Person talk:William Walton (6)

How are we doing? [10 November 2008]

Amelia,

I know we watch a lot of pages in common-- at least those of early New England colonists. As you can probably tell, I've been going through pages where I have set information (like this one) and cleaning up the narrative sections. I realize that the format I use in my own offline GEDCOM (updated since I uploaded my GEDCOM over a year ago) is different than what was here, especially around formatting of Sources. I feel as one frequently does when organizing a messy room (my old GEDCOM and associated pages): it gets worse before it gets better. I just want to check in with you periodically and see if what I'm doing is okay. I'm also merging as I go, but I know that everyone has their own style and you know the WeRelate style probably better than anyone (maybe even Dallan!). So I just want to acknowledge that I'm probably making things a bit messier before they get better, and I am completely open to any suggestions you have for me so that I don't make your life more miserable. You already do so much around here. Happy for you to be my guide as I return to WeRelate after a long absence. -- Jillaine 08:42, 10 November 2008 (EST)

Hi Jillaine. I'm rather thrilled that someone is interested enough in particular pages to take the time to edit them. I fully agree that things get messier before they get better, and I've done more than my share of that. Making notes coherent is hard and time-consuming, and usually requires several drafts. If I see a change when I have time, and notice with my fresh eyes changes that will advance the goal of coherence, I'll make them. But don't worry too much about running afoul of WeRelate style. I'm not sure we have one yet. We all have our theories, and mine tends toward the harsh editor who cuts unnecessary detail/speculation. There are many who have the opposite theory and want to preserve as much information as possible, and that's still being hashed out in theory and in practice.--Amelia 10:00, 10 November 2008 (EST)

Thanks for the quick response. Since I initially uploaded my GEDCOM to WeRelate (back in Spring 2007), I went through and did some major work, source collection, then editing of the emigrating ancestors of my husband's maternal side. I did this so I could come up with a document (for his family) of all the colonial emigrators that was in a consistent format. Only upon coming back here did I realize that such formatting could also serve the wiki. So I only have this formatting on those born in England who emigrated during the Great Migration. So that's what I'm focusing on first, merging as I go. Then I'll go back and clean up the sources (or you will...) Okay. I think we're on the same page. Glad to know that. Jillaine 10:33, 10 November 2008 (EST)

Text References vs. Sources [10 November 2008]

Amelia,

I notice you use "Text References" as well as Sources on this page. Could you please distinguish them for me? I'm curious to understand why one just wouldn't always use Sources. If you're using them, there must be a good reason. I want to make sure I'm consistent when I go about converting my various imbedded sources (imbedded into the narrative) to either Sources (which is where I was headed) or Text References. Thanks! -- Jillaine 08:46, 10 November 2008 (EST)

Well, the first reason to use them was that I didn't know originally that you can footnote to sources (i.e. ^[[#S1|S1]]), so on earlier pages (like Walton), I had to use the <ref> tags even for sources that I already had in sources. Now when I'm editing, I tend to use them for things that either aren't full sources, or are in the nature of footnotes, or sometimes if there are a lot of references, I'll have refs that in turn point to sources for consistency. For example, I have a lot of references in my personal database where I only have a NEHGR pin cite, usually to a list of founders of something or whatnot, or I'll have cites to old English documents that were cited in some other source, and I have no source page that they would belong to. I figure if there is no source page that would be helpful, it's a wash between text refs and sources, and it's much faster to convert parenthetical source refs to text ref footnotes than to take them out and make sources out of them. So there's my hard and fast rule ;-)!--Amelia 10:00, 10 November 2008 (EST)

That makes a lot of sense. Okay. I'll need to remind myself to come back here and re-read this when I'm ready to focus on source clean-up of the narratives. Jillaine 10:34, 10 November 2008 (EST)