WeRelate talk:Vision/archive

From User talk:Dallan: I can't help but think that it might be appropriate to review the status, as well as get a handle on user expectations. And I guess I'd also like to know how you and Solveig think of WeRelate. Is it a wikipedia for genealogy or is it a genealogy program? I think you have a divided audience on this, and I think the GEDCOM export is calling into question just what WeRelate is or is hoping to be. There appear to be a (growing?) number of people who are trying to use WeRelate as a genie program, and they're getting frustrated. But if you really are trying to create a hybrid that is both wiki and a genie program, then I think it may deserve some really focused thinking and community discussion about how to do it. (I'm sure you are doing such thinking, but it might help if you shared your thinking more with the community.) Thanks for considering my request. Jillaine 08:30, 15 October 2009 (EDT)

While I'm certainly willing to be swayed by others' opinions, in my own mind, WeRelate is first and foremost a collaboration environment. It's a place where you can collaborate with near cousins (whom you know) and also with distant cousins (whom you may not know). You can make connections, find out what others know, be notified when others have something new to add, and find "bugs" in your genealogy because multiple people are now reviewing it. In preparing a talk at FGS this year I took a step back and thought about the benefits of sharing your genealogy (why share video) and how WeRelate helps people realize these benefits (why share on WeRelate video). I think that WeRelate is on a solid path to helping people realize the benefits of sharing their genealogy. We still have a ways to go with making the website more user-friendly, but much of the basic functionality is finally in place. Gedcom re-upload is a big piece that is still missing of course.

There are many desktop genealogy programs out there, and everyone has a favorite. Although I can imagine many people using WeRelate exclusively and not using a desktop genealogy program, especially if they are casual genealogists who are collaborating with others, I can't imagine many died-in-the-wool genealogists giving up their desktop genealogy program for WeRelate any time soon. Desktop genealogy programs have many advanced features that just aren't in WeRelate. In addition, I think most died-in-the-wool genealogists would prefer to keep their "master" database separate from their "collaboration" database, so they could pick and choose which information from the collaboration database to copy back into their master database. So I don't personally view WeRelate as a competitor to desktop genealogy programs but an add-on. You:

1. export the information from your desktop genealogy program to WeRelate,
2. make connections with others online,
3. work with others on joint projects,
4. get notified when others have added additional material to pages your are interested in,
5. selectively copy the new material back into your desktop database, and
6. (once we have it implemented) periodically re-export your gedcom to update your information on WeRelate.

This is the cycle that I hope we can make as smooth as possible.

The problem that I see with this cycle is that it's cumbersome to create the gedcom file to get your information into WeRelate, and time-consuming to manually copy information from WeRelate back into your personal genealogy program. In the ideal world your personal genealogy program would make it easy to copy information back and forth between the genealogy program and WeRelate. You could easily select which people in your genealogy program to publish to WeRelate and to other family tree websites like Ancestry Trees or Geni or New FamilySearch. Living people would stay in your genealogy program and would not get published. The genealogy program would notify you when there was new information on WeRelate (or other websites that you've published to) that you might be interested in, and would make it easy for you to review and copy that information back into the program. So I do think that a collaboration-aware personal genealogy program would be pretty valuable, and I might be interested in building such a program someday if enough people thought it was useful, but I view it as separate from WeRelate.

These are my initial thoughts. Like I said at the beginning though, I'm happy to be influenced by others' thoughts.--Dallan 19:58, 15 October 2009 (EDT)

I just posted some possible alternatives for integrating a personal genealogy program with WeRelate at WeRelate talk:Living people.--Dallan 14:35, 16 October 2009 (EDT)

Initial reflections

As you know, I have not been keen on collaborating with someone that I do not know (e.g. don't know that person's desire for exactness, nor patience with my inexactness, etc.), but I am coming around, even though I do not yet have any inspiring stories to justify my changing attitude. I am experienced, but not "died-in-the-wool," and find that WeRelate provides the community, the motivation, the examples, the direction that I think I need to improve my skills, my vision, and my service to others. The cycle that you described is an example of what I'm reflecting upon.--Dquass 23:03, 15 October 2009 (EDT)

Great! (And I would say that you are died-in-the-wool :-) --Dallan 14:35, 16 October 2009 (EDT)