Good morning, I need assistance; I feel as if I am going round and round and getting nowhere. I uploaded my census image. The image is now linked to 11 people in my tree. When the image first appears on each person's page there is no caption.
Second, I created a MySource page for this image, but the source page is not linked to the image and I have not a clue how to link the image to the source page.
Third, I then decided to enter this source and image as a reference for the names of the 11 people in my tree. I successfully entered the reference and a caption for the image for Robert Coker (3). I wanted to enter the same source and image caption as a reference for the name of the remaining 10 people in my tree. It appears to me that I must reenter all of this data 10 more times to obtain the desired results. Then repeat this 11 more times for the birth date and 11 more times for the birth place.
Have I missed something? This does not work for me. I am not entering the same data 33 times.
Also I am rethinking entering the census image link for everyone. I believe having the image on the head of the household person page and the source page should be sufficient or maybe just the source page. What do y'all think?
Thanks, --Beth 11:04, 18 December 2007 (EST)
Hi Beth. I don't know that I can help you with all your items at the moment, but I'll take a stab at a couple of them. Someone else may have to come along and correct my stabbing though... :)
1) I looked at the image page and didn't see a place for a caption to automatically carry over to the other pages that are linked to it. I see that one person had a caption for the image. Did you enter that particular caption and were expecting it to show up on the other pages as well? If so, I'm not sure that occurs.
2) To enter the image on the MySource page use [[Image:nameofpic.jpg]] somewhere in the text field. To downsize the image (if you want), because it's going to be larger than how it appears on the image page, you can try [[Image:nameofpic.jpg|100px]] or some such size. Just experiment. I saw Quolla6 do some kind of trick like that, so maybe they can offer more help.
3) And yep, 33 times would be about right. I don't think you are missing anything. Others have mentioned this as well, so it might be on Dallan's To-Do list. But I like the idea you finished up with. Putting the image on your MySource page and perhaps on the Head of Household person or family page would be sufficient I think. You will probably still want to reference the source from the other pages, but you won't have to retype everything over and over since it will appear in the drop down box after typing a few words.
Ok, I'm done stabbing. Gotta run for now. :)--Ronni 14:00, 18 December 2007 (EST)
The caption that appears under the image on each person or family page needs to be entered on each page separately. I did this so you could have a different caption for different people (e.g., "Mary is second from the left in this image" vs. "Tom is third from the right"). One thing you might want to consider is leaving out the caption on the person pages and instead adding some descriptive text to the image page. People could see the descriptive text on the image page by clicking on the reduced image displayed on the person page.
You need to re-enter the source for each person unfortunately -- I can't think of an easy way around that -- but you should only need to enter it once for each person. Once you've entered it once, you can re-use the "S1" and "I1" references to link the source and image to multiple names and events. I edited Person:Robert Coker (3) as an example.
One thing I could do is take the beginning paragraph of text from the image page and display that under the image on the person/family page if there is not a caption for the image on the person/family page. What would you think about that?--Dallan 16:45, 18 December 2007 (EST)
Thanks Ronni and Dallan,
Are you giving me instructions for adding the image to my source page or a link to the image? I have made several attempts to add the image, trying to follow your instructions but no image appears, only what I typed in the text field; I must have a typo. I even tried media instead of image and that made no difference.
Dallan, is it not possible to have the fields for S1 fill automatically with the last entered data; and then one could edit the data if necessary.
Adding the descriptive text to the image on the person pages; I am not sure that really helps. When one clicks on the image and brings up the full size the title is there anyway, is it not?
Dallan, regarding the edit to Robert Coker; that makes sense but now the source page title is incorrect. I started to change the name but unsure about the results of changing the name. It says that the links are on the old title and one will be redirected to the new title or page. Is this desirable?
Thank y'all for your assistance. --Beth 19:14, 18 December 2007 (EST)
I changed the title of the source page, but not sure I like the results; I will try and ignore the initial wrong entry under Robert Coker. I had the page number wrong anyway for the first image. This census starts out with the first page in the county with the number and the next page has no number so the second page must be the back of first page, well I guess, it is all very confusing. I used to designate them A and B but that seems to have been removed from the latest book by Mills.--Beth 21:00, 18 December 2007 (EST)
Hi Ronni, Thanks so much for adding my image; I understand how finally. --Beth 01:23, 19 December 2007 (EST)
Okay, I just now discovered that sources and images are numbered by the page; I assumed that they were numbered sequentially in my tree not per person or page. I am sure that there is a good reason behind this design; just not what I am accustomed to in my genie program. Where are all of my sources and images listed for my tree and how are they numbered if each page has a different number for the same source and image? --Beth 18:05, 19 December 2007 (EST)
Your sources presumably were created in the "MySource<your name>" space. If you're working with "Source:" space sources, then there really isn't a concept of "your sources". Images are also loaded into a global space, so I'm not sure there's a way to see just those that you loaded, except by looking over your list of contributions and skimming for the image uploads.
The whole "werelate"/wiki paradigm is different than you're used to. Aside from user pages, none of us really own anything. We're all playing in a common name, source, place, etc. pool. It's a good thing because we are really and truly working together on common people.
The "tree" is a pretty limited concept in werelate - as far as I can tell, it's just a map of the pages that were created as a result of your GEDCOM upload. The pages themselves aren't really "in it", they're in common space. Others can explain it better I'm sure...
--jrm03063
Hi JRM, thanks for the comments. I am still learning about WeRelate; first used it a little in August and now getting back to WeRelate. I did not upload a gedcom. I purposely chose to enter my data, so I could learn more about WeRelate and fine tune my data, but the finished product is a long way off. I am hoping that eventually one will be able to discern why this Robert in this place is the son of that William in that place from the person pages and then can use the sources provided to either agree or disagree with the decision regarding lineage. I do understand the concept of the community but I was referring to MySource and the corresponding images that I have uploaded. I wish to be consistent in my source and image naming and find that it is necessary to manually write down the name of a prior image and source in the same category to maintain consistency. If I could access this list readily from any page that I am on; this would enhance my ability to maintain some consistency. I love the idea of WeRelate; but still learning and may test other sites after finishing my entries in this "tree". --Beth 19:41, 19 December 2007 (EST)
Hi again Beth. I understand the problem you are having remembering the names of sources, images, etc., but you can access this list from any page you are on. Let me explain what works for me. When I upload an image, let's say a source related to death, I will name it such that the first word is "death". Example: DeathPollyMorton1944.jpg. The naming convention is such that I can usually remember the name of a death image. But I don't have to remember the exact title, because when I go to add it to a person or family page, I will go to the section under Images then click on "select existing image" and type the word "death" in the field and then just wait a second. A drop down box will appear giving me all my choices starting with the word "death." But let's say that ALL of us start using the word "death" at the beginning of our images making our list of choices even longer for images I'm not interested in. Then make it even more selective. For instance, I may decide to upload all my birth records as something like: KnarBirthPollyMorton1866.jpg. Then any time I go to the field, I'll just type "KnarBirth" or even just "Knar" ("Knar" being the beginning of my user name) and my list will be narrowed.
This same thing applies for how I do sources. Since the naming convention for WeRelate is suggesting that source titles begin with author name (Last, First), followed by a "." (period) and then the title of the source, whenever I want to use a source, I don't have to remember the whole title. I just enter the author's last name in the source field followed by a comma and wait. And voila, there are my choices. This is of course assuming the title has been formatted that way. And when it's not? Then I change the title of the page so that it is. :)
Another thing I have done is create my own list of sources and put it under my User space. I have done this for my Morton Tree. These are my sources (minus vital records from counties, etc) made up of mostly books, magazines, online databases, etc that I can now click on and quickly be taken to the source page which (because in most cases I have made and updated the page myself) will have links to the online source. You could create your own image gallery if you wanted as well. I think this is the beauty of WeRelate. Because we do the "coding" we are only limited by our imaginations as to how we can best utilize the system (aside from software limitations). I think that's why I keep coming back to WR every day. I just can't wait to see what someone else has come up with that makes my genealogy experience easier and more exciting. It's fun, isn't it? :)
One more tip: you can always go to your MyRelate page, under "View Contributions" and see your latest edits. Use the namespace box in the upper left to narrow down the list to images, sources, person pages, etc. Leave multiple tabs open in your browser so you're not always having to leave the page you are working on to find what you want. Hope my comments have helped. --Ronni 06:39, 20 December 2007 (EST)
In addition to Ronni's suggestions, here's another way to find the images/mysources you've created: The past few days I've been working on a "chooser" popup window that will let you browse all of the images (or mysources or people or families) in your watchlist. You'll be able to select the image from this list. It should be ready sometime tomorrow. Once it's ready there will be a new "choose" link after each person, family, image, or source title entry field that will bring up the chooser popup window.--Dallan 14:33, 20 December 2007 (EST)
Wow! Thanks Dallan; sounds great and thank you Ronni. Happy holidays. --Beth 15:19, 20 December 2007 (EST)
Ronnie's solution works well, but if you have many distinct sets of items you're trying to keep track of, remembering the exact variant on the title construction can get to be a problem. An alternative approach that might ease this a bit would be to make use of the Categories space. The way Dallan has set up weRelate minimizes the need for creating categories---as the name and place constructions do that for you automatically when you fill in the input text boxes. But like other wiki's you can still create separate Category lists using the [[Category:whatever title you want to use]] construct. For example, if you insert [[Category:John Smith]] somewhere in the article (at the bottom of the page is the usual convention) the system adds that page to a list of pages that have that category appended. Basically, it creates an index.
The trick with this is getting to the actual category page--searching for "Category:John Smith" will probably do it, but there's an easier way....go to your home page and insert the link [[:Category:John Smith]] and you'll get a link to that particular category page listing all of the pages that have had that particular category added. NOTE: the distinction between the above, and the insert you put on each page is significant. The link has TWO ":", but the category itself has only one. The extra ":" is what keeps the link from indicating that this is another addition to the category page, instead of being a link. Here's an example from my user's page
If you omit that ":" in front of "Category", you'll simply tell the system that this page should be added to the Category list.---and you'll see nothing, because category indicators are not actually visible---putting that extra ":" is what turns this into a link that can be seen and clicked on. Of course, at the bottom of the page would be a link to the category page, but you can't make it appear anywhere else except by using this ":" dodge.
Bill 19:03, 20 December 2007 (EST)
Cool! I could use this for creating that list of sources I mentioned above. Thanks Bill! --Ronni 04:32, 21 December 2007 (EST)
The category trick would also be handy for MizLiv's North Central Kentucky Migrations project. --Ronni 04:46, 21 December 2007 (EST)
Hi Bill, Thanks for the great tip. Check out my user page. Did I do this correctly or do you have any suggestions for improvement?
Hi Beth Looks like it worked just fine. Bill 10:07, 23 December 2007 (EST) --Beth 09:19, 23 December 2007 (EST)
The source button and list are helpful; but it is still necessary for me to navigate back to get the page number and date every time I enter the same source for a different person. I guess I will have to resort to an old tactic used with some genie programs and save this information in wordpad. Another question: I thought I understood the difference between MySource and Source but not sure I do now. I created a community source page: Source:United States, Georgia, Murray. Marriage Book 1 (1834 - 1849). I envisioned everyone using this source page by entering the page number and corresponding image and then referencing this source and page for their marriage record. However; I do not know how to create a subsource. Am I now supposed to create a MySource? If so what is the purpose of the community source?--Beth 21:16, 23 December 2007 (EST)
You can also enter the first few letters of the source/mysource title and wait a couple of seconds to get a drop-down list of sources/mysources in your watchlist that start with those letters. But you're right -- to re-enter the same page number and/or date on different pages you'd have to save that information in wordpad or somewhere. (Although a trick that works in Firefox is to put your cursor in the page number or date field and press the down-arrow key. This will give you a list of things that you've entered into that field recently.)
The source you created looks great. You and others can list this source title and include the specific page number and any text content or page images in source citations on your person and family pages. I don't think you need to create a MySource unless you want to. If you did, you'd probably want it to include a link to the community source page that you just created.
The purpose of the MySource namespace is mainly just to hold sources from GEDCOM uploads. When a GEDCOM is uploaded, pages can be created for the sources in the GEDCOM without worrying about overwriting a community source page, and (once we redo search) searches for community sources won't return a lot of probably-duplicate GEDCOM sources. It's not a perfect situation, and later next year I'd like to figure out how to detect matches between uploaded MySources and existing community Sources, but in the meantime it seems best to keep the sources from uploaded GEDCOM's in their own namespace. Also, to date we haven't emphasized creating community sources because we're just now coming to terms with standards for titling community source page and what their content should include (see WeRelate talk:Source Committee). Now that the place wiki cleanup is finally complete, working to improve the community source wiki is one of the big projects for next year.
--Dallan 22:18, 23 December 2007 (EST)
Thanks Dallan,
I added the image to the source page; but should I? Question about Ancestry census images and Community Sources: I entered my census images under MySource because I thought that one might violate their copyright using a community source vs. the personal source. Do you think the source category makes any difference regarding the Ancestry copyright provisions? --Beth 23:09, 23 December 2007 (EST)
How do I rename an image? See my images here: Category:Beth's Images. I have two formats for census images so I need to change one format to the other or do you have other suggestions for formatting the title of census images? Thanks, --Beth 13:36, 2 January 2008 (EST)
That's a bummer. --Beth 08:41, 4 January 2008 (EST)
I created this source page Source:United States, Georgia, Murray. Marriage Book 2. I have several images of the pages from this book. Exactly how does one create a link to the images? Do we want to end up with 100 images for one source page? --Beth 17:39, 9 January 2008 (EST)
If 100 images for a source page makes sense, why not? See what I did with my Mother-in-law's 3x5 card file. If you click on individual cards, you'll see that they're attached to the person they're associated with. From that page, you can click to the actual person page. Alternatively, you could skip to the person page from the card heading (which is a link). When you get to an individual person-page, you'll again see the associated card.--Jrm03063 22:13, 9 January 2008 (EST)
I really like what Jrm03063 has done with the 3x5 cards! Here are two additional thoughts:
I really love the card file and how it is setup. However, for public records in books, wills, deeds, marriages etc., shouldn't WeRelate have one approach for these images? Dallan, what you said works fine; I have created the link for one image for Source:United States, Georgia, Murray. Marriage Book 2 as you suggested.
But I have not completed the other links, I really wish to know how the majority of users prefer the image links to be done. Should we place the images on the Source page or create the links?
Dallan , I don't have 100 images from one book, but just estimating the possible # we could have for some public records if WeRelate has 1 million users in the future.
And what is in the digital library; would you tell us more about the digital library?
Thanks, --Beth 08:11, 14 January 2008 (EST)
Here's my opinion (others' opinions may vary):
The digital library will be a complement to the wiki: when you upload something to the library, others cannot generally edit it. Also, a single uploaded item can include hundreds of images. The software we will use is the same as that used by Travelers in the Middle East Archive; visiting that site can give you an idea of what it will function like.--Dallan 16:22, 14 January 2008 (EST)
Is the digital library intended primarily for images? or would large chunks of digital text be fair game as well? I take it that this will function something like Wiki Commons. Also, I imagine this is way beyond the realm of possibility, but since you pointed to Middle East Archive....any chance that GIS will be a component of the Digital Library? I've several problems being worked where GIS would be a help, but its probably overkill for most genealogy. Bill 17:05, 14 January 2008 (EST)
Yes, large chunks of digital text (e.g., big text files, PDF, or Word documents) would be fair game as well. For GIS data, you could certainly upload shape files, but someone would have to have a shape file viewer on their machine to view them. I don't want to go to the trouble of running a GIS server, and so far I haven't found a free GIS viewer that doesn't require people to download a separate viewer application.--Dallan 20:25, 14 January 2008 (EST)
When I edited a page I noticed the new source button options. Looking forward (after the holidays of course) to learning more about this. Thank You for all the hard work, and great new site. User:DFree--DFree 16:09, 23 December 2007 (EST)
I'm having trouble with the source buttons. For example, I tried adding a source for Person:Rezin Debolt (1). The source is a community source: Source:A history of Grundy County : treating of its transformation from the heart of the wilderness of yesterday to the heart of the mighty nation of today; a tribute to. But every time I try to add it to Rezin's page and hit Save Page, I get a completely blank page -- no title, no text, no images, just a completely blank page. Any idea what I'm doing wrong? --Ajcrow 19:15, 23 December 2007 (EST)
I think I have an issue with this. I love it when I'm working with a source that's already in the database. But could we have an option to enter a source without making it a link to a possible new page? I really don't think everything everyone ever wants to cite needs a page -- there are one-off articles, people's email addresses, sloppy sources that lack enough specificity to match to a catalog, but at least offer some clue (or just say " unsourced internet cite"). And if the creator doesn't think any of these are worth having a page, she's unlikely to do the work to actually create the page, which means no one is going to use it again anyway, they'll just be a link for no reason. Or if the page is created and added to the source list, then there's a great potential for untold number of improperly named (since we don't seem to have naming conventions yet) duplicates.
On more of a 'bug' note - the function lets me pick and link to pages that redirect to other pages to correct duplicate or name format issues. Can we short cut that somehow so the link goes to the right page?--Amelia.Gerlicher 20:15, 23 December 2007 (EST)
Does the search for source really only pick up titles that start with the words I type? Can we have it pick up any words in the title? If I knew what the title started with, I could just start typing. And until we have all of them renamed with the author or place first, it's hard to know just what FHC (or anyone else) thought the title was.--Amelia.Gerlicher 20:43, 23 December 2007 (EST)
Thanks for letting me know about the problem with adding the source. I found and fixed a bug with this today. Hopefully it's the cause of the problem. If you're still getting a blank page, would you please let me know?
Good point about not wanting to always create links to MySource pages. I'll add a third "Title only" option under "Source" and "MySource" tomorrow that won't link to a source or mysource page -- just display the title without a link. This will be the default option. ("Title only" had actually been the default behavior until today; I changed it to having MySource be the default, but I'll change it back.)
I'd like to understand more about the redirects issue you mention. The old behavior was that if you entered a Source/MySource title that redirected to another Source/MySource page, when you saved the Person/Family page, the Source/MySource title would be updated automatically to the target of the redirect. When I was testing the new functionality, this behavior confused me because when I entered one source title, the page showed a different source title after it was saved. It took me awhile to figure out that the source title I had entered was actually a redirect to the one that was being displayed. So I took out the automatic redirecting on save. I could add it back in (nobody had complained about it), but I worry that the automated redirecting might be confusing?
The chooser just lets you browse titles that start with the words you type. Until we get the existing source titles renamed, I'm not sure how much more helpful it would be to list all source titles that contained the words you entered somewhere in the title. Searching for sources for a given place would still be problematic for example because many of our current sources don't list the place as part of the title. I'm not sure how to solve this problem without providing a full-fledged "search" function from the chooser popup. But adding search to the chooser popup is possible if enough people are interested.
--Dallan 23:36, 23 December 2007 (EST)
Dallan - the sources are working for me again. No more blank pages. Thanks! --Ajcrow 10:32, 24 December 2007 (EST)
I think I see what you're saying. I'm going to be re-doing search in the next couple of weeks; how about if I add a "Search" link on the popup window that switches you into search mode?--Dallan 00:32, 27 December 2007 (EST)
Any chance you could remove the quotes that show up automatically when you use the "title only" option? They're making it really hard to properly format source names with any sense (for example, source 1 here: Person:Samuel Tibbetts (1)) --Amelia.Gerlicher 19:13, 31 December 2007 (EST)
No problem. I'll put out the next set of changes early next week; the quotation marks will be gone at that time.--Dallan 19:59, 4 January 2008 (EST)
When you start typing in the box after picking "source", is it only picking up the sources I'm watching? Because I can't seem to get sources I know are there to show up, and it's really annoying to have to click four extra times to use the chooser to pick from "all titles." I don't really have an interest in watching every vital record page from Massachusetts to avoid this.--Amelia.Gerlicher 14:34, 7 January 2008 (EST)
Another bug: If the page already has a MySource citation, and someone else tries to edit it, the system inserts the new editor's username into the MySource tag, creating a link to a page that doesn't exist. For example, I edited this page, and it changed the "Glatzfam/The Holcomb(e) genealogy..." source to "Amelia.Gerlicher/Glatzfam/The Holcomb(e) genealogy...". (I was able to get back to the original link by using quotes and wikicode, so it currently looks more or less correct.)--Amelia.Gerlicher 21:38, 7 January 2008 (EST)
I may have mentioned this elsewhere, but it was still an issue as of a few days ago. If a page has a mixture of source and mysource, and you delete one sort of source that is followed by another sort of source, the delete process mangles the remaining sources a bit. Also, and I know there's a boatload of stuff to do, so this isn't a complaint !! Really!! But I am noticing that I'm more annoyed that I can't reorder sources without pulling them all out and putting them back in the order I want. If that's an easy one, particularly while the sources are being messed with more or less generally...--Jrm03063 12:48, 8 January 2008 (EST)
I've changed the drop-down for sources so that it includes all sources, not just the ones on your watchlist. And I fixed the bug with inserting your username in the case where you're editing a page with another user's mysource links. I'll put out these fixes later today along with the new menu system. Thanks for bringing that to my attention.
The sources and mysources shouldn't be getting mixed up anymore when you remove a source. Please let me know if they still are (the title of a page that it happened on would be helpful). Re-ordering sources isn't a quick fix unfortunately, but I've added it to the ToDo list for sometime in the next month or two. (If anyone who can program in javascript would like to take this on, please let me know.)--Dallan 14:59, 8 January 2008 (EST)
Hi Dallan,
It would be helpful to have the whirling thingy for the Repository and Repository address. --Beth 20:13, 29 December 2007 (EST)
Later this year (probably Fall) we'll re-work the source index, at which time we'll create separate pages for repositories. Once we've done that we can provide a drop-down list of matching repository titles.--Dallan 20:41, 4 January 2008 (EST)
Hi,
Trying to figure out how this works. I created a Shared Research page entitled Coker in Georgia. The way I see it the shared research is one article which links to the Category:Coker in Georgia. The category is a collection of all of the articles linked to Coker in Georgia, correct? But these red links drive me kinda nuts. The Category link is red because the page has not been edited, but what exactly would you put on this page? --Beth 00:25, 31 December 2007 (EST)
Yes, that's annoying. You could theoretically create the page with something like "This category is for Coker's in Georgia", but why should you have to? We need to re-visit categories and how we want to use them over Spring/Summer. At the very least I think a category link should be blue if the category contains pages even if the category page itself hasn't been created.--Dallan 20:41, 4 January 2008 (EST)
Happy New Year to everyone. I have added a person to my tree in the past with no problem; but I cannot seem to add the spouse of Person:Annis Coker (1). I have tried numerous times with no success. I am trying to edit her family page. What am I doing wrong? --Beth 09:15, 31 December 2007 (EST)
Hi thanks but I cannot get that to work. Will you check the page for me and let me know? When I attempt to edit the family page you cannot click on his name. --Beth 10:33, 31 December 2007 (EST)
Great? It is working now. Now why didn't I think of deleting the first one? Not sure that this is working quite right; but now I can edit the page. Thanks bunches. Happy camper again. --Beth 11:14, 31 December 2007 (EST)
I think this bug is related to the bug that Brannon reported below. When you create a family page by clicking on the family link from a person page, the spouse doesn't have "(index#)" after his name and doesn't have "(new)" after his name. Either "(index#)" or "(new)" is now required in order to save the page. You can manually add "(new)" after the spouse's name to save the family page, then click on the spouse's name (which should now have an index number after it) to create the spouse's person page. Early next week I'll fix this by automatically adding "(new)" after the spouse's name when you create the family page.--Dallan 20:41, 4 January 2008 (EST)
I don't think I'm transferring the longitude and latitude coordinates right since I keeping ending up in the middle of the ocean somewhere. When I have a coordinate that looks like this:
54°30'31.93"N
6°17'33.17"W
how do I convert that to put it into the WeRelate fields on the place pages? --Ronni 12:40, 31 December 2007 (EST)
In a perfect world, a nice lat/long coordinate parser would probably recognize the different forms and convert. But there are quite a few fish to fry before that rises to the level of being worth suggesting as a development task. In the meantime, I use "http://mapper.acme.com" which lets you come up with high precision coordinates in decimal or deg/min/sec.--Jrm03063 13:34, 31 December 2007 (EST)
Thank you Jrm! It's works nicely. --Ronni 12:04, 2 January 2008 (EST)
Here are two other suggestions:
--Dallan 19:59, 4 January 2008 (EST)
If cemeteries fall outside city boundaries, should they be placed under the appropriate township (if known) or directly under the county? What should we encourage people to do?
I just checked, and it looks like GNIS places cemeteries directly under the county. So if our standard is to put cemteries under the township when known, and we import US cemeteries from GNIS, those cemeteries will be located directly under the county until someone renames them to include the township.
I'm ok either way -- putting cemeteries under the township when known, or putting them directly under the county even when the township is known.--Dallan 13:15, 31 December 2007 (EST)
I don't think there's a really compelling reason to do this any particular way. I presume that GIS names are carefully chosen to be unique, so having different "Mason" or "Perkins" cemeteries isn't going to create confusion.
I'm working on an abandoned family cemetery in Nottingham, New Hampshire. You can see it at Place:Eastman Cemetery in Bartlett Memorial Forest, Nottingham, Rockingham, New Hampshire, United States. I'm not going to go into the woods with a transit (I wouldn't know how to use it anyway), but I may go out there with graph paper, stakes and a tape measure. Making a sketch of the area, then annotating it would allow positional context to be recorded and seen. I mean, who's buried next to who can be an important clue.--Jrm03063 13:58, 31 December 2007 (EST)
I think we do need a standard, if only so that it is consistent on where they are listed on a county's page. (Are they on the county page or under the township?) Having them in both places could be confusing.
On one hand, I prefer including the township so that the county's page isn't cluttered with a list of dozens and dozens of cemeteries. On the other hand, if you list them under the township, then you have to page through several township pages to find all of the cemeteries for that county.
Is there a way that a county page could have a link to a page with a list of cemeteries? For example, on Place:Perry, Ohio, United States, could there be a link to a separate page with all of the Perry County cemeteries? This would group all of them together, yet not clutter up the county page with a list of the more than 120 cemeteries in the county. --Ajcrow 14:54, 31 December 2007 (EST)
I have all the cemeteries in my database listed WITH their township, thus when I upload my GEDCOM's that is what my place pages will look like, and I have 59,000+ folks in my database altogether. However I agree it would be nice to be able to hit a county page and see what cemeteries are found in the county. WeRelate does have the ability to show "also located in" so why would it be so bad to have it both ways? linked to their township page as well as their county pages?
What is wrong with an Upload of the GNIS places cemeteries directly under the county, and then let folks (like me) who know the township to a particular cemetery, create a link to those (or edit the page) with a township included? Place:Butternut Ridge/Lay Cemetery, Adams (Township), Seneca, Ohio, United States--Msscarlet1957 10:34, 1 January 2008 (EST)
I just had another thought about having cemeteries listed just under the county and not the township. What about those instances where there are two cemeteries with the same name in a county? For example, Licking County, Ohio has two different Cedar Hill cemeteries; one is a large cemetery in the city of Newark, the other is a small, rural cemetery out in Bowling Green Township.
Like Msscarlet1957, I prefer the cemeteries to be listed under the township. (All of the ones in my databases are listed that way, too.) But for ease of use, it would be nice to have a single list per county somewhere. --Ajcrow 11:08, 1 January 2008 (EST)
Since Dallan is writing about what GNIS has, I am guessing he is thinking of importing all the GNIS listings for cemeteries, in which case there is no real need for discusssion, they will automatically be set up by county, so there is not need for us to do a lot of editing at this time, until after he would do that import, and then we would edit those pages to link to the township pages (in my humble opinion). Dallan are you going to import the cemetery database from GNIS?? --Msscarlet1957 11:39, 1 January 2008 (EST)
One more thing I just noticed (for my county) is that all the townships to the county did not have pages yet, so I just sat here and created all those. Now I will be able to link up the cemeteries to their townships, since GNIS does not have that information available (it seems).--Msscarlet1957 12:41, 1 January 2008 (EST)
It's good to have this sort of discussion about cemeteries. To the mix I would observe that it's a different sort of place in other ways - it's a little disconcerting to have cemeteries offered as candidates for a birth place.--Jrm03063 20:02, 1 January 2008 (EST)
Here is one link on cemetery recording information. [1] --Beth 13:44, 2 January 2008 (EST)
Here's a thought: One of the projects for this year is to make better use of the categories appearing at the bottom of the page. For example, the Seneca county category page currently includes all of the places in Seneca county - even if they are located within a township - so all of the cemeteries in Seneca currently appear in this category page. The category also includes articles, sources, and users researching that county. Eventually I'd like the category page to also include all of the people and families with events in the county. (Currently people and families appear in town-based categories; but I'm thinking of dropping town-based categories and putting the people and families into county-based categories.) Once we get categories working better, they'll be featured more prominently on the page.
Putting all of these pages into one category is probably unwieldy, so we'll probably create sub-categories for people and families (e.g., Category:People of Seneca, Ohio, United States or maybe Category:Smith in Seneca, Ohio, United States). We could create other sub-categories as well (e.g., for sources or places in the county). We could create a separate sub-category for cemeteries or put cemeteries in with the place subcategory.
Although cemeteries are not the same types of places as cities, people list them quite often in the "Place" field for burial events (sometimes listing a cemetery, other times listing the town the cemetery is located in), and so it's simpler in GEDCOM upload to treat cemeteries as places so that burial event places can match either cemeteries or towns.
If we go this route then perhaps the standard ought to be to put the cemetery under the township when the township is known. We'll add the cemeteries from GNIS sometime this Summer and put them directly under the county (unless we find an existing match), and let people rename them over time to be under the proper township.--Dallan 19:59, 4 January 2008 (EST)
Hello everyone,
Just checking to see if this is the correct procedure. I first add the source and then reference the source in my notes, correct? --Beth 20:04, 1 January 2008 (EST)
That works. You could do it the other way as well if you wanted -- first add the source citation on your person/family page and give it the title of the source you want to create. It will show up as a red link, but that's ok. After you've saved the person/family page, click on the red source title link to create the source page.--Dallan 19:59, 4 January 2008 (EST)
Hi Dallan,
There would be no source citation on the person or family page. This is a source for a statement in my text section regarding the census beginning enumeration date. --Beth 20:12, 4 January 2008 (EST)
If you're planning to create a separate Source page, you could link to the source as [[Source:source page title]] in your text, and you could create the Source page either before or after you save the page that links to it. Alternatively, if you just want a list of footnotes to appear at the bottom of your text, you can use <ref> and <references> tags. Take a look at Person:Ella Grey (1) for an example.--Dallan 21:09, 4 January 2008 (EST)
(I've pulled and reformed this comment/request as its own topic)
In order to do some cemetery-related work, it would be nice if I some slightly different image annotation features. Two things in particular.
The above two features would let me create rough plot-plans of a cemetery I'm studying (which I would then scan and upload as an ordinary image). From there, I would use the "pointer" annotations to indicate where a picture was taken and what direction is being faced when the picture was taken. Clicking on the teardrop/pointer would, ideally, bring up a thumbnail of whatever artifact is being documented. Of course from there, the thumbnail itself is clickable to get you to the werelate image page. Alternatively, the annotation could pop up as an ordinary clickable link that could take you anywhere in werelate. An image as a browsing context could be fairly powerful...--Jrm03063 13:48, 2 January 2008 (EST)
And poaching from another idea here on the watercooler - wouldn't it be nice to annotate a census image, or other document, with live links to corresponding person, place, or whatever pages?--Jrm03063 13:52, 2 January 2008 (EST)
Allowing you to enter links to other pages in the text of an annotation should be pretty easy. And if the link is a link to an image page, displaying a thumbnail of the image in the annotation might not be too difficult. These are both do-able this month if you like. But changing the selectable-size block to a pointer or teardrop with a position and direction would take a lot more work (any javascript programmers want to take this on?). I can see that it would be helpful, but it will have to wait until later in the year.--Dallan 19:59, 4 January 2008 (EST)
Hi,
No maps for me on Pedi-Map. --Beth 17:36, 2 January 2008 (EST)
They're working for me. Can you give a URL or page title of a Pedi-Map that doesn't work, and also say what browser and operating system you're using?--Dallan 19:59, 4 January 2008 (EST)
Hi Dallan,
Thanks; the maps are working now. I believe the maps did not work temporarily while you were reformatting the places. --Beth 20:35, 4 January 2008 (EST)
Where are the vaild dates for places listed? I attempted to enter before 1900 but that is not allowed. What is acceptable? I entered Place:Cora, Comanche, Texas, United States. Read the external link; there is not a definite date of the place disappearing which seems logical; death dates of towns are not often recorded or even thought about. --Beth 20:02, 2 January 2008 (EST)
Perhaps I should just drop the requirement that the from and to years on place pages be 3-4 digit years. Then you could enter what made the most sense. (I agree that death dates of places are often ambiguous.) Any objections to this?--Dallan 19:59, 4 January 2008 (EST)
--Beth 22:18, 2 January 2008 (EST)
Never mind it is already there. --Beth 18:16, 3 January 2008 (EST)
I was entering in pages for the first time in awhile and I noticed that it will actually say (new) next to it if there is no existing page, which I like. However, when I click on the new family page is tells me the spouse I entered is "not found" and won't let me save any information until I remove the spouses name and click "add new person page" and retype the name. Am I doing something wrong or is it just a little bug?
--Brannon11:52 3 January 2008 (MST)
Seems to be a little bug. You have to do exactly as you described but then it does work if you remove the first entry for the person. --Beth 14:07, 4 January 2008 (EST)
Or you can just type "(new)" beside the name and it will work. --Ronni 16:11, 4 January 2008 (EST)
Sorry about that. I'll fix it early next week.--Dallan 19:59, 4 January 2008 (EST)
Could you add a donation link on the home page? --Beth 21:15, 4 January 2008 (EST)
Sorry, I finally found the donate button, but I could not find the button the other day when I wanted to donate. I am going to carefully read the home page before I ask again for something that is already there. --Beth 17:43, 6 January 2008 (EST)
I noticed that WeRelate has separate pages for names that only differ in a capital or lower case letter. As an example: Mckinzie or McKinzie. Now I added McKinzie because the program did not seem to recognize Mckinzie and McKinzie as the same name.
Is this a correct assumption? --Beth 22:14, 4 January 2008 (EST)
This is the only frustrating thing about the Wikipedia software that I have found: titles are case-sensitive. I just redirected Surname:Mckinzie to your new Surname:McKinzie page, which is how the people on Wikipedia deal with this issue.--Dallan 14:59, 8 January 2008 (EST)
Is there a way to display an image that has annotations directly on a PERSON/FAMILY page? When the image is placed on the page, the only way I can see the annotations is by clicking on the image which then takes me to the original image page where the annotations are shown. --Ronni 01:59, 7 January 2008 (EST)
I'll add that to the todo list for the next couple of months.--Dallan 14:59, 8 January 2008 (EST)
Like the new Drop downs. Bill 11:18, 10 January 2008 (EST)
Thanks! The update didn't go as smoothly as I had hoped (those using the site yesterday can attest to that), but I'm hoping it will make the site easier to navigate especially for new users. I'll be updating the site again tonight to fix a few remaining issues and improve page download times.--Dallan 19:06, 10 January 2008 (EST)
I was in the middle of some heavy-duty editing when the message flashed across the page that the updating was in progress. I had some head problems at first figuring out what was happening but once I have gotten used to the new drop-downs they certainly make it much easier to navigate the site - thanks Dallan, as always! Walt 13:20, 11 January 2008 (EST)
Hello everyone, is anyone else having this problem? I have people that I know were in my tree and now the FTE says they are not in my tree; when I click on the + button it does add them to the tree but what's up with this? I have not identified precisely when this occurs and when it does not.--Beth 20:55, 12 January 2008 (EST)
We had a bug for about a week where pages you created were not added to your tree. They were added to your watchlist, but not your tree. I thought about automatically adding all of your watched pages to your tree, but I worried that some people might be watching pages that they didn't want added to their tree. If you'd like me to make sure that all of your watched (person, family, image, source, mysource) pages are in your tree, just leave me a note. This goes for everyone.--Dallan 17:47, 14 January 2008 (EST)
Hi Dallan,
I still had people not in my tree yesterday that had been in my tree, but I added them back. Will let you know if it happens again. --Beth 09:52, 16 January 2008 (EST)
How about checking out this page and tell me what I have done wrong on this one? The page is Family:Leonard Coker and Charlotta Wilson (1). Why is the link to child Mary E. Coker in red? Thanks. --Beth 18:09, 13 January 2008 (EST)
It looks fine now. This sometimes happens to me too Beth and I think it must have something to do with caching, so waiting a few minutes usually takes care of it. --Ronni 22:58, 13 January 2008 (EST)
Hi Ronni, I know I need some new glasses <g> but Mary E. Coker on the family page is still red and has been red for 2 days or have I gone completely bonkers? --Beth 07:44, 14 January 2008 (EST)
Beth, It also looks fine to me. If its still appearing in red to you, try clearing your cache, and/or refreshing the page. What you are probably seeing is the version of the page that your computer automatically stores in its cache; when you return to the page sometime later, if its still in the cache, that's the page that will be re-served to you, not the new modified page. Eventually the problem will go away on its own, but you can speed the process by clearing the cache or sometimes just by refreshing the page. That forces your system to go to the original for a new copy. Bill 07:56, 14 January 2008 (EST)
Okay, I finally got it to turn blue, but I had to clear out the cache completely and reenter my password etc. --Beth 10:41, 14 January 2008 (EST)
This has been an elusive bug to track down. It's definitely due to caching, but caching happens in several different places (browser, WeRelate server, and sometimes intermediate servers). If this happens to anyone again, could you do three things and let me know the outcome?
If you could also let me know the browser you're using and the title of the page with the problem, I'd appreciate it. Thanks!--Dallan 17:47, 14 January 2008 (EST)
Okay Dallan, I have a red link on Person:Elizabeth McGuire (5); the family link is red. Step 1 did not fix the problem.
Step 2. There is no action=edit to replace. The page editing person above has the following URL: http://www.werelate.org/fte/index.php?userName=Beth&treeName=Robert+and+Elizabeth+Coker+Family+of+Murray+County%2C+Georgia
Therefore, I am unable to perform steps 2 and 3. My browser is Internet Explorer.
Best, --Beth 08:07, 15 January 2008 (EST)
After editing the page the link is now blue. --Beth 09:58, 15 January 2008 (EST)
Unfortunately, options 2 and 3 aren't available when you're running the family tree explorer. I'll keep looking into this.--Dallan 22:55, 15 January 2008 (EST)
I see that if I first enter a given name and surname unknown and then later identify the surname and add the surname to the given name; the namespace for the person and family is not changed. I hoped that this would be updated directly by the program. What do I do manually to effect this change? --Beth 19:59, 13 January 2008 (EST)
Rename the page using the "Rename" link at the top of the page. --Ronni 22:56, 13 January 2008 (EST)
Thanks Ronni; that was easy enough. --Beth 07:56, 15 January 2008 (EST)
Hello Everyone,
Has anyone had trouble creating a new User Page? I tried to create a User Page similar to a do to list. The instructions say it should show up on the left side under the Researching Surname catagory. After trying to create the page it seem to be stuck. Suggestions? DFree--DFree 21:34, 13 January 2008 (EST)
It has been several days since I created a new user page so I don't know. Does it show up under My Relate > Dashboard > User Pages? If not something must be buggy. --Beth 21:51, 13 January 2008 (EST)
I just tried to create a user page DFree and it got stuck on me too. I'll send Dallan a note. Thanks! --Ronni 22:53, 13 January 2008 (EST)
Sorry about that! It's fixed now.--Dallan 17:47, 14 January 2008 (EST)
Hello Dallan,
Thank You for your hard work I just created the User Page. It worked like a charm. Thanks!!--DFree 11:55, 15 January 2008 (EST)
First of all, I really like many of the changes that have been made. Drop down menues and pages automatically being specified as (new) and other changes have made the site much easier to navigate.
I was just wondering though, it seems like I used to be able to launch the FTE, and any page I edited and saved while using a specified tree would automatically be added to that tree. Now I have to add them manually though. Was I just mistaken, or do I need to change a setting, or did something really change there?
That should still be working. I'll look into it tomorrow.--Dallan 17:47, 14 January 2008 (EST)
I tried adding pages in several different ways with different browsers today. I couldn't get it to break. The tree that I had open in the family tree explorer was always checked. It could be a javascript issue, because checking the checkbox for the appropriate tree is actually done by a javascript function that's supposed to run in your browser. Can you tell me what browser and operating system it's not working on? Could you also press Control-F5 to see if that helps?--Dallan 22:55, 15 January 2008 (EST)
Has this happened to anyone? First time for me. I received a warning from Adobe Flash player 9 stating that a script in this movie is causing Adobe Flash Player 9 to run slowly. If it continues to run your computer may become unresponsive. So I selected to quit running the script. The upper left portion of the FTE window went crazy and I could not exit my tree. I closed my browsr.
Doing a google search one response was that it is not my computer but happens when the flash script enters an infinite loop.
Computer is 2.40 GHz with 1 GB of RAM, running XP with service pack 2, using browser IE7.
Advice please. --Beth 17:52, 15 January 2008 (EST)
This happens when family tree explorer is doing something that's taking an overly-long amount of time, or if as you say it gets itself into an infinite loop. I've tried to eliminate all of the long-running scripts, but I may have missed a few. Do you remember what you were doing at the time? That would help me to track down the problem.
(As an FYI, it's annoying, but it doesn't affect the information in your pages. If it happens again, please let me know. You might also want to try clicking on the option to let the script run a little while longer to see if it can finish given a little more time.)
--Dallan 22:55, 15 January 2008 (EST)
Hi Dallan,
What was I doing at the time? I believe the message appeared when I was editing Person:Annis Coker (1). I entered events and sources and a caption for the image; just basic stuff as I recall. --Beth 09:55, 16 January 2008 (EST)