finishing my grandfathers work.

During the last years I have been trying to digitize my mother's and late grandfather's intensive family tree research on both sides of my family in hope of preserving their valuable work so that my descendants would be able to enjoy it in the future as well and I am hoping to share the information with all my close and distant relatives worldwide. I started the digitization process by using the software "Family Tree Maker", which is able to produce huge family trees (up to 99 generations). I entered all the info we had in the boxes quickly and easily into the program and there is was... The complete family tree the way my grandfather wanted it to be.

After a few weeks of looking at the tree my mother started to re-think if maybe we might get even further back by googling our oldest ancestors... and indeed ... we found out that since the 1980's genealogists have furthered researched the Norwegian Novelty and some unofficial sources share their research online which links our oldest known ancestor to many different directions in the novelty of Europe during the first century and goes as far back as the roman empire. In theory it makes sense, since back in those days novelty only married novelty and they all those ancient VIPs were well documented.

Questions started rising like..

I haven't answered those questions yet.. Because I haven't found such a place on the web to share my knowledge and find out the claims are true.

I've been going over different genealogy wikis during the last year but haven't found the right solution for myself. After finding your site today I was very pleased to see how well you have created it. very well done. I signed up and uploaded my GEDCOME file to the new uploading beta feature (I am supposed to get it ready by Tuesday).

Questions/feedback:

That's the right thing to do. I believe the best way to validate your genealogy is to make it publicly available and peer-reviewable so that others can suggest changes and provide additional information. Adding sources and scanned images of source documents is also very helpful.
I would put this information in the Family History text box on the Edit screen.
Not difficult -- if all of the changes to a page are spam/vandalism, when you're in the history looking at the differences between the two versions, click on the title of the older version, click Edit (you'll get a warning about editing an older version), and click on the Save page button to have the older version replace the vandal's version. Having said that, to date the spammers seem much more interested in spamming the discussion page of the main page and other higher-traffic pages.
Yes, several people revert spam, and we block spammers regularly. Most spam is reverted within a few hours.
Page titles appear in many places -- category listings and emailed notifications of changes for example. If I changed the page titles to just numbers, I would have to change the code everywhere they are displayed to replace the numbers with names, and then in a category listing for Smith's for example you could still have 100 John Smith pages that would all have the same link text. At least by following the names with an index number you get some indication of the name where ever page titles appear.
All of the deceased people would get their own page. Living children of deceased parents (and in fact anyone who belongs to a family containing one or more deceased individuals) will get a page created that contains only their surname and the word Living as their given name, with no other information. Pages are not generated for living people who belong only to families where all family members are living, because it didn't seem to make sense to have a family consisting only of "Living Surname" individuals.
Currently, deleting someone requires asking me or one of the other sysops to do it. Our policy is that if everyone who is watching a page (anyone who creates or edits a page watches it by default), agrees to its deletion, then it is deleted. Soon I will add something to the software so that if you are the only person who is watching a page, you can delete it.
We are planning to write a matching agent to run in the background looking for possible matches among pages. When it finds matches, it will add links to the matching page(s) on the discussion page. We will start working on this in the Spring.
I agree. As you've probably seen, our help pages are out-of-date. We recently hired a part-time writer (User:Wrhelp) who has been fixing them. We're also working on updating our video tutorials.
Good point.
Yes, GEDCOM export is on our todo list.
Goes along with your previous point about un-touchable copies of a tree.
I'm part Norwegian, so I'm interested to see what you have found. I haven't been able to trace my lineage that far back though...

--Barak4u 18:28, 15 February 2007 (MST)

We launched in March of last year, so less than a year now. We haven't promoted the site much because we're still in beta and are mainly interested in feedback at this point so that we can make it a terrific site at launch. We hope to have the basic features ready by April of this year though, at which point we'll take the site out of beta and start promoting it.
--Dallan 10:21, 16 February 2007 (MST)
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seem to have found the first bug

I didn't manage to add into the image page of this photo http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Image:Even_Mikkelsen_Stenberg_and_wife.jpg a link to the peoples' names and pages.. --Barak4u 16:26, 16 February 2007 (MST)

Well, it wouldn't be the first bug :-). Can you explain more about what you mean? It looks like the photo has been linked to the family page. Do you mean that you're not able to add annotations, or that you're not able to link to a person/family page from within an annotation? I'm going to enhance the photo functionality in the next month or so, so let me know what you're looking for.--Dallan 14:13, 17 February 2007 (MST)
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what to do when ..

one of the people I enetered has his own Wikipedia article ? should I copy the entire content of his Wikipedia article or is it any way to link it so that it works together well automaticly? --Barak4u 16:55, 16 February 2007 (MST)

You can't import the entire text of a wikipedia article into a person or family page, because those pages are dual-licensed under GFDL and CC-BY-SA, and Wikipedia articles are licensed only under GFDL. But you can create a link to the page: [[wikipedia:Johann Sebastian Bach]] links to the Johann Sebastian Bach page for example.--Dallan 14:13, 17 February 2007 (MST)
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saw your mug in the mag

Hello both -- I'm just looking thru my latest edition of byu magazine and Dallan's name caught my eye, got your info from the "Colleges Honor 13 Alumni" page (congrats!). My name is Scott Brackney, my wife, the former Laura Hafel, was Solveig's roommate in Heritage Halls, just before y'all (and we'all) got married, way back in 1984. drop us a line at (email removed).

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Geni

Following the discussion on the Watercooler, I wonder what your opinion on the Geni.com site was. Would you be willing to look at the possibility of some sort of partnership between the sites?--Bjwebb 14:41, 18 February 2007 (MST)

I've spoken with someone who knows the people behind Geni. He recommended we wait awhile until we have a larger user base.--Dallan 12:29, 19 February 2007 (MST)
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Download Gedcom?

Is it possible to download Gedcom files from pages I create?

Not yet. It's on our list of things to do though. We hope to implement it later this Summer.--Dallan 16:25, 22 February 2007 (MST)
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Comment requested

I started some comments in WeRelate_talk:Places (Historical Place Names). I'd like your opinion, if you don't mind. --Joeljkp 18:27, 6 March 2007 (MST)

No problem. I've been letting others monitor recent changes lately, but I obviously need to be better about continuing to track changes relating to the website as a whole. I'll take a look at it right now.--Dallan 20:46, 6 March 2007 (MST)
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Copy page

Can you copy the page Source:Mayflower families through five generations : descendants of the Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth, Mass., December 1620 (86888) to Source:Mayflower families through five generations: descendants of the Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth, Mass. December 1620, or even better, Source:Mayflower Families Through Five Generations? This will clean up the old name somewhat, though it can be left as a redirect to the new. The LOC uses the long name, but the book refers to itself by the short. --Joeljkp 16:30, 22 March 2007 (MDT)

Done. By the way, you can rename pages yourself by clicking on the "Move" button at the top of the page. Renaming a page leaves the old name as a redirect to the new one.--Dallan 10:27, 23 March 2007 (MDT)
Cool, thanks. I'll do it myself in the future. --Joeljkp 10:59, 23 March 2007 (MDT)
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family tree

1. Uploaded a gedcom file and nothing happened.

2. I have one person in tree, but how do I find John Gillespie (1) and (2) to get rid of them. They were entries before I figured out how to do it right?

Dave Gillespie, starfield

Hi Dave, I checked the gedcom upload log and didn't notice a gedcom file from Starfield. Not sure what happened. Could you try it again? Click on the "Create" tab, then click on "Launch Family Tree Explorer", then click on the "File" menu, then on "Import", then click on the "Browse" button on the right-hand side of the screen and select a GEDCOM file that you have created from your desktop genealogy application.
Regarding John Gillespie (1) and (2), it looks like the pages were never saved, so you don't need to worry about them. Also, I added "John Gillespie" as the preferred name on the Person:John Gillespie (3) page.--Dallan 00:17, 29 March 2007 (MDT)
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Video

I just heard about WeRelate (through DearMyrtle). The features mentioned sounded interesting, so I explored the site. After looking around a bit, I viewed the video and am sorry to say that it's really not very good. In fact, it's fairly terrible because:

1) The image is too small for senior eyes to tell what's going on. 2) It dashes through too many processes much too briefly to be followed. 3) The narration is simply painful.

If I may make some suggestions . . .

Consider breaking the material into a few sections and taking each one more slowly. The current format might make sense to experienced users but I can say from the viewpoint of a potential new user, it's very confusing. I would appreciate something beginning with an introduction explaining the purpose of the site. Is it to facilitate collaboration among researchers, provide a place to archive data, assist family research, replace individual web sites, replace desktop genealogical software? Or some--or all--of these?

Next could come bulletpoint-type examples of the very nice features of the site (without animation). Perhaps examples of some well-designed pages, a sample map with several events included, a typical family tree, a family photo with captions included, etc.

That should be followed by a "getting started" tutorial with choices for uploading a GEDCOM or inputting directly. And then, of course, some suggestions about where to go from there.

Obviously many computer-savvy people are using the site successfully but, in my opinion, broadening the user base will require something to take folks through the process in the ubiquitous "baby-steps." Remember that a very large number of family history researchers are retired folks who are a little reluctant to just jump in and start randomly clicking here and there.

I do hope I'll find the patience to struggle (for me) through putting my data on the site. And whether or not that happens, I wish you good luck with your venture.

Kirsten Bowman

Thanks for your suggestions. We are in the process of recording some new movies. We are sorry you are having problems. The original video was only intended to be a quick tour. Until then you might try the text tutorials available at the help tab. ---sq 15:07, 4 April 2007 (MDT)
I appreciate your time to enter these suggestions. We'll think about them and see what we can do.--Dallan 21:57, 4 April 2007 (MDT)
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Ferreira Porto

Dallan, obrigado pela atenção vou importar novamente o gedcom, abraços --carlosetmenezes 07:39, 8 April 2007 (MDT)

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Another confusion.

"WeRelate:About sources From WeRelate Our goal is for the source wiki to become a comprehensive database of genealogical sources, both on-line and off-line.

The Source wiki currently includes approximately 1,300,000 sources, including links to over 100,000 websites found on 58,000 unique hosts, 250,000 message boards, and 950,000 off-line microfilms and books found primarily in the Family History Library Catalog.

Everyone can contribute their favorite sources to the wiki. Most of the sources in the wiki were added by WeRelate's genealogy web crawler, but the crawler may have missed your favorite sources (or your favorite sources may be off-line). Please help others by adding your favorite sources to the wiki. First search the wiki to see if your favorite sources are already in there, and if not, please add them. Thank you for your involvement!

The source wiki includes the title of the source, a URL if the source has one, surnames and places covered by the source (usually), and a description (sometimes). Searching the source wiki is a good way to find off-line sources such as microfilms for a particular place and record type, but to search the full text of all pages on source websites, including these wiki pages, you should use the Search button at the top of the page.

[edit section]Related pages Search and browse sources Help on sources"

Retrieved from "http://www.werelate.org/wiki/WeRelate:About_sources"

-click on Search and browse sources and get "No such special page From WeRelate You have requested an invalid special page, a list of valid special pages may be found at Special:Specialpages.

Thank-you for pointing this out. I fixed the link.--Dallan 08:00, 9 April 2007 (MDT)
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Change password

I hit the "e-mail my password" button instead of the "log in" button. I was e-mailed a new password and told to log in and change my password. How do I change my password?

Thank you,

Shirley Palmer shirlronpal@msn.com

You can click on the "My Relate", then on "Preferences", then enter your password into the "Change password" box. Let me know if you have any questions.--Dallan 08:00, 9 April 2007 (MDT)
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Family Tree Explorer source problem

Hello,

I am sending this directly to you as it contains personal information I don't want on the water cooler.

I uploaded a GEDCOM of the Comegys Family yesterday and started inspecting it today.

There appears, at least to me, a problem with the way you are handling Sources: If you look at the root person (Cornelius Comegys, C 1) and source one. you find my name in the leading position which I believe has no business being their and no author's name. If you look at the GEDCOM you find: 0 @S169@ SOUR 1 TITL Maryland Calender of Wills 1 ABBR WIL MD Calender of Wills 1 AUTH Baldwin, Jane Baldwin & Wright, F Edward 1 PUBL Kohn & Pollock +, Baldwin, MD, 1904+

No where in the GEDCOM is my name but the authors name is there.

Shouldn't the source as presented in FTE show the authors name rather than mine?

I see what's going on. What is shown on on Cornelius' page is the "title" of your personal source page: MySource:Wallisguy/Maryland Calendar of Wills. The title of a personal source page begins with your user name so that your sources don't accidentally overwrite someone else's sources with the same title. You can see the author (and other information about the source) by clicking on the title. Having said this, I can see the source of confusion. There are three possible things we could do:
By the way, although this page is not as widely read as the watercooler, is still visible to anyone. Feel free to erase your comment and my response if you'd like. You can also send me email using the "E-mail this user" link at the bottom of this page if you have a question that you want to be completely private.
--Dallan 19:53, 10 April 2007 (MDT)
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Creating a Family Tree

I am a Macintosh user. My computer is running OS 10.3.9. When I go to my profile page, there is no box for me to enter surnames and locations. I have tried 3 different web browsers, but all have the same result. I am using Safari right now, but i also use Firefox.

When I enter the family tree manually, how do I connect parents with children, working back in my family line? The page appears to be set up to connect children with parents, but I have always been taught to work back from the present. Also, the information I am gathering is nearly always pushing one of my lines back a generation or two.

Thank you,

Shirlpal shirlronpal@msn.com

I think my iMac is running OS 10.4.8. I just tried editing my profile page with Safari and the boxes came up. My only thought is maybe you're looking at your profile page but not editing it? Have you clicked on the "My Relate" tab, then clicked on the "Edit profile" button near the top of the page? Do you see the big text-entry box labeled "Homepage text" for entering some text about yourself?
If you have a Person page for a child and want to enter information about their parents, the first thing you need to do is edit the child's page and under the heading "Child of Family", enter the names of the parents (father's given and surname followed by mother's given and maiden name; e.g., "John Spriggs and Charlotte Westby") in the text box. If you don't know one of their names, then just say e.g., "John Spriggs and Unknown". You can always rename the page later. Now save the child's page. You should see the parents' names (followed by an ID number to make the family title unique) represented by a red link on the child's page. Click on that link, and then click on the "Edit" box to create the Family page for the parents. Enter marriage information if you know it, along with names of any other children you wish to add. Now save the Family page. You should now see red links for the husband, wife, and any new children that you added. Click on any of the red links to create Person pages for those individuals. We're planning to simplify this process in the future. Let me know if you have any other questions.
--Dallan 19:53, 10 April 2007 (MDT)
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Image file names, unique vs descriptive

Hey Dallan, I just uploaded a couple of image files and was wondering about the file name itself. I've definitely chosen names that are unique. Naming them is also easy for me as the file name matches up with what's on my computer and the numbering system for my sources. However, they are not at all descriptive for anyone else looking at them. Is the file name itself something that someone would search for and then from that decide if they want to view the image? Is this something I need to correct? --Ronni 12:47, 11 April 2007 (MDT)

We haven't settled concretely on a naming scheme for images yet; you can name them what you want. I kind of like the idea of naming them similar to the person or family page that they correspond to, assuming that they correspond to a person or family page. For example, if I had uploaded a birth certificate for John Smith (13), I might name the image "John Smith (13) birth certificate". But I wouldn't worry about renaming the images you have already uploaded.--Dallan 16:17, 11 April 2007 (MDT)
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place names and dates

I've read about your plans to create a standardized format for places but what will you do with GEDCOM files that folks upload to your site that don't comply with your standards? For instance, I have a large chart; have never used the country name U. S. A. Would each individual have to be edited to comply with the standard? And how about the county that's written this way: Queens (now Nassau) County, L. I., NY ? That wouldn't fit neatly into the standardized format either. So how difficult will it be to get all the individuals in a large uploaded chart to fit into the format? I understand your making adding new typed individuals easy by selecting a location from a drop down box, but uploaded charts will present a different problem.

When a GEDCOM is uploaded, we match the places in the GEDCOM with places in the place index. If we find a match, we store both places separated by a bar(|): the original text, which is what is displayed on the page and is never modified, and the matching place title in the index, which is what the text links to. For example, U. S. A. appears as U. S. A.. If we don't find a match, then we store just the original text. The place-matching algorithm is not as good as we'd like it to be, but will get better over time.--Dallan

I also have dates that might defy standards, such as, betw 12 Nov 1826 and 5 Apr 1827. That is, between the time the deceased wrote the codicil to his will and the date the will was proved. Just something I was wondering about. --Janiejac 22:12, 12 April 2007 (MDT)

Dates like this will make searching more problematic (i.e., this page will match searches on "12 Nov 1826" but not "1 Dec 1826"), but otherwise it's not a problem.--Dallan 10:45, 13 April 2007 (MDT)
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Delete a used-created source page?

I am still on the learning curve for WeRelate. I created a source page - http://www.werelate.org/wiki/MySource:Debbie_V.:Marriage_Register%2C_Franklin%2C_Illinois and I realize now that I should have research a bit more before I did this. It is actually just a transcription of a marriage record for my g-grandparents and some info about where I found the information. I would like to add the transcription to the image itself and DELETE this source page.

You should be able to delete your source page by clicking on the green "Delete" button near the top of the page. If the button isn't there for some reason, would you let me know?--Dallan 14:29, 13 April 2007 (MDT)

I don't see any button marked Delete. Sorry.--Debbie V. 15:28, 13 April 2007 (MDT)

Oops, my mistake. I just fixed the problem so it should work from now on. (I also deleted the page you mentioned so you don't have to worry about it.)--Dallan 16:50, 13 April 2007 (MDT)
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Delete image page?

I have a similar request - I want to delete one of my early image pages. media:Edgar_Ligon_Marriage_Details.JPG but I don't see a DELETE button.

Oops - here's the link to the page.http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Image:Edgar_Ligon_Marriage_Details.JPG--Debbie V. 17:13, 13 April 2007 (MDT)

No problem. You can't delete image pages yet, so this is the right place to ask for them to be deleted. I'll take care of it. (I hope you upload something in its place though; this is a great example of a source document -- just the kind of image I hope more people post!)--Dallan 17:29, 13 April 2007 (MDT)

---
Yes, I decided to go with a photo of the whole marriage record line. I think I am slowly getting the point of the difference between the source and image pages. http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Image:EdgarLigonPatseyArnoldmarr1883.JPG I am kind of curious as to why this page doesn't show up on my Debbie V.:Ligon family tree page though. http://www.werelate.org/w/index.php?title=Special:ShowFamilyTree&user=Debbie+V.&name=Ligon Debbie V. 17:58, 13 April 2007 (MDT)

Once you've created the image page, you need to also add it to your tree. (Launch the family tree explorer, navigate to the image page you created, and click on the "Add" menu, then on "This page" to add it to your tree.) Generally, if the family tree explorer is open when you create a page, the page is added to your tree automatically. But it doesn't always work for images. I need to make sure it works for images as well.--Dallan 00:05, 14 April 2007 (MDT)
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Kanawha, West Virginia place name fix

Hi Dallan.. Place:Kanawha (county), West Virginia, United States needs changed to Place:Kanawha, West Virginia, United States. I tried to move the former into the latter, but couldn't of course because the page already existed. The page I tried to move it to is a little screwed up as well, e.g. preferred name is "United", made to look like a city, when it's really a county, etc. I'm stumped as how to proceed. I have some town information I want to include for Kanawha County but wanted to get this fixed first. Thanks!--Ronni 03:47, 14 April 2007 (MDT)

I'm not sure how that happened. I moved Place:Kanawha, West Virginia, United States to Place:United, Kanawha, West Virginia, United States and then moved Place:Kanawha (county), West Virginia, United States to Place:Kanawha, West Virginia, United States, so it's fixed now. The second move required deleting the redirect left behind from the first move, which isn't something you could have done, so I appreciate your bringing it to my attention.--Dallan 19:09, 14 April 2007 (MDT)
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Category pages, Surname in Place

Title Change I am working on a Category:Surname in Place page, Category:Ligon in Illinois. Should I have titled it Category:Ligon in Illinois, United States. Can that be changed?

Page format If you look at the page, you can see I am attempting to come up with a format that will do two things.

  1. To give a Census Year overview of when and where Ligon families (all spelling variations) came into the state of Illinois and where they came from. This is to broaden the view a bit so that people do not get too focused on one county.
  2. .To provide county sections where one can elaborate on the Ligon families in that county.

Right now this is rather cumbersome, but I hope in time to make it less so. If a county section gets too full I will move it to a separate page.

Do we have an example page for Category:Surname in Place pages?

Category Pages listing I added Category:Surname in place to the bottom of my Category:Ligon in Illinois page. However, when I look at this page, Category:Surname in place my Ligon page is listed under "Subcategories". Is that a mistake? --Debbie V. 19:28, 15 April 2007 (MDT)

Wow, this is a terrific page! I cut-and-pasted the text from the "Category:" page you had created into an "article" with the same title (but without a Category: prefix). A "Category:" page typically doesn't have much text on it -- just a list of pages belonging to the category. The "article" page has the text information. To answer your questions:
  • The title is fine. We don't typically add "United States" to the titles of surname-in-place pages. (I know there are some out there; I'm going to go through and standardize the names at some point.)
  • The format looks great. You have as good a page as any I've seen. For another example, Phillips in Texas is a page User:Solveig did.
  • Making the page an article now lists it like the other pages in the Category:Surname in place category.
--Dallan 10:39, 16 April 2007 (MDT)
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Capitalization of User Name

I tried to create the user name alexeagar, but it ended up as Alexeagar. I don't mind it being AlexEagar or alexeagar, but Alexeagar bugs me. Could you fix that? I can link to my home page using AlexEagar or alexeagar, but every time I log in it displays AlexEagar.

Thanks Alex Eagar

No problem. I renamed you to User:AlexEagar. (The mediawiki software capitalizes the first letter of every page title, including user pages.)--Dallan 22:14, 16 April 2007 (MDT)
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Place pages

Dallan: I've been exploring the site. Lots of potential here! One thing that I'm confused about are the place wiki pages. For example on the Place:Fairfield, Ohio, United States page, there are contained places listed on the right-hand side, including several in the "Unknown" category. Many/most of those are townships in Fairfield County. Is there (or should there be) a "township" category? Or should townships fall under the "Inhabited Places" category?

Yes, those places should have their "Type" changed from "Unknown" to "Township". A lot of places are of unknown type because we found them in the Source:Family History Library Catalog which doesn't record a type for any of their places. If you know the type of any place that is currently unknown, you are encouraged to change it!--Dallan 21:32, 18 April 2007 (MDT)

I wasn't clear before. The type shows up as "township" when you look at that specific page (for example Place:Berne, Fairfield, Ohio, United States), but on the Place:Fairfield, Ohio, United States page, it is listed as an "unknown" type. Is there a place to add "Townships" as a category in "Contained Places"? --Ajcrow 05:28, 19 April 2007 (MDT)

Thanks for pointing this out. It looks like this is due to a bug when we updated Place:Berne, Fairfield, Ohio, United States last December. There are likely lots of other places showing up incorrectly in the "Contained Places" list as well. You don't need to do anything; we'll correct the type in the "Contained Places" early next week.--Dallan 22:01, 19 April 2007 (MDT)
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Don's Tree will not load

I put in a few more people (without having Family Tree Explorer open) and now when I went to launch Family Tree Explorer and open Don's Tree, it will not open! What did I not do correctly?

It was due to a bug in the software - thank-you for pointing it out! It's been fixed now.--Dallan 09:56, 24 April 2007 (MDT)
Thanks. I'm glad that it wasn't something that I did or did not do. --Dquass 20:06, 25 April 2007 (MDT)
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Need another Image delete

Hi Dallan, I need another image page deleted. http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Image:Patseybradyobit.jpg. Thanks.--Debbie V. 07:14, 24 April 2007 (MDT)

Done--Dallan 09:52, 24 April 2007 (MDT)
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Sending a URL

If I'm doing it correctly, according to a few tests that I've run, I'll need to use the "%281%29" at the end of the URL. That is, it needs to be typed "http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Person:Given_Surname_%281%29" instead of "http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Person:Given_Surname_(1)". The reason seems to be that the ending ")" will not stay underlined, whereas the second "%" will stay underlined. Please check it out!--Dquass 16:43, 27 April 2007 (MDT)

I guess that's not too surprising. You can enter ()'s into the URL window of a browser, but email clients have to figure out where the URL ends, and technically ()'s should be encoded as %28 and %29 in order to appear in URLs. I just tried sending an email with a URL containing ()'s using MS Outlook and it worked, but other email clients could behave differently.--Dallan 11:18, 28 April 2007 (MDT)
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Duplication

I suppose this was to be anticipated: popular historical figures are being entered in multiple copies. I wanted to connect less well-known ones to Edward III of England and I found no less than 12 pages for Edward III under the names Edward Plantagenet (1,8,11,12,13,14,15) and Edward England (6,8,10,11,16), created by 6 different users. There may be more under other names. Do you have any guidance on how to resolve the situation ? --CTfrog 20:58, 27 April 2007 (MDT)

I wouldn't do anything right now. They could be merged now by-hand if you want, but I'm going to be working on matching and merging functionality this Summer, so if you wait until then it should be a lot easier to merge.--Dallan 11:18, 28 April 2007 (MDT)
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Footnote problem - duplicates

I am editing the Place:Franklin, Illinois, United States page and trying to cite sources using footnotes. I added a couple of sources but for some reason I get duplicate entries in the reference list. Can you help me with this?--Debbie V. 08:25, 28 April 2007 (MDT)

Thank-you for pointing this out! (It was a bug.) It should be fixed now.--Dallan 11:18, 28 April 2007 (MDT)
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Editing the sidebar list on a Place page

I need to edit the sidebar list of cities, villages, etc on the right side of a Place page. I would like to rearranage the list so that it works from largest to smallest and include a few more names. I don't see this section when I choose to edit the page. Place:Franklin, Illinois, United States Actually this is an issue on other Place pages as well.

You can't re-arrange contained places currently, but I've added it to my to-do list. (Solution proposed earlier doesn't work.)--Dallan 17:33, 29 April 2007 (MDT)
If the places were arranged alphabeticaly with no categories, some designations could be included in the place name. For instance, Benton, Benton Township). I like the idea of including the historical places with an asterisk and note below with explanation.

Also, would it be possible to just have the name of the place (Benton) on the list instead of the whole Place name (Benton, Franklin, Illinois, United States) ? This make the sidebar list very cluttered and harder to locate which place you want.--Debbie V. 12:02, 2 May 2007 (MDT)

We could just list the preferred name and type of the place in the list (with an * to indicate historical places). Listing the preferred name would require adding preferred name to all of the contained_place fields in a place, which will take some time but I'll add it to the todo list (along with adding alternate names to the contained places list). In the meantime however, I can just display the title up to the first comma, which is the preferred name most of the time. I'll add this to the near-term todo list.--Dallan 12:15, 2 May 2007 (MDT)
This sounds great but do we need to list the type along with the name? Maybe I am not thinking globally, but it seems to me that most places names that do not have a description included in their name (ex. Benton Cemetery, Benton Township, Benton Prairie) are usually some sort of town/village/city/borough depending on the locale. --Debbie V. 14:07, 2 May 2007 (MDT)
I agree with Debbie V. Listing the contained places alphabetically would make things a lot easier to navigate. If there is a village and a township with the same name in the same county, the township can be designated with "(township)" after the name. There really isn't any benefit to having the distinctions of "inhabited place," "village," "city," etc. Besides, what might be classified as a "village" or "inhabited place" now might have been a booming town a century ago. Leave it with just the name; leave out the population distinctions. --Ajcrow 18:57, 2 May 2007 (MDT)
Aj - what I am thinking is that the names of places, (besides town/cities/villages) themselves contain the description (Benton Township, Benton Cemetery, Dog Prairie, so even the need for a (description) would not be necessary. Of course there would be a few exceptions and those could be noted with ().--Debbie V. 19:12, 2 May 2007 (MDT)
I'll implement this (alphabetical names only - no type unless it's part of the name) either later today or early tomorrow and see what kind of feedback we get.--Dallan 09:31, 3 May 2007 (MDT)
Dallan, as beautiful as the sidebar place names list is on the [Franklin, Illinois, United States] page, I notice that the Preferred Name is not appearing for all of the places. How can we correct this?--Debbie V. 07:54, 5 May 2007 (MDT)
Can you give me an example?--Dallan 22:22, 5 May 2007 (MDT)
I realize now it is only the townships that are not showing properly. The following - Barren, Browning, Cave, Denning, Eastern, Frankfort, Goode, Northern, Six Mile, and Tyrone should have the designation Township after them (ex. Barren Township). The remaining two townships, Benton and Ewing, appear as "Benton (township)" and "Ewing (township)" even though their preferred names are Benton Township and Ewing Township. I believe the () were used previously because there are also cities with the same names as these townships.--Debbie V. 07:25, 6 May 2007 (MDT)
That's because in displaying the contained places, I'm taking the text of the title up to the first comma. As a convention, we probably ought to make the first part of the title the same as the preferred name. (And in fact at some point I should just remove the preferred name entry field from the place edit screen.) Could you move (rename) those pages to "X Township, Franklin, Illinois, United States", and add X as an alternate name? That should take care of it.--Dallan 09:08, 7 May 2007 (MDT)
Dallan -- I like the alphabetical listing *much* better! Thanks for making that change. --Ajcrow 12:11, 9 May 2007 (MDT)
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Historical places

Discussion moved to WeRelate talk:Places, since it's related to an earlier discussion there.
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gedcom

Recently uploaded a gedcom file furness-1823.ged.

Doesnt seem to appear on my gedcom list

--Kopuru 17:09, 5 May 2007 (MDT)

It looks like it was imported into your "winters" tree. Is that where you intended to import it? If not, since it doesn't look like a really large file, you could try creating a new tree, and adding the pages to that tree (with the new tree open in the family tree explorer, navigate to one of the pages created from the file, and click on the "Add" menu, then "This page"). Then remove the pages from the winters tree (but don't delete them from WeRelate).--Dallan 22:22, 5 May 2007 (MDT)
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strange wiki arrow on link?

Dallan, take a look at the little arrow right under the word Chicago in the History section. I don't see the usual Wikipedia arrow. --Debbie V. 06:26, 11 May 2007 (MDT)

Try increasing or decreasing the width of your browser window until the "Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad" link appears all on the same line. Does the little arrow under Chicago go away and get replaced by a regular wikipedia arrow at the end of the link? I don't see the little arrow in Firefox, but I can see something strange in IE if I set my browser width so that Chicago is at the end of one line and the rest of the link is on the line below. This is caused by a bug in IE. IE gets confused about where to put the wikipedia arrow if the link spans multiple lines. The page for Franklin Spur at Wikipedia has the same problem if you decrease the browser width so that one of the external links spans a line boundary. I spent some time trying to see if I could fix this, but the only fix I can think of is to do away with the wikipedia arrows altogether (which may be the best solution - I don't know).--Dallan 10:52, 11 May 2007 (MDT)
I decided to insert a break so that the link would appear on one line - it looks much better. Thanks for that explanation.--Debbie V. 11:28, 11 May 2007 (MDT)
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Help! Bad changes being made?

A change was made on one of my pages, and the change is wrong. Person:Living Ross (30) (that's my mother, actually) has just been given new--and incorrect--parents. The page she's on where the change was made is the correct page, showing John Ross and Mary Dunn as the parents. But Mary's parents--my mother's grandparents--have now been listed as my mother's parents.

I can just force a reversion to the old page, but I wanted to give you a heads-up. This change is wrong, and whatever prompted this change needs to be reexamined.--KF-in-Georgia 19:05, 17 May 2007 (MDT)

Thank-you for letting me know. I'll look at it first thing in the morning.--Dallan 22:07, 17 May 2007 (MDT)
(Problem was fixed and noted on User talk:KF-in-Georgia.)--Dallan 22:25, 18 May 2007 (MDT)


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Tree Trouble

Hi Dallan... I'm having trouble adding new pages to any of my trees and apparently I've had this problem for a few weeks but I'm just now noticing it. In FTE, the box will be gray indicating I need to add the page, but when I click on the "Tree+" button on the page, it won't be added even though it says my trees have been updated. (I thought there used to be a green plus sign actually in the FTE menu, but I don't see it now). In the last week or so I did a clean install of Windows XP on my computer and thought maybe that had something to do with it, until I noticed names that I had added to WeRelate before I did this install. Any ideas? --Ronni 15:36, 19 May 2007 (MDT)

Last Friday I made a change to WeRelate so that you could add people/families to trees by pressing the "Tree+" button on the page (even when the Family Tree Explorer wasn't open), instead of pressing the green plus sign in the Family Tree Explorer. It's possible that there's a bug that's preventing the page from being added to the tree. Can you tell me the title of the page you're trying to add, and the name of the tree you're trying to add it to?--Dallan 19:19, 20 May 2007 (MDT)
Try Person:Thirley Morton (1) and the name of the tree I would like it added to is "Ulysses Morton of Clay Co., West Virginia." The thing about Thirley though is I added him to the site in April and just happened to notice that he wasn't in the tree over the weekend. Another more recent page I've created and can't add to the same tree is Family:William Alderman and Mary Case (2). I've tried adding other pages to different trees and still have the same problem. Thanks Dallan! --Ronni 22:08, 20 May 2007 (MDT)
Ok, I can reproduce the problem you're having. It seems to be a bug related to tree names having .'s and ,'s in them, because I can add pages to tree names without .'s and ,'s, but not with them. I'll try to get this fixed in the next 24 hours and let you know.--Dallan 09:07, 21 May 2007 (MDT)
Problem should be fixed now. Thank-you for pointing it out!--Dallan 08:38, 22 May 2007 (MDT)
And thank you for fixing it! <g> --Ronni 10:41, 22 May 2007 (MDT)
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possible/probable spam

http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Place:Christmas_Cove%2C_Lincoln%2C_Maine%2C_United_States

I just hate to do a rollback if it's just an ignorant person. Am I too scrupulous?

--Hh219 13:41, 20 May 2007 (MDT)

This presents an interesting question: What's our policy on non-genealogical/historical/geographical information in place pages? Thank-you for catching this change and bringing it to my attention. I'm going to pose the question on the WeRelate:Watercooler.--Dallan 19:19, 20 May 2007 (MDT)
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Gedcom upload failure

I just deleted by "ZUPP" file (I hope!). A couple of days ago I uploaded a gedcom and it took awhile to process into a family tree explorer file. I looked at it this morning and THE SPOUSES WERE NOT LINKED!! All spouses were 'UNKNOWN'. I am trying to decide if I should try again - perhaps with a smaller, simpler file / gedcom; or conclude that this site is more smoke than sizzle. Any suggestions??

I looked at the original GEDCOM you uploaded, Zupp.ged, and all of the families I looked at only contained links to the husband or wife, but never both. I would really like to understand why this is happening. I noticed that you used PAF to export the GEDCOM. Was there a setting on the export that could have caused it to not export both spouses for each of the families? -Nathan 20:29, 5 June 2007 (MDT)

No, there should have been no problem! I have spoken with others who have had a problem with gedcoms from their PAF being loaded into other programs. I am going to try the same families from an Ancestor Quest gedcom next week when I am back from the Jamboree! Thanks for the explanation!

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Deleting account

How do I delete my account? Thanks.

Carol

I've taken care of it.--Dallan 14:39, 12 June 2007 (MDT)
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Remove

The following place should be removed: Place:Orléans, Paris, Île-de-France, France. There is no such place. I have placed a link to the Orléans templates in Place:Orléans, Loiret, Centre, France which is the correct description of the city of Orleans. Same thing with Place:Argenteuil, Paris, Île-de-France, France and Place:Bretagne, Belfort, France, I don't know where the Belfort part came from, it is a city in France about 500 miles from Brittany. The content on this page is now on the correct Place:Bretagne, France.--CTfrog 15:19, 4 July 2007 (MDT)

Done. Thank-you for fixing these!--Dallan 10:10, 5 July 2007 (MDT)

Seven more places to remove as I continue the cleaning up of the Paris suburbs: Place:Nanterre, Paris, Île-de-France, France, Place:Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Paris, Île-de-France, France, Place:Vitry-sur-Seine, Paris, Île-de-France, France, Place:Aubervilliers, Paris, Île-de-France, France, Place:Champigny-sur-Marne, Paris, Île-de-France, France, Place:Neuilly-sur-Seine, XVIe arrondissement, Paris, Île-de-France, France and Place:Créteil, Paris, Île-de-France, France. Content has been moved to the correct Place:Nanterre, Hauts-de-Seine, Île-de-France, France, Place:Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Yvelines, Île-de-France, France, Place:Vitry-sur-Seine, Val-de-Marne, Île-de-France, France, Place:Aubervilliers, Seine-Saint-Denis, Île-de-France, France, Place:Champigny-sur-Marne, Val-de-Marne, Île-de-France, France, Place:Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, Île-de-France, France and Place:Créteil, Val-de-Marne, Île-de-France, France. I have also rewritten the page for Place:Courbevoie, France, using material I translated from the French Wikipédia site. You can thus delete the template: Template:Wp-Courbevoie. --CTfrog 16:23, 15 July 2007 (MDT)

We'll delete them. Thank-you again!--Dallan 12:35, 17 July 2007 (MDT)

Here is a place that needs to be fixed, not removed. Place:Verdun, Meuse, Lorraine, France has in its Place Information box Verdun-sur-Garonne as an alternate name, when it actually is a separate place. More seriously, the Coordinates are those of the wrong Verdun, which makes it show up on Pedigree maps at the other end of France (they are wrong in the Getty Thesaurus as well). The correct coordinates should be:05° 23' 01" E, 49° 09' 37" N (Wikipedia). It doesn't look like I can make the change myself. Thanks. --CTfrog 13:23, 19 July 2007 (MDT)

I removed the Verdun-sur-Garonne as an altername name, and converted the lat+long you gave me to decimal-degrees format and entered them (I'm going to make it so that you can enter dms format as well by the end of next week). Do I need to create a new Place page for ?--Dallan 20:57, 19 July 2007 (MDT)

No, Verdun-sur-Garonne already exists. Thanks for doing this, --CTfrog 05:27, 20 July 2007 (MDT)

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Question from new user

Hi Dallan...

Msscarlet1957 asked a question on my user page that I'm directing to you if that's ok?

Thanks! Ronni

What happens when I upload a GEDCOM to update a GEDCOM?

Answered on User talk:Knarrows--Dallan 20:06, 11 July 2007 (MDT)
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response from MsScarlet [15 October 2007]

Dallan, I am not sure if you will see my response to you from my talk page, it does not show who is "watching" that page... so forgive me if this is a duplication, you can delete it...


I began my genealogy research in 1980, and have been on the Internet since 1999. Well here is my "process"..


I use "The Master Genealogist" software. I have ALL names in one database. TMG has ability to export a certain filtered family line to a GEDCOM. It also has ability to change the names within the files to a different color, so I can visually see my progress. As I get a family line all reviewed and researched (as far as I can) I create a GEDCOM for that line.

Now, there is overlap.. and sometimes quite a bit. I start at the oldest family member that I have in a particular surname and filter to include all descendants. This very likely always ends with my children's generation, thus it includes me, and them and any generation before us that overlaps between other files. There is no other way to do it and not have overlap, unless I filter out to a certain number of generations, thus loosing family member's of a certain surname's descendancy (spell checker says this is not a word!). So yes the files greatly overlap sometimes, it is not a perfect world. If I uploaded my entire GEDCOM at once there would be no overlap, but that is not what I want to do, as many names have not yet been reviewed. I hope this is not too confusing of an explanation on my part

--Msscarlet1957 07:48, 14 July 2007 (MDT)

I see what you're saying. We went ahead and uploaded them. Once the match+merge function is working this Fall we'll try to make it easy to merge the pages in common.--Dallan 12:35, 17 July 2007 (MDT)

Dallan, I have three issues:

1. On my own talk page, if someone posts a message to me... Where do I respond that they will see it? do I post a comment right there on my own talk page? As I have said before, it does not show who is watching my talk page, so I do not know how that works. Once a person posts a message to my own talk page, are they set up as watching that page? Or do I click on the link to the author of the comment and go to their talk page to post a response?

Whenever you edit a page, you are automatically set up to watch that page, unless you uncheck the "Watch this page" checkbox at the bottom of the edit screen (most people just leave it checked). When people leave me messages on my talk page I always answer them on my talk page, just like I'm doing here, so that their message and my response show up on the same page.
Although your talk page doesn't show who's watching it, your user page does (click on the "User page" link near the top of your talk page to go to your user page). The same people watching your user page are watching your talk page. Whenever you watch a page, you always watch both the primary and the talk pages. I suppose you could look at your user page to see whether the person is watching your page before replying to their message, and if they're not, reply to their message on their talk page, but I just assume that if they left me a message they didn't uncheck the "Watch this page" checkbox so they're watching my talk page.--Dallan 13:14, 15 October 2007 (EDT)

2. On my offsite Internet home page I have a list of links to my GEDCOM's which I have posted at WorldConnect. See list at: My homepage. Please go there and click on one of the links to a Gedcom and see how it comes up.. say the one titled "ADELSPERGER family". What I would like to do is create a similar link to those files which I have here on WeRelate. I am not sure how to get a link that might go to an "opening" page into any given gedcom here. I really did not want to make a link directly to the FTE page. I am not sure that the "share" option is what I want, what do you think? I hope I am describing it well enough for you to understand what I need.

When I click on the ADELSPERGER link I see a page that shows a set of links A..Z, which I can click on to get the list of surnames starting with each letter. The closest thing to this in WeRelate would be this link. One issue is that the person pages are sorted by their given name, which is pretty unhelpful for large trees. I plan to fix this (and I may adopt something like WorldConnect's A..Z links to highlight the individual surnames in the tree), but unfortunately it will be early next year, after we have tree matching & merging working.
Dallan, thank you for your rapid response. I will be very interested in knowing when you get that up and running, as well as the "update the gedcom" thingy (gotta love these technical terms!) I see so much potential for this Wiki site, but the learning curve is higher than what most folks, that I deal with have time for. I had not visited the site only since July, and it took me the last 2-3 days to figure out how to navigate etc all over again. (if you don't "use it you loose it" is very true with the WeRelate navigation skills!) I have plenty of time, since I only work part time, so I can sit here for 4-5 hours to figure stuff out, but if a person is not retired and only has half an hour to play genealogy, I think they would get discouraged easily... I want to send a link to a couple cousins, and see if they will participate and see how it goes.
Hi, I'll let you know. By the way, please let me know if you have ideas on ways we can reduce the learning curve. (As someone who's had to go through it twice, perhaps you have some unique insights!)--Dallan 23:18, 15 October 2007 (EDT)
You could alternatively give them a link to the Family Tree Explorer, which I changed recently to make it better for sharing trees with others (the annoying messages about how you have to copy the tree as your own tree no longer show up unless you try to add a page or remove a page from the tree).--Dallan 13:14, 15 October 2007 (EDT)

3.It has been a while since I created many of my GEDCOMS, thus I am wanting to create new updated copies and upload them. Have you yet created a way to do that other than just to delete a current GEDCOM and then upload a the next one as a "new" file, or is there a "replace" in effect now, that will not cause me to loose changes I have made to any of my existing Wiki pages? I remember you had told me earlier this summer, that you were going to be working on that.--Msscarlet1957 10:10, 15 October 2007 (EDT)

Not quite yet. Currently we're working on fixing up the place index for international places, which will take until the end of this month. GEDCOM re-upload is next on the list, and I expect it will be ready by the end of next month. I hadn't planned to spend time on the place index this Fall, but I realized a few weeks ago that it had to be cleaned up in order to do a better job matching & merging trees with international places, and so everything got pushed back a month.--Dallan 13:14, 15 October 2007 (EDT)
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Ancestor changed surname - which name to use?

I have an ancestor, John Walker Woods - I use 2 surnames because he changed his last name from Walker to Woods and I didn't know what to do with that. His son, John, took the Woods surname as well and all his descendants. I would like your opinion on which name to use when I move this to a page with only one surname. --Debbie V. 09:55, 20 July 2007 (MDT)

I don't have a strong opinion either way. If it were me I'd probably use the Walker surname just because it was his first one (similar to how we use the maiden name for women). The important thing is that you include both "Walker" and "Wood" as separate (alternate) names on his Person page. That way the matching algorithm that we're working on this Fall will be able to match your page with another page that listed just one of the surnames.--Dallan 12:20, 21 July 2007 (MDT)
Thanks for your thoughts. I decided to keep the Woods for now, but put the Walker as the first alternate. --Debbie V. 15:23, 21 July 2007 (MDT)
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Images [1 August 2007]

The Image Loading still baffles me. I followed the instructions and instead of my picture on the Image page I have the phrase: Download high resolution version (575X819, 18KB). How do I get my picture to show up? Separately should birth certificates etc. be considered historical documents for the licensing choices ? --CTfrog 08:14, 29 July 2007 (MDT)

Hi, it looks like you uploaded a couple of images: Image:Pierre Joseph Dropsy AD.gif and Image:ADELE-AD-1841.gif. I just checked and the image pages look ok to me. (Maybe it took awhile for the actual image on the image page to download into your browser window?). Let me know if you still can't see them. I also looked at Person:Pierre Dropsy (1) and Person:Adèle Dropsy (1) and it looks like the images show up ok on those pages as well.
I agree that image uploading isn't as easy as it should be. I've actually been working on some changes that will be posted late tonight. Please let me know if it's still confusing after tonight (what parts need to be made easier). And yes, I'd treat a birth certificate as a historical document.--Dallan 15:42, 29 July 2007 (MDT)

Hmm, still can't see them on any of the four pages. I must be doing something wrong.--CTfrog 15:47, 29 July 2007 (MDT)

What browser and operating system are you using?--Dallan 19:51, 29 July 2007 (MDT)

I use Mac OSX / Firefox. Interestingly, the pictures show up fine if I use Safari or Internet Explorer. --CTfrog 06:40, 30 July 2007 (MDT)

I'm eavesdropping. Hope you don't mind. :) I use Firefox on Windows XP and can see the images with no problems. I looked at them the day you said you were having trouble and they all looked good to me then too. --Ronni 07:29, 30 July 2007 (MDT)

I can't find anything using google about GIF images not showing up in Mac OSX/Firefox. I'm not sure what's going on. Are you using the latest version of Firefox? Also, can you see the gif image when you click on the "download high resolution version" link; e.g., this page?--Dallan 14:09, 30 July 2007 (MDT)

I use Firefox 2.0.0.4 and yes, I can see the picture when clicking on that link.--CTfrog 03:44, 31 July 2007 (MDT)
Ok, it must be something in the HTML that Firefox on the Mac doesn't like. I've got a couple of other things I need to take care of first (we're moving this month), but I'll try to figure this out in the next 3-4 weeks.--Dallan 10:53, 1 August 2007 (MDT)
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Renaming Family Tree? [4 August 2007]

I am trying to rename my family tree "Thomas Lefler, Civil War Veteran" to "George and Thomas Lefler". IN FTE, When I click on File, Rename and enter the new name in the field, it gives me the message that George and Thomas Lefler is not found. What am I missing?--Debbie V. 14:24, 3 August 2007 (MDT)

Sorry about that. It was a bug. I just (barely) fixed it.--Dallan 13:51, 4 August 2007 (MDT)

I was able to change the name, thank you. It appears correctly as "George and Thomas Lefler" on my Family Tree page, but the old title "Thomas Lefler, Civil War Veteran" is still appearing on my User Page. --Debbie V. 19:32, 4 August 2007 (MDT)

Argh, the system had cached the old version of your page (with the old family tree name) and was displaying that. It's working now. Thank-you for being patient.--Dallan 19:53, 4 August 2007 (MDT)

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Password change [11 August 2007]

Greetings from IVANHOE

I received what I assume is an automated e-mail to change password. The message indicated that the request came from an address all in numbers . . . which I don't recognize . . . EXCEPT that this morning I got a SPAM e-mail

saying I had an on-line "greeting card from an old class mate" It also was from 70.137.165.216 and it did not or would not open. I did NOT request a change in Password, and I will change the password, however I didn't see where to do that on WeRelate website. I tried asking for my password by clicking on the "forgot password" and that generated another automated password. I was only able to get back in after failing, by using my original pass word.

Help appreciated, --Ivanhoe 19:39, 11 August 2007 (EDT)

Hi Ivanhoe,

This is *very odd*. That IP address doesn't belong to WeRelate.org; it belongs a machine on Southwestern Bell's sbcglobal.net network (see http://www.dnsstuff.com/tools/ptr.ch?ip=70.137.165.216). Could you please forward me the first email that you received - the one saying that you had requested a password change? I'd like to report this to their abuse department. Thanks.--Dallan 01:16, 12 August 2007 (EDT)

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Feedback [18 August 2007]

Thanks for the note. I've been a wiki-dabbler for a while and have been looking for a place to get this family tree stuff online. None of the sites I had been too so far, including this one in its previous incarnation, seemed overly promising or easy to use. I was very pleased I took another look here and have been impressed at the ease of use. All the features of wiki, and the nice front-end and automatic fill-in boxes make it easy enough that even a non-technical person can use it. There's hope for some of my computer-challenged relatives after all :) I'm a Wikipedia:WikiGnome at heart, so here's some stuff I have stumbled onto so far.

  1. category improvement is definitely something I'd be glad to lend a hand with. See [[Category:North Dakota, United States]] vs. [[Category:North Dakota]]. Redlinks are evil. :)
  2. Also from the Redlinks are evil department, during a Help:GEDCOM upload, I noticed that the Occupation and Religion information ended up in the "Place" field, instead of the "Description" field. See this example. While I guess both Occupation and Religion could have places associated with them, at least to me, it seemed putting the information into a non-wikilinked field would be best.
  3. There may be a few mediawiki extensions which could be handy here. mediawiki:ParserFunctions is one I noticed when I was making {{bu}}. It adds #if and other logic to template parameters. Without the extension Template:bu doesn't work nearly as handy as it should. See bu on midrange wiki to compare.
  4. Help:FTE is a very cool feature. One thing I thought about was what if users are red-green colorblind? I am so accustomed to using red or pink for females and blue for males in my family trees that I noticed this right away.

Thanks for all your hard work on this great site and I'm looking forward to using it to improve and expand my various family trees.-- — MrDolomite • Talk 20:55, 18 August 2007 (EDT)

Thanks for the great comments. I'll look into place vs. description on GEDCOM upload and the MediaWiki extensions sometime next week (I'm on the road again this week). Regarding the FTE, I've been thinking about making families a different shape; your reminder about red-green colorblindness confirms that I need to do that. Thank-you also for your offer to help with category improvements. I'll be redoing these about the end of the year. I'll talk with you about this then.--Dallan 10:04, 23 August 2007 (EDT)
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HOW LONG BEFORE MY DATA POSTS TO "WE RELATE" ? [21 August 2007]

I was wondering how long the lag time is before my family information becomes "searchable" or can be found on "We Relate"? A day? A week?--Garycliser 20:33, 20 August 2007 (EDT)

Everything is re-indexed overnight, so anything you enter before 10pm (CDT) should be searchable by 6am the next morning.--Dallan 10:04, 23 August 2007 (EDT)
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Delete Source (shold be MySource) [22 August 2007]

Hi Dallan, Please delete http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Source:Debbie_V./Wilson_family_notes. This should be a MySource. I will redo this.

--Debbie V. 19:48, 22 August 2007 (EDT)

done.--Dallan 10:04, 23 August 2007 (EDT)