User talk:Andrew Lancaster

Welcome

Welcome to WeRelate, your virtual genealogical community. We're glad you have joined us. At WeRelate you can easily create ancestor web pages, connect with cousins and other genealogists, and find new information. To get started:

• Take the WeRelate tour to see what you can do
• Watch the "Getting Started" tutorial videos and learn how to make wiki pages for your ancestors
• Explore the Step by step Tutorials, if needed
• Create a User Profile page to tell other people about yourself and the families you are researching
• Read the etiquette page to learn expected behavior on a wiki
• Find other ways to get involved on the community portal
• Ask questions on our Support page

If you need any help, we will be glad to answer your questions. Just go to the Support page, click on the Add Topic link, type your message, then click the Save Page button. Thanks for participating and see you around! --Support 14:23, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Response to "Links to other websites are not allowed" from the Support desk [8 April 2017]

Ref:[1]
Hello again. Can you give me an example of when you are receiving the message above, i.e. a specific page on which it occurred and what you had entered on that page? Thanks, --cos1776 11:59, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

[from User talk:Cos1776:]

In response: I have seen this message in response to various attempts to add sources, either within the articles or using any other method. Actually I even get it when trying to mention an example URL editing here on your talk page. For some time the first article I have tried working on has been on William Hastings (1). I attempted to make the sourcing more clear by referring to the Early English Books project website run by Michigan University, which is the handiest way to cite Dugdale, who should be indicated as the main/only source for some of the facts on that article. Today I made a return to make a new effort and eventually succeeded, to make a repository entry for that website, but even to cite using that repository entry you should cite a URL.--Andrew Lancaster 12:07, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

In looking over some of the pages mentioned, a few things jump out at me that could be improved. Since this site is a collaborative endeavor among the volunteers working here, some areas are in better shape than others, depending on how much attention has been received. The WeRelate Source page in question Source:Dugdale, William. Baronage of England, or, an Historical Account of the Lives and Most Memorable Actions of Our English Nobility is a good example of a page that has not received much attention. If you look over the history of that page, you see that the only improvements (edits) have been the automatic creation and updates by our program as our source database has undergone changes over the years. So, we can update that page as we go through this.

You have mentioned both the EEBO project which contains digital images of the source above and the Univ of Michigan's sister project EEBO-TCP which looks like it contains annotated transcripts of the text in the source above (I only briefly examined this site). I also see the WeRelate Repository page you started, but it looks like that page is referencing a mix of the two projects above.

If I understand you correctly, it sounds like you wish to cite a specific page in the source and to create a direct link to the corresponding transcript page in the Univ of MI's transcription project above, such as p 574. Am I on the right track? --cos1776 12:57, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

ps - Please feel free to respond here, so that we can keep the discussion together. Thanks.

Yes it is obviously the type of profile which is often weak in many online collaborations, and I worked already on the Wikitree equivalent, and articles of that type for a long time. I have always simply found it impossible to work on Werelate. I also have a personal webpage which I have seen get cited about this particular family http://users.skynet.be/lancaster/Hastings%2520Part%202.html --Andrew Lancaster 13:45, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

Interesting that I just managed to paste in a URL. The problems seems inconsistent, or did you find a solution?--Andrew Lancaster 13:46, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

PS, I am aware of both EEBO webpages, but I did mention Michigan. I am of course open to advice on the details of how to distinguish these or any other sources, but I have a bigger problem before we get to that one.--Andrew Lancaster 13:49, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

I apologize that I went offline for a bit. I am on travel at the moment, so my connection is in and out for the next week or so, but it seems to be up again now. I am glad to see from William Hasting's page that the external links to the transcript pages are working for you now. Your profile says that you are familiar with Wikipedia, which is good, because we use the same software here, albeit an older version of it. Much of what you can do at Wikipedia, you can also do here by using the same wiki markup techniques. Please don't hesitate to ask again if you get stuck.

There are different ways in which you can go about setting up the WeRelate Source page to refer to the EEBO project(s), which I think would be a very helpful addition. I can demonstrate the way I might choose to do it, and you can see if it works for you. If it does not, we can always try another way. I will make some changes to the Source page either tonight or tomorrow and you can let me know if you would prefer something different. Regards, --cos1776 21:34, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

Have tried editing that article, but improvised a bit on the sourcing while I worked more on getting the information correct. I seem to have made all the sources now invisible? Possibly I am using an unadvisable mark-up? I can now only see the sourcing notes in edit mode.--Andrew Lancaster 21:42, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

The final ref tag in the narrative wasn't closed properly, it seems to work now. -- Bruce Kendall 22:54, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

Greetings! [11 April 2017]

I am always pleased to see someone trying to work in the older/medieval spaces - so welcome!

If I may be so bold, a couple of general comments...

• While it is possible to use WP style wiki mark-up to generate source references for a page - there's a reason to prefer the WR explicit approach. WR allows users to export results in the GEDCOM format - and such references won't be transformed accordingly.
• Likewise, you can use wiki mark-up to generate notes of various kinds, but use of the explicit WR fields will allow exported results to use the appropriate GEDCOM note structure.

Feel free to disagree...

I too am interested in a long term wiki approach to genealogy, and briefly did some work over at WikiTree. I came to prefer WR because it (more or less) symmetrically imports and exports GEDCOM. As to which would be "the winner" - I would argue - neither (and we don't need a winner, at least, not yet).

My thinking at present is to make use of the Wikidata ID to systematically designate which WR pages are associated with which WP identities. This will allow us to start by systematically establishing genealogical relationships among the people with Wikidata IDs, via the Wikimedia [Wikidata Project]. When that step is accomplished, there remains one more step that we can accomplish in Wikidata. I believe that we are allowed to create additional Wikidata person identifiers, in cases where doing so would allow creation of a genealogical relationship between two identities that are established in Wikidata, by virtue of corresponding Wikipedia pages (any language version of Wikipedia). For example, if there's a WP biography for Dad, and likewise a WP biography for Mom's Dad, we're allowed to create a Wikidata identity for Mom, since it will create a relationship between Dad and Mom's Dad.

A more concrete example...

• Thomas Stanley, 2nd Earl of Derby (Wikidata ID Q4444793^? , married Anne Hastings
• Anne, is the daughter of Edward Hastings, 2nd Baron Hastings (Wikidata ID Q5343362^?
• Creation of an identity for Anne, will allow Wikidata to represent the genealogy link between Thomas and Edward.

Only after Wikidata is substantially extended in this manner, does it become necessary to start to think about how to move to genealogy not well covered to that point. At least, that's my thinking...

Best Regards...

-jrm--jrm03063 16:46, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for contacting me.

1. Concerning my edits, I am very happy to get advice. I have been hoping someone will come and show me preferred ways of working etc. Are there any really exemplary profiles I could look at? I will check your edits on various articles and maybe post comments/questions. I am bit by bit trying to use more of the WeRelate specific functions, but it will take time for me to get used to them, and in the meantime I am editing faster than I can learn. So I seeing my initial edits as basic groundwork, and I intend to come back and tidy up. Mind you, I am not confident that the generic mark-up is never useful? You might have noticed that my initial sorties have been into profiles which require some explanation, and within a complicated explanation paragraph you also need sourcing.

I made a couple changes to some of your work, and might make more, and I wanted you to know what I was thinking and why. I certainly could be wrong!

2. Concerning Werelate, I have always been interested in it, but always had trouble getting it working. The sourcing system is a bit imposing and you can read above how it took some time to work for me whenever I tried. Is that a well-known glitch or maybe something built in to discourage new editors from over-doing it? The other big concern is very simply the fact that there seems to be less users, and less progress, at least looking at lines I know. Of course that makes some sense because Wikitree have gone for "cousin bait" as it is called there, and many of the most recurring complaints on Wikitree stem from that. Maybe Werelate will pick up speed more slowly but build up better? Anyway, for now I think I will keep trying both, because the comparison is interesting. I am interested in managing information anyway.

It is a slow mover. There was a burst a few years ago, but a lot of that was related to some early GEDCOM dumps which have taken (literally) years to work through. Also, since GEDCOMs don't get loaded without review, a lot of folks are probably put off. But the advantage of that is that we don't get folks who dump a weak GEDCOM, then disappear. It's also true that the interface departs enough from what's common to scare a lot of people off. It is a bit of an acquired taste that way - and rest assured - I've never found anything that I wanted to do but couldn't.

3. I noticed some links to Wikidata and never thought of that before. Interesting. Potentially all genealogy wikis could contribute to something like that? Or are you seeing this as work you do in Wikidata itself? Not sure I fully follow yet.--Andrew Lancaster 17:08, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

It is (ultimately) work in Wikidata proper - but there are aspects that relate to both. You will see that there are Wikitree people working on Wikidata...

• You'll see that Wikidata biography related pages often have facts that point back at the corresponding Wikitree page.
• The pages on Wikidata aren't really human friendly, but that's not their intent. It's more of a fact repository that's intended for use by other systems.
• For example, the different language links you see on a Wikipedia page are a consequence of a common Wikidata ID that the different language WP versions point at.
• WR could follow the example of Wikitree, placing identifiers on appropriate Wikidata pages, pointing back to WR. Instead, I decided that it was more immediately important for WR GEDCOM exports to contain the corresponding Wikidata reference number.
• I have code that searches out WR pages containing the Wikidata ID fact. It then determines how those pages relate to each other. Shortly, I'll be making it able to compare relationships found on WR with those found on Wikidata. Differences will show things that are missing from Wikidata and WR - and I should be able to add to both as a result.