User talk:DougVL

Welcome [2 July 2010]

Welcome to WeRelate, your virtual genealogical community. We're glad you have joined us. At WeRelate you can easily create ancestor web pages, connect with cousins and other genealogists, and find new information. To get started:

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If you need any help, I will be glad to answer your questions. Just click on my signature link below and then click on the “Leave a message” link under my name in the upper left corner of my profile page. Thanks for participating and see you around! Debbie Freeman --DFree 19:23, 28 June 2010 (EDT)

Renaming Marriages [2 July 2010]

Thanks for the info and help. Most of my troubles have been with marriages. Adding small GED files to my larger primary one seems to have left empty marriages, duplicates ones, and ones with only one spouse. I had guessed yesterday that to remove a marriage I would have to remove a family page. I haven't tried it yet, though, so I don't know if there's a way to do it.

DougVL--DougVL 16:55, 1 July 2010 (EDT)

DougVL, if you could provide a specific example, that would be helpful. Families with only 1 spouse sounds like it may have been a problem with your GEDCOM, though I can't tell for certain.

On another note, I see that you have a page titled Person:Se Ssien Hofkamp (1), but you edited the name to be Geessien. Editing the name only will not rename the page itself. You can rename the page by clicking on Rename in the left menu. You would also need to rename her family page: Family:Klaas Vredevood and Se Ssien Hofkamp (1).

Let me describe how I would work on one of your families without a spouse:

• You have Family:Hendrik Van Wouden and Unknown (1) (and they had a son named Sjoerd). From Sjoerd's Huwelijksakte (well, the index anyway...) at Genlias [1], we can see that Sjoerd's parents were Hendrik Sjoerds van Wouden and Jikke Barteles Reitsma. I did a search on WR, and I don't see that we have a page for Jikke Reitsma, so I won't have to merge.
• Now that Hendrik's wife's name is known, we'd need to add it to his family page (Family:Hendrik Van Wouden and Unknown (1)). Click Edit on that page, and Add Jikke as his spouse.
  • As a side note, middle names (and in this case, patronymic names) are not included in page titles. An example of this is Person:Murk Volbeda (1). The page title is Person:Murk Volbeda (1), but his full name of Murk Klazes Volbeda shows up in the blue box on the page.
• Adding Jikke to the marriage will not automatically rename the page. So, after Jikke Reitsma appears as a spouse, the page will still be titled Family:Hendrik Van Wouden and Unknown (1). So, from this Family page, you'd need to rename it to Family:Hendrik Van Wouden and Jikke Reitsma (the system will automatically create an index number {that is the (1) after the title} for you to keep the pages unique).
• From that Genlias index, there is one more thing of note, Family:Sjoerd Van Wouden and Dijtske Van Der Laan (1), Sjoerd's wife was named Sijtske, not Dijtske. I assume that was a typing error, as Dijtske is not a name common to Friesland. So... Sjoerd's family page would need to be renamed (substituting an S for the D), her Person:Dijtske Van Der Laan (1) page would also need to be renamed, and her page edited to reflect the correct spelling.

To be honest, this sounds far more complicated than it is. Also, once you do one or two, you'll get the hang of it. I would suggest going through the list of your contributions (which can be found in the Left menu), and fixing the pages you already have on WR before uploading another GEDCOM. Also, when you do upload another - perhaps you can leave a message on my talk page before you finalize the upload - and I can take a look at it.

One more thing... My husband also has family lines back to Friesland (that is how I noticed your edits...) I'm also working on a project here, the Ferwerderadeel and Leeuwarderadeel Project, along with another WR user. Feel free to ask questions about using WR or Friesland genealogy. It's great to see another user here interested in that region; I'm glad to help! --Jennifer (JBS66) 07:59, 2 July 2010 (EDT)

Jennifer - Thanks for the great help and detailed instructions. The setup of WR is strange to me for some reason. Maybe because it's a wiki, or because it isn't based on a tree as far as I can tell. And it has taken a while to learn about finding EDIT and RENAME commands, although they're right there on the screen. Roughly 30 years ago one of my aunts went to the Netherlands looking into family history. My grandparents (her parents) and my great grandparents immigrated about 1903. She found and talked to family members there, and apparently hired a genealogist as well. The genealogist, J. P. Schouten and an American colleague named Duncan Smith documented the research in a book called "The van der Laan and Related Families 1710 - 1927." A copy was printed and bound for each of my aunt's siblings and I now have my father's copy. There's a lot of research - names and dates - in it, but it wasn't publicly available. There's no date in it, no publisher's name, no copyright notice. But there's so much information I thought it should be made available to others. So I got PAF and made a GEDCOM. Then I went on line to do more research and found more family, mostly on GenCircles. Some of that was downloadable as one-family GEDCOM files. I used them to avoid typing. But merging them gave me some duplicate data, which I had to learn how to find and remove. Other names weren't downloadable so I used the Windows clipboard copy-and-paste to get the names and dated from the GenCircles screen into the PAF data. I started looking around for a free web site where I could upload the family tree and other members could add to it, and hopefully I'd be able to download the additions (or the whole thing) and add it to my local data file. That's how I came to WR. Now, most of what anyone else might add would be for living people, so WR won't actually be too useful, but I didn't know that at first. And I think it would be great to get this family tree linked into a bigger one anyway. Back in the 1970's I was in the Air Force and while stationed in Germany I went to Holland and visited Heerenveen. My parents told me that's where the family had come from. I've recently learned that Heerenveen is also an area as well as a city, and I've seen that my ancestors came from smaller towns in the area around Heerenveen. I've been looking online for a very simple map of NE Netherlands to put on my own website genealogy page that would just show the towns in the area, to demonstrate roughly the area we came from. The maps I've found so far either have far too much detail or don't show the towns. Genlias looks useful! I think I'd gotten something there before, too. I've often toyed with the idea of learning Dutch, too. I did learn a fair amount of German and that helps get an idea of what the Dutch pages say. My mother came from England. I found a census record listing her father's family, but nothing at all so far for her mother. Thanks again for the help and info!

Doug--DougVL 11:53, 2 July 2010 (EDT)

Glad I could help!

I have to caution, that GenCircles does not tend to contain the most well-sourced valid data. For Friesland genealogy you really are quite lucky that the Netherlands has so much posted online. Genlias is very good, although it contains the index for the document, as opposed to the actual scans. I've found a few errors in their index while working on my project.

If you have family that ventured outside of Heerenveen, AlleFriezen is outstanding! Unfortunately, Heerenveen has not yet begun to participate, but other gemeente do have the original birth-marriage-death scans available there. I see that Person:Sijger Van Der Laan (1) died in Nijehaske, which was in Skarsterlân, which is in AlleFriezen. Here is the death certificate for Syger/Sijger. Tresoar made the, in my opinion, silly decision to "simplify" and change ij to y in their index. So, while the certificate most often does really show ij, the index says y. Also, the death date on this certificate differs from your data. The certificate shows 23 Oct 1826.

For places and basic maps, http://www.tresoar.nl/plaatsnamen/plaatsen/default2.asp is helpful.

I also want to pass along this site: http://www.traceyourdutchroots.com/roots/dict.html. It's a helpful dictionary for Dutch genealogy. There is also the Dutch-English Translations (Certificates) page here on WR.

You've had a treasure of a document handed down to you - that is special! WeRelate is a great place to collaborate, even with the no living rule. It does have a steep learning curve, I will admit!

I'm taking my first trip to the Netherlands in September - I can't wait! As for learning Dutch - it's a bit of a challenge here in New England. None of the local colleges offer it. Not much of a call for it I suppose. --Jennifer (JBS66) 14:00, 2 July 2010 (EDT)

Nice catch on the death date! And thanks - I went to the Genlias link and looked at the death certificate. I saw where Mr. Schouten must have gotten some of the info in the book. I saw the number 112 in the certificate, and Schouten says he lived in house #112. I corrected the death month - I typed it wrong. A frequent occurrence for me.

I don't really plan to upload more GEDCOMs, in response to an earlier comment of yours.

Yes, I agree that the Schouten book is a treasure. That's why I wanted to publicize what I could from it. It has copies in the back of some of the source documentation. There's even a certificate from the town mayor certifying Sijger taking the family name of van der Laan.

We would LOVE to go back to the Netherlands. It was great, and lovely.

One note, from our experience there. You know how maps are drawn to various scales? Well, our map, for some areas at least, seemed to be close to a 1 to 1 scale. Streets an inch apart on the map weren't much farther apart on the ground! We constantly overshot distances and missed corners.

I had mentioned learning Dutch because when I first went to Genlias today, the page came up in Dutch. A little later, I found the link at the top for English. But still, I have wanted for years to learn some Dutch. Just haven't had a good enough reason yet to put the effort into it. I would do it with books and tapes, probably. Once in a while I've seen mention of a conversational Dutch class around here (southwest Michigan, close to Holland), but not in a long time.

Doug--DougVL 15:56, 2 July 2010 (EDT)

Next step: Review your GEDCOM [28 June 2010]

You're not done yet!

WeRelate is different from most family tree websites. By contributing to WeRelate you are helping to create Pando for genealogy, a free, unified family tree that combines the best information from all contributors.

Now that you have uploaded dvl2.ged, your next step is to review what your pages will look like, review any potential warnings, and combine (merge) people in your GEDCOM with matching people already on WeRelate. You need to review your GEDCOM before it can finish importing.

Note: if your gedcom contains many errors or multiple families, we’d ask that you resolve and correct the errors, delete this gedcom and re-submit it without the errors before merging it with families already on WeRelate. If the gedcom is very large, we’d suggest breaking it up into separate lines and importing them one at a time, which makes the review and correction process easier.

Click here to review your GEDCOM

Once you have finished your review and marked your GEDCOM Ready to import, one of our administrators will review your GEDCOM and finalize the import. This usually happens within 24 hours. You will receive a message here when the pages have been created.

--WeRelate agent 18:48, 28 June 2010 (EDT)

Next step: Review your GEDCOM [28 June 2010]

You're not done yet!

WeRelate is different from most family tree websites. By contributing to WeRelate you are helping to create Pando for genealogy, a free, unified family tree that combines the best information from all contributors.

Now that you have uploaded dvl.ged, your next step is to review what your pages will look like, review any potential warnings, and combine (merge) people in your GEDCOM with matching people already on WeRelate. You need to review your GEDCOM before it can finish importing.

Note: if your gedcom contains many errors or multiple families, we’d ask that you resolve and correct the errors, delete this gedcom and re-submit it without the errors before merging it with families already on WeRelate. If the gedcom is very large, we’d suggest breaking it up into separate lines and importing them one at a time, which makes the review and correction process easier.

Click here to review your GEDCOM

Once you have finished your review and marked your GEDCOM Ready to import, one of our administrators will review your GEDCOM and finalize the import. This usually happens within 24 hours. You will receive a message here when the pages have been created.

--WeRelate agent 21:03, 28 June 2010 (EDT)

Next step: Review your GEDCOM [28 June 2010]

You're not done yet!

WeRelate is different from most family tree websites. By contributing to WeRelate you are helping to create Pando for genealogy, a free, unified family tree that combines the best information from all contributors.

Now that you have uploaded dvl.ged, your next step is to review what your pages will look like, review any potential warnings, and combine (merge) people in your GEDCOM with matching people already on WeRelate. You need to review your GEDCOM before it can finish importing.

Note: if your gedcom contains many errors or multiple families, we’d ask that you resolve and correct the errors, delete this gedcom and re-submit it without the errors before merging it with families already on WeRelate. If the gedcom is very large, we’d suggest breaking it up into separate lines and importing them one at a time, which makes the review and correction process easier.

Click here to review your GEDCOM

Once you have finished your review and marked your GEDCOM Ready to import, one of our administrators will review your GEDCOM and finalize the import. This usually happens within 24 hours. You will receive a message here when the pages have been created.

--WeRelate agent 22:17, 28 June 2010 (EDT)

Next step: Review your GEDCOM [28 June 2010]

You're not done yet!

WeRelate is different from most family tree websites. By contributing to WeRelate you are helping to create Pando for genealogy, a free, unified family tree that combines the best information from all contributors.

Now that you have uploaded dvl.ged, your next step is to review what your pages will look like, review any potential warnings, and combine (merge) people in your GEDCOM with matching people already on WeRelate. You need to review your GEDCOM before it can finish importing.

Note: if your gedcom contains many errors or multiple families, we’d ask that you resolve and correct the errors, delete this gedcom and re-submit it without the errors before merging it with families already on WeRelate. If the gedcom is very large, we’d suggest breaking it up into separate lines and importing them one at a time, which makes the review and correction process easier.

Click here to review your GEDCOM

Once you have finished your review and marked your GEDCOM Ready to import, one of our administrators will review your GEDCOM and finalize the import. This usually happens within 24 hours. You will receive a message here when the pages have been created.

--WeRelate agent 23:10, 28 June 2010 (EDT)

dvl.ged Imported Successfully [29 June 2010]

The pages from your GEDCOM have been generated successfully. You may now:

• launch the Family Tree Explorer to navigate your tree
• view your network -- If you matched families in your GEDCOM to existing families, find out to which other WeRelate users you are related.
• view related pages not in your tree -- If you matched families in your GEDCOM to existing families, find out which people you are now related to that you can add to your tree (takes awhile to display for large trees).
• view a searchable list of the pages in your tree -- The searchable list will be available about an hour after your tree has been imported.

For questions or problems, leave a message for Dallan or send an email to dallan@WeRelate.org.

--WeRelate agent 11:24, 29 June 2010 (EDT)

Aengwirden [1 July 2010]

DougVL, I noticed that you created a new place page for Place:Aengwirden, Heerenveen, Friesland, Netherlands. A place page already existed for Aengwirden at: Place:Aengwirden, Friesland, Netherlands. WeRelate titles place pages for the Netherlands as they were around 1900. We also strive to have only 1 page per location. Since Aengwirden was a separate gemeente until 1934 (and not under Heerenveen), I am going to combine your page and the existing Aengwirden page.

Also, we cannot post copyrighted material here on WR. I have added a link to the flagspot page, instead of its page text. --Jennifer (JBS66) 06:18, 1 July 2010 (EDT) (volunteer administrator)

I'm brand new at WeRelate, and a list of links to 'related' sites showed up for me. When I went there, there was the title, but no information. So I added some, not realizing I was creating a new page and thinking I was just adding info to an existing one. I had also considered adding it to the Heerenveen page, but to do it later. Thanks for taking care of that. DougVL--DougVL 12:29, 1 July 2010 (EDT)

Hindrik Vredevood and Unknown [1 July 2010]

Hello again,

I noticed that you renamed Family:Hindrik Vredevood and Unknown (1) to Family:Unknown (14) (with a note that it was a duplicate). These pages are now essentially empty, and connect to no other pages here.

If a family or person is a duplicate, we have a merge feature. You can find your potential duplicates by clicking on My Relate at the top of the page, and then Show duplicates. You can also look for duplicate pages directly from a Person or Family page by clicking on more in the left menu and choosing Find Duplicates.

Please let me know if I can delete the Family:Unknown (14) page for you. If you would like a page to be deleted in the future, you can put it into speedy delete by following the instructions on this page. Thank you, --Jennifer (JBS66) 06:28, 1 July 2010 (EDT)

Hello! I searched the help, looking for how to delete a page but found no help. That's why I deleted the text and left the note. I'll try finding and using the Speedy Delete.

Sorry, I meant to include a link to speedy delete for you (instead I accidently put your talk page into speedy delete!). Here it is: Category:Speedy Delete. You can enter the following code in the text box of a page, and it will be deleted by one of the admins:

{{Speedy Delete}}.--Jennifer (JBS66) 16:29, 1 July 2010 (EDT)

Familienamen 1811 (van der Laan) [30 January 2011]

Doug, I saw on this Person:Sijger Van Der Laan (1) page that they chose the van der Laan surname in 1812. I'm not sure if you are aware of the Tresoar website (http://www.tresoar.nl). It provides a wealth of information on Friesland genealogy. They do not, however, appear to be updating their birth-marriage-death indexes lately, as the Netherlands is developing a new system that is expected out in October.

Anyway... on Treasor there is the Familienamen 1811, and they have scans for the documents. From there you can find:

Haske, deel 1 folio 33

Laan, Zieger Sietzes van der, Nijehaske

Kinderen:

Jeltje 16, Minke 14, Sietse 10, Rigtje 6, Rein 3, Bouwe 1

The scan is at: http://www2.tresoar.nl/genealogie/naamsaanname/toonna.php?inv=29_03&mairie=Haske&folio=33&verso=&achter=ja

There are also these, which might provide clues as to Zieger/Sijger's siblings:

Haske, deel 1 folio 34

Laan, Hans Sietses van der, Nijehaske

Kinderen:

Jeltje 4, Fedde 10 wkn

and

Haske, deel 1 folio 32 verso

Laan, Eeuwe Sietzes van der, Nijehaske

Kinderen:

geen--Jennifer (JBS66) 13:14, 2 July 2010 (EDT)

Jennifer -

Thanks very much for the information and for the link. I had heard of Tresoar but not yet tried it.

I have a photocopy of one certificate, in a book researched in the Netherlands for my family, but it is not as clear as the image in the link. I found the second certificate image too, and saved both to my genealogy directory.

I'm a casual genealogist, or more accurately just a data collector. I'm not too concerned with documentation and proof, but still it's nice to have. Mostly I'm just interested in a picture of my family tree and some biographical info about my relatives.

Again, thanks for your suggestion and help.

Doug--DougVL 19:58, 29 January 2011 (EST)

Re-Placed2.zip does not appear to be a GEDCOM [29 January 2011]

We were not able to import your file because it does not appear to be a GEDCOM file. You might want to read this help page.

For questions or problems, leave a message for Dallan or send an email to dallan@WeRelate.org.

--WeRelate agent 19:31, 29 January 2011 (EST)

Next step: Review your GEDCOM [29 January 2011]

You're not done yet!

WeRelate is different from most family tree websites. By contributing to WeRelate you are helping to create Pando for genealogy, a free, unified family tree that combines the best information from all contributors.

Now that you have uploaded RePlaced2.ged, your next step is to review what your pages will look like, review any potential warnings, and combine (merge) people in your GEDCOM with matching people already on WeRelate. You need to review your GEDCOM before it can finish importing. We will keep your GEDCOM in the queue for two weeks to give you time to review it.

Note: if your gedcom contains many errors or multiple families, we’d ask that you resolve and correct the errors, delete this gedcom and re-submit it without the errors before merging it with families already on WeRelate. If the gedcom is very large, we’d suggest breaking it up into separate files (or families) and importing them one at a time, which makes the review and correction process easier.

Click here to review your GEDCOM

Once you have finished your review and marked your GEDCOM Ready to import, one of our administrators will review your GEDCOM and finalize the import. This usually happens within 24 hours. You will receive a message here when the pages have been created.

--WeRelate agent 19:33, 29 January 2011 (EST)

Next step: Review your GEDCOM [29 January 2011]

You're not done yet!

WeRelate is different from most family tree websites. By contributing to WeRelate you are helping to create Pando for genealogy, a free, unified family tree that combines the best information from all contributors.

Now that you have uploaded RePlaced2.ged, your next step is to review what your pages will look like, review any potential warnings, and combine (merge) people in your GEDCOM with matching people already on WeRelate. You need to review your GEDCOM before it can finish importing. We will keep your GEDCOM in the queue for two weeks to give you time to review it.

Note: if your gedcom contains many errors or multiple families, we’d ask that you resolve and correct the errors, delete this gedcom and re-submit it without the errors before merging it with families already on WeRelate. If the gedcom is very large, we’d suggest breaking it up into separate files (or families) and importing them one at a time, which makes the review and correction process easier.

Click here to review your GEDCOM

Once you have finished your review and marked your GEDCOM Ready to import, one of our administrators will review your GEDCOM and finalize the import. This usually happens within 24 hours. You will receive a message here when the pages have been created.

--WeRelate agent 21:08, 29 January 2011 (EST)

Next step: Review your GEDCOM [29 January 2011]

You're not done yet!

WeRelate is different from most family tree websites. By contributing to WeRelate you are helping to create Pando for genealogy, a free, unified family tree that combines the best information from all contributors.

Now that you have uploaded RePlaced3.ged, your next step is to review what your pages will look like, review any potential warnings, and combine (merge) people in your GEDCOM with matching people already on WeRelate. You need to review your GEDCOM before it can finish importing. We will keep your GEDCOM in the queue for two weeks to give you time to review it.

Note: if your gedcom contains many errors or multiple families, we’d ask that you resolve and correct the errors, delete this gedcom and re-submit it without the errors before merging it with families already on WeRelate. If the gedcom is very large, we’d suggest breaking it up into separate files (or families) and importing them one at a time, which makes the review and correction process easier.

Click here to review your GEDCOM

Once you have finished your review and marked your GEDCOM Ready to import, one of our administrators will review your GEDCOM and finalize the import. This usually happens within 24 hours. You will receive a message here when the pages have been created.

--WeRelate agent 21:11, 29 January 2011 (EST)

‎RePlaced3.ged [24 September 2011]

Hello Doug, I took a look at your gedcom that is in admin review. There are some items that will need to be fixed and a new gedcom uploaded. I noticed that you have a few families with names such as Jan Dooitze Volbeda and Mrs. Trijntje Klazes Volbeda. The convention here on WeRelate is to use the wife's maiden name or the word Unknown when the surname is not known. These instances appear on the warning tab with the alert "Husband and wife have the same surname".

You also have other families titled, for example, Hans and Mrs. Hans or Harm Abbringa and Mrs. H. Abbringa. Since the wife's name is not really known, they will need to be renamed to Unknown instead. This type of consistency in our naming practices helps us to properly find and match duplicate families. Thank you, volunteer admin, --Jennifer (JBS66) 10:16, 30 January 2011 (EST)

My memory seems to be deteriorating worse than I thought. I just read a mention of WeRelate in a book, as a data sharing site, and went to it to add my data. Now I see that I already did that 9 months ago!

Also in looking thru the postings, I see that I wasn't going to add more. Mainly because of differences in naming, as just mentioned above. I would have to have two slightly different versions of my data and keep both up to date, because the unknown spouse naming conventions here make my charts poor, and make my data and families as I see them in PAF very confusing.

As a reference, I happened to find a site yesterday while looking for other info but which seems to explain or show something different. And more useful to me, as well. I'll quote it here:

"http://www.cgslink.com/learning/page10.html

Computer Genealogy Specialists

Finding and Correcting PAF Data Problems

(Article 29)

6.When the wife's name is unknown, use "Mrs. and the husband's surname (Mrs. Hawkins). (see PAF Help). To find unknown individuals without records (no RIN), start with MRIN 1 and use the plus (+) on your numeric keypad to advanced sequentially through the MRIN sequence. Look to see if an "unknown" appears in the husband or wife location without a RIN. If it is a female, double-click on her location and give her a name (Mrs. Hawkins).

7.When the husband's name is unknown use "unknown" (lower case) as his name to create a record (this gives him a RIN). Having a record (with a RIN and unique record serial number in PAF-5) is important when using the automatic match-merge in PAF-5."

On another subject, I was looking over some of the pages or features available, and went to the "Related Pages" page. There I saw this at the top of the screen:

"Related Pages

Pages not in your tree that are linked to by pages in your tree

You may want to add some of these pages to your tree.

Select the Person or Family namespace to see related people or families."

  There was no hint about how to add those pages, and more odd, the last line seems to make no sense at all.  I haven't seen a mention anywhere else to have any idea what those 'namespaces' are.

I've expanded my data quite a bit, and made numerous corrections. If I could just upload a new GED and replace all the old data, that would be nice. But needing to go through 2,000 people and several hundred families to check their page names just doesn't seem worth while.

However, I thank you for making this project and its data-sharing available to others.

Doug--DougVL 14:05, 24 September 2011 (EDT)

Doug, I will answer your questions in full shortly. First, do you have a link to the page where you found the text "Related Pages Pages not in your tree that are linked to by pages in your tree"... I can't seem to locate it anywhere. Thank you, --Jennifer (JBS66) 14:26, 24 September 2011 (EDT)

The link is halfway up my messages page, in a list of things to do after a submission was accepted.

Here's the link

http://www.werelate.org/w/index.php?title=Special:TreeRelated&user=DougVL&tree=van+der+Laan+%28Hudsonville%2C+MI%29

Doug--DougVL 14:35, 24 September 2011 (EDT)

Here's the whole section with that link, and others:

▼dvl.ged Imported Successfully [29 June 2010] The pages from your GEDCOM have been generated successfully. You may now:

launch the Family Tree Explorer to navigate your tree view your network -- If you matched families in your GEDCOM to existing families, find out to which other WeRelate users you are related. view related pages not in your tree -- If you matched families in your GEDCOM to existing families, find out which people you are now related to that you can add to your tree (takes awhile to display for large trees). view a searchable list of the pages in your tree -- The searchable list will be available about an hour after your tree has been imported. For questions or problems, leave a message for Dallan or send an email to dallan@WeRelate.org.

--WeRelate agent 11:24, 29 June 2010 (EDT)

DougVL 14:36, 24 September 2011 (EDT)

It appears you joined WR in June 2010 and imported a gedcom. You then removed all of your data in Jan 2011 in order to re-upload another gedcom. At that time, I left the message above that we wouldn't be able to accept the gecom in its current form based on the problems with names. Now, it may have been nearly the same gedcom you uploaded previously, but we have new error checks in place to catch problems.

I took a look at the cgslink.com site you referenced. Their recommendation of using Mrs. and the husband's surname is not standard genealogical practice. I searched around for a reference with style suggestions for names that are more commonly used, here is one: http://www.columbinegenealogy.com/pdfs/Getting%20It%20Right.pdf. Some style guides recommend using the word Unknown when part of a name is not known, other guides recommend simply leaving the field blank. Both of these options will work for gedcoms imported to WeRelate.

I specialize in research for Friesland, NL and it is not at all commonplace for wives to take their husband's surname. You would never see a Mrs. Hans in a record. I would find the name Mrs. Trijntje Klazes Volbeda much more confusing because the surname Volbeda will not appear as her name in any records in the Netherlands. One thing to note in NL research is that prior to 1811, most familes did not use surnames. If a person died after 1811 and their surname is indicated on records, then it is used as their primary name. If they died before 1811 and the record shows only a patronymic name, we don't assume or record a surname for them solely on the names their descendants chose. Also, for people that migrated from NL to the U.S., we use their birth name as their primary name, and add their immigrant name as an alternate name spelling. So, if they were born as Jan, but used John in the U.S., their primary name would be Jan and the alt name John.

It appears you have very little data still on WeRelate, so you would be able to upload your new gedcom. However, the names in your file would still need to follow a more common genealogical standard to be accepted for upload. There is quite a bit of activity on WeRelate for Friesland records and I am sure that your new gedcom will tie into other's lines. Since WeRelate creates pages for collaboration, they need to follow a more prescribed format. My suggestion would be for you to upload a smaller gedcom to WeRelate. It is then easier to make sure the data is correct and merge any family matches during upload.

Regarding the text "Select the Person or Family namespace to see related people or families": that means that at the top of the "Related Pages" page, there are a series of boxes - there is one on the Right that says Namespace:All. If you select Family or Person in that box and press Go, you will see a list of pages that are connected in some way to pages in your tree. If you have any other questions, please feel free to ask, --Jennifer (JBS66) 15:30, 24 September 2011 (EDT)

Thanks for all your help.

I just find the site too hard to use. The instructions and tutorials don't seem to match the screens.

I tried looking at the Explorer page and did not find it useful, or even very navigable. For example, the Flash tree space was mostly blank blue, with the names squished at the bottom, with the marriage line unreadable. I tried to send a screenshot but lost it.

I tried other pages from menu links too, but I just don't get it, or find it useable.

And the requirements should be made known to submitters as part of the process.

I'd like to have been able to use WeRelate to learn more about my Dutch ancestors, but it just seems impossible. I have no practical way to revise the data in my 2,000 person file to fit.

Doug--DougVL 17:18, 24 September 2011 (EDT)

Oh, here's an example of what I mean by hard to use:

"you will see a list of pages that are connected in some way to pages in your tree"

yes, I saw those links. Apparently hundreds of them. Lots were to non-existent pages!

The top of that page says something about links to other people's entries for matching people, but all I found were apparently links between people in my own data. And many, many links to places and sources. HuH?

Doug--DougVL 17:22, 24 September 2011 (EDT)