WeRelate talk:Support/2010

Can't find Massachusetts Vital Records to 1850 [13 January 2010]

Certainly there is a source page for the over-arching "Massachusetts Vital Records to 1850" but I cannot find it in the Search engine for Sources. I have tried exact search and open. I get pages and pages and pages (screens) of specific towns, but not the overarching source-- for example, the database as it is at NEHGS. I tried putting NEHGS (spelled out and otherwise) into the author field. Nada.

How do I find this source page? Please help!

Thanks!

-- Jillaine 09:32, 16 December 2009 (EST)

UGH! I finally found it, but it should NOT be this difficult. What did it was to put www.newenglandancestors.org into the keyword field. Even then, though, the result did not show up until halfway down the second page. Just seems to me that whatever is entered into the title field should come up FIRST. Jillaine 09:38, 16 December 2009 (EST)

Keyword search for 'Massachusetts vital records 1850' works (second entry), but I can't get it to show up just using title and place either. It's not a source It's also linked from a bunch of the town-specific pages as I get around to it (if you just need to find it).--Amelia 15:34, 16 December 2009 (EST)

There are two issues here:

• Massachusetts is not a word in the source title field for Source:Massachusetts, United States. Vital Records to 1850, so when you search for Massachusetts vital records 1850 in the title field, this source won't be ranked very highly. This was an unanticipated side-effect of removing the place-covered from the source title field. In hindsight, I should not have asked people to do this. Eventually I need to add the place-covered back into the source title field. In the short term I think the best solution is for me to search the source page title when you enter something into the title field when searching sources.

• There are a lot of county-specific sources for Massachusetts vital records, which tend to obscure the state-level source. The same thing is happening with census sources -- the county-specific sources tend to obscure the country-level sources. I need to think about how to make sure that state and country-level sources get ranked higher than county-level sources. The current plan is simply to rank shorter titles higher than longer titles.

--Dallan 15:37, 31 December 2009 (EST)

On what to rank higher, I'm not sure "shorter" is always better. If I search for Waltham vital records, I don't really want the state ones or the county ones to show up - I should get Waltham first, then Middlesex county, then Massachusetts. What I don't want to see is Massachusetts first if there is a Waltham record, and I don't want to see every other town in Massachusetts before I see Waltham. But you're right that it's also true that if I just search for 1870 census, I'm expecting the country-level document to come up. Basically, if I specify X place, I want the records that start with that place first, be it city, county, state or country. Followed by "included in" for the county or state where a city is, etc. If I leave it blank, I either am relying on the title, or I want the largest entity, which is probably where this is all going to get screwed up....--Amelia 17:05, 1 January 2010 (EST)

I'm assuming that you wouldn't get state/county records in this example because they wouldn't include the word "Waltham". I'm thinking that the sorting would first order by the number of keywords that matched, so all titles containing Waltham would sort to the top, then the system would sort those titles by length.--Dallan 14:41, 12 January 2010 (EST)

This is where human desires are going to conflict with search methodology, it sounds like. If I'm searching for vital records that cover Waltham, what I want to come up with I put "vital records" in the title and "Waltham" in the place is 1) sources that have "vital records" in the title and Waltham as the *only* covered place -- and it would be more helpful to have these ordered alpha than length, I would assume; 2) sources that have "vital records" in the title and Middlesex county -- the county, not other towns in the county -- as the covered place; and 3) sources that cover all of Massachusetts.

What happens now is that I do get (1), but then I get Springfield VR, then VR from Manitoba, Canada, a few more Mass town VR's, the Mass state VRs to 1850 as #8, the Mass VRs to 1910 as #12, and nothing else of use in the top 20.

I have to go now before I talk about the census problem... --Amelia 14:59, 12 January 2010 (EST)

I belong to NEHGS and haven't had a problem getting the MASS VR records.

Sometimes it takes a while to load, and sometimes it won't because they keep updating the files.

So much has been added in the last year.

Bonnie--Bboops 06:21, 13 January 2010 (EST)

What Happens to Data if WeRelate Goes Away? [15 January 2010]

In July 2008, AOL discontinued use of a number of personal pages and blogs under the AOL umbrella that the company was looking to drop (or "sunset" as they politely put it at the time),^[1] which included a number of family history pages, proving to be a somewhat minor irritant to genealogy users and contributors. AIM’s PeopleConnect (Pixnay) Blog also shut down early this year, with very little advance notice to its users.^[2] A much more serious cleansing occurred this past Spring at Yahoo when they closed the popular GeoCities site, a free web hosting service in use for many years for tens of thousands of genealogy web sites. ^[3] Although many of these GeoCities sites were archived elsewhere,^[4] important links to these old sites provided by popular cross-referenced genealogy indexing services such as Cyndi’s List ceased to exist or became no longer functional.^[5]

With the inherent transitionary nature of the Internet in mind generally, and with those specific examples of real life instances cited above fresh at hand, I pose the question, what will happen to our data if WeRelate ceases to operate? If WeRelate fails to generate enough financial support to continue operations, or if Dallan & Solveig decide to quickly retire on a desolate Caribbean island without Internet access, what preparations have been made to ensure the safeguarding and continued access to WeRelate information? In the Army we used to call it a "Continuity of Operations Plan."

While I would like to think that my genealogy data is in a form that will outlive me no matter what my relatives do with my physical family history collection after my passing, can I be relatively confident that WeRelate is a reliable and safe choice for uploaded documents and records looking 25-50 years down the road?--BobC 14:48, 23 December 2009 (EST)

Well, first of all, if you're really worried about this, you can regularly save back-ups to your hard drive of all the WeRelate pages you've contributed to, or that you're interested in. Or you can regularly download GEDCOMs of your own stuff, if WeRelate is the only place it exists. I don't know what sort of back-up Dallan could reasonably have in place for the entire corpus of WeRelate pages, though, since there's millions of them.

But "looking 25-50 years down the road," I think is useless. Look back a mere 20 years and see if anyone had the slightest idea what the Internet was going to look like in 2009 -- or if the word "Internet" even meant anything to most people. If you have physical docs you want to preserve, upload hi-res scans of them to one of the commercial online storage sites (since CDs aren't guaranteed to be readable in 20 years, either). Also send copies of the scans to family members or to anyone else you think might be interested, to insure that multiple copies of the information survive. Then store the physical originals in a climate-controlled safety-deposit box, or give them to a university archive. All of this is a good strategy for maybe five years, maybe ten years, max -- but that's really about as far into the future as you can reasonably plan anyway. Really. --Mike 10:10, 24 December 2009 (EST)

Of course, you're right, Mike. It's sad (and a little scary) to think that as technologically advanced as we are relative to 20 years ago that we may not even be able to see or read what we save now in the ethernet 20 years hence. I remember not too long ago backing things up on those little 3-1/2" floppy disks thinking I could always access my information if my computer went down -- I now realize I haven't even had the ability to recover what's on those disks (or a computer to read them) for over five years now. Since CDs are only a temporary solution (as you said), and external hard drives are only slightly safer and still not considered long term, I am looking for that longer term solution. Maybe looking back to the commercial printing process and the old microfilm camera is still the most permanent way to keep and share (on a smaller scale) what we have into future generations. --BobC 15:40, 24 December 2009 (EST)

Another note, which is a benefit of open-content material, is that WeRelate can make its entire database of pages available to anyone who wants to use it (Wikipedia also does this). So if for some reason WeRelate were to go away, someone else could take the database and run with it.

But we make enough money on ads to support hosting costs, so the idea of WeRelate going away sometime seems pretty remote to me.--Dallan 16:35, 12 January 2010 (EST)

The December 2009 issue of Family Tree Magazine had an article by Sunny McClellan Morton entitled, "Security Measures: How do genealogy Web site protect their data--and the facts you've stored there?" In it she inquired of the major web genealogy repositories, such as Ancesty, Footnote, FamilySearch, and WorldVitalRecords, what measures they take to protect their data from loss or destruction. While a few of the corporate respondents were somewhat vague for security reasons, it seemed the common thread was redundant servers backed up at secure off-site locations. As most people know, the LDS stores their's within the Granite Mountain Records Vault near Salt Lake City, Utah.--BobC 12:42, 15 January 2010 (EST)

Bboops question [12 January 2010]

I have no Idea what I am doing here. Can't figure out how it works. I keep getting messages, but can't pull up my own tree?????

Bonnie--Bboops 10:54, 3 January 2010 (EST)

Can you please be more specific in what you're looking for? What do you mean by "your tree"? To see any pages you have uploaded in a gedcom or added to a tree, go to My Relate in the blue bar above and choose "Launch FTE", which will launch Family Tree Explorer and simplify navigating among pages you uploaded or added to your tree. If this is not what you are looking for, please let us know.--Amelia 21:04, 3 January 2010 (EST)

Betty uploaded a gedcom in Sep 2007 and this tree is not listed on her user page. Looks like she has received many messages during the duplicate merge project. How one adds the tree to her page seems to be the question. --Beth 21:39, 3 January 2010 (EST)

I added all of the pages in her watchlist into a tree for Bonnie and let her know.--Dallan 15:19, 12 January 2010 (EST)

How to Archive Old Messages? [11 January 2010]

Hello All,

I tried to archive my old messages, and was only half successful. I could not locate the directions on how to do this? Any suggestion on where to look on WeRelate to locate this information? Any suggestion on how to get rid of the "Category:Speedy Delete" on the new subpage page too? Thanks, Debbie Freeman --DFree 11:15, 11 January 2010 (EST)

Debbie, the speedy delete category is on your archive page because in one of your messages on that page, you have {{Speedy Delete}}. You could removed the {{ }} around the words. At the very top of Beth's user talk page, she has pages that she has archived. If you don't want the archived page to show up on your main userpage like it is now (DFree/Messages pre 2010), then you can archive just your talk page instead, like Beth has done. To do this, create a page titled: http://www.werelate.org/wiki/User_talk:DFree/Archive_2009 .--Jennifer (JBS66) 11:27, 11 January 2010 (EST)

Hello Jennifer, Thank You for your help. I will follow your suggestion about the speedy delete directions. I guess I am asking a more simple question. How do I transfer my old messages including the title of the messages over to the archived page? Thanks Debbie Freeman --DFree 12:18, 11 January 2010 (EST)

To transfer over your messages, go to your talk page and click on Edit. Select all of the text that you would like to move to the archive. "Cut" the text by either pressing CTRL-X, or selecting Edit-Cut from your browser's menu. Go to your new page and "Paste" the test either by pressing CTRL-V or selecting Edit-Paste from the same browser menu. (note, I see there was a small error with my Archive 2009 link above, I've corrected it).--Jennifer (JBS66) 12:25, 11 January 2010 (EST) --- Hello Jennifer, Thank you very much that did the trick. I was able to transfer the messages like I wanted to. I still can't see the small difference that you did on creating the page title though. Gratefully Debbie Freeman --DFree 12:50, 11 January 2010 (EST) ---

Glad it worked! The small difference was a period and two dashes .-- after the page title, they were a mistake.--Jennifer (JBS66) 12:54, 11 January 2010 (EST)

They are still there? Do I have to edit this out? Will this destroy the new page?--DFree 13:00, 11 January 2010 (EST)

The title of your talk page appears as User talk:DFree/Archive 2009.-- You could always rename it to User talk:DFree/Archive 2009 You could also leave it the way it is, no harm in doing so. Sorry about that mistake!--Jennifer (JBS66) 13:06, 11 January 2010 (EST)

--- Jennifer, I will leave it as is. Thank you so much for the help I really appreciate this. Debbie Freeman --DFree 13:17, 11 January 2010 (EST)

Mergine Duplicates [12 January 2010]

I have a duplicate page for Alexander Erskine Handley And Alexander Handley. They both have the (1). When I followed your instructions for merging the two, only one page came up and the box under it was checked. When I tried to merge, it said I had to check the box that I wanted to merge. I guess I should have had a second page to merge with. I don't know how to correct this duplicate. Thanks.--Suzyq 12:28, 12 January 2010 (EST)

To merge these two pages, go to one of them (say Person:Alexander Erskine Handley (1)), and click on More, Find Duplicates. That will bring you to a search screen. Check the box next to the other Person:Alexander Handley (1) and press the Compare button. That will bring up the merge screen with both versions side-by-side. Make sure the Match box is checked under both names and press Prepare to Merge.--Jennifer (JBS66) 14:01, 12 January 2010 (EST)

MY TALK PAGE LOCKED..View Source Only?? [30 January 2010]

Does anyone know why my talk page is locked?? I cannot evven create it let alone add information. Why would it be locked in any case?

Does anyone know what could be going on here??--Alexandrina 21:40, 18 January 2010 (EST)

It looks normal to me, but I am not the owner, so I cannot guess what the owner sees. Why don't you describe what you do when you try to add information, and describe what happens when you do. Based on no input, I'll ask one question: in the top bar does it list your user name (i.e., the system recognizes you as a registered user) or does it say sign-in? --Jrich 22:38, 18 January 2010 (EST)

Could it be related to "Note 2 User names : shall try to rectify."? Only the matching user will be able to edit the user page. --Jrich 09:03, 19 January 2010 (EST)

It looks like you joined WeRelate two different times, once in Sept and once in Dec of 2008. Your user accounts are User:Alexandrina Murray and User:Alexandrina. I believe that Dallan can merge user accounts, not sure, but I can leave a message on his talk page about it if you like. Which username would you like to keep?--Jennifer (JBS66) 09:15, 19 January 2010 (EST)

It looks like User:Alexandrina has more contributions (User:Alexandrina Murray had only 3), so I kept User:Alexandrina to avoid future confusion.--Dallan 13:58, 23 January 2010 (EST)

Dallan, to reduce the possibilities of this sort of double-creation of accounts occurring, would it be useful to have the system check the email address of a new user in the database? To see if there's already an account tied to that address? I see that on various other websites. A message pops up, "An account for that address already exists." (Or do we already have that?) --Mike 16:13, 23 January 2010 (EST)

That's a very good idea.--Dallan 12:39, 30 January 2010 (EST)

my page seems to be locked also by a dallan , an i would like to know why an how to unlock immediately--Mikekib 07:24, 29 January 2010 (EST)

The page referenced above was not locked, the user accidentally created two accounts and was logging into the wrong one. Mikekib, can you please describe the problem you are having so I can assist? Your account has not been locked, so I am trying to determine the problem you are having. Thank you. --Jennifer (JBS66) 07:36, 29 January 2010 (EST)

Name question

[moved to separate topic to make it easier to find and reply]

I was christened Kaye LaVaun Baker, but never used either name. My name has always been "Bonnie", since birth, as my mother hated both names and we lived in "Bonnie Doon" neighborhood. Also my brothers and sister couldn't say LaVaun, so it became Bon. When I finally changed ii legally to Bonnie, I was sick of documents saying aka or also known as. Some older genealogy books still have me listed as Kaye LaVaun, so how do you handle that.

Bonnie--Bboops 12:54, 25 January 2010 (EST)

Are you asking about creating Person pages? When you look at the page in Edit view, you will see the name area in the upper left. You can add an alternate name. This is appropriate for any of the many cases where a person is known by a name that is not their formal, legal name.

However, since you are writing, I assume that you are a Living person. The policy is not to create Person pages for living people for privacy reasons. So I recommend that you do not create a Person page for yourself or any living relatives. --Judy (jlanoux) 13:34, 25 January 2010 (EST)

difficulty of use [4 March 2010]

i am not a beginner in computers or genealogy. this site seems very difficult to use.. i have been trying to correct a mistake in my tree. every time i correct it & then return to the tree, the mistake remains. help. susan--SusanWhitten70 11:15, 4 March 2010 (EST)

What are you trying to do? If you could provide some specifics, we might be able to help you out. A link to the problem page(s) would be helpful as well. --Amy 11:22, 4 March 2010 (EST)

The site has a bit of a learning curve unfortunately. Have you looked at the tutorials? Also, you might want to make sure that you're saving the page after you edit it.--Dallan 15:03, 4 March 2010 (EST)

Dallan -- Susan and I discussed it a bit at the bottom of my talk page. I got the relationships right, but she said that she is still seeing the wrong things on her tree. -- Amy 15:25, 4 March 2010 (EST)

How can I change the root of my tree? [9 March 2010]

How can I changes the ‘ROOT’ of my tree? I started collecting my genealogy some 30 years when a 2nd cousin introduced me to the local genealogy library. When computers and email came along we started up working together over the net. The enviable happened and mine cashed taking my records with it so my cousin emailed me his tree and as it happens the same thing happened to him and I was able to send it back to him. My only problem now, is he is the starting point the tree is built on. This was not a problem while it is only on my computer but when I uploaded it into WERELATE I discovered that I can’t change it into being my tree. We are using the standard LDS gedcom.--Doug Northrip 00:34, 9 March 2010 (EST)

I've moved your question to its own topic to make it easier to find.

You can do this in the Family Tree Explorer. Select the person. Then use the icon to the left of the green + to make the person the root of the tree. --Judy (jlanoux) 07:55, 9 March 2010 (EST)

Image size. Article pages. [17 March 2010]

I have two questions. First, can the image size be adjusted on, for instance, a Person page?

Second, I find that an Article title doesn't automatically save with Article: at the beginning. Images do as do Persons, in other words I don't have to remember to type Image:. Twice I found that I couldn't link to the article because it didn't begin with Article:. Can this also be automatic or at least change the instructions so that it is clear that the title has to be typed Article: title, etc. My fix was to delete and start again for one and for the other I just redirected.--HLJ411 19:56, 14 March 2010 (EDT)

I can't answer the second question, but I can answer the question about images sizes. Yes, you can resize them on Person pages. In the link, after the image page title, use a pipe symbol | and enter the size in pixels wide you'd like it, followed by px: [[Image:Caldwell,-Robt---Greenlawn-Cols.jpg|450px]] This is how I resized the picture on the Robert Caldwell page. The image I uploaded was 600 pixels wide, but I resized it to 450 on the Caldwell page. Hope this helps! --Amy 20:03, 14 March 2010 (EDT)

Regarding the second question, articles are not in their own namespace, thus they are not prefixed with Article:. Here is an example of an article page. I linked to it using the syntax [[Indiana Obituary Collections and Indexes in The Genealogy Center at the Allen County Public Library]]. To search for articles, you can select the Article namespace from the drop-down box in a search. --Jennifer (JBS66) 20:12, 14 March 2010 (EDT)

Thanks Amy & Jennifer. My problem on the second was that I used two titles. For instance, the article title was Apples, Oranges but the text of the article began with the title Apples and Oranges at the Saturday Bowmanville Market. I wanted to show the latter as the link and found I could only do it if I wrote [[Article:Apples, Oranges|Apples and Oranges at the Saturday Bowmanville Market]] . Using the [[ ]] without the Article: doesn't work. From now on it's only one title or remember to use Article:

Using the [[ ]] without the Article: does work. Here is one article that you created that you've not renamed yet: Last will & testament of Lydia N. Hammond. I created that link by putting [[ ]] around the article's name. Since there is no Article namespace at WeRelate, adding the preface Article: is not necessary - unless... you've renamed your page Article:something or other. In that case, you have forced the word Article: to become part of the title. Can you point me to a specific article link that you're having trouble with? --Jennifer (JBS66) 11:47, 15 March 2010 (EDT)

Jennifer, now that I understand, there really isn't a problem. I was taking the "unless... you've renamed your page Article:something or other" approach which I still prefer because it doesn't lock me into a link description that is exactly the same as the title. I just have to remember to start my title with Article:. Thanks for your help. P.S., exactly what is the definition of namespace?

Namespaces are customized prefixes that provide "containers" of sorts for Wiki contents. Here at WeRelate we have about 16 namespaces, (ex: Person, Family, Portal, Image, MySource, Source, etc). Articles are placed in what we called the Main Namespace, which contains no prefix (just the name of the article itself).

Regarding your comment "because it doesn't lock me into a link description that is exactly the same as the title". Using my previous example of Last will & testament of Lydia N. Hammond... I can decide to call it something else, by using the pipe |. So, I'm curious why the the [[text|other text]] didn't work for you. --Jennifer (JBS66) 14:08, 15 March 2010 (EDT)

I guess I didn't understand. Now I see that there are not 2 but 3 versions possible: [[text]], [[Article:text|other text]] and [[text|other text]]. I'm afraid I don't know why the latter didn't work. Will have to watch carefully the next time I do an article. At the time I used the middle version to get the link set up.

I'd recommend not prefixing the titles of your articles with "Article:", and using either the first or the third version. The Main namespace (the namespace that articles go into) doesn't have a prefix. (You can think of it as having an "empty" prefix if you want.) One of the requests for enhancement is to add a Document namespace for storing document transcriptions (like your last will and testament example). When the Document namespace is added we'll have page titles prefixed with "Document:", and I think having other page titles prefixed with "Article:" may be confusing.--Dallan 10:44, 17 March 2010 (EDT)

Can't Get person page to show, other problems. [31 March 2010]

1) I did a major edit and information dump on the Person Page of Robert Abernathy 1 (m. Sarah Cabbigo). I've had several people tell me--and have verified--that when they enter Robert Abernathy I, they get a bunch of other Robert Abernathys (including his son, grandson, great-grandson, and other peoples' Roberts etc) but no Robert I. The only way to bring up his Person Page is to click on one of the downlines and work your way back up. This needs to be remedied, and I don't know how to do it--please advise.

2) Also, the numbers in () after a person's name are incredibly confusing. E.g., with my Abernathys, Robt.II has (1) after his name, Robt. V has (4), etc. For anyone who has to track the same name through several generations, this is a nightmare. Plus there are other Abernathy lines (I think the Irish line has started posting) and they also have Roberts. I'd suggest getting rid of those numbers, since they don't seem to mean anything and are definitely confusing. You've already got spouse's name, dates and location. That's plenty to identify the Robert in question with that information.

3)Images--I tried to upload a pdf and a tif--and was informed after I'd gone through the entire process that the site doesn't like those formats. I had to post a headright grant as a note, and I can't upload the tif of a colonial record. The site needs to be a lot less picky about what it accepts, as most of us have to take what we can get. Also, what about adding a category on the left for Images, divided into documents and personal. That way, we could upload our copies of documents, and personal photos, but not have them dumped in the middle of the text.

I gotta tell you, I've worked in high technology (computers and software) for almost 30 years--I'm hardly a novice computer user, and I find this site difficult to navigate and somewhat disorganized. Some of my experience is in the area of navigation and user ease of use. I'd be happy to help with making the site more user-friendly.

Judy--BaggyGenes1 15:43, 22 March 2010 (EDT)

"Robert Abernathy I" is actually Person:Robert Abernethy (2) (notice the spelling of the last name). So searching for Abernathy will not find him.

There are a couple of comments on this.
1) If the spelling is not an error, and Abernethy wants to be considered equivalent to Abernathy, then a Surname page needs to be created for both names, with alternate spellings on each that reference the other. Then searching for Abernathy should also return pages named Abernethy. If it is an error, the page should be renamed, and the name fields edited, to get the right spelling.
2) If you search for enough unique information the system does find things well. It might be more useful to tell people to search (in the white box at the top) for "Abernethy Cabbigo" which gets pretty good results, since Cabbigo is not a common name. Or tell them to search for "Robert Abernethy (2)", or send them a link to the page.

The number in parentheses has long been a subject of discussion, but basically, it is what it is for the near future. It can actually be useful since when you have an important person that you work on all the time, like your Robert, for whom it is easy to remember that he is number 2 (unless you change the spelling to Abernathy, then his number will change too). It gets hard when you work on a lot of people, so you have to learn to get the search engine to bring back focused results. By experience, this means trying to specify fairly unique information, and using the exact match search when possible. It can be an art, though, because of different spellings used by different researchers, etc.

Unlike a system at home, there are potentially thousands of people all with some particular names that will eventually be stored in WeRelate, so chances are the number assigned to any particular page will have no meaning or relationship to anything about that person. It is essentially based on how many other pages with the same name were created before yours.

Generation numbers in the name field are not a good idea. This tends to represent too small of a viewpoint, i.e., since immigration. As this is a worldwide site, immigration may not be where all people want to start numbering. They are likely to be removed by others and so you should not expect the generation number to be there to help locate the page. --Jrich 16:34, 22 March 2010 (EDT)

1) It's time-consuming--not to mention space-consuming--to develop two pages for the same person, with different spellings. Plus, that route is a set-up for confusion. What if someone new edits one page, but doesn't realize they need to update the other page as well? You end up with two documents on the same person, saying different things. You'd have to know to go to the history to check which is the most current. Even then, you couldn't be sure which version is correct.

Also, in colonial documents, most surnames are spelled a variety of ways,so it gets really cumbersome if you have to create pages for each spelling (Abernathy/Abernethy is also spelled with an "ie" ending, among other variations). What about instituting a soundex or wildcard search capability?

Re: entering specific information. A lot of people won't have specific information to enter--that's what they're looking for. Again, using Abernathy as an example--Cabbigo is also spelled Cubisha, Cubishe, and Coppage. The number of searches you'd have to do to cover all variations of both surnames is daunting, to say the least.

2) What was the intended purpose of the () number? Maybe that will help me understand why it's necessary. I still see it as more confusing than helpful. Does it really matter which record was created first?

3) Any advice on images? I'd really like to get the Sarah's Cow document posted.

You don't have to create multiple Person pages, but just do this once for the whole surname. Pages that start with "Surname:" are special pages that describe the Surname. Actually, I hadn't looked before because I have done no Abernathy research and didn't know if this is the right thing to do, but there already is a page Surname:Abernathy and Surname:Abernethy linked to each other.

WeRelate search will match any page having any one of the data items entered as search criteria. For example, searching for a first name of Robert and surname of Abernathy will bring back all Roberts and all Abernathys in the system. Because the Surname page for Abernethy is set up it will bring back all Abernethy pages as well. Apparently over 22000 pages fit this criteria. If you use exact match for Robert and Abernethy, only two pages qualify. But with exact search you lose the fuzzy spelling provided by the Surname pages and so you must ask for exactly Abernethy. So it works best if you can do a regular/non-exact search but provide enough unique information to get focused results. The sorting of the results will put the best matches first, generally.

The number in parentheses is to make each page be unique. In a wiki, the information is stored as a page, and each page must have its own unique name. So WeRelate can keep the page for one John Smith separate from other John Smith pages. In your case, Person:Robert Abernethy (1) is born in VA 1719, whereas your Person:Robert Abernethy (2) is born in Scotland abt. 1633. --Jrich 20:40, 22 March 2010 (EDT)

To give a little more information:

• When you create the Surname:Abernathy page and list the related names, that tells the search engine what other names to look for when searching for Abernathy. It takes 4-6 hours before changes to the surname pages "take effect" in the search engine. It looks like this has been done for Abernathy and Abernethy now. (Specifying related names to search needs to be improved upon, I agree. It's on the list of things I need to fix.)

• You can use wildcards (only) at the ends of words so long as you have at least 3 letters before the wildcard. So a search for Abern* returns everyone whose surname begins with Abern.

• You should have been able to upload a PDF file. It's a bug if you can't - please let me know. WeRelate should accept the file if it ends in ".pdf".

• I just modified the list of includable files to include ".tif" and ".tiff".

--Dallan 17:18, 26 March 2010 (EDT)

Just a note about image types and extensions. TIF, TIFF, & BMP graphic files can be huge and real space hogs -- no reason for them for use on WeRelate, unless space is no issue for you anymore. I recommend against allowing them, and instead asking people to save the images on their favorite graphic program in JPG, JPEG, PNG, or GIF file type prior to uploading on WR.

BTW, Dallan, thanks much for permitting PDF files -- it's a great addition! --BobC 17:35, 26 March 2010 (EDT)

I'm not really wild about TIF's either, but I think the problem is that for most people, telling them that they need to convert their TIF images to JPEG or PNG is going beyond what they can accomplish. So we're better off accepting them. If space becomes an issue (it isn't right now), it wouldn't be too difficult for me to automatically convert them.--Dallan 22:24, 31 March 2010 (EDT)

one name research [26 March 2010]

Hello, I am looking around at potential wiki or similar web 2.0 options for a genealogy site that could suit a ONE NAME RESEARCH site. Do you already have people on your site who are doing such research OR do you think your site would support this sort of genealogy research? I am interested in your site as it supported by a public library service, and I am a public librarian working in Australia. Any information or comments much appreciated. louisem--Louisem 02:40, 25 March 2010 (EDT)

That is an interest of mine as well. If you go to the Community Portal and select the Surname Special Interest Portal you will be given information relating to Surname Studies (or the One-Name Research pages) at WeRelate (and elsewhere online). Please feel free to add your own contributions. If you have specific questions, comments, issues or information relating to Single-Name research pages at WeRelate, please voice or share them at the Surname Portal Talk Page. --BobC 08:15, 25 March 2010 (EDT)

Thankyou so much for the information - I will go exploring--Louisem 23:44, 25 March 2010 (EDT)

Louisem, did you decide to add a page here or go elsewhere to add your info. Either way I can add a link here for you at the Surname Portal. --BobC 12:39, 4 August 2010 (EDT)

Login [31 March 2010]

Would it be possible to delete my login and let me register with a different screen name? Thanks. Pam Pollard--Pdpollard 14:13, 28 March 2010 (EDT)

This has been taken care of.--Dallan 22:24, 31 March 2010 (EDT)

help with import [29 March 2010]

I downloaded a GEDCOM and recieved a message that some names were incorrectly formatted. I corrected the names but can't find the "import" tab I was instructed to use after correcting the pages.--Tr smith 22:44, 28 March 2010 (EDT)

The Import tab is the one numbered 9 on the far right when you are in the review. It appears that you attempted to load a new file rather than correcting the existing one. It is a good idea to correct your own database and reload. But you must delete the first one before uploading the new one.

I have removed your file for you. You should now be able to upload the new one without problems. I'm sorry you had this problem. --Judy (jlanoux) 03:14, 29 March 2010 (EDT)

Publishing living public persons [30 March 2010]

Is it allowed to publish living public persons who gave their permission to publish their details ? Just as an example: Queen Beatrix van Oranje-Nassau. I want to publish her descendants, they are also published in Wikipedia.Regards, salutations, groeten, Fred Bergman 04:50, 30 March 2010 (EDT)

Hello Fred, WeRelate does make an exception to our living person policy (ie: does not have a birth or christening date less than 110 years old). This exception is for people that have Wikipedia pages and are considered "famous". As always, using content from Wikipedia must be sourced, so take a look at our guidelines for use of Wikipedia. --Jennifer (JBS66) 05:28, 30 March 2010 (EDT)

Copyright license Question [7 April 2010]

In uploading images of marriage licenses that have been purchased from county courthouses, what license do you choose? This would be a state document, not a federal one. Thanks.--Txbluebell6 14:56, 3 April 2010 (EDT)

Government documents are not covered under copyright. The exception are those that are digitized and provided by a third party, such as Ancestry or Footnote; they can claim some rights to the digitized image. But for what you're talking about, they are clear of copyright.-- Amy 15:01, 3 April 2010 (EDT)

Unfortunately, state and local government documents may be covered by copyright. Hard to believe, isn't it. If you're asking about Florida or Minnesota you're in luck. But for most states you'll need to either check with the specific state, or you may be able to upload them under fair use.--Dallan 10:30, 6 April 2010 (EDT)

They talk about government "works." Would a single record, which is created for the purpose of meeting a legal requirement (such as recording a marriage), be considered a "work"? I was under the impression that a work had to have some creative element to it and not just recording a fact (which a single marriage record does). -- Amy 10:35, 6 April 2010 (EDT)

I understand what you're saying. I don't know. In my opinion (which isn't worth a lot since I'm not a lawyer), I believe they can copyright the marriage certificate, since presumably some creativity went into arranging how the fields appeared on the form. But they can't copyright the facts themselves. However, even if the original document is copyrighted, it seems acceptable to me to upload a low-resolution digital image under fair use: WeRelate is a non-profit website, it's a single certificate, and a low-resolution image shouldn't impact the value of the original.--Dallan 15:43, 6 April 2010 (EDT)

What is the date of the license in question? Does it have a copyright notice on it? Check to see if the descriptions of works not under copyright works. And if it's after 1977 I wonder if it concerns living people, in which case it shouldn't be uploaded.--Amelia 11:57, 7 April 2010 (EDT)

No, 1923, I purchased the copy in 1985. Both grandarents deceased. Thanks.

How to move Image to the top left of the Person Page? [14 April 2010]

Hello,

I would like to move an image to a different position on a Person Page from the bottom of the page (automatic position) to the top left so the person's photo is near the person's name. How do I do this? Simple instructions please. Thanks, Debbie Freeman --DFree 18:42, 13 April 2010 (EDT)

Debbie, there are two ways that I can think of:

1. You can use this code: [[Image:image title|100 px]] replacing the image title with the title of your image. You can change the number before px to change the size of the image.
2. You can use this code:

<gallery>
Image:image title|caption
Image:image title|caption
</gallery>

replacing caption with a caption to appear under the images and image title with the title of your image.

See Family:Benedictus Westerhuis and Trijntje Jellesma (1) for an example of #2. The instructions for this can also be found here. If you want to point me to a specific page, I can give you a hand. --Jennifer (JBS66) 19:01, 13 April 2010 (EDT)

Hello Jennifer, Oh Boy!! This is confusing. I wish it was easier to figure this out. Thank you for your help. I sure could use the help. The Person Page is Person:Anna Johansson (4). Debbie Freeman --DFree 19:29, 13 April 2010 (EDT)

I edited the page and decided to use #2 above. You will see there are 4 lines of the same text. I did that so you can see that you can add more than 1 photo inside those gallery "tags". For now, you can delete the extra 3 lines. --Jennifer (JBS66) 19:43, 13 April 2010 (EDT)

OK I gave it a try on another photo. It worked Thank Goodness. Could I make a suggest? Would you be willing to copy and past these instructions into the Image tutorial? Now if I could only just figure out how to make the photo a little bigger. It looks a little weird being too small. Any suggestions? The page is Person:Harlow Freeman (1) Thanks Debbie Freeman --DFree 20:39, 13 April 2010 (EDT)

The "px" number Jennifer gave you in the image link is flexible, designed to adjust the size and resolution of your image file. For a larger image footprint, increase the number to "250px" or even "500px" and check out the appearance. Remember that the appearance on your screen may be quite different than how it looks on another user's screen, depending on the screen resolution, monitor size, window area, etc. Rather than do it for you, play with it and see how it comes across using the instructions above.

BTW, one other method for posting an image on your person page that Jennifer did not relay to you, as long as that image is linked to the person page, is to select it as "Primary?" in the Image portion of the person page while in edit mode -- it wil automatically appear in the upper left portion of the finished page. See Person:Elbert Nixon (1) page for examples of multiple methods of posting photo images.

Good luck. --BobC 21:52, 13 April 2010 (EDT)

Hello Bob, That is much easier and simpler. Thanks, Debbie Freeman --DFree 23:51, 13 April 2010 (EDT)

Deleting GEDCOM [14 April 2010]

After reviewing and loading my GEDCOM, I realized, too late, that it omitted all the spouses. I would like to delete it and substitute a "fixed" file. How do I do it?--Aadenny 00:31, 14 April 2010 (EDT)

I did notice that it was unusual. You can delete your current tree using the links on the MyRelate, Trees page.

We ask that you review the impact of the change by reviewing the results of the Deletion Impact. Then if you are ready, you can remove your new pages by using the Delete link. Fix the problems on your desktop program and prepare a new gedcom for upload. If your desktop has the capability, you may wish to exclude the living people from your file. We do not create pages for living people. You can upload your new gedcom the same way you did the first. Use the tabs in the review program to carefully review your new pages. It is easier to make changes before the pages are imported. Wait at least an hour or two after the delete before you upload the new gedcom so that the old pages have been cleared out of the index. --Judy (jlanoux) 03:19, 14 April 2010 (EDT) (WeRelate volunteer)

Removing a relationship [9 May 2010]

How do I remove a relationship between a parent and child? I have discovered an error and want to remove the relationship between a mother and a child. She is still a wife of the husband in the family, but she is not the mother of the child in question. I can see no way of removing the relationship.--Klaidlaw 17:13, 30 April 2010 (EDT)

It is the Family Page which links parent to child. All you have to do is edit the family page and click on the Remove link next to the child which is improperly linked. The child's Person page will still exit, but he will not longer be part of the family. --Judy (jlanoux) 23:12, 30 April 2010 (EDT)

You can remove the child from the Family, or you can remove/replace the parents on the child's Person page. It would probably be nice to add a comment to the Talk page for the child giving some sources explaining why the previous state of affairs is thought to be a mistake, or provide sources justifying the new parents you replace the old ones with. Also, it might be useful to leave a link to the removed parents on the Talke page, because after the child is unlinked, it will not be as simple to find the old parents as it once was. --Jrich 00:11, 1 May 2010 (EDT)

Thanks for the responses. I will try it. As for adding comments, that is certainly a good suggestion. In reality, it was the warnings dialogue during upload of my gedcom that caused me to re-evaluate my data, which people have been copying off my website for several years without checking the data. It is now a wide spread error. It is an important reminder of why it is important to check data before you share it with others. We are guilty, but this certainly brought it back to me in spades.--Klaidlaw 10:49, 1 May 2010 (EDT)

I just went back into review of my gedcom and still can't see how to remove a link between a parent and child based on the suggestions above. I have tried editing the family, the mother and the child, but I don't see a place where there are any boxes to uncheck or links to break. I suspect this can only be done once I complete the review and make the gedcom publicly available.--Klaidlaw 11:00, 1 May 2010 (EDT)

I was not aware this was a GEDCOM upload and thought you were simply editing an existing page. Is the relationship to be removed in your GEDCOM? Or on one of the pages that already exists in WeRelate? Certainly two options would be to abort the upload, fix the GEDCOM and re-upload -OR- process the GEDCOM and then manually edit the pages afterwards to fix them. But there may be simpler ways? Unfortunately, I am not familiar enough with the GEDCOM process to attempt to say what the right answer is, but others should be able to. --Jrich 13:11, 1 May 2010 (EDT)

There isn't a way to edit relationships during the gedcom review process. You could either do the import and then change the relationships afterward, or don't import the current gedcom, change the relationship in your desktop genealogy program, and import a new gedcom.

Having said that, we don't have a way to represent that a child is a child of only one parent. This feature has been asked for and is on the todo list. In the meantime, the best approach would be to add a note to the family page saying that the child is a biological child of just one parent.--Dallan 00:39, 9 May 2010 (EDT)

If the child belongs to only one parent, a new family should be created. We have this all the time. The other parent may be unknown or named. --Judy (jlanoux) 10:17, 9 May 2010 (EDT)

One-Name Studies [1 May 2010]

What is the best way to create a page dedicated to the study of a surname? The person and family page categories don't seem to fit.--Jhculbert 14:10, 1 May 2010 (EDT)

We have just the place for you to research one-name studies and to help you add a page. Please visit the Surname Portal for further information. Glad to see someone utilize this little used resource. If I can be of further assistance, let me know. Good luck. --BobC 16:06, 1 May 2010 (EDT)

Adding a deceased child before one or more parents are deceased [8 May 2010]

How do I add a deceased child when the mother is still alive? The father is deceased. Should I put the mother's name in without any info or show Living XXX to create a Family Page?--Suzyq 19:17, 2 May 2010 (EDT)

I'd create a family page with just the father's name, or maybe the father's name and "Living" for the mother. You can create Person pages for the father and child, but don't create a page for the mother.--Dallan 00:39, 9 May 2010 (EDT)

Person Page Numbering System [10 May 2010]

I've been trying hard not to duplicate pages so when I searched for Hannah Bickerstaff, and found no entries, I added a new page. It is Hannah Bickerstaff (7)? I went back to search again and still only find number (7). Are 1-6 somewhere else?--B.holmes 07:39, 10 May 2010 (EDT)

Index numbers are not automatically reused, so you were assigned the next number in line, which was 7. I can see (I think because I have admin rights) that 1-6 were uploaded in 2008 and subsequently deleted. If you wanted to, you can also manually edit the number in your browser's address bar to see if that page exists. ie: http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Person:Hannah_Bickerstaff_(1).

Now, this is a little tricky but... some people want that coveted, empty, number one spot. IF a lower number has been deleted, you could rename your page to take its place. First make sure the page doesn't exist by going to http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Person:Hannah_Bickerstaff_(1). Then go you your #7 page, and rename, putting Person:Hannah Bickerstaff (1) in the box. --Jennifer (JBS66) 08:02, 10 May 2010 (EDT)

Census entries as sources [14 May 2010]

I can't find anything about citing actual census entries rather than published trascriptions. Do I cite the 1900 United States census, the 1900 Illinois census, the 1900 Boone County, Illinois census, or the actual entry for this particular person? Or choose one of the above and put the household info into the notes? Or is this a MySource? I'm sorry to sound so ignorant, but this has to be one of the most frequently cited tye of sources; it has to be there somewhere.--Agometz 17:45, 14 May 2010 (EDT)

This page gives details about our naming convention for census source pages. They would be added as a Source, rather than a MySource, because they appeal to more than just one person or family. While we have many census source pages, we don't have them all, so you may need to add a new page. An example of a page with census sources can be found here.--Jennifer (JBS66) 18:14, 14 May 2010 (EDT)

Modifying existing database [18 August 2010]

I am actively updating my database. Assume I have uploaded the data using GEDCOM to WeRelate. Then a month later I wish to update the WeRelate data. How do I do that?

I assume I would delete the existing file on WeRelate and then upload the new GEDCOM. But doesn't that remove any data placed in the file by other researchers?

Thank you for any suggestions. Mike--Michael Dietz 08:12, 4 June 2010 (EDT)

This is a "known" problem. You could delete your gedcom and re-upload. Pages that others are watching won't be deleted and you'll be able to merge with them when you re-upload, but this isn't a great solution. My recommendation is to wait until I implement the (long-promised) gedcom re-upload solution, which will compare your current upload to previous uploads, determine which people have changed, and upload just those people. Implementing this is one of the top-priority items on my todo list.--Dallan 09:56, 4 June 2010 (EDT)

Another problem with deleting is that you lose the changes *you* made. So if you go through your pages (as you're encouraged to do) and do anything like add headers, formatting, categories, or templates, all of that will be lost if you delete. Same thing if an administrator goes through and makes a change like that and isn't watching the page. It's possible, though perhaps less than ideal depending on what "actively updating" means, to work in both your database and WeRelate essentially simultaneously. You can upload small gedcoms of new people, and editing by hand moves fairly quickly once you're used to it.--Amelia 11:21, 4 June 2010 (EDT)

Amelia: Thank you for the reply. If I understand the procedure another potential problem is if I change an individual that somebody also has entered data for, even if my data does not impact theirs (e.g. I have birth date, they have death date) by my uploading a new GEDCOM their data would be dropped because the individual will have been changed.

And another one if their data corrects something of mine the correction will be wiped out even if you do the checking on an event by event basis.

I sympathize with you. Again thank you Mike

I think the answer to both your questions is no. The key is that people have to opt-out of watching pages they edit, and only pages that no one else is watching will be deleted with your gedcom. There are the following possibilities:

• A person in your gedcom already exists here -> you merge your data with it on upload -> if you delete, all that data will remain so long as at least one other person is watching the page. (If BOTH of you delete so that only you is watching that page, everyone's contribution is deleted when the last person deletes their gedcom).
• A person in your gedcom is edited by someone else after you upload it -> if that person watches the page, which most will, it won't be deleted when you delete your gedcom.
• You edit a page not in your gedcom -> Nothing happens when you delete your gedcom.

Regards,

Amelia

Suppose I have uploaded a gencom under a name, “Root1”. If I later upload a revised version under a different root, “Root2”, will I then be able to merge the matching pages?--Genki 19:17, 17 August 2010 (EDT)

Yes. The roots don't matter. The re-upload function will compare your entire current gedcom upload to your previous gedcom uploads, and automatically match people in your new upload to people you have uploaded previously.--Dallan 15:01, 18 August 2010 (EDT)

New Family Search Person Identifier [7 June 2010]

Is there a plan for adding the New Family Search Person Identifier as an attribute on the person like you have Ancestor File Number now?--Dlongmore 09:00, 5 June 2010 (EDT)

I vote no. --Jrich 10:09, 5 June 2010 (EDT)

Let's see how popular New Family Search becomes. When it becomes available to the public and if it becomes popular, then we can consider adding nFS as an additional "fact" type, and it can display as a link to the nFS page.--Dallan 12:57, 7 June 2010 (EDT)

I respectfully submit that the criteria should not be popularity, but whether or not they can deliver quality, documented genealogy with any consistency. Past experience with old Family Search and a demo of new Family Search make me doubtful. My impression was that it represents marginal changes to a process that needs a complete overhaul (of course, it was not designed according to my criteria, so my opinion is rightly irrelevant to its creators). I am afraid such event types in WeRelate will create the impression that WeRelate is doing some kind of service by directing people to website they probably know about anyway, instead of compiling lists of primary and reputable sources, sort of Great Migration Begins with unlimited scope, that would represent true value to a researcher, compared to some essentially anonymous person's unsupported assertion of what the truth is. And once such primary and reputable sources are documented on WeRelate, AFN and nFS event types become so much clutter anyway. --Jrich 14:07, 7 June 2010 (EDT)

Dates prior to 700 AD [11 June 2010]

I just got the warning that WeRelate does not accept birth dates prior to 700 AD. Will somebody explain to me the rationale of such a limitation?

Thank you Mike--Michael Dietz 14:54, 7 June 2010 (EDT)

The essential idea is that genealogy before 1500 is, in general, very hard to prove by modern standards of genealogical proof. There is discussion at WeRelate_talk:Watercooler/Archive_2009#What_do_we_do_with_Adam_and_Eve.3F_.5B8_April_2009.5D, including a link to an external article noted by Dallan (article on DFA) discussing this issue in more depth. --Jrich 15:41, 7 June 2010 (EDT)

Thank you for the reply.

I am a newbie to WeRelate. When I heard about the Wiki I was very interested since the promotional explanation(s) seemed to state the Wiki was designed to become a repository for genealogical material. I wholeheartedly agree we need such a mechanism to gather this material and combine in a controlled, useful, and accessible format. The One World Tree idea of Ancestry.com is a complete disaster. The AFN and IGI of the Family History Library is nothing more than a morass of errors. So seeing what appeared to be a concerted effort to resolve the problems associated with these other databases was very appealing to me.

However I was surprised to see the restriction on only allowing material dated after 700 AD. I quickly read all the comments referenced in your reply. I will admit I read it straight through and did not take the time to fully analyze the various arguments made in the discussion(s). I am getting ready to go to a graduation in Idaho and have printed all the material for reading and cogitating while on the plane. In the meantime I was struck by several points raised in the discussion.

As I said I have only read through the discussion once but several points stood out. These are · Selecting 700 AD because people could then connect to Charlemagne. · There is no real need to include anybody prior to then and even maybe prior to 1500 because Wikipedia would already have that material. · Including mythologies and religious trees would be useless and unimportant because they are based on faith or storytelling. I must state these aspects of WeRelate have greatly disappointed me.

Why Charlemagne? Granted he was an important individual in European history but what of those in other cultures. This smacks of white elitism to me. Also most of the published genealogies back to Charlemagne are fictitious. By allowing them you are compromising the stated objective of proven, accurate genealogies.

Since Wikipedia has the genealogy of President Harry Truman, why should I include him in my wife’s genealogy? They are eighth cousins one time removed but Wikipedia has a very good genealogy for him.

If WeRelate is to be a repository of human relationships, why deny the inclusion of proven ones, such as Egyptian dynasties, Roman Emperors, Welsh Kings, etc.? Granted there is probably no factual evidence connecting anybody who uses WeRelate to any of these older genealogies but genealogical research is an ongoing practice. Compare what we know now to what was known even 50 years ago. To disallow the storage of this data is extremely near sighted in my opinion. Look at what DNA testing is now allowing individuals to discover about their REALLY ANCIENT ancestors. Under your guidelines none of this would be allowed in your database.

And not allowing the stories, myths, and religious begets in the database is leaving a great deal of human experience, development, and wisdom by the wayside. Granted it is based upon faith and anecdotal data. But it also gives insight into the cultures which have these stories in their pre-history. Try to explain Saxon and thence English attitudes to society without the use of King Arthur. I would rather see these types of genealogies and their associated narratives be made available with the express caveats that they are what they are, myths and stories.

I guess I can sum up my disappointment in learning of this restriction by stating that in my opinion WeRelate is being remiss in attempting to be a repository of a certain type of knowledge. I thought that maybe here was a collection of genealogical material that would be based on quality. And by quality I mean not only in the accuracy of the proven material but also in the broader scope of the material available. That the mechanisms for including material in the database would allow future researchers to make intelligent decisions regarding the data they would be accessing. That it would be a repository of the known as well as the idealized relationships which could be used for research into why we are what we are. Unfortunately by removing much of human experience from that collection it falls rather short of that goal.--Michael Dietz 19:06, 7 June 2010 (EDT)

I would contend that WeRelate has a slightly different focus that what you envision (which, if I'm understanding you correctly, is basically a page for every person who ever lived, regardless of whether or not you can prove it). WeRelate is trying to get people to collaborate to expand their trees by using the best sources possible and using good analysis of the evidence. There are other places where the stories of Welsh kings, etc. can be (and are) collected. WeRelate simply doesn't focus on periods of time (pre 700 AD) that do not allow for the analysis of evidence because there isn't any known evidence. Yes, there are wonderful advances in DNA to allow people to trace their deep ancestry. However, it will tell you where that haplogroup came from -- not who the specific people are between you and your 75th great-grandmother (nor who your 75th great-grandmother is). The DNA analysis that will allow you to begin identifying specific people is for people much more recent than 700 AD. Personally, I think there is more than enough to sort through in the past 1310 years to keep everyone busy :-) -- Amy 22:36, 7 June 2010 (EDT)

In addition to what Jrich and Amy have said, another reason for establishing this rule was simply to cut down on the effort of identifying and removing error-prone material from WeRelate. Most of the people that we had with dates prior to 700AD were the result of individuals' vain attempts to establish their genealogies back to Adam. It was unsourced and generally a mess. Picking a year (700) and requiring that nobody be uploaded prior to this time made it easy to omit these invalid genealogies. Although there are some valid, documented ancient genealogies out there, I believe that Wikipedia is a better venue than WeRelate for publishing them. We want to focus more on genealogies that lead to modern descendants. Now if you have Asian ancestors, we're happy to make an exception to the 700AD rule. :-) Some Chinese genealogies go back much earlier than European genealogies (see Wikipedia:Confucius Genealogy Compilation Committee).--Dallan 00:06, 8 June 2010 (EDT)

Just a question: is this a gedcom limitation or an actual policy? Several of us have put in an not insubstantial amount of time on Roman emperors and their families, just recently, and this never came up. And if it's supposed to be an actual policy, than should we be enforcing it by deleting pages that violate it? --Amelia 22:31, 10 June 2010 (EDT)

The policy is that you can't upload people less than 700AD from a GEDCOM file, because we had too much junk coming in that way. In addition, there was an issue with pages for Adam and Eve about a year ago. The net result is that a number of people would rather not see biblical or mythological genealogies on WeRelate. However, that policy would be nearly impossible to enforce. The main thing we're trying to avoid is "junk genealogy", and a lot of the ancient lineages were pretty bad. If you're doing well-researched work on Roman Emporers I don't think anyone will stop you, but ancient lineages are not the main focus here (as I know you're aware).--Dallan 16:21, 11 June 2010 (EDT)

Image Behavior [1 August 2010]

I really like the way that referencing an image causes a thumbnail to show up in the reference section. I also very much like the fact that if the image is associated with a reference it is not displayed in the image section. However, it would appear that whatever is suppressing the referenced images is also suppressing all images. See Person:Charles Black (11). While all of the referenced images are handled properly, none of the dozen or so photos is shown anymore. Is this an error, or is there a new way to do this?--srblac 13:18, 10 July 2010 (EDT)

According to the section in the Watercooler pertaining to the "New look for WeRelate" Dallan says to use the "<show_sources_images_notes/>" tag to display sources, images, and notes at a specific location on a page, but I tried adding it to your page above and it did not seem to show up on the edited version. Since there still may be some adjustments and refinements in the new page features, hopefully Dallan or another user will be better able to assist. I have the same situation on one of the pages I am actively working on. --BobC 17:28, 10 July 2010 (EDT)

I played around with it some more. If I had it open in edit mode, added an image reference to a source and then hit "Show preview" the page displayed as desired, the image gallery was displayed and the image thumbnail called out in the reference. I could do this repeatedly, adding images to source references, hitting "show preview" and the page would update appropriately. However, once I hit "save" the images gallery disappeared and I could not get it back.--srblac 22:00, 12 July 2010 (EDT)

I too played with the person page I was working on and having like trouble with some more, but not getting the images to show I created an image gallery manually (e.g. <gallery> <br> [[Image:<first image>|Caption]] <br> [[Image:<second image>|Caption]] <br> ... </gallery>) so the images would be visible outside the mini-thumbnail source references until a fix is made. --BobC 06:19, 13 July 2010 (EDT)

This is definitely a bug. I'll try to fix it later today. Thank-you for reporting it.--Dallan 09:41, 22 July 2010 (EDT)

Fixed finally. Nice page by the way.--Dallan 19:14, 25 July 2010 (EDT)

It now works just like I hoped it would! Thanks for the fix and thanks for the compliment.

This file is larger than the maximum allowable size for a GEDCOM [10 July 2010]

When I tried to upload my GEDCOM, I got the error message: "This file is larger than the maximum allowable size for a GEDCOM" There are fewer than 8,000 people in my data which is not all that large. It was created in The Master Genealogist and has always uploaded okay to Ancestry.com and other sites. So, is there an easy solution? Or what did I do wrong?--PBVB 16:29, 10 July 2010 (EDT)

You didn't do anything wrong, the limit is by design. When you upload here, unlike Ancestry.com, your pages are community pages that (preferably) reference common source and place pages, and there is only one page per person. Therefore, when you upload, you need to go through the process of matching people in your file to existing pages, matching places, and matching sources. This is a detailed process that would be overwhelming with a gedcom that large, and in truth, any gedcom over several hundred people. For that reason, we strongly recommend that you start by hand editing a few pages that interest you, then upload your information in smaller chunks. For more information on the gedcom process, see Help:Before you import your GEDCOM.--Amelia 16:43, 10 July 2010 (EDT)

Appears that double year dates are being incorrectly interpreted [25 July 2010]

In trying some GEDCOM imports, it seems that the processor is incorrectly interpreting dates. A date like Jan 1675/76 (an old style Julian date) should be considered equivalent to Jan 1676, but it seems to be treated as if it was Jan 1675. This shows up in cases where there is a birth in Dec 1675, and then a baptism in Jan 1675/76, a warning is emitted for an event occurs before birth, when the events are actually in a very realistic order.--Richard_Damon 23:19, 11 July 2010 (EDT)

Yes, you are right. I believe it also ignores the qualifier such as AFT, BEF, etc. Fixing this is on the To Do List: WeRelate:ToDo List#Person/Family pages 3, bullet 10. There is also a request in the queue to convert all input dates into a standard format. I am not sure when or how these will get implemented. If there are serious issues caused by this, you might post examples here or on WeRelate talk:Watercooler but, I think you've encountered about the biggest issue this causes. --Jrich 09:35, 12 July 2010 (EDT)

I addressed the qualifier issues (aft, bef, etc) a few weeks ago, but I didn't take into account that 1675/76 should be interpreted as 1676. I'll fix that today or tomorrow. (Since the warnings have already been calculated for your GEDCOM they won't go away, but you can ignore them). Thank-you for letting me know.--Dallan 09:41, 22 July 2010 (EDT)

OS/NS dates should be interpreted correctly now, and before/after dates are now handled better during GEDCOM uploads.--Dallan 19:14, 25 July 2010 (EDT)

Printing [25 July 2010]

When I try to print out a page (File Print Preview) - the new format prints with the "more" expanding into the user page messing it up. Is there some way to fix this, or another way to print? see Person:Wiley Pollard (1)

Thanks, Pam--Txbluebell6 21:10, 12 July 2010 (EDT)

I'll fix this today or tomorrow. Thank-you for letting me know.--Dallan 09:41, 22 July 2010 (EDT)

This is fixed now. The menus should no longer appear on printed pages.--Dallan 19:14, 25 July 2010 (EDT)

Place outline? [22 July 2010]

Is there a way to make a place outline as is typical of WikiMapia, is stead of just a vague pointer to the centroid or possibly a misleading or ambiguous street address?
--Wikid 14:48, 15 July 2010 (EDT)

That's a really cool idea. Currently no. Would you want to assign the outline to a place in general (in which case we might need to also store a year-range for which the outline was valid?), or to a particular event on a person/family page? Please add your suggestion to the WeRelate:ToDo List.--Dallan 09:41, 22 July 2010 (EDT)

Preventing wrap in text box [6 September 2010]

I have a lot of transcripts that need to go into the text box of a MySource. My problem is that the lines are automatically wrapping - destroying readability of form entries. Is there any way to prevent this short of having to add a break at the end of every line? Code, pre and nowiki tags don't work. Example page: MySource:Jlanoux/Funeral File of Anna Parish Woody --Judy (jlanoux) 21:01, 24 July 2010 (EDT)

I just changed the pre tags to code (lowercase). It seems to work well for me. What do you think?--Dallan 19:38, 25 July 2010 (EDT)

Ok, I see what you're talking about. Lines that start with spaces are still not formatted correctly, even with the code tags. The problem is that mediawiki formats lines that start with spaces as pre, instead of code, and because a lot of imported notes start with spaces, we want to wrap pre tags. The trick is to use both code and nowiki tags. That does the trick.

There will be a better solution for this eventually, where we can just use pre tags and have them do the right thing, but we have to wait until people migrate from IE7 to IE8 because the solution doesn't work in IE7. In the meantime go ahead and use both code and nowiki tags, because that will always work.--Dallan 19:46, 25 July 2010 (EDT)

This is great. Thanks for fixing the page. Now I can go to town creating more pages. I wasn't getting any messages from WR and just now realized that with all the playing around with email changes, all of the notification boxes had gotten unchecked. I was wondering why it was so quiet. I guess I better go check my watch list. --Judy (jlanoux) 20:28, 30 July 2010 (EDT)

For anyone who's interested, the MySource page for Anna's funeral home file (noted above) is now more or less complete, with full transcript and images of all items in the file, formatted for readability. This page makes a good example of how source pages on WeRelate could (can) be used as full-blown repositories of the complete details of a source, for the use of all. --Mike^Talk 08:01, 4 September 2010 (EDT)

Mike, I think this is an excellent example showing the use of MySource pages. I added this as a featured page on the Portal:MySource.--Jennifer (JBS66) 14:57, 6 September 2010 (EDT)

Warnings [27 July 2010]

I have a small gedcom waiting for review with 9 warnings "child born less than nine months apart". This is kind of difficult to correct because each family has only one child! I won't proceed with the review until somebody can explain the warnings. It is my only gedcom at the moment - name: Farrall Leslie. My own software has the same criteria and nothing showed when I ran it.--HLJ411 21:47, 26 July 2010 (EDT)

Not sure if this may be the cause, but I noticed you did not review, edit and save the person entries first and then the family entries next, etc. I think the GEDCOM upload function is designed to have the uploader go through the tabs one at a time in the order presented. I know you can bounce around and between the tabs when presented with information that may change previously edited informaiton, but try going through the process in the order presented. I think the warnings are advisory as a reminder to review the information uploaded in your file rather than mandatory (or on the other end of the scale, perfunctory), so reviewing them one-by-one might clear up those notices. --BobC 08:15, 27 July 2010 (EDT)

Thank-you for letting me know about this problem! It was introduced a couple of days ago when I tried to improve how approximate dates are handled. I've fixed the bug and removed the warnings. (FWIW, you're encouraged to go through the tabs in the order they appear, but it's ok to jump around if you want.)--Dallan 14:19, 27 July 2010 (EDT)

Person Page for Julie Nixon [28 July 2010]

Julie Nixon, daughter of Pres. Nixon, has a Person page, which shows her as having died in 1995. She, of course, is still living. I tried to delete the incorrect death info, but got the error message that living people cannot have a Person page. Should this page be deleted or should it be redone as the other "Living Nixon" pages? Also, I just noticed that there is a Person page for Tricia Nixon. -- Amy 09:58, 28 July 2010 (EDT)

There are person pages for living presidents and their wives under the notable people/Wikipedia exception (basically it's silly to worry about their privacy when their birthdate/place/parents are splashed everywhere, and the benefit of being able to link to them outweighs). Technically the same policy applies to Julie, particularly given her husband. The way to fix is to put a question mark or note in the death date like this.--Amelia 10:16, 28 July 2010 (EDT)

Husband's data not showing up on family page [31 July 2010]

Can anyone tell why Francis Nixon's info isn't appearing on his Family page with Hannah Milhous? He has a Person page and the Family page has the correct link. -- Amy 10:50, 28 July 2010 (EDT)

There's a lag on updating (sometimes?) where the family page isn't necessarily changed when the person page changes, or vice versa, but at any rate, I fixed it by just making a minor edit on the person page.--Amelia 11:04, 28 July 2010 (EDT)

What Amelia did is the right thing to do. There was a bug in early versions of the merge function so that if you merged someone who had birth/death information into someone who did not, the birth/death information wasn't copied over into the family pages. This bug has been fixed, but I need to write a program to review all of the pages and copy information that didn't get copied over. Until this program is written, updating the birth/death information on person page causes it to be copied.--Dallan 13:01, 31 July 2010 (EDT)

Duplicate [28 July 2010]

There are two duplicate pages for Marcus Joseph Wright. He was married twice. His first wife was Martha Spencer Elcan. I managed to fix the Family page so it shows two wives. There was another Person page showing him married to Pauline Womack. I am not sure how to change someone else's page. I put in a person page for him with info. Can these two pages be merged now or should I have used the other person page and put in all the info? Thanks.--Suzyq 16:48, 28 July 2010 (EDT)

Yes, you can merge. In the end, there should be one page for Marcus, one for each of his wives, and one family page for each couple. It looks like if you go to this page and use the more -> compare husbands link, you can merge the Marcus pages and everything will be as it should be.--Amelia 23:17, 28 July 2010 (EDT)

Attaching brothers without parents [29 July 2010]

I have Lionel Elcan and his relatives listed. He has a brother and a wife whom I would like to add to Lionel. Should I show a father as Unknown Elcan and Unknown Unknown mother and then add the brother as a child on their family page? Thanks.--Suzyq 23:21, 29 July 2010 (EDT)

You can create a family page Unknown Elcan and Unknown, and add the brother to that page. Don't create pages for the unknown parents.--Amelia 23:48, 29 July 2010 (EDT)

Suggestion for Naming [12 August 2010]

I think it would be a good idea to add a new category to the name section. You could call it Familiar Name, Nickname, etc. I have a lot of people with the same name. Most of them were called by a nickname or a different name. I have been using Alternate Name. That is the only place it fits.

Please pass along my suggestion. Thanks.--Suzyq 01:01, 2 August 2010 (EDT)

I've added it to the todo list.--Dallan 16:14, 4 August 2010 (EDT)

Dallan, I think we also need a "suffix" field for the main person-name entry. If you have John Smith Jr., you have to stick the "Jr." at the end of either the forename or the surname field. The latter messes up searching & sorting (by effectively changing the surname) and the former gives you weird listings like ""John Jr. Smith." --Mike^Talk 10:36, 12 August 2010 (EDT)

Alt name is appropriate for nicknames. For common nicknames it isn't necessary to make a separate name. Just check the Given Name page for that entry and make sure the nickname is listed as an alternate. Then search will find your page no matter what version someone enters. William, Will, Bill, Billy, Etc. See Givenname:William for this example. To find a given name page, go to search and select Given Name as the Namespace in the dropdown.

The Title suffix field is where Sr and Jr should go. It's already there. --Judy (jlanoux) 12:07, 12 August 2010 (EDT)

Counties that don't exist [18 August 2010]

I can't remember if we decided this: for records for places that have changed, how do we title the page? As a specific example, should 1850 census records for counties now in West Virginia (formed 1860s) be titled using Virginia or West Virginia? --Amelia 00:57, 4 August 2010 (EDT)

I was going to add some info on use of "historic" type placename, but will wait for an answer to your question from someone else. I remember the discussion also, but can't find where. --BobC 12:41, 4 August 2010 (EDT)

You may want to review the discussions at Help talk:Naming conventions and WeRelate_talk:Source_renaming_project#Census_pages_.5B20_August_2009.5D. --BobC 1400, 4 August 2010 (EDT)

The county pages should be titled under West Virginia, with also-located-in links to Virginia.

However, for a major change like Virginia to West Virginia, maybe we should make an exception and add additional county pages under Virginia with see-also links to the corresponding counties in West Virginia? I could go either way on this. I personally don't think a few additional place pages will hurt; we just don't want to go crazy.--Dallan 16:14, 4 August 2010 (EDT)

As so many of the folks I will be uploading were born, lived & died in West Virginia, I'll watch to see what happens with this. On my desktop, I have handled it in two ways (I know, sigh, I'm not consistent). One is Edward Jackson b 'Harrison, (W)Virginia' and the other is Edward Jackson b 'Harrison, Virginia (now West Virginia)'. I've been wondering how that will pan out during GEDCOM upload. Somehow, I would like to see WeRelate indicate some way that the person was born before the area became the State of West Virginia (1863). OTOH, wouldn't that complicate the category 'Jackson in Place'? --Janiejac 15:33, 6 August 2010 (EDT)

Hi, one suggestion -- I got around this by using: Red River, Texas, United States|Red River, Republic of Texas in the field... which shows "Republic of Texas in the description... but lists Red River County.. See person page John Richey (9). He died during the Republic of Texas, but we don't have the Republic of Texas as a place in WeRelate... This would be hard to upload in a Gedcom, but could be fixed after uploading...

Thanks, Pam

I've done a lot of work in Red River County and I haven't worried about the "Republic" thing at all, frankly. Republic or state, it's still Texas. On the other hand, Red River was the "mother country" for all or part of more than 20 present-day counties, so early events in what is now (say) Hopkins County will be found in the early Red River records. You can get around this -- and without messing up the system -- by using a pipe to say anything you please, i.e., "Red River, Texas, United States|Old Red River (now Hopkins) County, Republic of Texas". Or whatever. --Mike^Talk 10:42, 12 August 2010 (EDT)

I apologize, my question was unclear. I had assumed that we had one rule for place pages, that they should be named based on the current location of the place. If the place had changed names or moved counties or states, that was covered by the located in/see also fields. I don't think there should be two pages for those places, it just duplicates information and effort (although some pages have already been created for Virginia versions of West Virginia counties; it's another question how hard to enforce this rule).

And we can easily use pipes with alternate names, and the system is supposed to recognize by virtue of the above entries for old places, for person/family pages.

What I'm asking is what we do for source pages that regard only records from a prior named version of a place. (i.e. 1850 Hampshire Co, VA (now WV) census records). Based on the fact that place pages are "smart" about dual names, it would seem that they would still link up correctly if we use the "old name" - which seems more likely the one that people would search under. But that is not entirely consistent with the source pages rule, so naming them the other way would also make sense. I don't see this question dealt with at any of the links above.--Amelia 21:37, 7 August 2010 (EDT)

I think in this case Source pages have to be handled differently than Place pages. There was no 1850 census for Monongalia County, West Virginia as WV wasn't a state yet. If we're trying to encourage accuracy in citations, we should be accurate in the Source pages we create. The Source page, IMO, should be Monongalia, Virginia, United States. 1850 U.S. Census Population Schedule. On a related note, I have a problem with the categories for censuses being, for example, 1850 Ohio census or 1850 Virginia census. That, to me, implies a state census for that state, rather than the Federal census taken in that state. But that's probably best left for another discussion. -- Amy 11:29, 8 August 2010 (EDT)

I agree that Source pages should be handled differently than Place pages -- the historical place should be used in the title. Would you mind adding this to Help:Source page titles?--Dallan 17:28, 18 August 2010 (EDT)

Note re state censuses: I think that was initially agreed, but we made a change because it looked like a lot of gedcoms were coming in using a state-specific format, so it was decided to allow people to create them. If that justification turns out to not ultimately be true, we should revisit ... somewhere... --Amelia 13:09, 8 August 2010 (EDT)

I'm referring to the names of the categories, such as Category:1900 Ohio census. I think the name of the category is very misleading, as it is *not* an "Ohio census." It is a Federal census taken in Ohio. Ohio, like many other states, had no state census and it is somewhat confusing to see something purporting to be a list of pages referring to a state census. For states like Iowa that did have state censuses, it is confusing to see something like Category:1880 Iowa census, as there wasn't an Iowa state census in 1880. What would be clearer (and more accurate) would be to have the categories named Category:1900 U.S. Census - Ohio. This should not affect anything regarding GEDCOM imports. --Amy 13:26, 8 August 2010 (EDT)

Oh, sorry, you did say that. I don't actually think that's confusing, but if someone wants to go through the 400 so-named categories and change them, I'm not going to fuss about it. I could argue that the lack of capital letter indicates generically a census taken in a state in that year (i.e. the Iowa state census category would be "1885 Iowa census"; if there were an 1880 Iowa state census, it would go in the "1880 Iowa census" category along with the federal ) and the nature of the census is quite clear from the page titles in the category. But, you're right, it's also a philosophical question about the purpose of categories for another day.--Amelia 14:17, 8 August 2010 (EDT)

Let's revisit categories in the Fall.--Dallan 17:28, 18 August 2010 (EDT)

Place page -Question of ability to add photographs [26 December 2010]

I have edited the Guthrie, Callaway, Missouri Place page to link to my Grandfather who was born, lived and died there. I have turn of the century several photos of the buildings in the town. It seems like there inclusion on the place page would be appropriate. Is there a way to add photos? B.holmes

Yes you can. First you need to upload the image by selecting "Image" from the "Add" menu. Then add [[Image:name of your image page]] to the text content of the place page. For more information see [[Help:Images]].--Dallan 15:28, 26 December 2010 (EST)

I think the idea of adding photos to place pages is interesting. A user has done that for Place:Lubbock, Lubbock, Texas, United States. I do have a concern about adding links to family members though. Place pages are meant to contain general information about the location, research tips, photos etc. People and Families are already linked to place pages by clicking on What Links Here. --Jennifer (JBS66) 16:30, 26 December 2010 (EST)

Place page - 2 questions [18 August 2010]

I'm building a place page Place:Northbank, King and Queen, Virginia, United States for a plantation estate. These were extensive and served as towns in the very rural areas. I'll have several more of these to create so I want to learn some things.

• Question 1: I'm stuck by the blank for "Type". I don't like to see Unknown there, but I don't know what the choices are as there is no drop-down. The Help page does not mention the use of the various fields.
• Question 2: I know how to use the GoogleMap link to give a link to a location on GoogleMap, but the Place pages have an actual insert showing the map. Is this something available to put on other pages (Person, Family)? How would it be done. When used sparingly, I can see this would be helpful.
  • Subquestion: the inserts on the Place pages are often not helpful as they are the wrong scale. Can these be changed by a user?

Thanks --Judy (jlanoux) 13:28, 6 August 2010 (EDT)

As I hinted at up on the previous topic, I've used the term "Historic" as the Type for these historic locations that no longer exist that are referenced by era documents and sources. A couple of my examples include Place:Reinholdsville (historic), Lancaster, Pennsylvania, United States and Place:Fort Decatur (historic), Macon, Alabama, United States (actually an historic military fort). The term "historic" in the actual placename title may be redundant, but I'd seen it deliniated that manner in other previous examples I researched and wanted to be consistent. These were known locations at the time of my subject's life and are recorded in written period references as such, so I thought it important they contain their unique designated historic placenames for historical consistency and future research context. I believe the Type field is free-form, so you have more freedom to apply your own description to it. The term, "Settlement," also comes to mind as one that I've seen on colonial references.

Regarding your particular example, Wikipedia identifies Northbank as an Historic Place within King and Queen County, Virginia (as a landmark on the National Register), and more specifically located within the unincorporated community of Walkerton. Whether or not that is justification enough for or entitles it to its own placename space at WeRelate, I'm not sure. For vital statistical purposes on person and family pages, you could just as easily use "Place:Walkerton, King and Queen, Virginia, United States" in the Place field and reference the "Northbank Plantation" in the Description field.

Thanks for the suggestion. I'm not asking for justification. In rural areas the plantations were the population centers, not towns. And K&Q is the most rural county around. I need the page as it is because I have a lot of information about the place and a lot of people to link to it. But, after years as a database administrator, the idea that users are making up their own "Types" gives me nightmares. We have to have a standard list. After looking around, I went with "Inhabited place". The K&Q page is full of those - illustrating how few real towns exist. --Judy (jlanoux) 19:24, 6 August 2010 (EDT)

Can't answer your second two question. Hopefully, others will provide their own opinion and expertise to both. --BobC 17:18, 6 August 2010 (EDT)

"Type" doesn't link to anything, so I've been thinking that free-text is ok. But it is used to group contained places on the containing place page, so maybe I should come up with a drop-down list...

As for the map question, there's a Template:Googlemap to create a link to a google map, but there isn't a way right now to add your own google map to a page. It's a good idea; I'll add a <map> tag to the todo list.

Regarding the zoom on place maps, you can change the zoom level by pressing the +/- buttons, but I assume that you want a way to set the default zoom for a particular place page? Note that you can't get too specific on the zoom; you'd get to choose from whatever levels the +/- buttons give you; you couldn't choose a zoom in between.

Is there a place page where the default zoom isn't good? Maybe tweaking the algorithm that determines the default zoom level would solve the problem?--Dallan 17:45, 18 August 2010 (EDT)

Adding a new Family member to the list [15 August 2010]

How do I add to a list that some one has already made ?--Whitetinydog 15:10, 15 August 2010 (EDT)

Can you point us to an example? If the list is on an article page, you can edit the page to add to it. If it is a list of children on the Family page, you can edit that page. I guess, in general, the answer is edit the page.

If you give us an example, we can give you more detail. --Judy (jlanoux) 15:17, 15 August 2010 (EDT)

If you want to add a child to a family: Let me use two of your pages as an example. This is assuming Person:Sterling Chatterton (1) is the child of Family:Chester Chatterton and Bessie Messersmith (1)

1. Go to the Family page and click Edit.
2. Under Children, type the title of the child's page. In this case it would be "Sterling Chatterton (1)". Note that the namespace "Person:" is not needed since it is understood that a child will point to a Person page.
3. Save the page

You could also do this another way.

1. Go to the Child's page, click Edit, and go to the Parents and Siblings family group page section.
2. Enter the Parent's Family page title. In this case: "Chester Chatterton and Bessie Messersmith (1)". As above, the namespace is not needed. If you wait a few seconds, the system will list all pages that match the page title (or portion of it) that you typed in, which is a good way of checking your work, since if nothing is shown, you must have typed something wrong.
3. Save the page. --Jennifer (JBS66) 15:23, 15 August 2010 (EDT)

--Jrich 16:15, 15 August 2010 (EDT)

How to please [8 October 2010]

I have been away from we relate for almost a year and was searching on Google and found a link to my information that I entered so long ago. I was so pleasantly surprised but when I went to the link it looked very different and I could not tell how someone would contact me if they found a relative in common with me. Could someone explain this to me?--LutheranChickadee 21:56, 16 August 2010 (EDT)--DFree 22:24, 16 August 2010 (EDT)

It seems to me that the answer is no different than a year ago, despite the new look. Watchers still get notified of changes, even to the Talk page. Users can use the My Relate->Network function to see who is watching pages in common with themselves, and while only a short list of watchers is shown by default, the "show all" item under watchers will show the complete watcher list like it used to be. There are the same options for contacting users, though to get all persons interested in a page, it is probably more efficient to place questions and discussions on the Talk page for persons, families, or for users. Logs still work the same, showing who made what change. Outside of the format of the page, the process hasn't changed. So this makes me think I am misunderstanding the question. Is there a specific example and/or more specific phrasing of the concern? --Jrich 23:12, 16 August 2010 (EDT)

Printing [7 September 2010]

2 weeks ago I was able to print a person profile. It was very streamlined. Everything was lined up on he left side of the page. Parents, Siblings, Spouse and Children Facts and Events & notes. Now when I print it looks just like the screen image, way too spread out. What am I doing wrong. Thanks.--Cats3333 16:30, 26 August 2010 (EDT)

Printing changed recently. Someone reported an issue with printing, and I noticed that printed pages were not using any styles, so I changed the system to use the screen-oriented styles for printing.

I don't want to go back to no styles at all, but I'm ok with left-justifying the family boxes. It would be really easy to

1. left-justify all family boxes (parents and spouses) one underneath another, above the facts+events section, or
2. put family boxes adjacent to each other, so the parents infobox would be left-justified, and the spouse infobox would be to the right of it (with additional spouse infoboxes further to the right), with the facts+events section underneath.

Preferences?--Dallan 20:49, 30 August 2010 (EDT)

I really like the left-justify style with everything lined with person, parents, siblings, spouse and children, and facts and events all in a line. It is so much easier to decifer.--Cats3333 08:45, 4 September 2010 (EDT)

Try printing now. The family boxes are left-aligned.--Dallan 16:48, 7 September 2010 (EDT)

A2A - now Source:Scotland. Access to Archives [31 August 2010]

Hello Support, for some reason the WeRelate Agent has changed/renamed the Source:A2A and it is now named "Source:Scotland. Access to Archives". It is a UK website source for the Archives in London, etc so it is more than Scotland. I am curious how that happened. Any clue? Thanks Debbie Freeman --DFree 20:16, 30 August 2010 (EDT)

This happened last Fall during the great source rename :-) when we renamed all of the sources to follow our "standard" page title format. This source was listed as a "government/church records" source, and the page title format for government/church records is "place. source title field". So it was renamed to Source:Scotland. Access to Archives since Scotland was the first place listed. Another (similar/same?) source is Source:United Kingdom. National Archives: Access to Archives (A2A).

Feel free to rename these sources using the source page title format described in Help:Source page titles. You may also want to merge these two sources together?.--Dallan 20:49, 30 August 2010 (EDT)

Hello Dallan, Thank you for pointing out this other Source. It is the same source. I will use that one. I will double check. I am pretty sure that I was the only user for the Source:A2A so I can delete it tomorrow. Thanks, Debbie Freeman --DFree 21:15, 30 August 2010 (EDT)

Problem w numbered list - specify start value [7 September 2010]

Need some technical help. I'm not a html or wiki wizard, but can usually copy an example.

I am trying to create this Ahnentafel page indexing a user's ancestors by surname line to give him easy access to WeRelate. Things were going well until I decided that instead of simply using # to number the lists 1, 2, 3, it would be more informative to start with the generation number for each surname.

According to help on Wikipedia all that is needed is to insert #<li value="9"> to set the starting number to 9, for example. This does work to create the desired numbers, but the WeRelate system is inserting an unwanted item 1 at the top of the list. Is there any way to prevent this? --Wswoody 15:35, 7 September 2010 (EDT) Whoops! forgot to change id. This is Judy

It doesn't work probably because we're using an older version of the Wikipedia software right now. Until we get onto the latest version you can use raw HTML tags to accomplish what you want. I edited the first list in your Ahnentafel page as an example.--Dallan 16:55, 7 September 2010 (EDT)

That seems to do what I need. Thanks. --Judy (jlanoux) 17:02, 7 September 2010 (EDT)

uploading a PDF that contains images [17 September 2010]

Hello, How do you upload a PDF that contains microfilmed images? I have a PDf that contains a civil war service record for a person in my tree. I can't figure out how to do this. Thank- You diyahnih--Diyahnih 07:10, 17 September 2010 (EDT)

You can upload a pdf from the Add Image page. The pdf will not be readable on the Person page, but you can include a link to it so a person can download the pdf and view on their computer. Use a Media tag. Here's an example:

 [[Media:Highly_Selected_General_Bibliography.pdf|Highly Selected General Bibliography]] 

will display as: Highly Selected General Bibliography
This is a good way to handle multipage documents as they aren't usually readable on screen anyway. --Judy (jlanoux) 12:58, 17 September 2010 (EDT)

confusing terminology [24 September 2010]

I'm confused. I searched for a page I thought was an article (since I wrote it) titled Surname:Jackson. The system couldn't find it an article named Surname:Jackson or Jackson Surname. So I tried searching the category and it went to the Category:Jackson surname. Clicking on that, at the top of that page it says "There are xx articles in Category:Jackson Surname" and right at the very top of the list is my article I was searching for. Now why couldn't the search engine find my article? Why did I have to go to the category to find the article? --Janiejac 15:36, 22 September 2010 (EDT)

Perhaps other experts can be of further assistance, but I will try to offer a couple ideas and workarounds. When you created a surname page such as you did with your Surname:Jackson page, even though you used the Article creation environment, it saved it in the Surname namespace. So if you went to Special Pages and clicked on the Browse Pages, if you left in the default "(Main)" namespace and looked up "Jackson" all it would find are the true articles relating to the name Jackson, identifing many of your Jackson Surname-in-Place pages. Whereas if you changed the namespace to "Surname" and then typed in "Jackson" you would have the Jackson surname page available as one of the pages to pick from. And if you used the Search WeRelate selection, you would also need to designate "Surname" in the namespace block to be immediately directed to your Surname:Jackson page. I would think you should also have been able to easily get to the Jackson surname page from a link to the catgegory repeated multiple times within your own User Page. You can add a direct link to the page for future use should you feel the desire. --BobC 19:01, 22 September 2010 (EDT)

No further assistance that I can think of - you nailed it :-) --Dallan 17:33, 24 September 2010 (EDT)

Pedigree-Charts covering people from several trees [16 October 2010]

I have my data uploaded in different trees. When I select for a pedigree-chart only people of one tree are reflected, although the connections (child => parents) are defined, but the parents are in another tree. When I make the pedigree-chart within the other tree, only persons from that one tree are reflected. In my opinion the idea of WeRelate should be that all connected persons should come together. Klaas --Ekjansen 03:50, 27 September 2010 (EDT)

Klaas, when viewing your pedigree chart, are you using the Family Tree Explorer (FTE)? I think Dallan can speak better to how FTE works, as I never used it myself. I can see, however, that only the pedigree from one tree is viewable that way. Instead, if you go to a person and click on More, Pedigree-Map you should be able to see a chart that spans multiple trees. --Jennifer (JBS66) 05:18, 27 September 2010 (EDT)

Jennifer, I am not using the FTE (this is not my thing) I look for the Pedigree-Map and there it shows only persons from one tree. Klaas --Ekjansen 05:50, 27 September 2010 (EDT)

The Pedigree-Map should show all ancestors regardless of what personal tree they are in. I can click on any other user's person and view their pedigree, even though they are not in any of my personal trees. Can you give an example of one of your pages where this is happening so I can take a look?--Jennifer (JBS66) 05:56, 27 September 2010 (EDT)

Pedigree of Hendrik Jansen [6] and the pedigree of his father Evert Jansen: [7] --Ekjansen 06:30, 27 September 2010 (EDT)

This is definitely one for Dallan to answer, as it looks like a system bug to me. I can see that you connected Evert to his parents in this edit. I thought it may be an issue with the system not recognizing this, so I made a null-edit on that page in an attempt to refresh it. That didn't help either. --Jennifer (JBS66) 06:43, 27 September 2010 (EDT)

The pedigree-maps are supposed to work the way you mention -- include people even if they're in different trees. I just looked at these two pages, and it appears that both pedigrees reference both people & trees now. Is it working now for you as well?

This is especially odd because the pedigree-maps don't do a lot of caching, so I'm a bit stumped trying to figure out what went wrong.--Dallan 23:25, 1 October 2010 (EDT)

Could it just be, that it takes quite some time to build up the references? I'll have my holydays now and will look in 10 days again. --Klaas (Ekjansen) 02:16, 2 October 2010 (EDT)

It shouldn't; it reads the database directly to create the pedigrees. Let me know when you get back, and have great holidays!--Dallan 09:47, 2 October 2010 (EDT)

Dallan, I can see where the pedigree in Klaas' example is now displaying correctly. I have had the same problem occur myself. I can't put my finger on a previous example, but perhaps you can replicate it. If you were to edit Person:Jan Van Der Veen (3) and add Family:Rienk Van Der Veen and Trijntje Leijstra (1) as his parents, you may be able to see it. Right now the pedigree for Rienk shows no grandparents. Ideally, they should display after you make the above edit. Well, hopefully this works - a bit like bringing your car in to the shop, it will never make the noise for the mechanic! --Jennifer (JBS66) 10:40, 2 October 2010 (EDT)

I know what you mean about the car and the mechanic. I edited Person:Jan Van Der Veen (3) and added Family:Rienk Van Der Veen and Trijntje Leijstra (1) as his parents. I then forced a browser refresh for the pedigree for Rienk and it showed his grandparents. You know -- that may be the issue: the browser has cached the previous version of the page. If that's the case, hitting refresh on the browser might solve the problem.--Dallan 16:02, 2 October 2010 (EDT)

Thanks for trying to replicate this. I did think about browser cache when Klaas brought this up. The thing is, I had never looked at his example page before, so it wasn't in cache for me. When I notice this happening again, I'll post another example here.--Jennifer (JBS66) 17:45, 2 October 2010 (EDT)

Thanks.--Dallan 18:09, 2 October 2010 (EDT)

• The problem is not solved yet: the pedigree-chart of Hendrik Jansen [8] stops with Geert de Lange [9] and Franke Ten Hoor [10], but their ancestry is also in WeRelate. The only problem I see is that they are in different trees. --Klaas (Ekjansen) 06:40, 12 October 2010 (EDT)

Ok, I finally see what's going on. The problem is that although Geert's parents appear on her Person page: Person:Geert De Lange (2), they didn't get copied to her family page: Family:Geert De Lange and Berendtje De Lange (1), where they should appear in small print above her name. The fact that they didn't get copied to her family page is a bug. The bug shows up in the pedigree, because the pedigree reads her parents from her family page instead of her person page. I've logged the bug and will work on it -- thanks for being persistent. Until it gets fixed, the workaround is to edit her person page and remove her parents (and save the page), then re-edit her person page and re-add her parents. This should cause them to be copied to her family page.--Dallan 14:11, 16 October 2010 (EDT)

Searching for Sources [6 January 2011]

Is there a preferred way to search for a Source? If I go Search, Sources, enter Victoria, Australia in the Title box, select Vital records in the Subject box and then Search I get 176 sources. Mixed in with those souces I'm looking for (at about number 60 & 61) are sources for Canada, Mexico, Phillipines, South Africa and all of the Australian states without any obvious ways to refine the search. Also, if I want to find the same source that I used a few months ago, I need to go though this process to re-find it and hopefully select the correct one (there can be lots of similar sources). If the sources had a number I could make a note of it to speed things up. I have been trying to do re-directs on a few of these similar sources to make things a bit easier for others (fortunately there are not many other links to these sources yet). If I try adding the word Births after Australia, I then end up with 3655 sources. Cheers Ken.--Kenamoore 22:10, 4 October 2010 (EDT)

The source title field has an autocomplete feature. Once you set the namespace to Source, anything you type in the title field will try to match sources whose page title starts with the same string. A list of such matches appears in a popup and you can select it from that list (there is a limit somewhere around 75-100, to how many titles will show up in the popup list). It is case sensitive, so it has to be exact. Once you find a source, you usually can remember the title and figure out the minimum string necessary to bring back a short list containing that source.

For geographic sources, like most vital records and most church records, the title of the page starts with the place name. So type in enough of the place name to be unique, pause for a couple of seconds, and then you will get all the titles that start with that place name. For books, the title is last name, first name of the main author, then the title, so usually typing in the author's name is sufficient to get a list including the desired title.

If you go to the find/add screen to do your search, possibly because you can't figure out how to get the autocomplete to suggest the desired title, be aware that the search is an OR (union) of the criteria as opposed to what I think is most intuitive, namely, an AND (intersection) of the criteria. So if you know something concretely, it is almost better to type in that criteria only and do an exact match. For example, put Victoria, Australia in the place field and nothing else. Less is more usually, in terms of getting a focused result. Adding more search criteria will usually result in more results returned. --Jrich 22:49, 4 October 2010 (EDT)

Perhaps I'm doing something wrong, but the autocomplete feature does not seem to work for me in either the Search, Source, Title field or the Place field, however I have seen it work in other fields so I know what you mean. Could you please try it? Also, when the source titles are very similar it is almost impossible to remember which one to use several months later. Regards Ken--Kenamoore 23:40, 4 October 2010 (EDT)

Further to this, there is a difference when entering the Search WeRelate screen from Search (on the top menu bar), Sources, compared with entering the find/add page screen from Editing Person, Source Citations, Title field, find/add >> The find/add page screen works as you described, however the Search WeRelate screen does not. Regards Ken--Kenamoore 07:08, 5 October 2010 (EDT)

I use autocomplete all the time so it works for me just fine, for Source titles, and place names. I use firefox. I don't know, and can't guess, to what extent its operation may be affected by which browser you use or the preferences you have set?

I was merely trying to describe how I use autocomplete, as I find it very useful/functional in specifying sources. As always, it may not fit your preferred work style as well. It wasn't meant to be an overview of all the search screens.

However, to your points, the search box in the top menu bar search merely sticks the words into the Keyword field, so this is behaves little differently. That search box is specifically designed to provide a quick search capability, and so doesn't offer all the same control the others do, though I am pretty sure it is built on the same search capability.

I believe the regular Search->Source screen does work the same as the find/add search. I picked a source I am familiar with to pretend I was searching for something specific. Using Search->Source, I search for author Willis and I get 547 results. I search for author Willis and title Portland, and I get 916 results. (Only some subset of sources matching author Willis could have Portland in the title, but the result set didn't get smaller, it got bigger. So the only answer is that now it matches the original 547 having author Willis, plus those additional sources that don't have author Willis but do have Portland in the title, i.e., a union.) I tried to add a source citation, and used the find/add function, trying the same two sets of criteria, and I get the same two result counts. It appears to give the identical functionality to me. --Jrich 09:27, 5 October 2010 (EDT)

I use IE8 so I would have thought it should work fine. As I said before, the Search-> Source screen does not provide autocomplete in the "Place" field whereas the find/add search screen does provide autocomplete in the "Place" field. The search which you described did not utilize the Place field.

Is there any good reason why each individual source does not have an individual identifier such as a number? I have seen a case where 2 sources have virtually identical titles except that one has an additional comma. It would be helpful in future when discussing with others which souces to redirect, combine or delete.

No one seems to be making any attempt to fix up all of those similar sources, which do not have any links to them nor anyone watching them. Multiple entries seem to have been created by people from the Family History Centres.--Kenamoore 20:35, 5 October 2010 (EDT)

Source searching is a known problem right now :-(. Better searching is the next feature to be launched, at which time the search criteria will be AND'ed instead of OR'ed, and sources will be ranked based upon how many people have linked to them or are watching them. You're right that the Search screen doesn't have auto-complete on the Place field, while the Find/Add screen does have auto-complete on the place field. That will get fixed as well. In the meantime, the source auto-complete on Person & Family pages is your best option unfortunately.

BTW, the reason that there are similar sources is when the website was first launched several years ago, I gathered existing sources from the Family History Library Catalog, Ancestry, and a number of genealogy websites. In hindsight this was probably a mistake. Cleaning up and merging those sources turned out to be a huge job. A lot of people put a lot of effort into a source renaming project last year, and the sources are much better now because of it, but as you've pointed out, there is still more work that could be done, and some people are continuing to clean them up.

I like the idea of bringing sources that you've used before to the top of the list. It won't happen right away, but I'll think about how this could be implemented in the future. One thing that you can do right now that will help: Watch the sources that you tend to reuse, and check "Show only Watched" in the search form.--Dallan 18:29, 6 October 2010 (EDT)

Thanks for this Dallan - I'm sure we all appreciate your time & efforts in trying to get everything just right and know that we can't get everything fixed immeadiately - I'm sure we can live with minor issues for now.

Has there been any discussion on giving every individual source say a 9 digit identification number? It can be very difficult trying to identify a particular source - especially when the titles are very similar - when discussing it with someone else.

Another possibility - could we have favourites? I am effectively doing this by watching sources. Cheers - Ken--Kenamoore 19:23, 6 October 2010 (EDT)

I Watch the sources that I use regularly. They check Watched box in the Search screen. Some people just keep a User page with a list of their regular sources. --Judy (jlanoux) 19:54, 6 October 2010 (EDT)

Yes, that's how I manage it. I tend to use the same 50-60 sources over and over, and I can't always remember what they're all called (some are similar to each other, same county and so on), so I keep a list of them in a plain text file. When I'm doing a bunch of info-adding that needs to be sourced, I just open that file and copy/paste. That also reminds me of whether I've actually used a source before, or whether it's a new one for me. It's rather kludgy, but it works. --Mike^Talk 10:20, 7 October 2010 (EDT)

I'd rather not add a 9-digit number to every source page title. But if two sources have confusingly-similar page titles (the same except for punctuation, etc.) and you want to distinguish them, I think it would be ok for you to rename those two pages and add the publication-year in parentheses to the end of the page titles. That's been done before when it's been necessary to distinguish between two different editions of a book.

For now, watching the sources or writing them down is the best way to have a list of favorites. In the future, I like the idea of keeping track of the sources you've linked-to in the past and moving these sources to the top of the auto-complete drop-down (assuming they match what you've entered so far). Similarly for places.--Dallan 10:28, 7 October 2010 (EDT)

As others suggested, I've created some user pages for my "links I want to remember" at various times, tho I find after I go through the effort to make them, I end up not using them very often. Anyway, I recall some discussion about a possible "favorites" list at some point early on; I think Dallan felt it would be duplicative of other bookmarks managers. And, when the autocomplete works, it's like a really focused bookmarks list - very effective.

I too have experienced a recent failure in the autocomplete function in some, but not all fields. I haven't yet worked out what could be causing it, but based on the fact the feature works for other weRelate users with the same browser as I use (either Chrome or Explorer) I'm assuming it's something in my settings. I'll let you know if I figure out what it is...

The autocomplete is triggered once by a change to the field. Sometimes if I do something that causes focus to leave the field (click on a different field, perhaps a popup steals the focus), I mess up the sequence of events that would normally trigger autocomplete. Or I accidentally dismiss it and want it back. In that case, I merely delete the last letter I typed and retype it, and it triggers the autocomplete afresh. Don't know if something like that is all that is needed, or if you are experiencing a bigger problem? --Jrich 12:49, 8 October 2010 (EDT)

No, there is something else that was going awry. Not sure what it is yet, as I haven't been back to a project that would involve updating citations via autocomplete in a bit. But I'm going to try it again soon, and see if I can figure it out. This was an abrupt change, where I was adding info to numerous citations and suddenly was unable to "copy" from my prior entry into the field. It did not affect the actual citation source title field; that one still did autocomplete. However, some of the other fields, like Volume/Pages and Date, stopped autocompleting. I recently (after this issue arose) updated to IE8; I will test and see if it happens still. However, I generally use Chrome when I'm working in WeRelate.--Brenda (kennebec1) 14:00, 14 October 2010 (EDT)

The autocomplete for the Volume/Pages and Date fields within a source citation is provided by your browser using previous responses, not by WeRelate. So it probably did have something to do with changing/updating browsers. WeRelate can only do autocomplete for fields where the entry is looked up to see if it exists, i.e., fields that correspond to a namespace, like Place, Source, Family (in spouse or parents field of Person page), etc. Because WeRelate takes over the autocomplete on these, the browser is unable to. But fields where WeRelate has no stored set of answers to use in anticipating your input, it does nothing, allowing your browser to offer you a list of previous input values if you have your set preferences set right. (On Firefox go to Tools->Privacy, and either remember history, of use custom settings for history, see the details in the Help.) Both types of autocomplete are great aids in manual entry of pages. --Jrich 15:13, 14 October 2010 (EDT)

Thank you! It was my guess that it had to be something with my browser/autocomplete function, but because it looks and works the same as the werelate autocomplete, I wasn't sure. I'm going to go mess with my browser settings now... --Brenda (kennebec1) 19:43, 15 October 2010 (EDT)

Finally, there are definitely more duplicate sources out there despite our massive source review project last year; if you have time, feel free to fix them. If you don't have time, is there a way such issues could be flagged for review? I'd be happy to review problem sources; I've been working for the past year reviewing Maine-related sources and updating and de-duping them (though I've only gotten to M, so I've got a ways to go yet).--Brenda (kennebec1) 12:14, 7 October 2010 (EDT)

I thought I'd try out the idea of watching sources. So I searched for sources I am watching and got 101 hits. However, over 40 sources that I am watching were not returned. Even when I put the name of the book in the search criteria and selected Watched, the book was not returned. If I selected Unwatched it was. My Watchlist (accessed from my user page) seems to be correct. So there must be some kind of bug. One example of a source I am watching that was not returned is Source: Hoppin, Charles Arthur. Bliss Book. I looked for a pattern (sources I changed vs. sources I didn't; sources that have been renamed; how long since I started watching) and could not find one. If you need my full list, let me know. --DataAnalyst 13:24, 31 December 2010 (EST)

This problem seems to be resolved now. --DataAnalyst 23:04, 6 January 2011 (EST)

Probably various caches used by the searching didn't have time to get updated when you first tried it. --Jrich 01:11, 7 January 2011 (EST)

Can't access Matthew Winans' person page [7 October 2010]

A few days back I was transfering a 3-page descendancy to Matthew Winans (1), so that I could then distribute part of said descendancy to other pages & eventually eliminate the descendancy altogether. Something happened and now I cannot access the page at all. I even used my niece's user name & password which helped yesterday. Now neither my nor my niece's user name & password allow me access. Instead the program freezes & I have to Ctrl Alt Del to get out. I'm here at the library as always. Help ! I don't mind starting all over again creating Matthew, but I'd rather not have Matthew Winans (1) floating out there in lala land.--Neal Gardner 10:23, 5 October 2010 (EDT)

Now I can not access person page for Matthew Winans' mother, Rebecca Connant (1) either. I need some intervention, I don't want to lose a handful of ancestors. Help, help, help !--Neal Gardner 11:37, 5 October 2010 (EDT)

Neal, I can access Person:Matthew Winans (1) and Person:Rebecca Connett (1) using both Firefox and Chrome. Internet Explorer is having a problem with it though. --Jennifer (JBS66) 11:43, 5 October 2010 (EDT)

I edited your Person:Rebecca Connett (1) page as a test. See if you can view it now using IE. --Jennifer (JBS66) 11:55, 5 October 2010 (EDT)

Got into Rebecca Connant (1) and was able to edit and get out. Have to leave library, but will try Matthew when I get back. Thanks a whole bunch. Thought a fungus was taking over..{:>)--Neal Gardner 12:13, 5 October 2010 (EDT)

Glad it worked! I'll edit the Matthew page too. This time I'll put the descendancy in a note field, instead of a source field (since that's the more appropriate place for it).

This will provide a clue for Dallan though as to why the page was so unliked by IE.--Jennifer (JBS66) 12:17, 5 October 2010 (EDT)

Thanks Jennifer. Everything back to normal. Didn't realize temporarily using Bio section was vulnerable. --Neal Gardner 14:58, 5 October 2010 (EDT)

I don't think it is the "Bio" (Personal History) section that is the problem per se. I started up IE (normally use Firefox) and didn't have a problem even with the older revisions. But I did note that a warning was displayed: "WARNING: This page is 48 kilobytes long; some browsers may have problems editing pages approaching or longer than 32kb." --Jrich 16:23, 5 October 2010 (EDT)

I haven't seen a browser actually crash on a page for a long time. The indentation in the descendancy tree causes the text to be rendered inside an HTML "pre" tag. I've changed (again) how pre tags are styled. The default styling is to never wrap lines of text; in WeRelate, "pre" tags now wrap lines of text when they get too long. I reverted Person:Matthew Winans (1) to what it used to be and looked at it in IE7, IE8, Chrome, and Firefox. It now looks good in all of them.

Changing the styling of pre tags may have negative consequences on other pages. If anyone notices indented text not being rendered well elsewhere, would you please bring it to my attention?--Dallan 10:19, 7 October 2010 (EDT)

Where's Wiki Help? [11 October 2010]

The WR help pages sometimes refer one to Wikipedia help for more extensive how-to information. This seems appropriate as it saves reinventing the wheel by rewriting help here. But I have problems when using the Wikipedia help to try to do things on WeRelate. The answer seems to always be "because we are using an older version of Mediawiki". I'd like to save a day or two of frustration by using the appropriate documentation. Is there a site that has the help appropriate for our version of Mediawiki? --Judy (jlanoux) 13:11, 9 October 2010 (EDT)

You can look at old versions of wikipedia (and many other websites) by going to Archive.org. Enter the URL you want to see a previous version of in the "Wayback machine". The version you want is from July 2006. Yes, it's been awhile. :-(. This is not a perfect solution, but will have to do until I upgrade to the latest version next year.--Dallan 18:31, 11 October 2010 (EDT)

Thanks. I have no previous wiki experience, but I'd like to learn a few new tricks every now and then. I had no idea where to get information. Off to explore the past (appropriate for a genealogist) --Judy (jlanoux) 18:39, 11 October 2010 (EDT)

Formatting an Article [21 October 2010]

I'm having trouble formatting an article so that it is readable see Journal of Harriett M Rendell September 1869. In the text box I keep entering Carriage Return [Enter] to make a space between lines and to seperate text but these spaces don't appear when I preview. I have tried looking at the featured page on Wiiliam H. Smith to see if I could get any ideas without luck. What am I doing wrong? Also, is setting up an article the preferred way to present this journal? Cheers - Ken--Kenamoore 07:27, 20 October 2010 (EDT)

I wonder if this is a "negative consequence" that Dallan referred to above here when he said "Changing the styling of pre tags may have negative consequences on other pages. If anyone notices indented text not being rendered well elsewhere, would you please bring it to my attention?" Your text works on person pages but not articles, so this may be an unintended result of Dallan's restyling.--Jennifer (JBS66) 07:34, 20 October 2010 (EDT)

Hmmm. That's very strange. I went immediately to take a look at The Problem of William H. Smith, which is an article referenced on the William H. Smith Person page, and it still looks the way it ought to. However, the difference may be that almost everything of any substance -- and certainly anything that long -- that I post has first been written offline, either as a memo in TMG or as a Word doc, and then copy/pasted into the text box in WeRelate. Perhaps that means the imported text isn't quite as "bare" as I had thought, and that codes for "hard return" are being imported -- I don't know.

As far as using a article to present this sort of lengthy info, I think that's a very good way to handle it. Either in an article or as a source page, actually. I've been doing that with cemetery transcriptions and military muster rolls. Other people can then easily link to the material and it also keeps the Person page from becoming unwieldy in lengthy. --Mike^Talk 08:29, 20 October 2010 (EDT)

Something about having the center tag covering two lines was screwing it up. I formatted the two lines separately and now the rest of the returns show up.--Amelia 11:12, 20 October 2010 (EDT)

Thanks, Amelia. I wouldn't have thought that made a difference, since the wiki defaults (I thought) to wrapping lines practically indefinitely. The tags shouldn't care about how long the lines are, and the browser will simply split them wherever necessary. (I've done that on regular web pages, though it sometimes comes out looking a bit sloppy.) --Mike^Talk 20:45, 21 October 2010 (EDT)

Thanks for your help, it now looks great, amazing how little things can make a lot of difference. Regards--Kenamoore 19:51, 20 October 2010 (EDT)

That's an interesting journal, Ken. I love reading old letters and diaries, even if I'm not connected to anyone in them. Now, of course, you need to research some of the other passengers mentioned in the journal, make up pages for them, and link to those pages from the journal. . . .  :-) --Mike^Talk 20:45, 21 October 2010 (EDT)

Source Data??? [1 November 2010]

How can I find out the source data for a given entry. Is there any way to tell if there is a verifiable for a specific individual or lineage. I know a lot of the entries are what people have been told or surmised but a lot of us need the documented proof in order to join a variety of organizations such as: the DAR, the SAR, the DUV, etc.--Mcguirepv 16:03, 1 November 2010 (EDT)

It depends upon the page. Some pages have extensive source citations and, unfortunately, there are some pages that have few, if any, sources listed. The great thing about a wiki environment like WeRelate is that if you see something that's undocumented and you have documentation, you can add the source even if you didn't create that page. --Amy (Ajcrow) 16:08, 1 November 2010 (EDT)

Hello, You can also locate the Watchers on the Person Pages or Family pages in WeRelate by clicking on their User page and leave them a note on their WeRelate User Talk page and ask about sources for Person: John Doe or Family: John & Jane Doe too. We do and are trying to encourage WeRelate Users to add sourcing, it is a step hill so far though. Also another idea you could do outside of WeRelate is contact the organization you wish to join and order the ancestors latest "record copy" or whatever that organization calls it thru that child's name. Good Luck, Debbie Freeman --DFree 16:25, 1 November 2010 (EDT)

Problems with werelate or my pc ? [10 November 2010]

Hello

Is there a problem with the my Relate section today The screen looks like this:

• <home>
• <add>▼
• <myrelate>▼
• <admin>▼

Also I have uploaded a new Gedcom this morning and this is nowhere to be found yet, normally it is there within minutes (Spoeltman file)--Kalishoek 05:15, 9 November 2010 (EST)

With respect to your gedcom upload, there was a large file being processed and your file was in queue. It is visible now.

The problem with display is usually transient - I see it at times too. Often reloading the page will clear it up. If it persists, please tell us what browser and version you are using. --Judy (jlanoux) 10:22, 9 November 2010 (EST)

Every once in awhile when the system gets overloaded you'll see this. It's a known bug. Reloading should fix the problem.--Dallan 16:08, 10 November 2010 (EST)

Source - Add Page - returns blank page [27 November 2010]

I have been adding sources successfully but now when I attempt to add a new source a blank page is returned. More specifically I'm attempting to create source pages for newspapers. After clicking "add page" a blank web page is displayed and the new source page is never created. The problem has been occurring for the past few days in both Firefox and Internet Explorer. Is there a limit to the number of sources one can add? Is anybody else having this problem? Any help would greatly be appreciated. Thank you.--Joe 12:30, 11 November 2010 (EST)

I've had something similar happen every so often. I recently discovered I needed to adjust popup settings, open links in new page/tab or not, and "autofill" settings to get WeRelate to work optimally. If you've recently had a browser auto upgrade, you might check your settings and test a few alternatives to see if you still have the same issue. I'm sorry I can't be more specific as to what I changed; this isn't the same issue I recently had, so I'm not sure what I did will help you. But what you're experiencing sounds like a browser settings and/or a memory/WeRelate is busy now type of issue. There aren't limits on the number of sources you can add, so you should be ok there! --Brenda (kennebec1) 16:39, 12 November 2010 (EST)

I was entering my master source list into WeRelate and when I got to my newspaper sources (about the 200th source) I couldn't enter any more sources. No changes to my system, just entering source after source until I no longer could. Entered a source one minute and the next minute a blank page. Which is why I thought it might be an administrative block of some sort. I do appreciate the feedback and tried your suggestions to no avail. Maybe it is time for me to take a break. Thanks again. --Joe 10:12, 15 November 2010 (EST)

Joe, what happens if you "refresh" the page? And have you tried to clean out your browser cache? I've asked some other more tech-savvy adminst to take a look at your question as well. Hopefully we'll come up with an answer.--Brenda (kennebec1) 14:08, 17 November 2010 (EST)

I'm noticing that this is only happening with adding sources of type Newspaper. Not much help, but hopefully it's a clue for Dallan. --Jennifer (JBS66) 14:12, 17 November 2010 (EST)

I tried adding a newspaper and got a blank page as well. I think it must be something in the programming for this type of source. Joe, will you try adding a source of a different type? Thanks.--Brenda (kennebec1) 11:45, 18 November 2010 (EST)

That's a bug; thank-you for reporting it. It's fixed now.--Dallan 00:52, 28 November 2010 (EST)

Source titles for encyclopedic references [19 November 2010]

What is WR's rule for titling source pages that are multi-volume, multi-authored books? One example is Source:Schöffer, I. Biografisch Woordenboek Van Nederland. It appears to have been published from 1979-2008 with multiple authors. The authors listed on the source page are collaborators/editors. Can we remove the author from the title and title this Source:Biografisch Woordenboek Van Nederland? --Jennifer (JBS66) 09:42, 19 November 2010 (EST)

I believe that is what we did when we encountered these cases. Then in the Source page text we included details of each volume giving pub date and editor/compiler and topics whenever we could find the information. You can even add a suggested citation for each volume if you wish as these things do confuse novices. --Judy (jlanoux) 18:55, 19 November 2010 (EST)

Ellisisland.org [26 November 2010]

I'm looking for suggestions on consolidating our various sources/repositories for the http://www.ellisisland.org website. We currently have:

1. Source:Ellis Island, New York, United States. Immigration-Records.com
2. Source:New York City, New York, United States. Ellis Island
3. Source:Ellis Island Records
4. Source:Ellis Island, New York, United States. Ellis Island Passenger Arrivals : American Family Immigration History Center
5. Repository:Ellis Island Passenger Arrivals : American Family Immigration History Center

I'm wondering what the correct source title should be and which of the above should be deleted. Thanks, --Jennifer (JBS66) 07:25, 26 November 2010 (EST)

Perhaps the source should be Source:New York, New York, United States. Passenger and Crew Lists of Vessels Arriving at New York, NY, 1897-1957 and the repository The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation. I'm not sure that any of the above items are really useful. --Jennifer (JBS66) 13:26, 26 November 2010 (EST)

I agree with Jennifer. That page has the actual title of the source. The other pages are not necessary at all and should be redirected, IMHO. -- Amy (Ajcrow) 14:22, 26 November 2010 (EST)

Thank you Amy. I created a repository page for Repository:Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation and deleted the above pages. There was nothing that linked to them and deleting them ensures they don't show up in the drop-down box. --Jennifer (JBS66) 16:27, 26 November 2010 (EST)

City Directories [6 December 2010]

What is the policy for citing City Directories? Does each year have its own source page, or are they considered a serial publication? What is the proper format for the title? Thanks, --Jennifer (JBS66) 14:11, 1 December 2010 (EST)

I found some limited discussion about city directories as they related to the source renaming. We still seem to have a great variety of titles, from Source:Polk's Directory, Seattle, Washington, 1899-1900 to Source:Westbrook, Cumberland, Maine, United States. Westbrook (Maine) City Directory, 1909-1910.

It seems that since these are geographically oriented items, they should follow the Place. Title rule. I also think that having (Maine) in the example above is redundant. There are also a variety of publishers for City Directories, so I chose to include that information in the title: Source:Grand Rapids, Kent, Michigan, United States. R.L. Polk & Co.'s Grand Rapids City Directory. I also grouped all years from the same publisher in one source, and omitted any dates in the page title. Am I on the right track here? --Jennifer (JBS66) 13:28, 6 December 2010 (EST)

Since many of the directory sources were imported from Ancestry and Family Search, you will find a variety of formats in the catalog. Directories should be treated as Serial as you proposed. The year of issue is part of the citation added by the user, but not the source title. However, there should be a separate source for different publishers. The text box on the source page could contain some useful information about which issues are available at various resources. This is one source where having catalog pages could be of great use. The few directories that I have found already had source pages so I used those (pre-redesign.) If I were to add one now, I would do it as you describe. --Judy (jlanoux) 15:45, 6 December 2010 (EST)

Places in geographic source page titles [8 December 2010]

For geographically oriented sources, how are we titling them when there was a jurisdictional change? One U.S. example might be West Virginia/Virginia. I see from Source:Logan, West Virginia, United States. 1850 U.S. Census Population Schedule that we are using the place title as Logan, West Virginia, even though at the time of this source, it was in Virginia. Is the rule such that we need to use the WR place page title verbatim in the source title? --Jennifer (JBS66) 07:55, 8 December 2010 (EST)

See Counties that Don't Exist above. Places are named with their "constant" (1900) name. Sources should be named with the place as of the time of the source, but that was not done during the automated process. (Also, I assume, there's an exception that we're including "United States" on colonial sources so as not to make things excessively confusing).--Amelia 09:58, 8 December 2010 (EST)

Thank you Amelia! I knew there was talk somewhere about historical place names, but I didn't notice the section about source titles. --Jennifer (JBS66) 10:03, 8 December 2010 (EST)

Ancestry.com data bases as Sources [11 December 2010]

Currently I have a MySource:Janiejac/Rockingham County, Virginia Deaths, 1853-61. http://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=4623

The link does NOT go to the individual result of search, but goes where you begin the search. (Much easier to re-use the source that way.) I'd like to create a source for this but am unsure how to handle ancestry.com's databases.

The explanation of the database says:
Original data: Bureau of Vital Statistics - Death Register for Rockingham County, 1853-1861. Taken from a microfilm copy of located in the Library of Virginia at Richmond, VA, USA.
Taken from microfilm copies of the original documents, this database offers researchers information regarding the decedent's name, sex, race, and date of death. The page numbers refer to the original documents from which these entries were taken.--Janiejac 10:42, 11 December 2010 (EST)

Most of the Ancestry sources were in the Source catalog. But new ones have not been added automatically. So always look first. I don't see this one so you will have to build it. Some Ancestry sources are images of the originals and do not need a separate source record. But this one has been converted into a database which makes it a separate source. While you quoted Ancestry's description of the original, they also provide a citation for this source: Fridley, Beth. Rockingham County, Virginia Deaths, 1853-61 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: The Generations Network, Inc., 2000. The source record should be built using this information. You may want to put in the narrative the information about the original data. --Judy (jlanoux) 11:23, 11 December 2010 (EST)

Cannot view all watchers [12 December 2010]

If you select [show all] on the Watchers list, you get a message about not being able to view the XML. This just started within the last hour or two. I assume a change was made and introduced a bug in the XML formating. --DataAnalyst 22:58, 11 December 2010 (EST)

I've checked a few pages and it seems to be working now. Perhaps it was a transient problem. Write back if you are still having trouble and let us know what browser. --Judy (jlanoux) 23:51, 11 December 2010 (EST)

It was a transient problem - it is working now. Thanks --DataAnalyst 09:39, 12 December 2010 (EST)

Deleting an article [16 December 2010]

I created an page that I want to delete. No one is watching it; there is no text on the page, nothing links to it. When I click on 'more' to find the delete button, nothing happens - there is no more. So I cannot figure out how to delete this page. Will someone delete it for me? http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Jackson_in_Louden%2C_Virginia%2C_United_States --Janiejac 21:50, 15 December 2010 (EST)

Done:) (you had nothing in it, it required a bit of text first) cheers.

--Leo Bijl 22:25, 15 December 2010 (EST)

Thanks. I tried everything but that. Sometimes it is the littlest things that trip me up. Requires text? Who wuda thunk it? --Janiejac 13:49, 16 December 2010 (EST)

Now that I come to think of it: I believe it needs an administrator to delete any page other than one for a person or couple (provided it was your own and nobody watches). It did need an edit first though.

--Leo Bijl 14:19, 16 December 2010 (EST)

Changing password [22 December 2010]

--Online 21:16, 21 December 2010 (EST)

How do I go about changing my password?--Online 21:17, 21 December 2010 (EST)

Through settings, top right, just next to your name :)--Leo Bijl 21:21, 21 December 2010 (EST)

Formating Problem - New WeRelate [28 December 2010]

In going through the pages entered prior to the new WeRelate, I note that some using the Cite work fine and others required the change to "ref name= "S1"/" solution. Just FYI, perhaps you already know this.

However, here is another strange formating issue where fonts are changed and the "Cite" calls are not an issue.

This is happening because you have a space before the name Nettie. When a line has a leading space, it causes the font to change. --Jennifer (JBS66) 09:19, 28 December 2010 (EST)

RE:

OK? Thanks.--B.holmes 09:54, 28 December 2010 (EST)

Nettie Bell Thomason

Nettie Belle Thomason, daughter of Elizabeth Vaughn and James Brown Thomason, was born on 6 January 1888 in Callaway County, Missouri.

Nettie Bell Thomason and Alvin Edgar Holmes married on 11 August 1904. Most likely the marriage was in Callaway County, Missouri. The had two sons: Floyd Walace and Harry Holmes.

Young Harry is shown in the following photo with his mother, maternal Grandmother and Great Grandmother(maternal Grandfather's Mother.

Nettie died in May 1960 in Guthrie, Callaway County, Missouri and is buried there.

A memorial is found on the Find-A-Grave website with a photo of her cemetery marker in Guthrie Cemetery. --B.holmes 09:12, 28 December 2010 (EST)

Ged com attached to wrong tree [26 August 2010]

Greetings!

I attached the following Gedcom to the wrong tree.

 JacobNKvandal10genOGF.ged
 Import: 22 Dec 2009
 Download

It should be attached to the Albert Henry Luehr tree and not the Herman Richter tree. Is there anyway to remedy this ?

Many thanks!

Ruth Ellen--RELuehr 21:54, 25 August 2010 (EDT)--RELuehr 12:45, 29 December 2010 (EST)

Pedigree [30 December 2010]

I cannot locate how to access the neat pedigree view show in a tutorial. I do not have a MORE button on as a menu item in a bar near the top of the page. SOrry for needing help with such a basic.

RELuehr--RELuehr 18:50, 29 December 2010 (EST)

The "More" link has moved over to the lefthand side of the page. And no need to apologize! The only silly or stupid question is the one that isn't asked. :-) -- Amy (Ajcrow) 06:57, 30 December 2010 (EST)

Bug in handling split-year dating [30 December 2010]

I submitted a GEDCOM for uploading and got the following two error messages for Ebenezer Butterworth:

Birth is after death

An event occurs before birth

When I look at the preview of the record, it shows his death (11 Feb 1699/1700) before his birth (6 May 1699). However, with split-year dating (used from approx. 1582 to 1752), Feb 1699/1700 is after May 1699. Does WeRelate have a general bug in handling of split-year dates, or is it just because this happened to be the turn of a century?

I would appreciate this bug being fixed, because it does not take much to push warning messages over 2% of a GEDCOM file, at which point it might not be uploaded. Thanks.

I don't wish to insult anyone's genealogy knowledge, but for anyone who has not yet encountered split-year dating, there is an excellent article on it here: http://www.eogen.com/CalendarChange16thCentury

--DataAnalyst 13:25, 30 December 2010 (EST)

I noted that problem when I reviewed the file and left Dallan a message. Thanks. Your file is importing. --Judy (jlanoux) 14:31, 30 December 2010 (EST)

Redirected family pages [30 December 2010]

I came across a redirected family page that uses the #REDIRECT template: Family:William Gifford and Hannah Unknown (3). Is this current practice, or has it been replaced by merging? I believe that if I were to merge this page with the page it redirects to, the redirect would become automatic, and the user would be saved having to click a link. Should I merge such pages when I find them? --DataAnalyst 14:34, 30 December 2010 (EST)

Merging is uses a redirect as well. This appears to be an old-style merge before the process was automated, but the automated merge would have left the abandoned page with a redirect to the target page, also. No only does this save having to clean up all the What Links Here, but it retains all the history prior to merging so you can actually go look at the pre-merge versions, and possibly restore the old version if the merge was wrong. There does not seem to be a noticeable performance penalty for the extra level of indirection, and in practice, the number of hops to get to the target page is very small. --Jrich 16:58, 30 December 2010 (EST)

Orphaned records with no information [30 December 2010]

If I find an orphaned record (no parents, no spouse) with no useful information (no dates, no sources) and nothing linking to it, should I tag it for speedy delete? I found such a record today: Person:John Gifford (5). He appears to have been removed from a family in 2008 - someone obviously decided there was no John in this family. In the past, when I have wanted to get rid of unsubstantiated extraneous children in a family, I merged them with another child in the same family. Is speedy delete preferable? (I know it takes Admin time, but then the page is completely gone.) Or is merging preferable because it can be undone if someone finds evidence for the person after all. Thanks. --DataAnalyst 14:41, 30 December 2010 (EST)

Yes it looks like John used to be in the William Gifford and Hannah Unknown family mentioned in a previous topic, but when the vital records of Falmouth were tracked down, no John was listed in this family or in the marriages or deaths, though the other children were, and so the parents were removed on the assumption, which appears valid, that there is no evidence of a son John in this family. But with the parents removed, we are left with no identifying information of any kind on John's page, and he could be any John Gifford for all we know. As the creator did not respond since the page was orphaned two years ago, I agree the page has no purpose for the community. Speedy delete is one way to handle it. Merging doesn't not actually remove the page, it just redirects it to the target page (effectively hiding it). Another way to remove it would be to enter the data for some other person named John Gifford that is known about, even if it might not be the John Gifford the creator intended. --Jrich 17:16, 30 December 2010 (EST)

I would lean toward Speedy Delete. I think that's a much "cleaner" solution than adding info for another John Gifford and having it end up getting mixed up somehow with the original family. -- Amy (Ajcrow) 18:08, 30 December 2010 (EST)