User talk:Jrm03063

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GEDCOM Export Ready [5 March 2014]

The GEDCOM for tree mason is ready to download. Click here.


GEDCOM Export Ready [5 March 2014]

The GEDCOM for tree tuttle is ready to download. Click here.


GEDCOM Export Ready [5 March 2014]

The GEDCOM for tree noyes is ready to download. Click here.


Wikipedia information [20 March 2014]

Hi Jrm, can you please expedite the Wikipedia Template population for Bernard Kroger? I believe you helped with one of these a while ago...

Thanks much and best regards,

Jim:)--Delijim 17:02, 20 March 2014 (UTC)


Please be aware that I am no longer a routine contributor. --jrm03063 20:25, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for your assistance:) Have a great week,

Jim:)


Removing categories [20 November 2014]

Would you mind explaining why you removed Person:Richard Dummer (2) from both categories I added?--Daniel Maxwell 17:30, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

I just finished the e-mail explanation. Feel free to revert/modify things any way you like - I did that one page as an illustration. --jrm03063 17:35, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

Sir Winston Churchill ancestry [1 January 2015]

"At the end of the 16th century the Lord of the Manor of Standish was Sir Henry Winston. His memorial in Standish's 14th century Church of St Nicholas carries a 20th-century sign:
"This monument to Sir Henry Winston was restored to commemorate the marriage in 1618 of his daughter Sarah to John Churchill from which union descended Sir Winston Churchill K.G. O.M. C.H. M.P. 1874-1965 Prime Minister 1940-1945. 1951-1955"
"This Sarah Winston's grandson became the first Great Duke of Marlborough, ancestor of Sir Winston."

I found this in the Wikipedia article on Standish in Gloucestershire. It has not been transferred to WeRelate. We appear to have a conflicting entry for this marriage, so I hesitate to add it myself.

Happy New Year

--Goldenoldie 11:38, 1 January 2015 (UTC)


email? [5 October 2015]

I got your email, but cannot respond as you didn't include your address and I cannot send email via WeRelate due to your user settings (according to the error message). --Trentf 13:16, 5 October 2015 (UTC)


Thank you! [18 nov 2015]

Thank you for your encouragement to work with the stuff you already put into WR. I had already wondered why some Dutch persons seemed so English. I'm currently working on my mothers pedigree. I had not expected it would bring me so far into the Middle Ages. And that I am very likely to be a descendant from people that played key roles in the history of my region of birth. As a small child I was fascinated by the ruins of the Medieval castles, like Brederode and Meerenstein, wondering about the people who once lived there. And now I'm studying their geneology and history. What I like about WR is that it offers the opportunity to build on the research of others and let others work on yours. If we work seriously, the result should improve. And I have learned the WR community to be one of serious geneologists. So thank you for your encouragement and the opportunity to work with your input (and I hope others will benefit from mine).

Edwin--Edwin 20:43, 18 November 2015 (UTC)


Thanks again! [23 nov 2015]

That was a nice clarification. I already had the impression that this was an example of "advanced wiki". Nice to know how and why you applied it.

(must take some time some day to learn those tricks too :-)--Edwin 21:01, 23 November 2015 (UTC)


Thanks for the clean-up [29 December 2015]

Thanks for cleaning up Person:Abigail Whitney (1). It really helps when someone with some familiarity with the family can sort out some of the problems. --GayelKnott 21:55, 29 December 2015 (UTC)


Wikidata item [27 February 2016]

Thank you for asking my opinion on the wiki data item.

I've needed some time and experience to appreciate it.

I think it is a valuable addition to a profile.

1) I think wikipedia usually is a good secundary source, reflecting the general consensus among geneologists and historians. Of course this may vary from person to person, depending on the author and the depth in wich the article was reviewed. The strength of WP here is that it is fully open for review.

2) I think the historical and genealogical body of knowledge may differ from country to country. Generally one may expect deeper knowledge in an language area or country that a person may be perceived to be a member from. For French nobility: look at France.

The tool helps to identify language areas that may be interesting to explore: on WP and other secondary sources.

There are some limitations though. I have seen that the tool does not pick up on all information in the article (I guess only what is tabulated?). And of course we are not all omnilinguistic. I'm limited to dutch, enlish and german and can pick up on french, italian and spanish.

Nevertheless, wikidata is a valuable addition I think!--Edwin 11:52, 27 February 2016 (UTC)


Thank you for giving it some thought as I requested. Since you were working out there, I wondered how it seemed to you.
The individual commenting below has done so against my express wishes that he not post upon this page ever again. So as not to encourage him, I will communicate with you separately via e-mail (and will provide my private e-mail at that time). --jrm03063 01:15, 28 February 2016 (UTC)
Sorry. If you did, it must have gotten erased when you deleted your Talk page and all its history. I can't find it. I wasn't really addressing anything you said, which I hope is clear. I was responding to a comment I thought was often untrue, to wit, "wikipedia usually is a good secundary source", based on my long experience with it. I responded here because the statement was posted here. I tried to respond with what I thought were factual examples, to which I would welcome fact-based responses if it is desired to explore this issue more. You appear to be moving your conversation to a non-public exchange, which seems appropriate if you do not want this to be a public discussion. --Jrich 05:58, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

wikipedia is often not a good secondary source. The website itself has a policy against genealogy, and what little they do put on pages is often copied from the first source they find when writing the article, usually by an author who does not understand how to do genealogical research. Therefore, bad assumptions are made, complicated situations are rarely analyzed correctly, data is not confirmed against additional sources, and they do not know how to, or care to, resolve discrepancies. Not their job. To the extent that a wikipedia page lists its sources, it may be a useful tool for locating good sources, but use of wikipedia as a source has resulted in many bad errors, such as Person:Fletcher Webster (1), son of Daniel Webster, where the wikipedia article lists two sources and two references. While some of these sources had the right birth date, as do several other readily available sources on the Internet, the wikipedia article chooses to use a memorial plaque found on Find A Grave which happens to be engraved wrong, and then copied the data off the plaque wrong. Or there is Person:Mary Walcott (2), one of the Salem Witch Trial girls. The article gives her two marriages, but anybody looking up both marriages instead of just the one as the article did, would realize they are overlapping marriages necessarily involving two different woman. Or Person:Nathan Webb (1), whom wikipedia gives a wife Ruth and a daughter Elizabeth without realizing Elizabeth was his second wife, not his daughter. Any person looking at the records of Uxbridge, where he preached all his life, or reading his will which mentions Elizabeth his well Beloved wife, or distributing his estate to brothers and sisters instead of children, would realize this, but because genealogy is not important to wikipedia, they do not make this effort. Want more? I can go on all day. --Jrich 15:21, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Care in data entry [16 December 2016]

As you typically enter no sources, on such pages I always assume you are copying from Savage. However, recently, this assumption suggests Savage is being copied wrong, as a high percentage (maybe half?) of the pages I have been notified that you have changed, have had errors, several of which apparently appear to be the result of copying Savage wrong. If you stray from Savage, it would be courteous to enter the source, your work being so closely associated with Savage.

  • 18 Apr: Person:Hannah Dane (6): unsourced death date 1730. Death date did not come from Savage, was imprecise, without location, wrong, and 2nd marriage was not entered, knowledge of which is required to find the correct death date, which occurred in 1734/5.
  • 18 Apr: alt death date of 1676 added to Person:Stephen Otis (11) when his marriage is dated 10 years after this (1685/86) so he could not have died in 1676: apparently hasty reading of Savage which gives this death date to Stephen's wife's father.
  • Further work on Otis family exposed from earlier entries:
Person:Thomas Allyn (10) entered with birth 1665, death 1669, yet shown as married even though shown as died at age 4?
Person:Elizabeth Otis (3), wife of Thomas Allyn, death date entered as 1669 (their marriage was 1688, the existing marriage entered by you to David Loring showed a date of 1699).
  • 19 Apr: Family:James Patterson and Rebecca Stevenson (2): death location of son James given as Dunstable even though Savage says "a. 1718 rem. to Groton, there d. 1737", son Jonathan entered with incorrect birth date not found in Savage (31 Aug 1686, when Savage says 31 Jan 1686 which is correct) and no source given.
  • 20 Apr: Person:Samuel Payson (5): entered with birth date 10 years off (1672, Savage has it right, giving 1662).
  • 21 Apr: Renamed Family:George Phillips and Elizabeth Unknown to George Phillips and Elizabeth Bond with no sources, apparent misreading of Savage who says "Eliz, by Bond, with happy conject. thot. to be wid.of capt. Robert Welden", i.e., referring to Henry Bond the author of Watertown Genealogies, not giving her surname.
  • 22 Apr: estimated birth of Person:Sarah Pitney (1) input as 1632 even though Savage says she was age 7 when came on Planter in 1636, which would be 1629 [and most sources, e.g. here give 1635, making it 1628].

These are just the errors of commission, not counting errors of omission and various errors made by Savage (such as Samuel Payson having the wrong wife) and simply copied. --Jrich 04:35, 23 April 2016 (UTC)

Feel free to offer your complaints to someone in authority. --jrm03063 15:53, 25 April 2016 (UTC)
Some things you might have noticed before you merged/renamed Family:Peter Bent and Mary Unknown (1) into Family:Peter Bent and Mary Parris (1): Why did a couple who had 11 children in Marlborough (already entered with sources in WeRelate before you made your change) starting in 1733 go over five years after their marriage in Sudbury (i.e., a different town) in 1727 (according to Savage) before having children, in an age before birth control was available? If you had done any research in Sudbury, based on Savage's information, you would have discovered that Family:Peter Bent and Mary Parris (1) of Sudbury had 11 children all born in Sudbury (entered since you made your change) that overlapped the previously entered 11 children born in Marlborough to Family:Peter Bent and Mary Unknown (1). Since you never put sources, I cannot tell why you think it might have been the same Peter Bent that lived in Marlborough who married in Sudbury, but Savage has nothing on either of the two Peters under surname Bent, and under Parris 3:346 only identifies the wife of Mary Parris as "Peter Bent". Needless to say, I wasted a lot of time investigating the approximately 2 dozen change notices I received because of your error, since yes, it was I, that had entered information on the entire family of Family:Peter Bent and Mary Unknown (1), including arriving at the conclusion that his wife was Mary Unknown, not Mary Parris. However, in my corrections, I have put a hint on Family:Peter Bent and Mary Parris (1) of who the real husband of Mary Parris is, if you have some breath of knowledge on the Bent family. I know you have said, "I've always thought that getting people to "just know everything" in genealogy (lots of sources, and all their details, etc.) was kind of hopeless. Instead, it may be more reasonable to expect that individuals can become experienced with a particular source or small set of sources." But this is a good example of why looking at just one source, or even a small set of sources, instead of developing a broader knowledge of a person, is a flawed methodology. --Jrich 04:12, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

John Evelyn [24 May 2016]

I was tidying up the places for John Evelyn, the diarist, and found that your descriptions of places of death and burial, taken from Wikipedia, did not match with the WR atlas. Before I change them, I thought you might like to take a look at the page in edit mode as it now stands.

  • Dover Street is now considered to be in London, but in 1706 was in Westminster, Middlesex. (It is between Bond Street and Albemarle Street--I worked for John Murray, the publishers, in Albemarle Street 50 years ago in my first year in England and had many enjoyable lunchtime walks in the area.)
  • The Evelyn Chapel is in St. John's Church in Wotton, Surrey, England, and not in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

I know you are not responsible for the WR page on [[Person:John Evelyn (1)|John Evelyn]], the grandson of the above. I will attempt to clean it up in the next few days using only Wikipedia as a reference. It amazes me that anyone would leave a webpage describing an historical figure available for viewing by anyone in the state it is currently in. It does no credit to WR.

Regards, --Goldenoldie 07:03, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

You are very kind to consult me, but I'm very happy for you to proceed on the basis of your best sense of the matter. --jrm03063 15:14, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

BOT savvy [25 August 2016]

Hi jrm,

Unfortunately I am not savvy re: BOTs; I'm one of those contributors who uses Help often. I searched Support & Watercooler, but was unable to come up with the short conversation I recall reading, a month ago ? My instinct is that Dataanalyst may have that knowledge or at least recall who does. My apologies, I don't always recall everyone's given name vs. their user name. Best of luck finding a BOT expert. Neal--SkippyG 17:30, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

Well, Thanks all the same! --jrm03063 17:54, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

I just saw this comment... I must have missed on the watercooler page that you were looking for someone with BOT expertise. While I don't have specific BOT expertise, I've written many programs to do web related work, including web crawlers and programs for manipulating wikis and other web sites. I don't have a lot of spare time on my hands, but I may be able to help out. --Trentf 14:40, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

Another brave soul! That's great! Even if you're only in a position to offer your opinions, that would be useful. To get a general idea of what I've been messing around with, see these:
* User:Jrm03063/Source-side reference creation
* User:Jrm03063/Savage Extract Sample
* User:Jrm03063/savage sketches.py
* (and maybe) About the WeRelate Transcript of the Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England (and in particular this)
Some folks - well one anyway - are extremely anxious about what might happen on Person pages were a bot cut loose to distribute content from Savage. I think there are lots of ways such distribution could occur - including approaches that would be very modest in impact. For example, instead of putting lots of content directly on particular Person pages - to instead create a small standard source link that references a secondary page (one of those per Person) - which would contain extracted content from Savage. There are also approaches like that used for Wikipedia - where the Person page sources a template - and the separate template page is the part most apt to see change over time.
I don't yet have a solid idea of what I would want to do on a per-Person page basis - but I'm inclined to try to be modest in initial impact (to Person pages anyway). Ironically - use of a bot creates an incentive to start small. Letting bot results be proved in practice isn't the kind of hardship that you have if you have to implement a community standard by hand. Humans really don't dig repeating thousands of painfully accomplished hand edits because someone decided that the cosmetics of the approach needed to be tweaked. If done by bot - changes usually only stress out the bot writers (they're used to such abuse!).
Thanks for reaching out! --jrm03063 16:39, 25 August 2016 (UTC)
It will take me a bit to read through things, but my initial thoughts are that bot edits are something requiring great caution. Perhaps a separate project page on here documenting the precise nature of the edits? I would suggest running such a bot in a very limited way, until everyone can see it's not going to "run wild". Also, I would suggest putting the source code on GitHub or some such location, a wiki page isn't really a good place for storing source code (my particular speciality is version control systems). As for Python... I will do my best to control my gag reflex  :-) --Trentf 20:47, 25 August 2016 (UTC)
I don't think there's near as much cause for anxiety as others might think. The domain of operation need not be all 23,000+ (and growing). I wouldn't expect to do more than 10 for purposes of a by-hand demonstration (not a bot - but program created edits that I paste in mechanically). Only after some interest/consensus develops with that kind of demonstration, would I imagine moving to something meant to run as a bot. Even then - I would expect to limit the domain of operation to a tiny and statically defined set of Person pages. A lot of baby steps where the operational domain grows very, very slowly.
Have you seen how WP content is distributed to pages here? Separate template pages are written for each WP extract. The only thing that the bot does on Person (and other pages) is to drop in a reference to the template - which is then never changed again. I think a similar approach could be used here - where the actual size of a Person page bot edit would be a couple dozen bytes. Perhaps all I would want to do is add a single active page link to a single note entry. The link referring to a secondary page containing an index of Savage for the person in question.
I could even imagine a roll out - where one of the steps is to only allow the bot to touch Person pages that are empty of sources or content outside the barest fact fields (unsourced birth/death and name). Perhaps even a semi-automatic process - where the bot only writes the separate index pages - and a human is required to add a reference to the Savage index page associated with that particular Person.
Only after many tiny steps (and it may never even be needed) could I imagine writing transcript content directly to a Person page. --jrm03063 01:31, 26 August 2016 (UTC)
BTW - I agree that something like GITHUB is a better place for code. Sorry that python isn't your style though - we embed it in our applications at my workplace - in order to make them script capable for testing as well as repeated operations. It's been very helpful and pretty easy to hook up. --jrm03063 01:35, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

BOT & Savage [12 September 2016]

Hi, I've not been avoiding giving you my opinion re: BOT/Savage; rather that I am not very savvy when it comes to creating programs, BOTS, etc. Nevertheless, I can offer opinions regarding its usefulness.

Preface: I don't cite Savage's Dictionary often, because of its well-known errors. In fact only when I can't access other sources do I grab a quote as anchor while I seek elsewhere. I'm one of those WR contributors who can't afford any memberships right now, who learns what I need to know one lesson at a time. I sometimes wonder how useful I am here, not being a "techy", but have decided that I produce more than my share of Person Pages, Cleanups, Place pages, etc. to justify my presence.

I do see a possibility for use with various VRs that are neither alphabetical or chronological, ie. Enfield (Conn) History which jumbles vital records between prose and selectmen's meeting notes, in an order that is very hard to search. Also wondering if this BOT feature could be optional ? Or when implemented, does it seek out ALL pages to which the quotes apply ? I certainly am in favor of a small trial run, (if the genealogy gods agree), if only to get people to "think outside the box". As you've seen, there are a few that grouse about anything new.

Well, that's my 2 cents worth... Neal--SkippyG 04:03, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

I guess bot knowledge exists somewhere. If it becomes needed - it can be found.
What I'm trying to find now - is what kind of thing might be acceptable to the community. I absolutely agree that a trial/restricted run would occur before anything was done across "the universe". I would expect a series of informal iterations over potential display ideas - for just a handful of Person pages (not using a real bot - just a program that behaves "as if" it were a bot). My sample bot would produce output that I would then copy/paste into the handful of test pages - for critical review by a few open minded parties. Only when consensus was reached with a small friendly audience - would I think about moving to making a proposal to the community.
A real bot implementation could be - more or less - as flexible as you want. It could look at a specific Person page and - based on what it found there - do different things. Anything from "leave this page alone" to "do everthing" to "do a little". I hadn't thought too much about letting individual Person pages tune the result that they got - but that is a possibility. Instead - I was trying to think of something minimal that would never be unacceptable - so that it could be used everywhere.
One of the reasons that I was interested in Savage was specifically because it seemed kind of "hard" - being more or less continuous narrative. I've found that the right choices of templates used for markup - allowed me to solve two problems at once. The templates can be used to control display characteristics - useful for making the transcript display nicely as a stand alone document. They can also mark what different content in the transcript means (what it is, where it starts and ends, etc.) such that a different program can process the same input to produce a summary of reference information organized for specific WR Person pages.
I would be interested in seeing your Enfield Selectman's notes material - assuming some of it is on line somewhere. Was it published? Does a transcript exist?
I'm tired...maybe I should sleep? :) --jrm03063 05:11, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

In WR Catalog: Allen, Francis Olcott. The history of Enfield, Connecticut: compiled from all the public records of the town known to exist, covering from the beginning to 1850 ... ; together with the graveyard inscriptions and those Hartford, Northampton and Springfield records which refer to the people of Enfield. (Lancaster, Pennsylvania: Wickersham Printing, 1900).--SkippyG 05:51, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

That stuff is COOL! - and I assume - well out of copyright? Is there a transcription for you to start from? Or are you preparing a bucket of ice to soak your fingers?  :) !
I think it's inevitable that a WR transcription will have some cosmetic departures from the original - but the goal is to make things look enough alike that it's easy for someone to verify the transcription by comparison with the original page. Savage presented difficulties for me - since it's a transcription with embedded updates for various corrections discovered and published during Savage's lifetime. You would be in a better position - since you would be absolutely strict about having a published page that agreed with a transcript page. I did split the Savage transcript back into the page breaks of the original - which is a huge help when checking - but it's not exact.
Were I you, I suppose I would try to get my hands on jpegs for every page in the published original. An overall pdf may be ok - but ONLY if the page numbering was careful to be consistent with the published original in a very obvious way (as I see the PDF on hathitrust - page "115" corresponds to a weird pdf reference with "seq=123"). Unless you can find a way to re-name/re-number PDF pages after the fact (I suppose there must be a way) - I wouldn't want to use that. When you're creating a transcript for page "115" - you want to be able to refer to the corresponding image in a very obvious way.
While the content has a lot of narrative - there appears to be some usable linear structure. Dates break up and effectively label the content that follows. Committee meetings seem to have a regular appearance - with the names of officers listed. Notes seem to be embedded in blocks in the page - but could probably be shifted to the end of the page without being too disruptive.
By making sure that the transcription is broken up into pages that nicely correspond to the original - you get useful back links just as soon as you start annotating transcription pages with WR Person references. That's instantly useful all on its own. It becomes more important if you want to be able to use software to analyze the transcription (tracking where WR Person references appear) - so that you can later produce a competent index - or even better - a full reference.
--jrm03063 17:45, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

Savage excerpts are failing [18 September 2016]

...Post by specifically unwelcomed user removed...

I'm not keen on the whole idea either. It seems like an awful lot of work for not all that much value added. I suppose I could live with the excerpts as long as they're always the last source citation on the page, making it easier for the casual reader to ignore, but I see absolutely no reason to have deleted (in the case of Thomas Huckins), the former S2 citation of his entire sketch from Savage. Obviously it's your call, but I think there are more productive contributions to be made.--jaques1724 17:42, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
I think there are a variety of options out there for what to do - if anything - and how to do it. I've come pretty far to finally be in a position to explore the possibilities, so I'm not inclined to give up on this effort without trying out some different ideas.
A few things...
  • In hindsight I agree, that any Savage cite that's actually hooked to a fact probably ought to be left alone.
  • I also agree that the content that is presently produced is bibliographic. Handy to have on a page - but not a preferred source for citation of fact. In truth, I think the software should order source entries such that those hooked to facts appear first - with the unhooked/bibliographic facts appearing later (maybe even under a separator).
  • The code presently generates what I've been calling an index for a person. Since someone even managed to justify publication of a female index of Savage - I figured that an index that aims at every individual must have some kind of value. One of my earlier ideas was to leave that content off individual Person pages - instead - simply have a link that points at a secondary page for the Savage content.
  • There are other choices too - I'll add more here when time permits.
Thanks for reaching out! --jrm03063 18:35, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
Whether or not I have an open mind is perhaps debatable 8-). Nevertheless I will add my comments here which you are free to consider or ignore.
1) I have actually added a couple of links to the Savage transcripts on the pages of a few of my early NE ancestors where appropriate. I will be VERY upset if some BOT wipes-out my work.
2) In my opinion some of the Savage citations are better placed on Family pages rather than Person pages (eg I submit that the lists of children in the Savage transcripts rightly belong on Family pages).
3) Acknowledging the problem of zero citations on some of the early "drive-by" GEDCOM uploads, I have some concrete suggestions.
a) BOT-generated suggestions for changes to a Person or Family page rightly belong on the associated Talk page. Only after a human has investigated them, should they be incorporated on the Person or Family page. And then they can be properly linked to other information.
b) I would NOT automatically create Person or Family pages that do not already exist. If you add Savage transcript info to Person or Family Talk pages as I have suggested you can avoid this problem in most cases.
c) If nobody responds to the Talk page after some reasonable amount of time (eg 3 to 6 months) then someone on a "cleanup" crew could go ahead and edit them properly into the Person or Family pages.
d) The person doing the "cleanup" (not the BOT) should decide whether to add Person or Family pages as appropriate.
e) Under almost all circumstances (absent egregious errors) the person doing the "cleanup" should defer to existing citations and explanations where these have already been supplied by other contributors.
f) In the case of apparent errors in the existing contributions or citations, the person doing "cleanup" should document why the existing work appears to be incorrect, rather than simply deleting it. It is much more helpful for others who are following-up, including in some cases the original contributor, to explain what is wrong. You can see examples of this practice on my Talk page.
4) I think the set of links from the Savage transcript to the (presumptive) Person and Family pages would be very helpful.
--Jhamstra 16:02, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
Thanks again! I'm working on a response to your remarks now, and looking forward to your review of the same... --jrm03063 16:31, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
Ok, some of my thoughts - in response and more generally....
  • I thought about indirect approaches like the Talk page. There may be something to that as an incremental step for pages that have existing sources or recent user activity. Still, the real value lies in getting information that becomes part of an exported GEDCOM. Sooner or later, we have to take a crack at thinking about what that might look like.
  • The set of links between Savage and Person effectively already exists. The transcript annotation takes you to referenced Person pages, and the Person page "What links here" entries will include the pages from Savage. By breaking Kraft's original four ASCII files into pages corresponding to the published work - it was assured that the back links would yield useful page references.
  • I have never imagined that a bot would replace edits provided by humans. In so far as that has occurred (and there still isn't a bot) - that's a case of my judgement being that the generated form was at least as good as that already present. I've created a lot of cites to Savage by hand - but I would generally prefer that those be replaced by something subject to being updated based on the latest information in the transcript. When I edit a Family to add a Person - I don't have to also go to the Person to add the Family. When a Person is designated in a Transcript - there must be a way to reflect that information back to the Person page.
  • As others have observed, Savage really isn't a preferred source. Being both secondary and created before present day research standards. Other things being equal, we would prefer that the facts of a Person's life were supported by primary material. So, if we had the Person page we preferred, what do we want from Savage? Some would say nothing - but I disagree. Savage is far too ubiquitous to be ignored. A really complete page will still need a bibliographic entry citing relevant parts of Savage.
  • While the work of Anderson (begun in 1988) is accepted as the successor to Savage (at least where there is overlap) - that didn't prevent Myers from publishing her Female Index of Savage in 2008. Considering her work, and that of Dexter, it appears that an index of appearances in Savage is valuable. WeRelate could serve as the best individual index of Savage ever.
  • I can see value in using Savage on Family pages - but I'm fuzzy about what form that might take. Perhaps, for Family pages where the father is the subject of a sketch - the entire Sketch is brought to the Family page. There are sketches where that would be too much though. Perhaps the Father's sketch, where the extracted portion covers sections that note the Father, the Mother, and any Children of the page. I had considered adding annotation to Family pages in the transcription - but the existing task seemed ambitious enough :) !
  • Even if the wider community decided that automatic extracts from the Savage transcript were appropriate in almost all cases, there would still be situations where an extract isn't appropriate. Charles I and Oliver Cromwell appear repeatedly in Savage, and it is intended that they should be correctly annotated in our transcript. So we will still need a way to mark particular Person pages as needing to be skipped. Perhaps the most obvious would be to define an empty template with a name like "NoSavageTranscriptExtract" or similar. If the template is found on a Person page, then no extraction is provided. Alternatively, specific pages to exclude could be enumerated on a common page.
  • In contrast to the previous item, instead of choosing to place extracts on all pages where we could, pages where an extract is to be used could be explicitly marked. If we had regular activity on the majority of the potential target pages (over 23K at present) - that might make sense. But one of the problems I'm hoping to address, is to provide at least some reference material on pages that are essentially empty. While I've created a few such pages myself - I'm sure that the majority appeared without my assistance. If a page objectively lacks source entries or body content - it shouldn't need to be explicitly nominated as a target for extracted content. Then again - this absolutely is something that would be done as a step in testing and approval of any sort of automation.
--jrm03063 18:28, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
It is not clear to me when or how the links from the Savage transcript to various Person pages were generated. So I did a quick spot-check on three surnames of ancestors mentioned by Savage. My Wilson and Newton ancestors were linked whereas my Bowers ancestors were not. Was this index generated as a one-time thing when the transcript was created? --Jhamstra 06:09, 18 September 2016 (UTC)
Nothing is run on WR proper. From time to time I run a script that opens WR and screen scrapes all 2000+ pages of the transcript. It then processes that to create an index of entries on a per WR Person basis (over 23,000 individuals). At present, I've pushed content from that index by hand, to something like 65 or so Person pages. I'm trying to figure out what reasonable behavior might look like.
The idea here would be that - on some routine basis - the transcript is processed to produce a new index. The index output compared against what's already out on Person pages - and updates emitted as appropriate. --jrm03063 16:24, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

Request for some patience [22 September 2016]

Please give me some time to finish cleaning up the pages in these recent group of Medieval pages before opening them for editing. I was working on Person:Caratacus Unknown (1) and lost the work because you opened/edited/closed the page before I finished. I am walking down the tree now and adding the Wikipedia entries (yes, I know that it is way too far back, but I decided to just go ahead and create the Wikipedia links instead of deleting everything, since this line is backed up by some scholarship). If you tell me where to find the Wikipedia reference number, I'll be happy to enter it as well as I go along and save you the additional editing step. Thanks, --cos1776 17:17, 22 September 2016 (UTC)


Thoughts on Global IDs [10 October 2016]

I am noticing some additional identifiers in an Authority Control box on some Wikipedia pages, such as a WorldCat identity, a Virtual International Authority File (VIAF), etc. - Example: see James Lyons (Virginia).

This is very interesting, wouldn't you agree? I hadn't really noticed this box before, so I'm not sure how long it has been in use or how wide spread it is. I was wondering if you had any thoughts on this and if we might want to take this into consideration going forward with what we are doing with the Wikidata IDs at WR? --cos1776 19:59, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

There are a variety of identifier schemes out there to be sure - but I think Wikidata is the one that's most apt to be meaningful if someone encountered it in a GEDCOM (which was what I was going for). Also, in a sense, our alignment with 22K+ Wikipedia biographies essentially already makes us users of Wikidata to that extent.
Wikidata is also the identifier that the Wikitree people are focusing on. I heard from someone over there today, who claims they have about 30K pages aligned.
If something else comes into common use - I think we can bet that there will be a translation between that and Wikidata to be had. So I think we're well positioned for the time being. --jrm03063 01:07, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

A probable error in Savage [22 December 2016]

Hi. Just wanted to let you know that I believe I have found an error in Savage that you might want to mark in the transcript. On page 3:276, the children of John Newmarch (from his will) include Phebe and Pennywell. Phebe married a man named Peter Penniwell (according to WeRelate pages - I did not verify), and I assume that the will actually said Phebe Pennywell. I doubt that there was a man named Pennywell Newmarch. Anyway, I thought I'd let you take a look and see what you think. I have added the speedy delete template to the page for Pennywell Newmarch. Thanks--DataAnalyst 02:13, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

receipt of Phebe Penewell of Ipswich widow for sum received from "my brother thomas Newmarsh" administrator. --Jrich 03:16, 22 December 2016 (UTC)
Thanks! --jrm03063 18:25, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Thaddeus Leavitt Sr & son Col. Thaddeus Leavitt [12 April 2017]

Thought I'd give you a heads up. You placed the Wikipedia article for Col. Thaddeus Leavitt on his father's page. I corrected Thaddeus Sr.'s death date with a source, and completed and sourced Col. Thaddeus' page. Wikipedia has the wrong birth year (1750) & death year (1826) - he was born 16 Feb 1778 & died 12 Oct 1828. Regards Neal--SkippyG 03:51, 12 April 2017 (UTC)


I read the wikipedia article again & believe it combines facts re: both Thaddeus, Esq. & Col. Thaddeus. Needs some serious editing.--SkippyG 04:35, 12 April 2017 (UTC) Sorry, I think it is only the death date that needs correcting. Plausibly Thaddeus, Esq. could be the subject of the events listed, considering the sale of land in the Connecticut Western Reserve began in the mid-to-late 1790s.


Notes on edits [12 April 2017]

Hi again. Quick notes on edits you adjusted. First a general point: I was hoping for more examples of how to handle complex sourcing cases, but mostly they were small things. No big issues, so this is just to touch base.

Let me know what you're looking for - and I'll try to put you onto something. The page for Darby Field shows a number of things. Since he has a WP biography, he has a Wikidata reference number. The page also makes use of some template short hand that gets us an automatic extract from WP to create a quick and useful page body. Several ordinary source references are present, but you'll see some interesting ones toward the end. I created image, source and transcript pages for the Exeter Combination, to which Mr. Field was a signatory. You'll also see a source reference to Savage, where the volume/page reference is an active link to the WR transcription of Savage's Genealogy Dictionary. The latter being possible since our transcription of Savage restores the volume and page organization of the original.
Will try to find time to look at those examples.
  • [1]. Removed my note mentioned how two generations married on the same day. Small note, and admittedly not much an article if that would remain the only text. But if it is happened, it is interesting information, at least for a genealogist. If it did not then the note becomes a reminder for further work. (I saw myself as only doing a first sweep. One thing I want to locate are any active editors who might have opinions or ideas.) Anyway, I hope my reasoning was clear and not considered totally unreasonable.
I thought it was perfectly appropriate. I looked further and saw that the source given didn't offer a date for the marriage of the younger couple. Between that, and the commonality of the names, I concluded that the date given for the younger couple was apt to be a transcription error. Wouldn't want to chase a phantom issue if there isn't good cause.
Well, as mentioned, it was partly to remind myself to clear it up, so it was based on my confidence that I will get back to clean such things up. Therefore I understand you. Of course on a really busy wiki like WP my edit might have needed a special note or template to mention that I was expecting to work further.
  • [2]. Moved my note about his wife to the wife only. Why not leave it on both articles? The note was of course also an explanation for anyone wondering why I changed information which can be sourced. Without the note there may be a revert/misunderstanding? Anyway, I hope my reasoning was clear and not considered totally unreasonable.
Well, there was one note, and if that's the case - then the Wife seemed the more appropriate place. If you think there's a good reason for it to be reproduced for both - feel free.
I'll come back to these profiles anyway.
  • [3]. AFN template.
That template is something that I recently created. I encounter a lot of AFNs - and while some are relevant - others don't seem to be associated with anything. Use of the template allows me to turn a bare string into a useful link - when in fact - the string proves to be useful. If we eventually find other locations that can be the source of an AFN, then a different template could be created to mark them and make them useful.
  • [4], [5], [6], [7], The Peerage website. I am not a great fan of website citations, also MEDLANDS, but fine by me to use some if they are a small list everyone can agree on. (Otherwise there are so many websites.) There are certainly more sources could be added to every article I worked on yesterday. For example, the real 2nd ed CP is now online and preferable to the Peerage which partly tries to report that? Joe Cochoit's webpage gives a good summary of URLs for CP.
Adding weaker sources doesn't preclude adding stronger ones. Indeed - I would argue that it can be very important to include a "weak" source - if it's got problems and is apt to turn up in web searches. A page may need to explicitly note problems with a source. I agree that you want to be careful with use of web sites as sources in general - since they sometimes inconveniently disappear. The collection I make use of were the ones that allowed me to work reasonably quickly through enormous areas of GEDCOM content that often was without source content of any kind. They also seem to have lasted for at least a few years. I would be happy to see if other better things have appeared in the meantime.
Of course, but I am constantly seeing the profiles I was working on as just a scouting mission. Burkes, and the Peerage may well look a bit like excess baggage at the end, but that's something I'll work on.
  • [8]. Volume and page format. Is there a standard listing somewhere? I tend to use pp. for pages and Vol. for Volume if there is no other standard. Also, I am not sure how you edited these because these were sources outside the text box entered by form.

Once again thanks.--Andrew Lancaster 12:40, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

I don't recall a hard convention - though I think the shortest unambiguous forms are preferred. For example, "p <n>" (when only a page is present) or <v>:<p> (when volume and page are both present). As to where I put them - when you add a Source/Reference - you'll see that you're given a number of fields that you can separately edit.
Ah. So you did it with mark up in the box. On WP I always used the complex {{citation}} so I will have to familiarize myself.--Andrew Lancaster 17:52, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

2 examples I would like suggestions on:

I can of course find ways to do both, as you can see, but...--Andrew Lancaster 18:08, 12 April 2017 (UTC)


John Vesey Parnell, 2nd Baron Congleton [17 June 2017]

Hi Jrm03063, I've been notified that you changed Parnell's places of birth and death to "Tower of London". Are you sure about that? According to his biography (Henry Groves, Not of the World, p. 8, 132) he was born in Baker Street and died at Great Cumberland Place, which are both about five miles away from the Tower. --schneid9 19:35, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

That's weird. Seems like an automatic place name edit provided by the system. I'm just working to add the Wikidata template where appropriate... --jrm03063 19:48, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

FamousLivingPersonException Template [10 July 2017]

Can we please fix this template to display in a single line (e.g.)? (On firefox it doesn't and I find that distracting..... It may be something with the <sup>.) Also, any idea why this reference number displays after the death event and this one before? --pkeegstra 03:06, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps I fixed it? The ordering discrepancy results from one death record having a date and the other being a placeholder for the template but having no date. --Jrich 03:18, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
Thanks! In my browser the template does now display in a single line. I'm sure you're right about the origin of the discrepancy in ordering, and I suspect the ultimate cause is deep in the wikimedia implementation details. --pkeegstra 13:05, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
I've never seen the template take up more than a line - since I use it as a description for a death that hasn't occurred and has no date. --jrm03063 17:59, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
From User Talk:Floyd: "The reason for this is so all 'livings' can be monitored in a category. I admit right now it is displaying strangely, but I will ask Dallan to look into why it is displaying like it is.--Daniel Maxwell 05:04, 17 June 2014 (UTC)". There was an extra newline after the <includeonly> that was causing a newline to be added. --Jrich 18:27, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
Good thing they can all be fixed from one place then... --jrm03063 14:21, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Sent a note via email RE: Andrew Wescott & Margaret Tucker Hope you get it

Roland Henry Baker, III


Please see Person talk:Arnold Schwarzenegger (1)

Leaving a note here, in case you are not monitoring edits to Person pages any longer. --cos1776 14:28, 2 August 2019 (UTC)


We Relate - Entering People With No Surname [15 May 2020]

Hi - this is my first day exploring We Relate, and I have been reading help pages and discussions trying to understand We Relate's handling of people with no surname. I am not talking about people for whom the surname is unknown. I am talking about people for whom it is known that they had no surname. I tried entering Taoyateduta (abt. 1810-1863), and We Relate automatically put Unknown in the surname field. But this is not accurate. Is it acceptable to simply put "No Surname" in the field so that the Person page is not indexed under Unknown? Thank you for your help.--WomanMN 20:18, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

Hey Jrm and WomanMN - I happened to be on a break, so I jumped in to answer some of this. I hope you don't mind. Please see Person talk:Thaóyate Dúta Unknown (1). Best Wishes, --cos1776 22:28, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
No offense taken!

Completing a partial merge [28 October 2020]

Hi

As I was working on something else, I noticed duplicates for the family Family:Pedro Gonzalez-de-Lara and Eva Unknown (1) and merged them. However, there is more work to do in merging duplicate marriages and child records for their son Nuño. Is this something you can take over? I am very focused on removing pages for living individuals, so have strayed far from my current comfort zone. Also I noticed that Pedro's son Fernando is listed as the son of his wife Eva, but Wikipedia says Fernando was the son of Pedro's lover - that is, if it is the same Fernando. Is this something you want to take the time to try to straighten out?

Thanks--DataAnalyst 16:50, 28 October 2020 (UTC)


Pages for living people [2 October 2021]

Hi

I created a report to find pages for potentially living people, and several pages you created showed up. I know that some are for Famous Living Persons (and I have added the template to a few), but several don't seem to fall into that category. Can you please check them out and either update or delete them as appropriate? I will delete any you don't address in about a month (let me know if you need more time). Thanks--DataAnalyst 12:11, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

Person:Lucy Tuttle (3)
Person:Rebecca Tuttle (6)
Person:William Tuttle (20)
Person:Martha Stearns (2)
Person:Mark Stearns (1)
Person:Judy Stearns (1)
Person:María Cerruti Carricart (1)
Person:Diane Conklin (1)
Person:George Conklin (8)
Person:William Conklin (22)
Person:Alexandra Clark (1)
Person:Cecilia Mount (1)
Person:Charlotte Ford (5)
Person:Elbert Tuttle (1)
Person:Mary Acheson (4)
Person:Hon. Mary Cynthia Roche (1)
Person:Lavinia Pitman (1)
Person:Deirdre Craven (1)
Person:Jennifer Lowther (1)
Person:Elisabeth Raverat (1)


Isolated pages without dates to be deleted [27 January 2022]

Hi

This is a heads up that I plan to delete all the pages below in about a month because they are isolated individuals or families with no dates (with one exception, Richard Whittington, where I left a note on the talk page). Without dates or relationships, we can't tell whether the person is living, so the pages can't be kept. I suspect some or most of these pages are leftovers after being removed from a family (either before or after uploading to WeRelate).

If you want any of these pages kept, please enter more information. If you need more time, please let me know. Thanks.--DataAnalyst 14:26, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

Person:August Eilola (1)
Person:Bethiah Dame (1)
Person:Brunolf Eilola (1)
Person:Henry Compton-Cavendish (1)
Person:His Hon. Lady Judith Milbanke (1)
Person:Jane Whittington (2)
Person:John Boteler, 1St Baron Boteler of Brantfield (1)
Person:John Conley (6)
Person:John Hanson (22)
Person:John Norman (68)
Person:John Portman (1)
Person:Lady Elizabeth Noel (1)
Person:Libbie Korby (1)
Person:Louis Unknown (46)
Person:Mary Hajjar (1)
Person:Mary O'Brien (37)
Person:Richard Whittington (3)
Person:Robert Mason (34)
Person:Rosa Johnson (13)
Person:Samuel Carpenter (27)
Person:Stephen Sargent (2)
Person:Stephen Sargent (3)
Person:Thomas Belasyse, 1St Earl of Fauconberg of Newborough (1)
Person:Thomas Hanson (13)
Person:Unknown Helma (1)
Person:Unknown Whittington (2)

I'm sorry, I just happened to login and see all this. Having been away for a while? I'm not really entitled to a complaint - even were I inclined.
The only thing I might have asked was for you to see if a page was referenced by Transcript:Savage, James. Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England. I have created a few weak pages over the years just to create an Person/outpost for a name from that document. But this isn't a lot. It's not as if something can't be created anew if/when good data comes along. And an unlinked name on a transcript page speaks for itself. --jrm03063 20:30, 27 January 2022 (UTC)