User talk:Dallan/Archive 2008

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Image Notes [12 January 2008]

Dallan, How long has this been available? I just stumbled upon it this morning and I LOVE it!! Thanks!! Walt 07:50, 12 January 2008 (EST)

Thanks! (It's been available for awhile; we need to advertise it more.)--Dallan 14:57, 14 January 2008 (EST)

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we're related facebook application [13 January 2008]

Dallan,

Paul Allen selected a name amazingly similar to WeRelate for his facebook application; We're related. --Beth 08:20, 13 January 2008 (EST)

Pretty funny. Paul knew about WeRelate long before he named his facebook application. I take it as his acknowledgement that he knows WeRelate is the #1 community genealogy website, and he wants to name his new facebook application accordingly.  :-) --Dallan 14:57, 14 January 2008 (EST)

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Bug Report: User Pages [13 January 2008]

Hi Dallan... there appears to be a bug when creating a new user page. After naming the new page, it gets "hung" and all we get is a blank page that is stuck. BTW, are you and Solveig receiving my emails? I'm starting to get paranoid. <g> --Ronni 23:04, 13 January 2008 (EST)

Hi Ronni, Sorry about that. I'll fix this right away. I got an email from you on Friday, but went camping over the weekend and am just now getting back to my email. I'll give you a call.--Dallan 14:57, 14 January 2008 (EST)

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map location as a link [16 January 2008]

Sir -

Left a message on the watercooler, but it didn't generate a response. Perhaps you can suggest something.

I'm finding it common to want to refer to places like an old homestead, a former home site, store site, etc. Unless such locations have general importance, significance, or history, they are not going to justify a place page of their own. What I would really like is the ability to create a link that opens a map location for a set of coordinates. Now I could create such a thing anyway, making direct use of a link produced by a view of a google map, but that's a pretty obscure looking bit of html, and I would rather make that sort of reference indirectly - using whatever the default mapping support for werelate might be. I would love to have something like \[\[map_site <lat> <long> (optional width) | <label>\]\].

Thanks...--Jrm03063 12:23, 14 January 2008 (EST)

Hi, (first of all, the name is Dallan :-). I just added Template:Googlemap. You can use it by adding {{googlemap|latitude|longitude}} to your page. Clicking on the resulting link brings up a google map of that location. There are some additional parameters that you can read about at Template:Googlemap. Does this give you what you're looking for?--Dallan 14:57, 14 January 2008 (EST)

That's definitely the idea. I'm trying it out on my Grandfather (he won't mind!), and while it does what I expect mostly, I'm getting some line breaks that don't belong there. I'm not very extensively wiki-hip, so I was wondering why we would sometimes choose a "template" (is this really sort of a macro?) versus using one of the werelate-specific square-bracket forms?--Jrm03063 18:35, 14 January 2008 (EST)

I think I fixed the extra line-breaking problem. And yes, templates are wiki macros. If you edit the google maps template page you can see how the google map link is constructed from the passed-in parameters.--Dallan 20:33, 14 January 2008 (EST)

Cool. Thanks!--Jrm03063 20:55, 14 January 2008 (EST)

Thanks again for the template and suggestions.

Not that development needs any more work, but in thinking about the map links, it might be sort of cool to have a "light-weight place". It would not take up a place in the place-page space, but would really only consist of the lat/long coordinates and a label. Maybe they could be at the same level as a "note" on a person page. The reason to do this (beyond simply using the template) would be that pedi-maps could get some additional features, without every location needing a place.

It's a thought anyway...--Jrm03063 11:14, 15 January 2008 (EST)

How about putting the googlemap template in the "Description" field next to the place of an event? I'm re-doing Pedi-Maps this week, and it wouldn't be difficult to pick up the lat+lng for an event from the googlemap template if it's in the description field.--Dallan 18:21, 15 January 2008 (EST)

I think you're onto something there...scanning for a special case string like the map template seems a touch weird though. On the other hand, creating some special lat/long fields that are only rarely populated would be even more weird....

As I reflect on this a little more, I like it more. All the life facts/events that we're interested in - residence, employment, birth, death, etc. - can easily have a more refined location than just town or even township. Community names, considering how political boundaries change and evolve over time, can induce as much confusion as help. If we get to the point of knowing an event by its coordinates however - then (allowing for tectonic drift), you've really got a place on the globe.--Jrm03063 21:26, 15 January 2008 (EST)

Sounds good. I'll look for the googlemap template in the description field then.--Dallan 23:19, 15 January 2008 (EST)

Hi Dallan, could you delete a couple images for me? http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Image:Evelyn_Kerr_Notes.jpg http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Image:Memorial_card_of_Paul_Herman_Koenig_19_April_1966.JPG I deleted the tree they were used for. Thanks! T.K.

No problem. I deleted them.--Dallan 23:18, 16 January 2008 (EST)

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Problem trying to add a new source page [21 January 2008]

I just attempted to add a new source page and after entering all the information and hitting "save Page" I got a window that opened saying:

A database query syntax error has occurred. This may indicate a bug in the software. The last attempted database query was: 


   (SQL query hidden)


from within function "RecentChange::save". MySQL returned error "1205: Lock wait timeout exceeded; try restarting transaction (localhost)".


I hit the "back" key and I see that all the "places" I had entered are now GONE, but all the other information remained. So I saved and added only three places and it worked fine --Msscarlet1957 09:42, 19 January 2008 (EST)

I'm really sorry about that. I'm afraid that starting over is all that can be done. I assume this happened after you edited the Surname:Powell page? I'll look into this problem on Monday to see if I can fix it.--Dallan 03:11, 20 January 2008 (EST)


This happened while creating the Powell book source I was attempting to enter several "places" that the book covered. It "seems" that adding more than three places on the initial set-up page is what the wiki did not like, as once I cut it down from four to three it worked fine. and there are a lot more that four places covered in that book, I am glad I had not taken the time to enter all of them and then loose all that effort! --Msscarlet1957 10:01, 20 January 2008 (EST)

I'll do some tests tomorrow adding a source with a lot of places. In case it's caused by a different problem, could you answer a few questions for me to help me locate it?


--Dallan 10:35, 20 January 2008 (EST)

Thanks! This is very helpful. It helps me identify in the server logs what else was going on at the time.--Dallan 16:25, 21 January 2008 (EST)

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Overcoming objections, whining [27 January 2008]

I love the concept of this site! But I am envisioning problems that trouble me if/when I upload my GEDCOM. I have over 18,000 individuals in the database that I would love to share and collaborate on.

But I think about all of my sources would need to be edited to fit into the conventions and I just shake my head.

And what about the dates that start with 'abt'? I use this extensively when birth dates are estimated from census records. What about Quaker dates, that is, 1701/1702? Or locations that begin with 'probably'. The words 'abt' and 'prob' are merely my best guestimates, which I've been told is better than nothing. Some dates are ddmmmyyyy, some are just mmmyyyy and some are only yyyy; just depending on what the source has.

Where the names of some locations have changed over time, I have as: Gilmer (now Calhoun) Co., VA (now West Virginia). Gilmer did not change it's name to Calhoun; just the area of Gilmer that my ancestor lived in later became a new county called Calhoun. So my record is explanatory, but I don't know how this would be placed on WeRelate. And because many cities and counties have the same name, I have put 'Co.' on every county name to be sure to differentiate.

I've not saved census images, but have carefully transcribed the record into the notes of individuals, and see now that they will show on WeRelate as all run together; nearly undecipherable. No way am I going back into every note to put html code 'br' on every census line.

Is there any hope for my records to show up on WeRelate in usable form? Should I wait until WeRelate is more mature? I can never go back to edit all those source records. I am wiki-challenged as most of us older genealogists are going to be. But I want this to work! Should I wait? Or upload and leave this mess for somebody else to hassle with? Or just walk away? There will always be folks that don't participate; maybe I should just leave this to younger, more knowledgeable folks. Any recommendations?

After all this whining, I hesitate to even leave my name! But maybe some of these questions are legitimate things to think about.--Janiejac 13:20, 20 January 2008 (EST)

Hi Janiejac, first off one of our goals is that people don't have to do anything special with their GEDCOM's to upload them.

I think the "wiki way" is to put up what you have and then make it better over time (or let others make it better over time). How about if you wait until the end of the week to give me time to fix the note issue, then upload your GEDCOM. If you don't like what you see you can delete it.--Dallan 16:25, 21 January 2008 (EST)

I've just changed how notes and source texts are displayed so that any carriage returns in them show up as line breaks in the display.--Dallan 10:51, 27 January 2008 (EST)

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Delete image file [21 January 2008]

Please delete this file: Image:Kane_family-abt_1892_labeled.jpg I wish to do more editing and repost later. Thanks

Done.--Dallan 16:25, 21 January 2008 (EST)

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Dashboard bug [22 January 2008]

I assume this is a bug anyway. The dashboard presentation of the trees shows "(list)" next to each tree. I assume this should yield the list of pages in the tree, but instead, it seems to be yielding the entire list of trees. I'm assuming it's a bug, since very nearly the same UI presentation on the manage trees page does indeed list the contents of the tree, and we probably don't need a list of trees for each of the user's trees!--Jrm03063 11:40, 22 January 2008 (EST)

Thanks for reporting this! It will be fixed when I put out the next set of changes at the end of the week.--Dallan 11:55, 22 January 2008 (EST)

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What happened to the Family Tree page? [22 January 2008]

Dallan = somehow i cant seem to find page that lists FAMILY TREE in the heading? I wish to enter several persons? cagorske--Cagorske 14:46, 22 January 2008 (EST)

Sorry about that. We changed the menu structure and haven't had a chance to change all the help files and tutorials yet. (We're working on that now.) The "Family Tree" page has generally been replaced by the "Add" menu. So if you want to add a person page, click on "Add" in the blue menu bar, then on "Person". Then enter the name of the person you want to add.--Dallan 20:47, 22 January 2008 (EST)

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Events [24 January 2008]

I am a long time genealogist, a software engineer, and a new user. I have long struggled with the best way to present information electrnically. The normal tree structure with a list of events always left me cold. I have always wanted a way bring e-life to the persons I was documenting beyond the standard genealogical data dump. The new Wiki technology made me wonder if that would finally be the answer. WeRelate proved to me that it was. Person pages let you bring folks to life. Images and sources are managed as separate objects of their own and are linked to persons. I especially like the way sources are managed. This is a tool for real genealogists! I surfed some of the other Genealogy Wikis and sources seemed to be missing.

Plus the whole purpose of the website is one person <> one entry instead of a database of GEDCOM files. The Ancestry OneWorldTree tried to make this work. It was great but there wasn't a way for the community to correct and improve the tree. The Wiki-managed collaboration of WeRelate was everything I hoped for plus a few things I hadn't thought of (like sources!).

Best of all, I live in Fort Wayne and love the Allen County Public Library. I fear spending a lot of time creating pages only to have the website die. The ACPL connection gives me hope that this won't happen.

A couple of things ...

1) Events = I use "The Master Genealogist" (TMG). My database has numerous facts/events beyond birth, death and relationships. Most often they are census events, but I also have residence events, just plain notes, and a couple of stray tags. Q) What will happen to these events when I upload my GEDCOM file? They represent a lot of work. I wish to build on them when I perform the Person edits, I do not relish the thought of re-entering the data. I am hoping they will end up somewhere in the Person file, where I can build on them later.

They will end up on the person page, under the birth/christening/death/burial events. We support over 60 different types of events. Other events are uploaded as an "Other" event, and the type of event is put into the "Description" field. If you have event types that are getting put into "Other" that you think should be added to the list of event types, just let me know and I'll add them.

2) I have followed as best I can the threads on merging. A merge process or tool was mentioned in the thread but it was unclear what the latest functionality on merging is. I have a moderately large file with about 2-3K people. I am certain to duplicate existing people and I'd like to be able to understand the merging process. I'd obviously prefer as much automation in the process as possible. Is there a FAQ describing the current state of the art?

We're still working on merge. There's been some thought and discussion, but no coding yet. Coding will begin next month, and I hope to have a first-cut at match+merge ready sometime in May. The general idea is initially to present the trees that likely overlap yours, then when you click on one of the trees to present the pairs of people within the two trees (yours and the one that you clicked on) that are likely to match, and to give you a chance to check whether you want to merge each pair. Merging two pages will append the (unique) pieces of information from one page onto the other. Every piece of information (except gender) can have multiple values, so nothing will be lost. After the merge, you or the other contributors could go into the pages and edit them to remove bad data. That's it in a nutshell, but as they say the devil is in the details.

3) Suggestion for deconflicting Multiple People - I have a Van Stone line that was in love with the name Samuel. I must have a dozen Samuel Van Stones in my file. TMG reports keep them straight wherever possible by extending their identification to name/birth year/death year. It's easy to separate Samuel Van Stone 1755-1807 from Samuel Van Stone 1777-1826, etc.

Of course you're still going to have a hundred John Smith (no years) in the WeRelate database but this approach should cut down on the number of duplicates significantly (if it is feasible). It should also make an automated merge process more precise, cutting down on the number of spurious merge candidates.

Although there's not a lot of academic research in how to best merge two trees, there is a fair amount of research in how to best match individuals. State of the art in matching is to use a variety of "features": name, birth date, birth place, names of relatives, etc. A total score is generated based upon the features that match and the ones that don't. The candidate pair is presented to the user if the total score lies above some threshold.

Sorry if this isn't the best way to make these suggestions. I just started this evening and I wasn't sure of the best way to make suggestions. --Srblac 21:45, 23 January 2008 (EST)

Leaving a message on my talk page or (perhaps even better) on the WeRelate talk:Merging and downloading trees is the best way to make suggestions on this topic. Glad you like the site!--Dallan 15:40, 24 January 2008 (EST)

Hello, I too use TMG and my file has over 56k folks in it. Here at WeRelate they do not accept files that large as it slows down the functionality. So I break it down and upload smaller GEDCOMS. I have been a user here at WeRelate a while and wanted to assure you that all the "added" tags that we can create with TMG do get imported when you upload. However the name of the tag gets changed to "other" and then the "real name" of the tag is put under the date and place, for mine anyway. You can see an example at one of my Powell family pages.

The Merge thingy here has not been perfected and I will let Dallan answer you on that issue. For now I am just uploading a new GEDCOM every once in a while if I have done a lot of updating on my database here at home, to keep what I have at WeRelate current. The problem with that is that I can not do any editing of my own Wiki pages or those changes will be lost when I update. Right now the only way to update is to totally delete your GEDCOM from WeRelate and then upload the new one. So I do no work on my Wiki pages for that reason. I was uploading photos, but realized all links to those would be lost when I do an update, so I stopped. But I think it is a great idea to be able to upload and link photos. I have high hopes for the Merge to be implemented (late this year) and then be able to upload updates and not loose photo links in the process. At the present time, as long as you only build a database here at WeRelate, page by page, all is groovy! But folks wanting to upload GEDCOMS and then add photo links are left in the dust (if you ever want to update with a new GEDCOM). This site is developing and improving daily, but just now it is very difficult to learn, and once you learn how to navigate it is easy to forget if you aren't back here on a regular basis to use those skills! But I feel the potential for it being a great collaboration site is worth waiting for... So I keep returning. --Msscarlet1957 09:03, 24 January 2008 (EST)

That's true. I think the first "match+merge" functionality we need to implement is to match your new tree with your old one so that you can re-upload without losing your online edits! Hopefully the new drop-down menus made the site a bit easier to use. The new search functionality should help as well. Thanks for hanging in there! :-) --Dallan 15:40, 24 January 2008 (EST)


That would be great Dallan if I could not loose My edits I could begin actually playing with the wiki pages and uploading photos! Right now as it is I am stalled dead in the water... But I am hanging in there and hoping and waiting for it to be working properly! :-) --Msscarlet1957 22:22, 24 January 2008 (EST)
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Not receiving change notice emails [25 January 2008]

I thought things had been awfully quiet on WeRelate; I haven't received a "change" email on any of the pages on my watch list (including this page and the Watercooler) in 3 or 4 weeks. I've checked my spam filter, but they're not there, either. Any ideas? --Ajcrow 17:50, 24 January 2008 (EST)

I just check my dashboard and don't rely on the notifications anymore. They seem to be rather sporadic. --Beth 21:57, 24 January 2008 (EST)

When you do get a notice you have to visit the page via the link that is within the email or you will no longer get notices.

Go to an old email notice and read you will find this line: There will be no other notifications in case of further changes unless you visit this page.

so I always click on the link and view the page and then after that delete the email so I know for sure I have "visited" the page. So far so good, I get all the notices! hope this helps ya --Msscarlet1957 22:19, 24 January 2008 (EST)

Thanks for the heads-up on the notification. Is there a setting somewhere that we could opt to be notified daily if there are changes -- in other words, a daily email of "here are the changes that have happened on your watchlist in the last 24 hours"? If I no longer receive notification if I don't visit the site means that I will miss pages being changed (as has already happened.) With the volume of mail that I get, it is impossible for me to click on the link just to go there so I'll receive future notices. Or maybe instead of a daily "here are the changes that happened on your Watchlist today" email, there could be an option for a weekly "here are the changes on your Watchlist this week" email. As it is, if you don't click it, you've effectively turned off that page from your watchlist. --Ajcrow 07:59, 25 January 2008 (EST)

Ajcrow, This is already in place "sort of" if you go to the drop down menus up at the top right on each page. click on "My Relate" and drop down to "Watchlist" and click on that. A window will open that shows you:

Recently-changed pages 

   * Show all pages changed since last visited


Below are the last 32 changes in the last 7 days, as of 09:50, 25 January 2008.

Show last 1 | 2 | 6 | 12 hours 1 | 3 | 7 days

(on the real page the above options are actual links that do something) Check it out, I think this is what you are looking for. But it does not arrive in an email. You have to return to WeRelate on occasion and check out your watchlist page. --Msscarlet1957 08:58, 25 January 2008 (EST)

I'm aware of that feature. But the email notification is really nice, too. I just wish it wouldn't effectively turn itself off if I don't view the page before the next change is made. --Ajcrow 15:45, 25 January 2008 (EST)

I've experienced this too. Re-notifying people of further changes to a page after a day has passed if they didn't visit the page after they got the last email is on the todo list right after improving search, which should be done in the next two weeks.--Dallan 10:44, 27 January 2008 (EST)

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Problem with redirecting person page and tree index [27 January 2008]

Hi Dallan,

Don't know if I caused this or if it is a bug. Somehow I ended up with too many Mansel Cokers. I have Mansel Coker (1). I added a second Mansel Coker but he was Mansel Coker (3). But the page for Mansel Coker (2) had not been edited. I redirected #3 to #2. Not today. But when I added a third Mansel, that one was Mansel Coker (4). So I now have redirected Mansel Coker (4) to Mansel Coker (3)today.

So there should be #4 floating around somewhere.

But after all this, which I am sure is not very clear; in my tree index I now have Mansel Coker (1) and Mansel Coker (2) which are correct. But I have duplicates for #3, 2 with the exact same entries for Mansel Coker (3).

Help! --Beth 19:54, 26 January 2008 (EST)

Hi Dallan,

This morning I no longer have the duplicate Mansel Coker (3) in the tree index. I guess the problem fixed itself. Have a great day. --Beth 09:41, 27 January 2008 (EST)

It looks like there's a Person:Mansel Coker (4) page that redirects to Person:Mansel Coker (3). Your tree includes just Mansel Coker (1), (2), and (3). If you redirect a page while the Family Tree Explorer is open, it removes the redirected page from your tree and adds the redirect target to your tree (if it's not already in your tree), but there may be a bug where both pages show up temporarily in the Family Tree Explorer until you shut it down and start it up again.--Dallan 10:44, 27 January 2008 (EST)

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Adding pages to tree automatically not working [28 January 2008]

Hi Dallan,

This seems to be broken again. I found a page purely by accident this morning when I decided to check under what links here on a place page. That page is just out there in la la land somewhere. The edits are not on my watch list because one of my research assistants added several new pages in the tree and because they were not automatically added to the tree, I am not watching pages in the tree that I am primarily working on.

I presently have 2 other users editing the main tree which is great but I need to edit their pages until they understand how WeRelate works. How can I make sure that I am watching all of the pages that they edit? --Beth 08:25, 28 January 2008 (EST)

Hi Beth, If one of your research assistants adds a page, it's not going to be added to your tree and it's not going to be added to your watchlist, so that's a problem. I can think of three ways to solve this:

  1. Give your research assistants your WeRelate password so that he/she can log on as you. It's alright to be logged in on multiple machines simultaneously. If you want, you can change your password beforehand by clicking on "Preferences" in the "MyRelate" menu. This is the easiest solution.
  2. Alternatively, at the end of each day/week you can go to your research assistants' user profile pages, and click on "Contributions" in the "more" menu. There you will see a list of pages that they have edited. Click on each page and add it to your tree.
  3. Finally, if you can afford to not worry about whether pages added by your research assistants are in your tree for the next few months, you can wait for a new screen that will be available this Spring. As part of implementing match+merge, we will have to create a screen that will list everyone that is linked to someone in your tree but is not personally in your tree. This screen will give you a chance to add them to your tree if you want, so you could add them once this screen has been developed.
  4. Or if you want, every once in awhile you can give me the user names of your research assistants and I'll add all of the pages in the trees to your tree :-).

--Dallan 15:45, 28 January 2008 (EST)

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Delete person [6 February 2008]

Hi Dallan,

Sorry I got carried away and forgot that I had not established this person's death yet.

Please delete Person: Osie Stewart (1).

Thanks. --Beth 21:29, 5 February 2008 (EST)

That page doesn't appear to exist. Any ideas? (Also, you can delete the page yourself if you're the only person watching it by clicking on the "More" menu in the upper right-hand corner.)--Dallan 23:48, 5 February 2008 (EST)

Hmm! Well, Dallan, that person did have a red link and I removed the child from the family page, so I assume that deleted the page. I do not find a selection under the More menu for deleting a page; which selection is it? --Beth 00:57, 6 February 2008 (EST)

Hi Dallan, I found delete; the More menu changes depending on which type of page one is on in WeRelate. I did not realize that. --Beth 07:09, 6 February 2008 (EST)

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Family Page video tutorial [12 February 2008]

Dallan -- I love the new video tutorials! I noticed, however, that the link to the "Adding Family Pages" video brings up a blank page (just the WeRelate header and page title at the top.) --Ajcrow 07:39, 7 February 2008 (EST)

That happened to me once as well, but I thought it was just me. I've sent a support request to techsmith.com, who hosts the videos. Could you do me a favor to help me to track this down? Could you try going to the video again, and

  1. wait about 60 seconds to see if it's just because their servers are slow, and if it still doesn't show up,
  2. go to the Adobe Flash website and install the latest version of Flash.

When it happened to me, I installed the latest version of flash and that fixed the problem, but it may have just been a coincidence. If it fixes the problem for you as well, then I'll know that that's the "fix". Thanks.--Dallan 19:33, 7 February 2008 (EST)

Just a quick update. I called the TechSmith people yesterday who said that this was a known problem with their current infrastructure, and that they were moving everything over to a different hosting center last night to hopefully resolve the problem. They also mentioned that occasionally people have problems when they install an upgrade of Flash in IE7 that the old version isn't completely removed, which can cause problems. But since you could view some videos, it doesn't sound like an old version of Flash was the problem for you. I'll research this Flash version problem more and add a help message about how to re-install Flash if you're not seeing the video. If you notice videos not showing up again, please let me know. (I've tried several times today and the all show up.) Thanks!--Dallan 22:54, 9 February 2008 (EST)

Dallan -- sorry for not responding sooner. A project for history class was calling. :-) All of the videos seem to be working for me now. FWIW, I'm using Firefox 2.0; I'm not sure what version of Flash I have installed. --Ajcrow 21:40, 11 February 2008 (EST)

No problem. Thanks for checking that they're working now. The fact that they're all working for you now points to the cause of the problem being TechSmith's old infrastructure, which I'm glad they've fixed!--Dallan 22:14, 11 February 2008 (EST)

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Gedcom glitch [18 February 2008]

Hi Dallan, should I send a message to the users that signed up after the glitch regarding gedcom uploads, or just wait to hear from the user if they have questions. --Beth 08:47, 17 February 2008 (EST)

In reviewing the log files it appears that since the bug was introduced, 7 people tried to upload GEDCOM's between 5MB and 10MB in size that didn't get processed due to the bug. I can identify 4 of them and I'll send them email messages. For the other three that I can't identify, I think we can just wait to hear if they have questions. I'm glad that User:Bmarkjones reported the problem.--Dallan 10:59, 18 February 2008 (EST)

Okay, great and thanks.--Beth 17:53, 18 February 2008 (EST)

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Digital Library [25 February 2008]

In order to be a werelate good citizen, I've had to cut down the size of a number of images. I assume the digital library will allow for higher-resolution scans? I have a number of images that I would like to see kept at higher resolution than werelate encourages. I think I would like to take a swing at the digital library. Thanks.--Jrm03063 10:13, 23 February 2008 (EST)

Thanks! I'll let you know as soon as it's up and running.--Dallan 20:50, 25 February 2008 (EST)
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Digital library alpha testing [19 March 2008]

re your recent message

By the way, I'm thinking that in the future we'll encourage people to add source transcriptions and images not on the source pages themselves but in the digital library, and then add links from the Source pages to the digital library items. Anyone interested in trying out the alpha-launch (means really, really early version) of the digital library for the purpose of providing feedback, please let me know.--Dallan 01:30, 23 February 2008 (EST)

I'd be happy to alpha test this. I'm looking forward to haveing the digital library functionality, as I think it solves some of my basic problems with current sourcing. Bill 15:36, 23 February 2008 (EST)

Thanks! I'll let you know as soon as it's up and running.--Dallan 20:50, 25 February 2008 (EST)

Hi Dallan,

Add me for the alpha testing of the digital library. This is fantastic; creating the Afriquest database. I just sent several documents to them today. Will one be able to upload documents directly to the database when this is completed? --Beth 20:02, 19 March 2008 (EDT)

Thank-you! I've left a message on your talk page with a few instructions. Yes, you'll be able to upload documents directly to the digital library.--Dallan 02:35, 20 March 2008 (EDT)
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Getting my Gedcom to upload [29 February 2008]

Dallan,

I want to thank you and WeRelate for successfully uploading my Gedcom. Frankly, I was quite surprised at the follow-through to get this to work. And I didn't even know it worked until I started getting email suggesting that I review edits already being made to my pages. I really like what I see so far and will now read the tutorials to better understand how to respond to those making edits etc. Some folks are for example adding parents to my line but without sources, something I have always tried to avoid.

Keep up the great work on this.

Cheers,

Jeff from Concord, MA.--Jbernard 17:42, 28 February 2008 (EST)

Hi Jeff, thanks for the comment! And I agree - asking people to provide sources is a good idea.--Dallan 08:57, 29 February 2008 (EST)

Dallan,

I received the following error when clicking on one of my family members in the Pedigree and Descendants view of FTE: 

 Error

 A runtime error has occurred.
 Do you wish to debug?

 Line 73
 Error: ‘Chosen’ is null or not an object


This error occured at Person: Living Buckley (38)

Any ideas?

Jeff--Jbernard 12:34, 29 February 2008 (EST)

Thanks for letting me know about this. It was an error in the script that displayed amazon ads. I've fixed it now.--Dallan 19:09, 1 March 2008 (EST)

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Remove image [3 March 2008]

Dallan,

Please remove this image; Image:Mrs. J. R. Coker funeral home record.jpg. I don't think this is covered under fair use; I believe that I need permission which I have not acquired. Thanks. --Beth 00:42, 4 March 2008 (EST)

I took care of it.--Dallan 01:05, 4 March 2008 (EST)
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Pedi-map error [14 March 2008]

Hi Dallan. A new user is reporting a problem viewing the pedi-map. Could you check out the following message on my talk page please? Thanks! :) --Ronni 10:40, 14 March 2008 (EDT)

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Deleting test gedcom and related pages [17 March 2008]

On Friday I uploaded a test GEDCOM to see how everything works here and was greatly impressed. In preparation for uploading my real GEDCOM, I deleted the tree for the gedcom I loaded up. When I loaded it up I didn't realise that the generated pages wouldn't be deleted automatically if the tree gets deleted. Unfortunately my test gedcom had a bunch of people in it with information I didn't really want to put up. Do I have to delete them all individually or is there some easier way than going through all the person pages and all of the family pages?

Sorry to be a pest - is there any way to get rid of the pages where I (pfred60) is flagged as the contributor (in Person and family area anyway).

Thanks Peter--Pfred60 08:41, 16 March 2008 (EDT)

Sorry about that - they do get deleted by a background process, but it looks like the background process crashed yesterday. I restarted it and they're gone now.--Dallan 22:19, 16 March 2008 (EDT)

To clarify what you have stated: If a tree (created from a gedcom) is deleted, the person and family pages for entries generated by the gedcom load will automatically be removed (via a background task). What happens if someone else is watching it or additional content has been added? Does it still get deleted? Thanks--Pfred60 22:34, 16 March 2008 (EDT)

That's right -- person and family (and MySource) pages in your tree are removed by a background task that normally runs within a few minutes of your deleting the tree -- unless someone else is watching the page. In that case the page doesn't get removed. If someone else has edited the page but isn't watching it, then it does get removed. Once we get match+merge working, the plan is to have a screen that will show you a list of people/families not in your tree that are linked to people/families that are in your tree, so that you can decide which of those pages (if any) you want to add to your watchlist.--Dallan 23:27, 16 March 2008 (EDT)

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Digital Library alpha testing [18 March 2008]

Hi Dallan

What kind of format do you want to use for bug reports? And how do you want bug reports submitted

How about if you send them by email (dallan@werelate.org), since there will probably be a number of them and they're not going to be interesting to most people watching this page.

For starters:

Sign in worked fine.

On the page to modify my profile:

my given name appeared in the text box for last name, along with my last name. The given name text box was empty. System seemed to accept my modifications of the preference page.

Yes, DSpace has separate fields for given and surname, but MediaWiki just has a single full-name field. I'll combine the given and surname fields into a fullname field in DSpace to be compatible.

I did a little browsing just to get a feel for the site. Took a look at page "http://www.werelate.org/dlib/handle/64"; I was able to read it fine. Navigated away, and came back via back button on my browser. Now the page appeared blank. When I browsed backwards from there, every page I'd been to was blank.

I went back to your invitation and used the link you provided, and came to the same page as I initially reached (based on the address) but now it appeared blank.

So that pretty much stops me from doing any more with this tonight.

I just tried it now and it worked ok. I had to take the site down several times last night; perhaps you caught it during one of those times? Does the same problem happen today?

Bill--Q 23:08, 18 March 2008 (EDT)

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test [19 March 2008]

At http://www.werelate.org/dlib/submit

A. Third "button" from left says "Describe". So does the fourth.

B. Button's look like they should be clickable, but are obviously not intended to be clickable---possibly need a different design so folks aren't confused. The "Buttons" are much larger than the "next" button below, which may be a bit confusing to some. (After you figure out how it works, though, it shouldn't be a problem.

Good point. I'll address both A and B in the next couple of weeks.

C. Tried a submission of a fairly lengthy title, and the system hung, and eventually gave a message asking to try again, and if the problem peristed, submit a description. I tried again, Same thing.

Title was "Records of the First church in Huntington, Long Island, 1723-1779. Being the record kept by the Rev. Ebenezer Prime, the pastor during those years ; Containing lists of members of the church, and of baptisms and of marriages, a confession of faith, accounts of trials of members, and various other matters pertaining to the affairs of the church, with full index of names"

Message was "Internal System Error

The system has experienced an internal error. Please try to do what you were doing again, and if the problem persists, please contact us so we can fix the problem."

D. Tried a submission of a short title and the system gave a message "Error reading the source page (please try again later)"

Bill--Q 09:10, 19 March 2008 (EDT)

I can see both C and D errors in the log and I think I've addressed them now. The internal system error isn't due to the long title but to a Source wiki page with an unexpected format. I've written a work-around, but can you tell me the title of the Source wiki page you had entered? The "error reading the source page" is due to the Source wiki page not being found - I fixed this so that the system tells you so instead of giving an error.
I'll email this and future comments.
Thank-you! And sorry for all the bugs. I really have submitted several test files successfully. It seems whenever someone else tests software they always find things that you overlooked.--Dallan 13:26, 19 March 2008 (EDT)


You're welcome, but I believe you made it clear this was an alpha test, so I was pretty much expecting issues to crop up quickly. I'll send future bug reports directly, in similar format, unless you have something specific. Don't know how tight you want to be with the formalisms. Sometimes the requirements for things like this get fairly heavy. But that doesn't appear to be the case here (thankfully!). Much nice to just do the work, with out all the fiddle faddle. Q 14:07, 19 March 2008 (EDT)
No formalisms :-) thanks for finding the bugs!--Dallan 02:35, 20 March 2008 (EDT)
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Multiple uploads [8 April 2008]

Dallan. User Jrm3063 has been editing some of my pages so his/her talk page is on my watch list. I noticed that he/she had started merging pages for Richard,I of Normandy and Gunnora. This piqued my interest so I took a look at them and I discovered that a user, Tjlamb had uploaded a Gedcom including this family some 80 times during a 3 hour period on Nov 14,2007. Is there some way to remove this stuff in one fell swoop rather than merging thousands of articles? In addition to this, the information is badly flawed. I believe the genealogy of ancient and/or historical persons should be restricted to scholarly constructed data, if it is to be included at all on this site. What is your opinion on including mythical genealogies such as that from the Anglo Saxon Chronicles, Merovingian descents and descents from Adam and Eve, etc.? I firmly believe they should be excluded or relegated to their own site. Rather than repeat the work of others more capable than we, I would for example, simply include a source reference. A wonderful example is Steward Baldwins "Henry Project" at http://sbaldw.home.mindspring.com/hproject/henry.htm this is a competently researched and well documented work. Rather than copy it or compete with it, it seems better to reference it. It might be worth archiving it just in case something happens to Stewarts site.--Scot 18:17, 6 April 2008 (EDT)

Hi, I tried searching WeRelate for user "Tjlamb", but the only reference I could find to tjlamb was on this page. Could you check the spelling and let me know? We're supposed to detect and stop a single user from uploading overlapping GEDCOM's, so I'm interested to check into this. If it turns out that we didn't detect the overlap in this case, I can delete entire trees at a time pretty easily.

Good, this is the sort of thing that could cause this site to end up a jumble of misinformation like most of the the other online databases. I am hopeful that doesn't happen, and that it becomes a data base of constant improvement.--Scot 12:50, 7 April 2008 (EDT)
If I could jump in for a sec. The "Tjlamb" being referred to (not sure of the spelling either) is the user that had a large gedcom (17.5 mb) that wouldn't upload and you had to increase the size limit for him. That could be part of the problem perhaps. He uploaded his gedcom and haven't seen him online since. --Ronni 12:19, 7 April 2008 (EDT)
Sorry it's Thomasjlamb, somehow I shortened it in my mind. He uploaded every few minutes for over 3 hours on that one afternoon.--Scot 12:26, 7 April 2008 (EDT)
I think rather than uploading every few minutes, you're seeing different timestamps on the pages because it took the GEDCOM uploader several hours to import the GEDCOM.--Dallan 12:33, 7 April 2008 (EDT)

I don't think so,user jrm03063 commented "How could 4 submitters generate 70 pages for a single family?, arrgh" I then looked at a single person, "Gonnor De Crepon" (properly Gunnora) and found 88 pages for her, 80 of them submiited by thomasjlamb with time stamps spread over the 3 hour period. I noticed several othe individuals with lots of duplicates as well, but didn't delve into them. I see that jrm03063 has already redirected alot of them, but I am not sure if he/she realizes the magnitude of the task before him/her. If you look at the page Family:William Longsword and Sporte De Bretagne (3) ( Guillaume/William I "of Normandy" Sprota) you will see multiple alternates for each family member all submitted by Mr. lamb.--Scot 13:18, 7 April 2008 (EDT)

User name is User:Thomasjlamb --Ronni 12:20, 7 April 2008 (EDT)
Ok, I see this now, but it looks like he uploaded just one GEDCOM. Is the issue that there are a lot of duplicate pages for the same individual within this GEDCOM, or that the GEDCOM contains one duplicate page for a lot of different individuals? Could you give some example duplicate page titles?--Dallan 12:29, 7 April 2008 (EDT)

As far as including mythical or biblical genealogies, I like to let the community discuss questions about content. Perhaps you could initiate a discussion on this topic on the watercooler?

Regarding including well-documented early genealogies, I'm all for that, although I'd prefer to create wiki pages for them so that people could link their genealogies to those wiki pages. There are a number of possible options. I know that the LDS Church has/had a "Medieval Unit" whose responsibility was to come up with a "gold standard" for pre-1600 genealogies for certain European countries. If there's a way to get a hold of that and generate wiki pages based upon that information, or generate wiki pages based upon other well-documented sources so that people could merge/replace the early genealogies that they upload with well-documented wiki pages for those people, that seems ideal. We could possibly even mark those pages as "protected" so that they couldn't be edited except by system administrators if there was a group of people willing to manage these pages.--Dallan 11:15, 7 April 2008 (EDT)

The only way I know how to access the data from the Medieval families Committee is from the Ancestral File submitters info which is buried in the AF. They provided no source documentation when they uploaded the data. I know that Paul Reed resigned over the"Gold Standard" issue. Some Committee members were willing to include anthing that could be found in a book, and we all know that a lot of spurious information has been published. Paul insisted that that criterion was not good enough. Perhaps someone there in Salt Lake knows how to get a hold of their work and the source documentation for it. I have seen a lot of data in the AF on Medieval Portugal submitted by a Pat Ward of the "MDC" As far as creating Wiki pages from sources such as Stewart Baldwin's site, I'm not certain how that would work due to copyright issues. How much is fair use?--Scot 12:50, 7 April 2008 (EDT)
It looks like all of Thomasjlamb's duplicates were all part of the same GEDCOM upload. He only uploaded the GEDCOM once, and we don't check for duplicates within a GEDCOM. Based upon the large number of duplicates within the GEDCOM, I'd be ok with removing the GEDCOM. I'd just need to let Thomasjlamb know what I'm doing and why.
Regarding creating pages from other sites, you can't copyright facts, so I don't think it's a matter of copyright. We ought to get permission though, and we would want to provide a link to where we got the information from. Regarding the Medieval Unit, I'll try to contact someone in that group.--18:56, 8 April 2008 (EDT)
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Norman genealogy and the lamb upload fiasco... [15 April 2008]

I meant well, in trying to merge all this junk down, but I'm afraid it's a total beast. I've certainly merged over a 1000 pages already, and there seem to be plenty left. It looks to me like what the user in question did, was to fully duplicate Norman genealogy for a number of his ancestors that may have gone back that far.

I'm afraid that my efforts at merging may actually get in the way of you clearing things away. I don't want to "unwatch" my complete set of stuff, but if you wanted to unwatch any page of mine that was in a lamb tree (so the delete would go through) that would be just fine.

How about if I delete the pages in his GEDCOM that you are not watching? That should remove all of the pages you haven't already merged, right?--Dallan 18:56, 8 April 2008 (EDT)
Well, it couldn't make things worse...
The tree is being deleted right now. Please let me know if there's anything else I can do. I hope to have "match" and "merge" buttons for individual people and families (not for entire trees - that will take longer) by the end of the month.--Dallan 13:38, 10 April 2008 (EDT)

Any chance we can leverage the code that detects whether a person is living to detect whether they have a pre-1600 birthdate? I don't think we need to preclude pre-1600 genealogy altogether, or require a committee all the time, but purging it from any inbound GEDCOM seems pretty reasonable (unless by special arrangement).--Jrm03063 17:39, 8 April 2008 (EDT)

We could do this, although rather than precluding people from creating pre-1600 pages, I think it would be a better experience if a user's pre-1600 pages that matched existing pages were merged into those pages as part of the GEDCOM upload. The match/merge code should be implemented sometime in the summer; if we felt that we had a pretty complete set of pre-1600 pages for a particular country, we could automatically merge pre-1600 pages for that country in GEDCOM uploads. (This would be an exception to the usual policy of not automatically-merging pages, but if we felt our existing set of pages was already pretty complete, I think the exception would be justified in this case.)--Dallan 18:56, 8 April 2008 (EDT)
Whatever you're comfortable with. I wish there was some way to ask folks not to upload data they really aren't seriously working on.
I agree. Once I get match/merge working as part of the upload process, I think that extra step will help filter out non-serious users.--Dallan 20:07, 8 April 2008 (EDT)
I just wrote a long response here and somehow lost it upon saving the edit. I am afraid the problem is much greater than that created by Mr Lamb. I found a page for Richard Normandy (126) one for unknown Richard I, one for Richard Gunnora and so forth. Because surnames were not in use at those times but people feel compelled to put something in the surname field.This invites any number of variations for a single person even more for a family making match merge virtually impossible. Perhaps all data for persons prior to 1600 should be purged and entries be limited to single articles with source documentation, thereby avoiding massive uploads of junk genealogy gleaned from questionable sources and making it easy for a monitor to evaluate the quality of the entry.
If we had a group of people who were committed to create a "gold standard" of pre-1600 genealogy I could see doing that, but without such a group I think I'd rather see how good we can get at matching+merging them first. If we realize that there are records for only a few people before 1600 and that names for these people tend to vary, we can relax the match threshold for pre-1600 data. I'm not saying I'm unwilling to block pre-1600 genealogy; it's just that we haven't even tried to match them yet and deciding to block at this point seems premature.--Dallan 13:38, 10 April 2008 (EDT)

Similarly I sense a problem with source entry. the default seems to be mysource which I interpret to be private papers in the possession of the submitter. For example there are 75 entries for Savage under mysource. I had problems with this at first. Also for a Source entry if there is the slightest change in the title it appears a new source is created. Sometimes when entering a source reference, a drop down list appears and if I am quick, I can select from the list, but usually it rapidly vanishes and I can't get it to return. Even so often when I test the link, I am taken to an unedited page.--Scot 20:26, 8 April 2008 (EDT)--Scot 20:20, 8 April 2008 (EDT)

MySource's are created for private papers and also for the sources in GEDCOM uploads because most of them are nearly devoid of citation information and attempting to match sources in GEDCOM files to Source pages is a task for next year. Regarding duplicate Source pages though, I realize this is a problem. Once I get the new search functionality working, I'll be able to add a function to check for near-duplicate existing Source titles when you're about to add a new Source page and ask you if one of the existing Source pages is what you're looking for. But the existing search functionality doesn't allow that.
What browser and OS are you using? The drop-down list isn't supposed to disappear, although I've heard that others have had problems with this as well.--Dallan 13:38, 10 April 2008 (EDT)
I am using Firefox and windows XP.
If I enter a source on a person page it sometimes creates a new source even when the source exists. I've even tried visiting the source first, copying the name and pasting to the webpage and it still created a new source. I have tried renaming a Mysource changing to a Source and a duplicate My source is created. If I try placing a redirect in the notes field as you suggested, It givs the errror message about being outside of the Namespace.--Scot 13:34, 11 April 2008 (EDT)
I wish I could peer over your shoulder to see what's going on. Could you give me an example of a Person/Family page that you've saved where you've copied the title of a Source page into a source citation and it doesn't link to the Source page? Also, when you redirect a MySource page to a Source page, are you sure to include the "Source:" part of the source title within the brackets after the #redirect?--Dallan 18:01, 15 April 2008 (EDT)
That's it, I left off the "Source:" from the redirect.--Scot 19:55, 15 April 2008 (EDT)

Just a note on the pre-1600 genealogy -- If we're going to do something to limit gedcoms with people before standard sources are generally available, I think a better "flag" date is 1550 or 1500. There are lots of parish registers and other information that's revealed births and parents for Great Migration era immigrants; that data shouldn't be lumped in with the medieval line problem. Many of those registers started sometime in the 1500s.--Amelia 22:39, 10 April 2008 (EDT)

Thanks. I knew the "cutoff" date was in 1500-1600, but wasn't sure exactly where. If we do something to limit GEDCOM's, I'll make it 1500, not 1600. Another thing is I'm not sure the limit would apply equally to all countries. I've heard that extended genealogies are more common in Asian countries, but I'm not sure how well documented they are.--Dallan 22:48, 10 April 2008 (EDT)
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Source problems [10 April 2008]

My data base was created in PAF over a 16 year period. because, PAF(and I)changed the way sources are entered thru the many iterations of PAF, when I uploaded my GEDCOM many if not all sources are entered as mysources and most should be sources. Is there a way to list all pages that list a particular mysource so the source reference can be edited?--Scot 20:13, 9 April 2008 (EDT)

There are two things you can do:
  • Erase everything in the big edit box at the bottom of the MySource page and replace it with "#redirect [[Source:title of the source page]]" (without the quotes). That redirects the MySource page to a Source page so that every time you click on a link to that MySource page you'll be automatically directed to the proper Source page. If you do this, please note that Source pages are generally for entire collections, not individual records. So you wouldn't create a Source page for a single individual's birth record. You would create a Source page for the collection of birth records available at a county courthouse and record the birth certificate number as part of the source citation on the Person page. This way Source pages can be re-used by others.
  • You can get a list of all pages that link to the MySource page by clicking on the More menu for the MySource page, then on "What links here". This works for any page.--Dallan 13:38, 10 April 2008 (EDT)

When I do the procedure #1 I get an error message that says redirect outside of namespace--Scot 16:53, 10 April 2008 (EDT)

Are you sure you're redirecting a MySource page to a Source page? I just redirected MySource:Scot/Ancestral File (R) to Source:Ancestral File as an example. Being able to redirect MySource pages to Source pages is an exception to the general rule that you can't redirect a page to another namespace.
When I did the redirect, I didn't copy everything over. If you want to unredirect it, click here, click on the "edit" link next to the revision on the left, and press "Save". Otherwise, feel free to edit the Source page and add the additional information. You can also click on that link to see exactly how I redirected the page.--Dallan 17:29, 10 April 2008 (EDT)
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Redirect problems [18 April 2008]

Never mind, I figured it out. sorry.--Scot 16:51, 18 April 2008 (EDT) Sometimes when I try to do a redirect it won't work eg I entered the following: "#redirect Person:Joanna Blessing (1)" when I previewed the page I get this error message "Redirect is outside of namespace" What am I doing wrong?--Scot 16:48, 18 April 2008 (EDT)

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Hi again [23 April 2008]

Been a long time; I wanted to reach out and say hi, and see how you are doing! -- Brad Patrick 01:58, 23 April 2008 (EDT)

Hi Brad! I keep thinking about you. I always plan to contact you once "X" is done, but then it seems like there's always another "X" to be done before the website is ready to show you. Since we last spoke,
  • A group of volunteers spent several months reviewing and correcting the place wiki pages. We now have pretty good wiki pages for places.
  • We created a few video tutorials, and volunteers reviewed and corrected the text help pages.
  • We greatly improved the pedigree maps (example).
  • The website has undergone various usability enhancements.
  • We've decided upon and partially implemented a better approach to source pages.
  • We just launched a limited early-release digital library.
  • We're now at just under 2 million person and family pages.
Still to do,
  • I'm in the middle of re-doing search.
  • Matching and merging pages for duplicate individuals and families.
  • Match needs to be integrated in with add, so that when you add a person/family page you're presented with a list of possible existing matches.
  • Gedcom re-upload needs to update the wiki pages with any changes made in the GEDCOM file, and notify the uploader of conflicts with online edits.
  • We need to review and correct the source pages just like we reviewed and corrected the place pages last fall.
Search should be done in the next couple of weeks. The rest are scheduled to be completed by the end of the year. I'll send you an email with further details.--Dallan 16:21, 24 April 2008 (EDT)
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(waiting to be cached) [27 April 2008]

I see this on all persons in my tree except for the home person and I can't seem to find out what it means (waiting to be cached)--Davrchy 18:07, 26 April 2008 (EDT)

That message is displayed while the system is trying to cache the pages locally on your hard drive for improved performance. Normally it's displayed for only a few seconds while the page is downloaded, so I'm not sure why it's not going away in your case. Do you see a dialog box pop up asking to use some hard disk space? Answering "yes" to that should address the issue.--Dallan 10:06, 27 April 2008 (EDT)

Problem went away when I closed Mozilla Firefox and used Microsoft Explorer.--Davrchy 11:52, 27 April 2008 (EDT)

That's very odd. I'm not sure what would cause it to work in one browser and not in another, since the Flash player (the family tree explorer runs in flash) should be the same for both.--Dallan 14:34, 28 April 2008 (EDT)

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FTE caching problem [3 May 2008]

Hi there Dallan... I seem to be having a caching problem with the FTE. I'm using Firefox. New pages that I add to my Tree don't seem to want to stay. I'll see the colored box in the left side frame, but when I click on it, it turns grey and says the page is not part of the tree. The only way for me to get it to stay is to clear my cache. But the next page I add will do the same thing and I'll have to clear my cache again. This problem has been occurring for a couple of days now. In the meantime, I'm still enjoying WeRelate! Hope you are too. <g> --Ronni 10:46, 3 May 2008 (EDT)

Argh. You're right. There does seem to be a problem. I'll fix this tomorrow.--Dallan 20:01, 3 May 2008 (EDT)

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Notifications [28 May 2008]

Nope i havent received any notifications yet to changes bye email. I know my provider doesnt have reverse lookup set up so could this be causing a problem on the email?--Jeffjahn 11:08, 28 May 2008 (EDT)

I just sent you a separate email on this. I think the problem is due (at least in part) because your "Email me when..." options in Preferences are unchecked. You can turn them back on by clicking on Preferences in the MyRelate menu, then checking the boxes in the "E-mail" section and saving the page. Please let me know if you're still not getting emails after you do this.--Dallan 12:52, 28 May 2008 (EDT)

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Place Deleted [30 May 2008]

I need to have this place page deleted. Had it listed in the wrong township. Place:St. Martin Evangelical Lutheran Cemetery, Van Buren, Keokuk, Iowa, United States Thanks--Jeffjahn 15:05, 30 May 2008 (EDT)

done.--Dallan 19:03, 30 May 2008 (EDT)
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nFS [19 June 2008]

Dallan, I just heard about nFS today, can you tell me how this will affect what you are doing? It seems that they are proposing to create another database with massive amounts of misinformation. I am being told it will render all other Wiki sites obsolete. Why are they re-inventing the wheel? We will be having our Austin Family convention in SLC July 25 thru the 27th, [[1]]. Is there a chance you or someone fro your organization could speak to our group about your project?--Scot 15:17, 30 May 2008 (EDT)

nFS is an interesting project. Here are some differences:

So I wouldn't say nFS will render wiki sites obsolete. They're taking a different approach. I think that the recently-added ability for anyone to change the information that appears in the summary view without notifying other contributors of the change or keeping a history of changes could be a problem. We'll have to wait and see what develops.--Dallan 13:39, 19 June 2008 (EDT)

BTW, one of us might be able to come to Austin; would you be willing to pay for airfare from Minneapolis? Send me an email and we can talk further.

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Bug in FTE [31 May 2008]

Hi Dallan, I am not able to add a page to my tree by selecting the + sign in the FTE window. I can however still add a page by selecting the tree and + on the menu bar. --Beth 17:02, 31 May 2008 (EDT)

Sorry about that. I'll fix it on Monday.--Dallan 21:37, 31 May 2008 (EDT)

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Children showing up in red [7 June 2008]

Am I doing something wrong? When I make a new person page and add them as a child to an existing family, the new person shows up in red on the family page even though that person has a page. For example, on Family:Henry Kingery and Nancy Dillon (1), McCager Kingery is showing up in red even though he has a person page. When I'm creating the person page I choose the family page rather than typing in the title of the family page. I've also had it happen that the link to the family page from the child's page shows up in red although the family page exists. I've refreshed my browser (Firefox) but it has not had any effect. Any ideas? Thanks! --Ajcrow 10:55, 6 June 2008 (EDT)

The red links happen every once in awhile. I believe the problem is that the old version of the page (the one with the red link) stays in the server's cache even after you've created the other page. Eventually the red links "turn blue" once the old version of the page stops being cached by the server. It's an annoyance but doesn't cause any real problems, which is why it hasn't made its way to the top of the ToDo list yet. Someday after search is complete I promise I'll fix it.--Dallan 23:47, 6 June 2008 (EDT)

Thanks, Dallan. I was afraid I was messing something up! --Ajcrow 06:24, 7 June 2008 (EDT)

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Location in the wrong county [9 June 2008]

If you look at the Google map on the Place:Franklin, Ohio, United States page, you'll see an arrow way to the east. It's Rock Haven Park, which is in Licking County (almost to Muskingum County). It's listed incorrectly in the Getty Thesaurus. I went to edit its page, but couldn't find a way to take it out of Franklin and into Licking other than putting a reference in the "Also located in" field. --Ajcrow 22:00, 7 June 2008 (EDT)

You can change the place a place is located in by renaming it (click the "Rename" link at the top of the page). So you'd probably want to rename it to "Rock Haven Park, Licking, Ohio, United States". Thanks for finding the problem.--Dallan 11:06, 9 June 2008 (EDT)
Thanks, Dallan. I knew I was making it harder than it needed to be! --Ajcrow 15:45, 9 June 2008 (EDT)
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WeRelate Software Distribution [11 June 2008]

Wondering if I can get a copy of the mods for mediawiki that you made so I can run a genealogy wiki on my home web site? Just thought that I would ask. This would, of course, open up a whole weird and wonderful world of distributed genealogy wikis, some with better reputations than others. Dunning 03:37, 10 June 2008 (EDT)

Perhaps someday, but not now. The purpose of WeRelate is to encourage people to work together on their genealogy. Having a large number of online genealogy wiki's before there is a mechanism in place to interconnect them would defeat that purpose.--Dallan 09:44, 10 June 2008 (EDT)
Come on! Step up the pace! I need the distributed wiki software now. I am sure you can just slip it into one of your many free moments when you are doing unimportant things. Meanwhile, if I embed PhpGedView inside of PhpBB and add Gallery... But then compatibility would go out the window completely. I sure am glad you are a software architect. Takes a burden off my mind. Dunning 02:44, 11 June 2008 (EDT)
 :-) --Dallan 10:26, 11 June 2008 (EDT)
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adding new spouse when the spouse already has an existing page on WeRelate [10 June 2008]

Hi Dallan,

If you are around I could use some help here. I have a question from a user on my talk page. The spouse window does not have an option to select existing person. I can give a work around or do it for her but would like your input. --Beth 20:41, 10 June 2008 (EDT)

I'm around this evening. I'll check out your talk page and answer as best as I can.--Dallan 22:15, 10 June 2008 (EDT)
Thanks, Ronni replied and we have not heard from her so you can relax and wait until later. Enjoy the B game and your family. --Beth 22:19, 10 June 2008 (EDT)
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Family Search [18 August 2008]

Hi Dallan,

I assume from the following that we can upload images from FamilySearch. But wanted to check with you first. --Beth 21:01, 14 June 2008 (EDT)

FamilySearch Licenses. This site is owned and operated by Genealogical Society of Utah (GSU), a nonprofit organization created by The Corporation of the President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the "Church"). GSU is dedicated to family history and genealogical research. All material on this site (including text, images, databases and other information) is owned or licensed by GSU. You may view, download, and print material from this site only for your personal, noncommercial use unless we specifically indicate that other uses are permitted. You may not use this site or information found at this site (including the names and addresses of those who submit information) for selling or promoting products or services, soliciting clients, or any other commercial purpose.

Here's another quote from their Conditions of Use page:

This site is owned and operated by the Corporation of the President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. All material found at this site is owned or licensed by us. You may view, download, and print material from this site only for your personal, noncommercial use or, if you are a professional genealogist, for use by a current client. You may not post material from this site on another web site or on a computer network without our permission. You may not transmit or distribute material from this site to others. You may not use this site or information found at this site (including the names and addresses of those who submitted information) for selling or promoting products or services, soliciting clients, or any other commercial purpose. If you have questions or desire permission to post information, send e-mail to: fhd-copyright@ldschurch.org

I think based upon this second quote, you'd be better off uploading either a small portion or scaled-down version of the image so that you can upload it under fair use.--Dallan 13:39, 19 June 2008 (EDT)

Okay and thanks. --Beth 17:35, 19 June 2008 (EDT)
Dallan your quote is not from the conditions of use for the pilot Family Search Records Search. This is from the original site, correct. In any event I have used the fair use and reduced the image size and resolution. --Beth 20:31, 19 June 2008 (EDT)
Ah, I see now. I didn't realize the terms were different on the pilot search site. I'm glad to see that FamilySearch has relaxed the terms of use on the pilot search site.--Dallan 23:58, 19 June 2008 (EDT)

Hello Dallan,

I am still a bit confused. How or could we cite a source on the new Family Search (pilot) Labs website on WeRelate? I am finding some good information on the new MI databases. I would like to cite them as sources. Could you supply an example for us to follow?

Debbie Freeman--DFree 15:12, 28 July 2008 (EDT)

The best thing to do is to create a source for the underlying collection; for example, if I wanted to cite records from their "Michigan Births 1867-1902" collection, I would try to add a source for "Births 1867-1902" in Michigan. In the process of adding that source I would be shown a list of possible matching sources and I'd see that it already exists: Source:Birth records, 1867-1902. This is a horrible title, but we're going to automatically rename the source titles in the Fall, so I'd go ahead and use this Source page. I would then edit the page and add "http://pilot.familysearch.org/" as a new repository URL (you can leave the repository name blank). The idea is that as more and more records go online, rather than creating new Source pages for them we want to just add new URL's where they can be found.--Dallan 16:03, 28 July 2008 (EDT)

Hello Dallan,

Thank You for the input. I will try it out.

Debbie Freeman--DFree 16:23, 28 July 2008 (EDT)

Footnote re LDS. It is unfortunate that the LDS church somehow believes it owns the copyright on material that was submitted to them by church members and others over the years. When I was a member years ago, I submitted people, but today, I search and they do not show in their database, even though I have records from them re the submissions. - Doug Couch

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Footnote system [19 June 2008]

Hi Dallan,

I have discovered a problem with the footnote system; it is one directional. I noticed this when entering deaths on the Coleman Deaths page for Texas. My list is alphabetical by given name. For now it is correct; but the initial entry must be the first one; so if a contributor edits the page and tries to add a footnote with the shortcut above the initial entry; that does not work. --Beth 22:37, 18 June 2008 (EDT)

That's true unfortunately. You could re-enter the footnote content for every reference, but that's kind of a pain. The footnote extension is from Wikipedia; I haven't looked to see how difficult it would be to change.--Dallan 13:39, 19 June 2008 (EDT)

Okay, Dallan, I am going to enter the earliest person in the alphabet on that page and try and get around the problem that way. --Beth 17:36, 19 June 2008 (EDT)
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terminal tags [18 August 2008]

Dallan

I notice that you modified template:Speedy Delete by adding terminating line tags in the table e.g. </td></tr> I know that's proper form for formal HTML tables, but I also think believe those ending tags are unnecessary. Ditto </br> or </ br> Is there a reason for including these terminators beyond "good form"? Q 11:43, 19 June 2008 (EDT)

Belay that question. I now see that its necessary to make the table-within-a-table trick work. That's helpful, as I can make use of this to simplify table organization---Ie, I think I can use it to group entries by column rather than by rows---much easier to see where things belong this way. Thanks. Q 12:02, 19 June 2008 (EDT)

RE [Ditto </br> or </ br> Is there a reason for including these terminators beyond "good form"?] Although the table terminators mentioned earlier are very necessary, I do not know of any </br> terminator. The modern XHTML version of <br> is <br />, which is not a terminator per se, but does indicate closure...kind of nutty in my opinion. Both <br> and <br /> are currently correct, depending on the page coding with which they are used. I use <br> only, and if the HTML editor insists on converting any of them, so be it.--Dougcouch 21:34, 17 August 2008 (EDT)

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Re Price 1904-1913 [19 June 2008]

I'm probably particularly bad about filling in those text boxes. My personal preference is for a card layout such as you see with Price, but I've certainly no objection to someone else filling in the text boxes. Eventually, I'm going to have to go back in and do text boxes all the way around, but since I'm focusing on specific individuals at a certain time and place, the longitudinal relations (grandparents, parents, children, etc) are less important to me,so the text boxes don't come into play as much in person articles---so unfortuantely, I tend to ignore them. One of the reasons I focus on the article itself, and including informat