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This was transferred from my personal talk page. The subject matter begins with giving some ideas about how Beth might design a "shared research page" for her Coleman family, but not referenceing any specific place (ie, distinct from "Coleman in Georgia". Q 21:26, 3 June 2008 (EDT)
Hi Q, I don't have any experience in designing web pages. I am trying to decide how best to setup a Coleman research page or pages. I have a number of abstracts from books that I own, mostly land records that I want to post on the page; they are mostly in Virginia and North Carolina, different counties. I hope to set up the page and then maybe others will contribute. I don't intend to enter person pages on the Coleman family for any one other than my line; unlike my Coker study. I don't have time to do both.
Look at this page on Rootsweb. [1].
Any ideas on the best and or simplest way to accomplish my goals.--Beth 14:07, 2 June 2008 (EDT)
Hi Beth
I can think of a couple of ways to do that. One would be to just open up a page and start learning HTML.
Another way would be to find a page whose layout you liked, and copy its HTML onto your page---and make the necessary changes to wikify it (some standard HTML is not needed on a wiki page. You can do this by going to your example page, then clicking on "view Source" or whatever your browser calls it (its something in the menu bar, probably under "View"), copy what you find with a "copy all", then go to your empty page and paste.
Q 15:38, 2 June 2008 (EDT)
Bill
A semi complete test example is here A test page for Beth. This is based on your prototype site. I've put in an arbitrary header, a list of links and an arbitrary welcome message. If nothing else this will give you a place to practice HTML. Note that the list of links and the welcome text are templates. You can change these however you want simply by editing the templates. This keeps your work space (the Beth Test Page) uncluttered and makes it easier to see what's going on.
To edit the templates, open the beth Test page for editing, scroll to the bottom, and you'll see a list of templates used. Click on the one you want to edit, and have at it. I'll help whenever you ask. I also won't have hurt feelings if simply trash this and start over on your own.
One other bit of guidance. Wiki tables is probably a bit easier to use than the HTML formating. I just don't use it myself, since I understand the HTML nuances, and I don't understand wiki tables. But in some ways wiki tables gives you a cleaner looking table---more like what you see in wikipedia. Q 19:47, 2 June 2008 (EDT)
Thanks Beth, for inviting me in on this conversation. I'll bring the perspective of someone who still is having trouble seeing the whole picture. And in an effort to see/understand I already have a question. Back in Feb I set up a page 'Jackson in Tennessee' for the purpose of putting misc Jackson info that might or might not pertain to my tree. I had gone through a book of Carter Co. TN marriages and gleaned all Jackson marriages, even Jackson bondsmen and had the info sorted by year. After I posted it someone left a msg on the talk page that the info posted might be better served if I posted it as a source. Here is his msg: http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Talk:Jackson_in_Tennessee . I became overwhelmed and went back to working on my desktop and have just recently come back to give his suggestion a try. So I've done it now, but am somewhat uneasy about it. I think his suggestion to put all that info on the source page clutters the page. Here is the cluttered source page: http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Source:Burgner%2C_Goldine_Fillers._Carter_County_Tennessee_Marriage_Records_1796-1870. Also there is a whole lot more info in that book than Jackson marriages and you can't put everything there. I'm thinking I should put the marriage info BACK on the Jackson in Tennessee page under the section heading for Carter county. What do you think?
If I end up with Jackson marriages in very many TN counties, yes, the page will get too long. If/when that happens, then the separate counties could have their own pages.
So I'm looking at it from the perspective of the small detail that would/could go to a type of Beth's page which would have a much larger scope. If a page such as Beth suggests is created for Jackson, there would have to be a whole lot of sub-pages with state detail behind it. If we were writing a book, that page would be like a title page, an entrance into what all is available.--Janiejac 22:09, 3 June 2008 (EDT)
I think you're putting your finger on one of the real problem areas in doing genealogy on the web. So much data, so little space to put it all in. The trick is, I think, to find a way that allows you to navigate through the maze of information in a logical and intuitive way, but in a way not so complex as to get in the way of doing work. Very tricky.
I think what Beth is suggesting works well for your purposes as well. While we've just started looking at it, I think what's going to happen is that Beth will end up with a series of nested pages that organize her information into categories of some description. Then, using menu's (like on the test page) you'll be able to "drill down", to the level of detail your are interested in. This is similar to what I'm doing on my Southwest Virginia Project, though that's designed to be (eventually) more of a web of inter-related pages, rather than a hierarchical arrangement like Beth is shooting for. Q 22:26, 3 June 2008 (EDT)
With regard to your Burgner Source, and the guidance you received, toward the end of 2007 and the beginning of 2008 there was considerable discussion of whether sources were intended to be citations, or data sets. Depending on how you looked at it, they could be either, and Dallan initially said they could be both. The guidance you received on organzing Burgner dates to that period, and reflects the idea of using the source page as a data collection page. I think it became clear as the discussion moved along, that this would create some problems---one of them being that you'd never know what you were going to find when you clicked on a "source", and another being that having these pages serve as data collection points would do exactly what you found---produce a very cluttered, overloaded page. I believe the current guidance is to use the "source" category specifically as a citation, and find a home for the data in the source someplace else. Where that someplace else should be is not exactly clear. There are lots of choices, and I've probably used many of them:
a) extract data about specific individuals and put it on their person name page, with a reference back to the source b) extract data about groups of individuals and put it on a group page of some description (surname, locality, Friends of the Loyal Order of the Buffalo, or what have you) c) Create a specific page to hold the data from some source, but not in the source namespace, and refer to that page in when citing data for a particular subject. d) Insert the data into the Digital Library, and refer to that when citing data.
That last one has some real promise for your purposes. You could, for example, store that excell spreadsheet there, and then anyone with excell could extract that spreadsheet and work with it---which is what you intended. There are some problems here though.
a) The Digital Libraryis still in Beta Testing, though I think most of that's done, just waiting for the fixes. b) Once something's in the Digital Library, there's no way (currently) to change it. Unlike the main area of Werelate, its not amenable to collaborative modification.r You can extract something from the DL, say a spreadsheet, modify it, and reinsert it into the library, but the reivsed version has to go in under a different name.
Q 07:50, 4 June 2008 (EDT)
Thanks for your response. I don't know the first thing about the Digital Library and I need to get more familiar with WeRelate before tackling another new area. I believe since my Jackson marriages were all in Carter County, that it would best be put back there and will do that. I have linked two of the marriages to family pages (such as they are). Eventually I'd like to link all of the marriages to family pages, but may not have the time to do all that by myself. But that's what collaboration is for! --Janiejac 08:37, 4 June 2008 (EDT)
It would be good to have a recommended standard title for surname research pages. I think anything that has the surname as the first word in the title; e.g., "Coleman Research" or "Coleman Research Project" or "Coleman Surname" or even just "Coleman", so that in an alphabetical list it appears alongside other Coleman articles would be fine.--Dallan 14:36, 4 June 2008 (EDT)
Still thinking. <g> Maybe we should remove surname from the title. Then the name could be used for other projects also. Examples, Research Exchange Southwest Virginia Families, Research Exchange Mayflower Compact, etc.--Beth 10:26, 5 June 2008 (EDT)
How about just "Southwest Virginia Families" or "Mayflower Compact"? In a sense, all articles are research exchanges.--DemoGuy 18:09, 5 June 2008 (EDT)
Q is right -- earlier I was suggesting that source data be placed on Source pages, but it became clear earlier this year that that didn't work. Better to create an article for the data and add a link to the article on the Source page.
Here's a possible approach for linking related articles together: I just changed a setting so that articles could have "subpages". That means that if you create an article titled "Coleman" and another one titled "Coleman/Marriages", the "Coleman/Marriages" article contains a link to the "Coleman" article under the title at the top of the page. Unfortunately, the "Coleman" page doesn't automatically link to its subpages, but that wouldn't be difficult to add if people wanted to use this approach. Other than these links, subpages are in all other respects like regular articles.--Dallan 14:36, 4 June 2008 (EDT)
Dallan, do I need to use the / for the link to work in the title? --Beth 11:42, 7 June 2008 (EDT) Still attempting to iron out a few difficulties with the creation of the subpages. --Beth 11:42, 7 June 2008 (EDT)
The A test page for Beth looks awesome! Beth, if you use this, please post a link to your article on this page. I'd like us to feature more of these kinds of pages.--Dallan 14:36, 4 June 2008 (EDT)
Hi Dallan,
Thanks but Q did the page. I have a 600+ page book to study to learn HTML. I have decided that I need to know HTML and it doesn't seem too difficult to learn; not like the Fortran class I flunked in college. <g> I located the Gay Surname exchange page on Rootsweb while researching my husband's line and was impressed with the structure of the database. Hopefully with everyone's input we can utilize this on WeRelate and also attract more serious researchers with examples of what one can do on WeRelate. --Beth 09:16, 5 June 2008 (EDT)
With Bill's encouragement to finish my project; thanks Bill; I have edited my page with the help of my son and renamed the page. I also added a new category. The category designation is problematic in that users including myself do not remember to enter the category name on their page so that the page is included in the category listing. My son is working on the next template for my nesting of pages; but since he is not familiar with the Wiki he may need some assistance. When this template is completed, I can then enter abstracts of land records for the Coleman surname; which was the initial goal that began the path of how and where to enter such data on WeRelate. Thanks for everyones input and please feel free to edit or suggest improvements. --Beth 23:41, 6 June 2008 (EDT)
I like this concept and would use it. But I'd also like to modify the template so I could add or change categories.
For example, I've done a fair amount of research on the JAUCH surname.
See: 1. http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~jillaine/jauch/
and
2. http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~jillaine/jauch/EmigratingJauchs.html
Also, I wanted to know, would we simply use this Template on a surname page (such as Surname:Jauch -- which is empty right now)?
jillaine 09:51, 17 November 2008 (EST)
Hi Jillaine, To modify a template just copy the template contents under a new name; you can use numbers to distinguish the templates. If the first template is no number then yours could be 1 and number 2 would follow. User:Janiejac has a table and info on the Surname:Jackson page.
Also check out Lauren's ideas. Lauren started her own Rumgay Family Exchange so check out her pages. My project is at a stand still, and WeRelate has not come to a definite decision on how to handle shared research pages, surname pages, or family exchanges, etc.--Beth 17:20, 17 November 2008 (EST)
