WeRelate talk:Watercooler/Archive 2007

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Merging with other sites?

See new page project:mergers with other sites?
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License change?

We are discussing possibly changing the license of the Wiki content on WeRelate. If you are interested, please read the background material at WeRelate:Licensing and participate in the discussion at WeRelate talk:Licensing.
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Person and family wiki page format

See the WeRelate:Person and family wiki page format page
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Pedigree page format

See WeRelate:Pedigree page format
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Annotated Images

I just followed the latest "featured pages" from the home page and saw the McLean family portrait. That is very cool! Tim, you must tell us, how are the annotations done? (I looked at the "Images and Annotations Tutorial", but it doesn't yet discuss annotations.) --TomChatt 15:25, 2 January 2007 (MST)

Yes, it is a cool (and quite useful) feature. On the page that appears when you upload an image, there is a link a couple paragraphs underneath the image that says Edit/annotate image. Once you click that you're presented with three buttons above the picture that allow you to add or edit notes. When you click add notes a box appears that you can drag around the feature you wish to annotate, and then place whatever text you want in the textbox below. Works great for group photos. --Tim 16:23, 2 January 2007 (MST)
You can also add annotations after uploading by clicking on the Edit link on an Image: page. Then you get the three buttons above the picture that allow you to add or edit notes as Tim says. We're running a bit behind on the help pages, but we've just hired someone part-time to work on them so hopefully they'll improve soon.--Dallan 20:16, 2 January 2007 (MST)
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Access to pages, ease of search

My ultimate goal here is to find collaborators, distant relatives who have information I don't, who can grow the tree in branches too distant to be worth my effort, and to share what I know with people who have common ancestors to me. To enable that, they need to stumble upon the pages I'm constructing. I'm wondering how likely that is. I've been hanging around for a couple months or more, and am familiar with how the site works, but I don't know an efficient way to get to my own pages, and I already know that they're there. Presently I use my watchlist to find the pages I've built, and before that I used the surname categories at the bottom of my user page. If two or three others had been writing pages with the same surnames as me, it might have become much more difficult to get to my pages through the surname categories.

If I envision myself someone new to this site, someone who wishes to learn more about their heritage but who has only a faint knowledge of a couple generations previous and some inhibition with computers, I think I'd be confused here and wouldn't find it a useful resource. My usual tactic with a site like ancestry or familysearch is to punch a surname I'm curious about plus maybe a couple other details into the search box that is the most prominent feature on the front page and see what is returned. If something matches I'm drawn in further. If there are no matches or any clear direction, I move on to another site.

For consideration and discussion, here are a couple possible changes to make the person pages here easier to access for searchers:

I don't know how wiki software works or what the restrictions are, so I might be suggesting approaches that are technologically difficult or impossible, or already considered and rejected. But it seems that a lot of information is able to be manipulated for the pedigree pages and some of the features on the edit pages, and a similar approach for search might be useful towards making the person pages more findable by others visiting the site.--Tim 19:41, 9 January 2007 (MST)

These are great ideas! We used to have a very simple web-search box on the main page, but I took it off because we wanted to emphasize the wiki aspects more. Once we get gedcom upload working, our next effort is to improve search. Our goal is to provide an Ancestry-like search interface to people/families in WeRelate (and webpages in general). So you'll be able to search for people by birthdates, death-places, name of spouse, etc. And search results will have separate fields for name, birth, death, etc. Once we get the new search working, it seems to make sense to put the search box back on the main page.
Regarding categories, once we get more people using the site and the categories start to get unweildly, we can move the categories down a level, say to the county level for Scotland. If that is still too large then we can move them to the town level. But we didn't want a bunch of empty categories to start with, so we kept them pretty high-level.
I'm not sure what you mean by your pages not showing up on the category pages. I just checked Category:McLean in Canada and Category:McLean in Scotland and they have a bunch of pages in them. Are you talking about the category pages we have for each place? We don't put person and family pages in the place categories because we want to leave place categories mainly for articles and sources. Would moving the surname-in-place categories to the county/town level eventually address this issue for you?
Regarding what shows up on a category list, changing this is a little more difficult. The easiest solution would be to implement something where if you "hovered" over a link to a person page for a second or two, you would see the name, birth, and death information about the person (similar for family pages). What would you think about that? Having said this, I'm expecting that once we get the improved search, search will become the principal method to find people rather than browsing the categories.--Dallan 10:34, 12 January 2007 (MST)
I may have been confused about where persons appear in categories. I had been thinking I'd seen them show in larger place categories, but I was probably thinking of Surname in Place categories. I didn't see the reason for them being placed in a large geographical category like a country or province, since there would soon be too many names at that level when more people begin adding data. But I could see it being useful if they showed in a smaller place like a parish or a village, especially since it's hard to discriminate between similar names without having to click through on each one. If you can change the level on which they show as the site becomes more used and the larger places more crowded, then that problem is solved. I was thinking that for smaller geographical areas it would be useful if there were a way to see at a couple clicks not only when people were working on the same surname, but when anyone was working in the same area at all. Someone once mentioned they liked the idea of being able to specify hospitals or cemeteries as places because they'd be able to see all the people born or buried in the same spot. I haven't previously uploaded any information or a gedcom onto the web, at someplace like Rootsweb, because I saw those as all too disconnected, with little possibility of anyone interested stumbling upon them, and then if they did, little opportunity to collaborate easily. This has much greater potential, but the pages have to be easy to find. I think I'd use search when I first came to a site like this, but after becoming acclimated I'd be more likely to click around to see what I could find, so the way the categories are displayed is at least as important as the search. --Tim 12:39, 12 January 2007 (MST)
We can move the surname-in-place categories down to lower-level places as the site grows. That's not a problem. The question is, for a place category would you like to see all of the people and families with any surname that link to that place (in addition to the articles and user pages and sources that link to the place), or do you think that adding people and families would clutter up the category list too much? I could go either way on this.--Dallan 13:38, 15 January 2007 (MST)
I'd like to be able to see all of the people associated with a given place, but I think having them in the Place category listing could definately get unwieldy. Would it be possible to have a subcategory like "People of Wherever" or "Residents of Wherever" that sorted to the top of the Place category listing to make it easy to find? --Lauren 07:19, 16 January 2007 (MST)
I agree that it could be unwieldy to have all the people and families listed, especially for large places. If it could be broken up, so that when you click on a place category there would be further categories for Persons, Families and Sources that you click through to see which one you're interested in, and then maybe the Persons and Families were presented as surnames that you'd click through to see the individuals, then that might make it more manageable for browsing. But I suspect this is probably difficult to do in this format. If every page has to be listed in the category page, so that every place page would end up with hundreds of listings for people, families and sources, then it's probably best leaving it how it is. --Tim 08:33, 16 January 2007 (MST)
Creating a "People of Wherever" category would be pretty easy to do, and having it appear as a sub-category of the Wherever place category should be do-able. I could similarly create "Families of Wherever" and "Sources of Wherever" categories and have them appear as sub-categories of the place category as well. Presenting people by clickable surname in the categories would be more difficult though. What do you think about having three subcategories of each place for people, families, and sources?
An issue here is what to do when a place is moved. The people and sources and families will continue to belong to the "People/Families/Sources of Wherever" category where wherever is the old (redirected) place name, and they won't show up in the categories for the new place name. One solution is to have a bot program periodically rename the places on people/family/source pages to the new place name. I have been planning on updating source pages this way already, but I'm not sure whether to do this for person and family pages because I don't know how well people would accept having their person and family pages changed by a bot. Maybe getting their pages listed in the new place categories would be worth it however.--Dallan 21:10, 17 January 2007 (MST)
I don't think I'd have any problem with a bot changing pages. In fact, I think it's preferable that the links be updated when places or sources are renamed into a more proper format. The only downside of this would be the sudden bombing of emails that would happen when several pages on your watchlist are updated at the same time. I'd like to see subcategories for places, allowing people to be place within them. The more pathways to making findable the pages people create the better. --Tim 13:54, 18 January 2007 (MST)
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List which trees a page is in

I'm planning to show the trees (see WeRelate:Family Tree Explorer) a page appears in when you view the page, as a way to help people connect with the appropriate users when they view pages they come across in searches. Alternatively, I could list all users who are watching the page, which would also include people not using Family Tree Explorer, but might include "casual observers" as well. For those of you who have tried the Family Tree Explorer, is anyone planning on not using it, and instead continuing to create person and family pages the way you've been doing it?--Dallan 22:07, 30 January 2007 (MST)

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LDSOSS added new link

As I was surfing today and came across LDSOSS a site for LDS Open Source projects I decided I would add a description (and link) for WeRelate to the list of open source projects. The description may not be the best so feel free to edit it. I am not really a marketing person.

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Search for Surname, not Place Name

How do you find a surname that is also the name of many cities" Search for surname Stockton and get 903 entries. 901 are "templates" of cities. This is a HUGE problem on every website I've ever seen.

PJ

I agree this is a problem. We're working on a solution that we hope to be ready early in the Fall. Until then, you can select "Person (and Family)" from the Namespace box on the search screen (click on the "WeRelate" button if you don't see a Namespace box) to exclude other pages like place templates.--Dallan 08:45, 9 April 2007 (MDT)
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Categories

See the "policy and principles" page project:categories and initially its Discussion page
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Place page titles?

See the new page project:Place page titles
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Wikipedia links - both to and from

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From WP

This discussion has been moved. See the new page: project:links from Wikipedia
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To WP

This discussion has been moved. See the new page: project:links to Wikipedia.
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Showing living people

See project:living people and its talk page.
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Surname in Place vs. Family and Person pages

On a different topic that still fits under this heading, why are county-based surname in place pages not on the category page for the surname for that state? For example, the Morrow in Warren County, Tennessee page does not appear on the Morrow in Tennessee [:Category:Morrow in Tennessee] Category page. Since all my Morrow people from Warren County have a link to the Morrow in Tennesse category on their page, it would be nice to be able to then find the nice story on the Warren County page. Conversely, the Morrow in Warren County page is supposed to be in the category for Morrow in Warren County [:Category:Morrow in Warren County, Tennessee] Or, at least my user page says so, but neither the surname in place page or the people who lived there show up on that page.--Amelia.Gerlicher 22:04, 13 February 2007 (MST)

Regarding why Morrow in Warren County, Tennessee doesn't appear in the Category:Morrow in Tennessee category, I filled in the surname and place fields at the top of the page with Morrow and Warren County, Tennessee, and it now appears in the proper category. Those fields are automatically filled in based upon the title for new pages, but we weren't doing that when this page was created last May.
Regarding why Morrow in Warren County, Tennessee doesn't appear on the Category:Morrow in Warren County, Tennessee category, this is a bug, which I'll fix tomorrow. I'll change how category links are generated on the user page so that when you say you're researching Morrow in Warren County, Tennessee, you get a link to the Category:Morrow in Tennessee category, not Category:Morrow in Warren County, Tennessee. As we get more content added to the site, I'll change the links on your user page and on the surname-in-place pages to be more specific - to link to categories at the county level instead of the state.
The other thing I need to do is list county categories as sub-categories of the state category. That's a bit more complicated and will take longer.--Dallan 20:44, 15 February 2007 (MST)
I've fixed the bug where the wrong categories were being generated on user pages. The categories will be corrected the next time you edit and save your user page.--Dallan 23:35, 16 February 2007 (MST)
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Place Names

What's the genealogical protocol for place names? If someone is born in 1701, do we put the location as it was called then (Virginia Colony, etc.), or as it is called now? --Joeljkp 18:18, 2 January 2007 (MST)

I'm not much of a genealogist so I couldn't tell you what the standard is, but one thing you could do is enter the name of the place as it currently is (which you can select from the drop-down), followed by a bar(|), followed by the name of the place as it was when the record was created. For example, you could enter "Virginia, United States|Virginia Colony". Then when the person page is displayed you see "Virginia Colony" as the place, and clicking on it takes you to Place:Virginia, United States.--Dallan 20:16, 2 January 2007 (MST)
I just searched for placename of 'Overton County' in 'TN' and got no hits. But when I changed TN to Tennessee, I got lots of hits. Is it going to be required to spell out the state name or can the program learn the shortened form? --Janiejac 07:17, 8 April 2007 (MDT)
If you check the "Include alternate names" checkbox next to the place search fields, it should include Tennessee (and other alternate names listed for Place:Tennessee) when you search on TN.--Dallan 08:45, 9 April 2007 (MDT)
I'm wondering how WeRelate will handle unconventional place names, example; I have a location of death for Elizabeth Pomeroy in 1850 as "Hannah Bailey Jackson's home in Jane Lew, Lewis Co., (W)VA". Hannah Bailey Jackson was her daughter-in-law. Maybe all that info isn't necessary, but it's already in my genealogy program and if I upload it, how will the program handle it? Will I need to go in and manually edit this type of thing? And I'll be interested in knowing how you're going to handle folks that were born in Virginia in the area that later became West Virginia. I've been using (W)VA. I don't know if that's the proper way, but I figured it was self-explanatory.

--Janiejac 23:10, 18 April 2007 (MDT)

The GEDCOM upload program tries to match places in your GEDCOM with places in the place index. If it finds a match, it adds a link to the place in the place index. It doesn't change the text that you've entered. If it can't find a match (and in the above case it's unlikely to find one), it just leaves the place as-is. We don't currently have a lot of historical places in the place index. Eventually I'm thinking that we'll have both "Lewis, West Virginia" and "Lewis, Virginia" in the index, with a "see-also" link between the places that they are in fact the same.--Dallan 00:52, 19 April 2007 (MDT)
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Watercooler as a blog

What do others think of turning the watercooler into a blog. I love the watercooler portion of this site. For some reason when I think of it though a blog just naturally comes to mind. I guess because of its informal nature and feeling of conversations going on. I would also like to just add the watercooler to my rss reader and be able to periodically checkup on what I have missed out on. That is my suggestion for the week. --Dlongmore 08:40, 16 March 2007 (MDT)

Did you know that you can subscribe to an RSS feed for any page? The feed is available from the "History" view. For example, here is the feed for this page.--Dallan 23:58, 27 March 2007 (MDT)
I just tried the RSS feed for the Watercooler and its great! I might suggest adding that little red RSS logo thingie to make it a little easier to spot. Found the RSS feed at the bottom of the page. --Knarrows 08:33, 10 April 2007 (MDT)
That's a good idea. I'll add that to the todo list as well.--Dallan 11:14, 10 April 2007 (MDT)
Or it could even be a forum. Perhaps that would make it easier to find the specific subjects. I'm having a hard time finding a section that I read yesterday and would like to add a comment, but haven't found it again. --Janiejac 07:28, 8 April 2007 (MDT)
A forum is an interesting idea. I'll have to figure out how much work that would be. In the meantime, I'm going to archive old topics so this page isn't so long.--Dallan 08:45, 9 April 2007 (MDT)
Dallan, the page is getting long again. ;o) What is frustrating is that I'll be reading a section of the Watercooler, want to try something out or look at something that is discussed, and all the site's links (Home, Create, Connect, etc.) are miles away at the top of the page. And if I scroll up there so I can right-click to open a different tab/window, I lose track of where I was in the Watercooler. Perhaps a blog-format would make navigation a bit simpler. And now--totally off the subject, but I'm not sure where to put this topic on this confusing page--it would be nice if the on-line help explained what the slider-triangles on the tree-part of the FTE do. I mean, I slide, boxes change sizes, info disappears, then reappears, but I don't have a clue what I'm doing and I have to fiddle around to get something that works right on one tree, then fiddle again on another tree. (I understand the radio-buttons that switch the direction of the tree...at which point the sliders seem to work differently, or at least affect my tree differently.)--KF-in-Georgia 20:13, 1 May 2007 (MDT)
I'm going to look into turning this page into a forum, but it will take awhile. In the meantime I've moved threads more than two weeks old into WeRelate:Watercooler/Archive 2007. Regarding the FTE slider boxes, I'll add an explanation of what they do to the FTE help page today. (They control the number of generations of ancestor and descendant generations that are displayed on the screen. If you're going to view more than just a few generations, it helps to make the FTE window wider, which you can do by dragging the bar that separates the FTE window from the webpage window all the way to the right.)--Dallan 09:38, 2 May 2007 (MDT)
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Merging

Dallan, congratulations on completing the Gedcom Import test phase! Here is an issue I haven't seen discussed: what is the mechanism for merging people? As people enter their Gedcom files more and more instances of intersecting trees are gong to come up. Does WeRelate send e-mails to the originators asking them to work out the inevitable conflicts ? Does the older record prevail in case of irreconcilable differences ? Before we start soliciting more entries I think this should be made clear. Other improvements, some of which have been kicked around: I think a peoople search box should be available from the main page since this is going to be the first think people are likely to do when they reach the site. Also, adding a link to a random person or family page would give vistors an idea of what it will look like when they enter their own data. Finally a link to "recent additions" (of people or trees) might be worth considering. Again I am trying to think of ways to make the main page attractive enough to entice people at first sight. --CTfrog 09:59, 27 March 2007 (MDT)

Once we have a matching algorithm in place (see my comment just above this post), the next step will be to send out emails notifying people of possible matches and asking them if they want to merge the pages. If they agree, information from one page will be merged into the other page, and the one page will become a redirect to the other page. Merging will be voluntary, and people will be able to "unmerge" if they find out later that they really can't get along editing the same page. This will take a fair amount of time to implement and is currently planned for this Fall, at which time we'll check all of the submitted pages for possible matches and send out merge-invitation emails.
I like your suggstions for making the front page more enticing. I'll add them to the more near-term todo list.--Dallan 23:58, 27 March 2007 (MDT)
I've come across an imported tree that duplicates a lot of what I've been entering. Before your algorithm is ready, are there any suggestions on how to merge these? My idea was to copy everything into the lower-numbered version, making sure to keep everything intact from the other page. --Joeljkp 19:09, 24 April 2007 (MDT)
Yes, I think that if you want to merge pages now, you should copy the data (especially the links to people and family pages) from the newer page to the older page (which will be the lower-numbered version if the pages have the same title other than the version number), and then edit the newer page and enter just a single line in the big text box:
  1. redirect Person:older page title
This causes the newer page to redirect to the older page. As a courtesy, you should leave a message for the other people watching the pages to let them know what you plan to do and make sure that they agree that the pages should be merged.--Dallan 11:19, 25 April 2007 (MDT)
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Deleting and watching pages

Several people who have uploaded GEDCOM files have wanted to delete the pages they uploaded and upload a revised GEDCOM. The problem is that currently you have to be an administrator to delete pages. But being able to delete a person or family page when you are the only person interested in that page seems like a valid thing to do. Because of this, I'm thinking of implementing two new features later this week, and I'd appreciate feedback:

What do people think about this?--Dallan 23:58, 27 March 2007 (MDT)

Sounds like a reasonable solution. --Joeljkp 07:10, 28 March 2007 (MDT)
I just added a function to show who's watching various types of pages: people, families, images, names, places, sources, user pages, and articles. This will hopefully make it easier to see who else is interested in the same pages as you, and prepares us to allow people to delete pages so long as they're the only one watching, which I'll add over the weekend. (Administrators will be able to undelete any pages that are deleted accidentally.)--Dallan 16:38, 30 March 2007 (MDT)
I really like this feature! -Nathan 10:29, 9 April 2007 (MDT)

I wonder why anyone would care who is "watching". make a place to leave them a message or add a counter. Just because I look at an individual, etc., does not mean I want to "watch" it.

You can leave a message on the "Discussion" page of each page. To "Watch" really means "send me an email whenever this page is changed." People who choose to watch the page are typically those who have contributed to its contents.--Dallan 12:43, 9 April 2007 (MDT)

Goes to prove I'm too "genealogy" and not enough "Techie". Why "watch" and not plain english "send me an email" ? -- PJ

Because "Send me an email when this page has changed" doesn't all fit on an 800x600 screen :-). Perhaps I should have some text pop up when you hover over the buttons to explain better what they do.--Dallan 23:14, 9 April 2007 (MDT)

This raises the related question of whether there is a way to update records (including changes, add and deletes) from a GEDCOM upload vs having to delete the tree and then create it again. I am concerned that as relatives start adding info to my pages, I am going to lose their changes if I upload a new version of my GEDCOM.--Jgoldsti 15:31, 15 April 2007 (MDT)

We're going to start working on a "merge" function over the summer so that when you re-upload your GEDCOM, the system will match the new pages with the existing pages and update the existing pages if they've changed in the new version. If one of your cousins has updated the page on-line and you have also updated the page in your new GEDCOM, you will have a screen where you look at both sets of changes and determine which ones to keep. But if the page hasn't been updated by someone else since your last upload, then the page should be updated automatically.
Until we get this in place however, we're recommending that people delete their trees before re-uploading. If someone else has edited one of the pages in your tree, that page won't be deleted because they'll be watching the page and you can only delete person/family pages if you're the only person watching the page, but you will have to merge that page with the corresponding page in your newly-uploaded tree by hand (see Help:Merging pages). It's a less-than-ideal situation for now, but we expect it to be better by the end of the summer.--Dallan 11:41, 16 April 2007 (MDT)
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Is there a way to improve performance after upload of a large GEDCOM?

I've found that it takes a long time for the pages (measured in hours over a 3Mb DSL line) to be cached back to my local machine after I have uploaded my GEDCOM (thousands of entries). I discovered that it has to cache the info back again after I deleted the old tree and uploaded a new GEDCOM to update a limited number of records. Is it possible to speed this up...hopefully for initial uploads and especially for updates. I realize that I could go into the online editor and make the updates, but this is painful compared to uploading the updated GEDCOM. By the way, I am very please with werelate! I was able to get started using it quickly and the capabilities are powerful...especially for a tool in beta test. I love the idea of being to upload images! Keep up the good work. - Jonathan 12:45 9 April 2007 (EDT)

You're right. There are three people who have recently uploaded GEDCOM's of more than 10,000 people (I think you're one of them), and they're all seeing similar performance problems. People with GEDCOM's of just 1-2,000 people don't have the same problem. Fixing performance problems for large GEDCOM's is on my high-priority list for this week. I'll post something here when I get it resolved. Thank you for your patience.--Dallan 12:43, 9 April 2007 (MDT)
I've made some modifications to the Family Tree Explorer so that performance should be significantly improved for large GEDCOM's. I'm able to download a 1000-person GEDCOM over a 256K DSL line in about 40 seconds. I expect that a 10,000 person GEDCOM should be downloadable in less than 10 minutes. (The initial open of a large tree will take awhile because the program is converting cached pages from the old format into the new format, but after that things should go much faster.) Please let me know if large GEDCOM's are still taking longer than 10-15 minutes to download.--Dallan 21:04, 18 April 2007 (MDT)

I deleted my old family tree and uploaded my large GEDCOM file earlier today to test performance. I opened the family tree creator a couple of hours after uploading the file and it has been showing "loading 0%" for over 30 minutes". I've tried clearing out my Internet explorer cache and updated Flash reader to the April 12, 2007 level and it has not helped. --Jgoldsti 12:54, 19 April 2007 (MDT)

I'll review this tomorrow morning. In the meantime, please don't delete your tree. I'm going to try loading it onto my computer and see if I can track down exactly what's happening.--Dallan 21:41, 19 April 2007 (MDT)
I made some additional improvements to performance today. I'm able to download your tree using a DSL line in less than a minute. (Clicking on "Find in tree" from the "Edit" menu or clicking on the "Index" tab and then selecting the "Person" or "Family" namespace requires downloading all pages in your tree, so you should expect that to take 10-15 minutes for large trees, but it's only necessary once, and not required at all if you never search your tree or select "Person" or "Family" from the Index view.)
I'm not sure if the changes I made today fixed the problem though. If you're still seeing "loading 0%" for a long time, in addition to clearing out the IE cache again, would you also clear out the Flash cache? To do this, launch the Family Tree Explorer and right-click somewhere inside it. Click on "Settings", then change the amount of disk you allow WeRelate to use all the way down to 0, then try loading your tree again. (Answer "yes" when you're asked if WeRelate can use your disk to cache data.) I've added some logging statements to the server so that I can tell if we're sending the data to you or not. If it still doesn't work after clearing out the Flash cache, would you let me know, and also let me know whether you're using a dial-up modem or DSL, and what version of IE you're using? Thanks.--Dallan 17:16, 20 April 2007 (MDT)

My tree loaded successfully today using both Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2.0.0.3 with Windows XP SP2. Clearing the Flash cache seemed to help. --Jgoldsti 10:12, 21 April 2007 (MDT)

That's great news!--Dallan 10:48, 23 April 2007 (MDT)


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Search functionality always accessible

One thing I have noticed that I bounce back an forth between is the article/person/whatever and search screens. I would find it very handy to have the search functionality always available somewhere. That is my two cents for today. --Dlongmore 13:54, 16 February 2007 (MST)

Yes. On my screen resolution atleast there is a space to the right of the logo. Perhaps a search/go to page box here. I've been missing the "type in a page name and go to it" functionality of a wiki, could we add it?--Bjwebb 03:04, 17 February 2007 (MST)
We could do that. It would have to be a single textbox that took you directly to a page if you entered the page's exact title, or did a keyword search on all WeRelate pages if you did not. How does that sound?--Dallan 14:57, 17 February 2007 (MST)
You bet - sound good to me! --Dlongmore 17 February 2007 (MST)
Yeah sounds good. Something like the Go/Search from the normal MediaWiki software would be good as it would make us wiki-users feel at home.--Bjwebb 08:12, 18 February 2007 (MST)
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Spam

After appearing to have taken a break for awhile, attempts to spam the site are again happening regularly. I assume these attacks are performed by bots seeking out wiki sites. It's little difficulty to revert their attempts, but I wonder if they still realize a success since their links remain in the page histories, and may then still be found by some search engines. Is it a good idea to allow here page changes by unregistered posters? Not only does this open up the site to regular attack by spammers or vandals, but it also allows changes to pages by well-meaning, perhaps knowledgeable, people we then can't contact or verify. One of the most important goals of this site is to connect researchers. Anonymous page edits conflict with that goal. --Tim 09:27, 19 February 2007 (MST)

I've also been thinking about this lately. But I keep coming back to the same conclusion that you have - that since an important goal of this site is to connect researchers, requiring people to log in to edit pages detracts from that goal. I'll install a spambot that tries to automatically detect spam tomorrow to see if that helps.--Dallan 13:27, 19 February 2007 (MST)
Actually, I think we're making opposing points. I don't see the practical advantage of allowing anyone to post without being logged in. If someone makes a change to one of the pages I'm interested in, but either by design or oversight hasn't logged in, then all I can see when I check to see who made the change is an IP address, and that's pretty much meaningless in helping me make connections or to reach conclusions about the trustworthiness of the person who made the change. So I don't think we lose anything by requiring people to log in, but we might gain a little rigor, and it builds a wall against automated spammers.--Tim 13:44, 19 February 2007 (MST)
Ah, I didn't read your previous post carefully enough. The idea of requiring people to log in so that you can determine the trustworthiness of the person who made the change is an interesting point that I hadn't thought of before. What do others think?--Dallan 16:00, 19 February 2007 (MST)
Based upon the points made above I've changed the permissions so that you must be logged in to edit.--Dallan 22:33, 21 February 2007 (MST)
I maintain several MediaWiki installs, some open, some not, for a few groups and similar - we've seen bots that automatically register as well as people hand-registering (to get around CAPCHAs) and then turning a bot loose on Wikis they want to spam. Requiring logins helps (when it's politically feasible), but you really want to mix that with people policing (and blocking spam IPs) the wiki as well to prevent it completely. --Improv 21:29, 9 April 2007 (MDT)
We do exactly that. We monitor recent changes, especially from new users. We've seen a few users issuing spam as you say, but it has gone way down since requiring registration.--Dallan 23:14, 9 April 2007 (MDT)
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Geni.com

I have to say I been using GENi and will probably use it for actually connecting people together. I also made a comment on the GENi blog about providing a link to WeRelate for storing all the biographical and research related information. So I could see myself entering indivduals without neccesarily being concerned about how they are linked together. I see the combination as being like bread and butter together. I will continue to experiment with the family tree explorer but so far it does not provide me as much as GENi.--Dlongmore 13:54, 15 February 2007 (MST)

What are the features of geni that people would like to see added to WeRelate?--Dallan 20:44, 15 February 2007 (MST)
I really like the way it displays family trees. If you could reach some partnership with Geni to use their tree display interface it would be great.
If we were to use their tree display, how would you suggest we display personal histories, sources, notes, and scanned images? Would you want a split-screen display showing the tree on the left and the wiki page for the selected individual on the right, or to use the full screen to display the tree and have the wiki pages pop up in separate windows?--Dallan 11:11, 16 February 2007 (MST)
My vote is to have them popup in a separate window. They currently have a feature to allow you a links to other systems. The only draw back is it takes several click-pause/click-pause to get from the tree to werelate. It would be really nice to just have something righton the tree that you would click and it would popup your werelate person page. --Dlongmore 13:54, 15 February 2007 (MST)
I would second the what Dlongmore says.--Bjwebb 12:50, 16 February 2007 (MST)
Even better would be a full partnership where Geni could hold information about all people in a tree (including living people) and WeRelate would show the tree, but with Living people named "Living".--Bjwebb 03:30, 16 February 2007 (MST)
I don't get it. While I haven't tried Geni beyond looking at its preview screenshots, it reminded me of email address collectors when I first looked at it a month ago. It looks like it's for attempting to find all your living relatives, to arrange picnics, coordinate jello salads. Totally different goal than what's here. Unless there's something to it that's not apparent from the screenshots I don't see what it has to offer as an interface that the trees here don't. The trees here hold a lot of information. They have the AJAX functionality that allows you to see extended families. They have the maps that allow you to see migration patterns. In the screenshots the Geni trees look candy coated toyish. Do I ever hate pink and blue to indicate gender. Your ancestors aren't babies, and gender is a minor data point. There's no reason I can see to adopt their path or develop a relationship. Compared to other interests, genealogy isn't well represented in new approaches to making connections on the internet. Hopefully there will be many varied approaches to serving the market.--Tim 16:11, 16 February 2007 (MST)
Let me explain how I actually use GENi. It is an introduction point. I do not enter anything other than there name and a picture and a link to WeRelate (thats it). You could almost consider as the bait and hook for WeRelate. Every person I have invited to GENi has responded very positively (except one). It has a very non intimidating interface. It appeals to the casual crowd. In that sense it maybe the first step to get them interested enough to look further at WeRelate. I will use it to help funnel people to WeRelate for the most part. Its also lots of fun.--Dlongmore 13:54, 15 February 2007 (MST)
I guess you do have some valid points, but their current ajax tree dispplay is much better than what we currently have. I can see now the different goals you point at - Geni is obviously targeted at helping connect living people, so mcuh so that the default option is living. But the AJAX IMO does look really good, are there any plans to develop something like that in the long term for WeRelate?--Bjwebb 03:02, 17 February 2007 (MST)
I'll try Geni out this morning, just to see how their interface differs. But I haven't wanted to be sending emails to relatives telling them to come join, so it hasn't previously had any attraction for me. If I don't invite anyone then everything I enter remains only accessible to me. I do believe that the future site that successfully encourages people to cooperatively research their genealogy will be a cross between the approach here and some of what GENi offers as a social networking site. An open, public, easily searchable record of ancestors combined with private networks of living individuals. For example, let's say I'd traced my genealogy back six generations on all my lines, found a couple living distant cousins to contribute information to the wiki, and wanted to show it to a 10-year-old niece who I thought might be interested. I'd be far more successful in interesting her if I could email her a link to her own place in the tree, so that she could look through her parents and grandparents back to the ancestors she never knew, rather than having to start with her great-great-grandmother. Through the distant relatives I'd met through our common interest in certain ancestors, my niece also might be able to see other youngsters in her network of living people because they're related (albeit distantly) to her, and that might seem cool to a kid. --Tim 07:31, 17 February 2007 (MST)
I agree with Tim - I don't see anything that GENi has that would be good for us, besides perhaps a pretty interface we could use for inspiration. I agree with the feeling that it would be cool to have more details on living individuals, and that could be accomplished here through some kind of permissions system or private pages rather than doing anything with GENi. WeRelate has totally different goals than GENi does, and I don't see much overlap there to play with. --Joeljkp 09:14, 17 February 2007 (MST)

I'm thinking about making the family tree explorer the full width of the screen. This would allow me to add new tree views that aren't as horizontally compact, like Geni's network view. We could then have detailed information about people and families appear in popup windows. What would people think about this?--Dallan 14:57, 17 February 2007 (MST)

Yes. The other thing with the current display at the moment is that it isn't very user friendly (just boxes next to each other) could you create some interface connected with lines.--Bjwebb 08:39, 18 February 2007 (MST)

The integration of living family networks with deceased ones is important but not something that could be addressed easily by WeRelate due to its reliance on the Wikipedia software, which doesn't support group-level permissions well. A partnership with a separate organization would likely be necessary, where one could copy pages for selected (deceased) individuals from your private website to WeRelate and establish a link so that updates on one site get propagated automatically to the other. I'll have to think more about this.--Dallan 14:57, 17 February 2007 (MST)

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Help page revision

As some of you may have noticed, the project for revamping the WeRelate help pages is underway. By overhauling these pages, we hope to increase clarity, minimize redundancy, and facilitate learning. Our plan is to integrate the About pages, Help pages, and tutorials into a systemic, cross-referenced, stylistically uniform guide for WeRelate users. The first step toward achieving this is defining the purpose and content of these three "types" of help pages. Here are our first attempts at such a definition:

To see these distinctions in practice, check out the first draft of the About, Help, and tutorial pages dealing with person pages:

If you think these pages succeed or fail in relation to these distinctions, or if you simply agree or disagree with the specifics of the proposed system, let me know. Respond on this page, or leave me a message on my User talk page.--Wrhelp 16:40, 15 March 2007 (MDT)

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External link to "file://"

I thought I would give this a try using "file://" in an external link and it did not work. The reason I would like to refer to a local file is becuase I would like to be able to refer to some my living relatives histories (creating a werelate article for them is not a very good option in my opinion). I did some research on the possiblity of doing it at the help pages at Wikipedia]. It said that it can be enabled by doing the following.

"file://" does not work by default. If enabled it only works in MSIE. To enable it, add a $wgUrlProtocols entry to LocalSettings.php; see the $wgUrlProtocols in DefaultSettings.php for example. --Dlongmore 19:18, 17 March 2007 (MDT)
For everyone else viewing the page, the "file://" link would be broken. That doesn't seem like a great solution. I thought you were using Geni to store information about your living relatives? How about linking to a geni page (that would require a password to view) instead?--Dallan 23:58, 27 March 2007 (MDT)
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Baptism on person pages

Can we get Baptism events sorted above Death events on person pages? Baptism events seem to be often used instead of birth events, so it makes sense to have it displayed above the associated death event (or other, later events). --Joeljkp 11:51, 18 March 2007 (MDT)

Christening events sort above death events on person pages currently, but not baptism events. Perhaps the system should sort all events by date when displaying them on person and family pages. What do people think?--Dallan 23:58, 27 March 2007 (MDT)
Well, the issue with baptism goes further than that. I use baptism events rather than christening events simply because my sources specifically say "baptism," so I comply to keep consistency. The problem is with sorting on the person pages, but also with displaying the date in FTE, on relatives' pages, etc. Christening events show up, but baptisms don't. Since the two are basically synonyms, can you create one as basically an alias of the other, so they behave the same in every way? --Joeljkp 19:11, 29 March 2007 (MDT)
I see what you're saying. There's a fair amount of effort involved and I don't think I'll do it right away (unless others ask for it as well) but I will add it to the todo list.--Dallan 13:45, 30 March 2007 (MDT)
In the meantime, Dallan, I think it's a great idea to sort facts chronologically by date. Jillaine 11:14, 8 July 2007 (MDT)
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Improving efficiency for manual addition of people/families

I find myself adding lots of people and families manually (rather than by uploading GEDCOMs), and I keep noticing things that could be improved to help out with that process. I'll add them here as I think of them. --Joeljkp 07:19, 21 March 2007 (MDT)

  1. When working with families, I add the names of all the children at once, then create their pages later. Before I do that, they show up as red links on the appropriate family page. I click on these links to add birthdates, etc. for the child. It seems natural that when clicking on a nonexistent child link to add the initial info, it should be prefilled with the name and "child of" family. Without this just means extra time spent adding the name (again) and linking to the family (again).
  2. When adding several people at once, it seems natural to work through by adding a person, the families for that person, then clicking on the resulting links to add new people and families, etc. If various parts of this tree already exist in the system, the user is not alerted to this, leading naturally to the creation of duplicate entries. It would be great if, say, when adding children to a family, the user was alerted to possible matches already in the system.
Pre-filling the child page with the name of the child and the "child of" family should be happening, but it looks like it's broken. I'll fix it tomorrow. Regarding being alerted to possible matches, I agree this is important. It's going to take some time to implement. I hope to have it completed this Fall.--Dallan 23:58, 27 March 2007 (MDT)
Pre-filling the child page is fixed.--Dallan 12:08, 28 March 2007 (MDT)
Works great! --Joeljkp 20:20, 28 March 2007 (MDT)
I too am in the process of manually entering persons/families and was wondering if there is a way to search for the "red links" to those pages that need created? --Ronni 05:25, 13 April 2007 (MDT)
Not at present. I'll add it to the todo list. In the meantime, if you click on the "pedigree map" icon in the upper right-hand corner of a person or family page, you can see the people in someone's pedigree chart who are missing (have red links).--Dallan 14:44, 13 April 2007 (MDT)
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Press

Congratulations on the great article in the Fort Wayne News-Sentinal! --Joeljkp 18:22, 5 April 2007 (MDT)

Thank-you! Traffic has doubled since the announcement. Exciting times are ahead!--Dallan 23:59, 6 April 2007 (MDT)
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Longitude and Latitude Links

I think it might be helpful if the longitude and latitude entry on a place page were a link to a google map of that location. I stumbled across a place cited in my family tree, and I didn't know where in the world it was located. Luckily I thought of clicking on the wikipedia link for the article, which had a nice map.

-Nathan 15:20, 8 April 2007 (MDT)

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Reserving titles when moving person and family pages

In the case where a user is moving a person and family page title to one that already exists, it would be nice if WeRelate suggested an ID number that could be used in lieu of the ID number from the old title. For example, if I wanted to move the title Nathan Powell (1) to Nathaniel Powell, and the person page Nathaniel Powell (1) already existed, the system would reserve and suggest Nathaniel Powell (2) as the new title. -Nathan 13:22, 10 April 2007 (MDT)

Just leave off the ID number in the title you want to move the page to (e.g., "Person:Nathaniel Powell"). The system will assign a unique ID number for you and move the page to that title (e.g., "Person:Nathaniel Powell (2)").--Dallan 18:05, 10 April 2007 (MDT)
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Initial Impressions

The help pages and tutorials don't seem hard to understand when I read/listen to them, but I seem to run into situations they don't deal with. Unfortunately I don't keep notes because part of being confused is not knowing exactly what I'm confused about (and some are things that I have since managed to figure out).


What is most confusing at watercooler is that I have to hit "edit" and edit this page in order to respond to these questions. It needs to be super-easy to leave responses and comments here of all places.

Is page creation hard to understand? It depends on the type of page. I find it much easier to create an article than to accomplish things in inputting new genealogical data. I'm beginning to think there are several things going on here at once -- the wiki thing (community-wide editable text) and the FTE thing (another way of viewing genealogical data). Then there's the genealogically-targeted web searching thing. I find FTE beautiful in view, but I have a terrible time making it work. I also have a feeling that "source" means more than one thing. As a genealogist, it's telling people where my information came from. But somehow it also involves werelate "crawling" the internet. What's that about?

Search functions are somewhat confusing. The concept of "namespace" was new to me, but using it certainly helps in getting the kind of results desired. Even so, results often seem to include a lot of places where my search term ("Illinois")just happens to be mentioned in the course of something quite different. Of course all kinds of searches do that, not just here!

The tabs are a language of their own. I just punch them and see what comes up.

Some other specifics:

I just learned that there are "types" of places. Maybe I skipped a tutorial but that was news to me and I'm not sure what the possible types are, or how one decides which type a given place is. I understand the point -- a useable wiki cannot have half of the entries about Guggisberg, Canton Bern Switzerland, a village, and the other half about Guggisberg, Canton Bern Switzerland, an inhabited place. (I love the way this works when inputting personal genealogical data.)

The same standardization project with regard to sources really has me puzzled and frustrated (because it seems so important). I'm not clear on the distinction between Mysources and community sources (and I think others are too, some have all their sources as mysources). I don't seem to be able to use sources in articles the same way as I use them in inputting data. Standardizing relatively straightforward community sources, like Stiles' History of Ancient Windsor, Connecticut, looks really hard, and census data make even that look easy. At least with census data I can imagine a standard template: 1900 US Census Illinois Grundy County Morris, but then we need a roll number as well as a page number for the big places. TMG allows users to distinguish for each source between the general name and the citation specific details, but with censuses everyone carves that out differently. I prefer to make each year/county a separate source but many other solutions are equally reasonable.

I hope this doesn't sound whiny and I'm sure some of it is stupid (=easily avoidable with more patience). It's a noble project and the right way to go and I want to make it work. --Hh219 05:35, 15 April 2007 (MDT)

First of all, I really appreciate your comments. We'll be making changes in the next 2-3 weeks that should address several of these comments specifically.
Regarding place types, the types come from the Source:Getty Vocabulary Program. They seem to use several different types. Sometimes the type appears in the title of a place when two places have the same name but different types. (Of course in some of those situations the two places are really the same place, in which case let me know and I'll merge them.)
Regarding sources, it's a difficult problem. I like the idea of someday having a comprehensive, searchable index of genealogical sources, which is why it's included. However, in its current state it is not very easy to find sources because of the standardization problems you mention. One possible solution could be to add a "reviewed" checkbox to each of the source pages, work with people to determine what the standardized title for a set of sources (e.g., census sources) should look like, then automatically (or semi-automatically) rename the pages and check the "reviewed" checkbox for as many sources as possible. Unreviewed sources would remain in the database and would be searchable, but wouldn't appear in the drop-down list when you're entering a source. If anyone is interested in discussing ideas for improving the source index, please add comments to WeRelate talk:Sources. I know that some people have been working on standardizing sources already for Source talk:Scotland, Old parochial registers.
MySource's are "personal sources", which means that they're for information that is of more personal interest than public interest, like a birth certificate in your possession. The reason for MySource's is so that the general "Source" index doesn't get cluttered with a lot of sources that aren't of public interest. In particular, the system creates MySource's from GEDCOM files because we don't know which sources in a GEDCOM are of public interest. We'll try to make this distinction clearer in the future.
--Dallan 11:41, 16 April 2007 (MDT)

I have been with WeRelate for a few weeks now and it does require a learning curve. I would agree that if it doesn't become easier many people will not make use of it. That said I LOVE many things about this site. I have never been comfortable with sending in gedcom files; my work is in constant change and I keep some things in a gedcom and some in free form notes on web pages etc. WeRelate allows me to combine the power of linked family groups with plenty of space for notes that are easy to add and I can add or delete any time at any computer. It does seem a bit clunky in places but you expect that with a new kind of software. It takes people using it; reworking it; growing with it to fine tune an experiment. I think that is exciting.

I think the faqs are good but I really wish there was a search engine for them or for directions of "how to". Signatures are an example. I read how to do it but I cannot refind the directions and must be looking right at the section but can't locate it.

I also suspect a message board would get more traffic than the wiki by users. I know this is wiki based but I think communication this way, back and forth, seems awkward to many of us.

I don't think the person vs. family pages are real intuitive. I had a friend go look at some of my pages and she didn't understand to look at both the person and family view for more information. I don't know the answer to that. It makes sense if you know how it works but for people just visiting they don't necessarily get it.

Other than that the only thing I find really lacking is indexing. I work with large clusters of people; the neighbors; the inlaws; anyone who shows up in my path when I am researching. This means I need a really good index by surname of both married and maiden name. The index you get when you click on the family tree just doesn't work for me. In lieu of that I think I am going to build separate web pages (housed elsewhere) that index my WeRelate pages. That way I can have tidy indexes and even annotate the index entries ie

Walker, Cornelius - son of James & Mary; husband of Julia Armstrong.

I would not expect WeRelate to generate something that cool but it WOULD be nice if it would do an alpha list that a person could print out. I don't know how to sign my name so that it helps find me

Anne

Thank-you! Those are good suggestions.
  • I'll add a search form for the help pages on the main help contents page. (In the meantime, you can click on the "Connect" tab, then click on the "Namespace:" drop-down list and select "Help", then enter the terms you want to search for in "Keywords:".)
  • I've also thought about the message board idea. I'm going to see if I can change how the discussion pages work to get them to behave more like message boards in the upcoming weeks, but if that doesn't work I'll be integrating some traditional forum software.
  • I agree that the person vs. family page distinction isn't very intuitive. It seems necessary in order to make the "everything is a page" concept of a wiki work for genealogy. I'm interested in suggestions in presenting it more intuitively.
  • Regarding indexing, that's an interesting thought. One thing you can do is open your tree in the Family Tree Explorer, then click on the "Index" tab, then select the "Person" namespace, where you can sort everyone in your tree by surname, birthdate, deathdate, etc. But it won't let you annotate the index entries as you mention. Another thing you could do is create your index as a "Personal Research Page". Click on the "MyRelate" tab, then the "Edit Profile" button, enter the name of the page you want to create (e.g., "My tree index") in the box under "Personal Research Pages" and press "Save page" to save your profile. Then click on the red "My tree index" link and press "Edit" to create the page. You could then add lines to your page like:
  • I'll add generating a personal research page with an alpha list of people in your tree as a feature request for the family tree explorer. I'm also going to make it possible to add people to your tree even when the family tree explorer is not open.
--Dallan 11:19, 25 April 2007 (MDT)

There's one navigation issue that tends to make the site a bit more confusing than I think it needs to be. If I'm on an individual's page, I can't get to that person's spouse or child or mother or father with a single click. If I want the spouse, I have to click on the husband-and-wife page, then click to the spouse. If I want a child, I have to do the same thing. And if I want mother or father, I have to go to the father-and-mother page, then click to whichever parent I wanted. It would be heavenly to be able to get to places with one click. Maybe, make the father-and-mother link be three separate links: click the father's name and go to him, click the mother's name and go to her, and click the "and" to go to the parents' page. The same could happen with the husband-and-wife page: if I click "and" I go to the couple's page, but clicking either name would take me to that individual (meaning that if I were on the wife's page and clicked her name, I wouldn't go anywhere). And if it were possible to list children--maybe run in, separated by commas, rather than listing down the page if the comma-format would make it easier...and don't list dates and stuff--that would be heavenly. I think it might be frustrating, and a bit confusing to new users, that they can't get from a husband to a wife or to a child or to a parent with a single click. And for people with slow-loading dial-up, that extra click to get from one person to another might be too time-consuming to be borne. I realize that with the color coding--existing links are in blue--it might not be obvious that someone is looking at three different links until they mouse-over and see an underline that breaks on either side of "and", but I almost intuitively click on the dad's name if that's where I want to go, anyway. Just an idea...--KF-in-Georgia 22:09, 6 May 2007 (MDT)

I agree here about showing children on individual person pages. This may have the drawback of making the family pages less obviously useful or necessary for newcomers, but it would allow you to see all the children a given person has produced, something that right now is split amongst all the family pages the person is a member of. --Joeljkp 07:25, 7 May 2007 (MDT)
I'll add this to the to-do list. As long as we're happy with showing just the page titles of parents, spouses, and children on the Person page, it's not too difficult. If we must also show full names, birthdates, etc., (like we do on Family pages) then it gets complex. You can also open up the Family Tree Explorer to navigate among several generations in a tree, but I agree that having the links right on the Person page would be more convenient.--Dallan 10:37, 8 May 2007 (MDT)
I tried navigating using the Family Tree Explorer. If you open it enough generations to see spouses of the children you're editing, you still can't get to those spouses with a single click. If you click the spouse, it opens up the Family page, not the spouse you were aiming at...or so I discovered when I put Clarence's obit on the family page when I was aiming to put it on his page. (grin) I got it fixed, but it does seem silly that there's no way to get from husband to wife (or vice versa) with a single click. (I know you can use the FTE Index to navigate, but that's no fun when half your family members have the same given name.) (By the way, the FTE-click that takes you to the Family page is great when it's time to add kids to the tree. I've no problem with that. I'm just still searching for a single-click way to get from husband to wife.)--KF-in-Georgia 10:20, 9 May 2007 (MDT)
That's a good point - I hadn't realized that. We'll add spouse (and father, mother, and children) to the person page in the next few months. (It will take some effort, but it's do-able.)--Dallan 20:35, 9 May 2007 (MDT)

Can it be possible to upload a file or spreadsheet to a personal research page? I have some typed Family Group Sheets that were created using a spreadsheet. It would be great if these could somehow be uploaded to my personal research pages and then made searchable. If that is not possible, could I enter this info in the Family Tree Explorer even though these folks are not related or connected to each other?--Janiejac 16:19, 26 June 2007 (MDT)

At present you can upload only images and GEDCOM files. Uploading and indexing PDF files is on the ToDo list. Spreadsheets are a little more difficult to index, but it's do'able if people want it. Another alternative is to create wiki pages for them - check out the updated Create tab - or you could create them in the family tree explorer even though they're unrelated to others in your tree (you could create a new tree for them if you want). Finally, I'm working on a "digital library" addition to WeRelate that would allow people to upload, index, and preserve source documents that don't need to be community-editable. The digital library will likely be in test mode for awhile though.--Dallan 22:03, 26 June 2007 (MDT)


I think your site is too complicated & too high tech for the average older user. It is NOT simple!!! I think putting a file on Ancestry.com is much easier. Your 13 min. video just confuses you more. It is very involved. Both my file & my husband's file have each almost 11,000 names & many hundreds of pictures which I would put on your site if there weren't so many steps required.

Thank you for writing down your impressions. You're right - the site is starting out being too high-tech but we're in the process of making it easier to use. We're interested in hearing people's ideas of how to make the site simpler.--Dallan 14:48, 7 April 2007 (MDT)
I have to agree with the earlier post; it certainly is not user friendly yet. I couldn't get through the video. These eyes just couldn't see the fine print of the video and the speaker skimmed over info way too fast. Can you put making a new tutorial video on higher priority? I tried to read the text tutorial . . and copied this from it: "Example research guide - For an example of a research guide, please see [[Colorado research guide|]]." Why not make the 'Colorado research guide' a link to it? I haven't yet figured out how to search for it. --Janiejac 14:39, 10 April 2007 (MDT)
I agree we have a ways to go on usability. I do appreciate the feedback. We've started working on several new tutorials, each covering one topic from the current tutorial but more slowly and in more detail. They'll hopefully be out by the end of next week. We'll make the screen larger this time. Also, I fixed the link to the Colorado Research Guide; thanks for pointing that out. By the way, if you want to search for something on WeRelate, click on the "Connect" tab (which we'll probably rename to Search), then enter what you want to search for (like "Colorado research guide" in the Keywords field).--Dallan 18:05, 10 April 2007 (MDT)
I'm a new user myself and quite frankly I'm simply amazed and impressed at what the site can do! After just a couple of days of tinkering, the site is becoming easier for me to use. I'm very excited about being here and looking forward to future collaborations with fellow researchers. --Knarrows 03:39, 10 April 2007 (MDT)

I am amazed at the sheer volume of copywritten sources you have downloaded, I'm sure, without permission! Both personal, Ancestry and Rootsweb copywritten web pages are included here: Genforum, FTM home pages, etc. Yet, you tell "users" not to post copywritten information??? -- PJ

I believe you're referring to the Web search. Just like google, our crawler crawls web pages at Ancestry, Rootsweb, Genforum, and several million other web pages in order to make them searchable. Also just like google, we obey the robot exclusion protocol so that if people do not want their web pages to be searchable on WeRelate they can exclude our bot from crawling their site.--Dallan 23:14, 9 April 2007 (MDT)

My initial impression is that the site is extreamly dificult to navigate thru. When I go to a person I expect to see almost everything about that person in one view. ie Spouses listed in order of marriage, children listed in birth order, tags in order. Instead, I found spouses off to the side in random order, children not listed. Look at TMG and copy there page. It will be more useful to the user.

There are two types of pages in a tree: Person pages and Family pages. Person pages show information about a single individual, including links to the Families they are a member of (as a child or spouse). Clicking on a family link takes you to a Family page where you see information about the family, including marriage and children. It would be pretty easy to list the families a person is a spouse of in order by marriage date on the Person's page; I'll add that to the todo list. But if you want to see information about both a person and their spouses and children on the same page, click on the "pedigree map" icon in the upper right-hand corner of the screen, which will give you a 5-generation pedigree chart.--Dallan 11:14, 10 April 2007 (MDT)


This site is not user friendly at all. The design is in dire need of a makeover and the navigation is so bad I would think that Magellan would have trouble finding his way around. Also the blatant copyright violations on this website needs to be addressed.

If you will point out specific violations along with a source of the copyrighted material, we will look into it.--sq 20:35, 17 April 2007 (MDT)

I'm a newbie, and I'm working my way through how to make WeRelate work. Yeah, it's a bit confusing, but every new software set-up takes users a while to figure out. I don't have Wiki experience, so I have the general Wiki learning-curve to negotiate, as well as this site's specifics. A couple of quick questions: ??? Is it possible to rename images once they're uploaded? I'm ready to concede that "7287909-R1-037-17_2.jpg" is not the most useful file name. ??? And is it possible to rename a family tree? I didn't realize the site would tack "family tree" onto the name I entered, so I've got the "Hoss Family Tree family tree"; I'd like to eliminate the redundancy. Thanks.--KF-in-Georgia 21:28, 29 April 2007 (MDT)

Regarding renaming images, unfortunately you can't rename them. (I'll add that to my to-do list.) You need to re-upload the image using the name you want, and then leave me a message and I'll delete the old image. Regarding renaming trees, I'll add this as an option in the "File" menu in the Family Tree Explorer today or tomorrow.--Dallan 10:18, 30 April 2007 (MDT)
Thanks. I've renamed the tree. --KF-in-Georgia 16:03, 3 May 2007 (MDT)

Is there someplace specific to ask newbie questions? I have a question about editing a source page, but when I go to help on sources, my question does not fit any of the topics and I don't know how to add a topic. --Janiejac 06:01, 16 June 2007 (MDT)

You can ask your question here if you like. To add a new topic btw, type == New Topic == just the way you see it there changing NEW TOPIC to the appropriate text of course. Another way to do it is, when editing, there is a row of bu