WeRelate talk:Support/2014

Warnings bug?? [19 January 2014]

I uploaded a small gedcom of abt 30 persons. I had a warning that one marriage was when the couple was too young. Since it was such a small gedcom this one warning gave me 21% warnings. So I saw the marriage date was wrong and edited the page removing the date of marriage. That should have fixed the problem. But now the warnings are just doubled - and the list of warnings now list the same couple twice. Now I have 42% and cannot upload. Am I missing something here or is there a bug? --janiejac 21:14, 14 September 2013 (EDT)

I still see the warnings at 21%. The warnings percentage is only generated when you upload your file, they are not recalculated when you make edits during GEDCOM review. I went ahead and imported the file for you. --Jennifer (JBS66) 07:18, 16 September 2013 (EDT)

Some small bug must have caused that msg after editing the page during review. I didn't imagine seeing the 41% warnings msg and the same two people listed twice. And the comment that because of the 41% warning I could not upload. Perhaps the view the admin sees just didn't show that. Or perhaps the msg went away after 24 hours? In any case, thanks for uploading it. --janiejac 09:47, 16 September 2013 (EDT)

I have noted that warnings are often duplicated in GEDCOM uploads (on the warnings tab that the submitter sees when reviewing the GEDCOM). This is clearly a bug, but it has never been significant enough for me to report. Warnings that have already been read will be added again as unread warnings after some editing and/or matching of the GEDCOM file - I have not taken the time to determine if there is a particular pattern or trigger for this.--DataAnalyst 02:50, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Well, it has happened again so now I cannot import the file. Before review I had a 7% warning level, concerning 2 problems. I fixed one but the system did not provide an edit feature so I could fix the other one. But the larger problem was that in fixing that first warning, the system doubled all alerts and thus increased the warning level to now 13.8 percent and now I cannot import. This same thing happened on my last gedcom import/review process. I mentioned it at that time, and the admins saw no problem and inported the file for me. But since it has now happened twice, I think someone should look at it. --janiejac 15:18, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Being impatient, I just went back to that GEDCOM that I could not import because the warnings had all duplicated themselves and now the percentage was too high. But when I went into it this evening, it was all OK. So perhaps a work-around to this problem is to close the review and open it again. Anyway, since the warning percentage was now back to 7%, I was able to import it. That still needs fixed because a newbie might have completely given up. --janiejac 02:06, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Error messages at top of Watercooler page [27 October 2013]

Near the top of the Watercooler are some error messages:

  Error creating thumbnail: convert: unable to open image `/mnt/images/6/64/LibraryBook.GIF': @ error/blob.c/OpenBlob/2587. convert: missing an image filename `/mnt/images/thumb/6/64/LibraryBook.GIF/105px-LibraryBook.GIF' @ error/convert.c/ConvertImageCommand/3011.

  Error creating thumbnail: convert: unable to open image `/mnt/images/9/99/New_User.jpg': @ error/blob.c/OpenBlob/2587. convert: missing an image filename `/mnt/images/thumb/9/99/New_User.jpg/96px-New_User.jpg' @ error/convert.c/ConvertImageCommand/3011

This happens with Chrome and I.E. --Robert.shaw 04:47, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

This appears to be fixed now. It was related to the issue posted here on the Watercooler. If you are still experiencing any problems, please let us know. --Jennifer (JBS66) 14:46, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

I get the same error message today: Error creating thumbnail: convert: unable to open image `/mnt/images/e/e5/Lesja_I_verlie.jpg': @ error/blob.c/OpenBlob/2587. convert: missing an image filename `/mnt/images/thumb/e/e5/Lesja_I_verlie.jpg/180px-Lesja_I_verlie.jpg' @ error/convert.c/ConvertImageCommand/3011. See this profile for example: http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Person:Ola_Bj%C3%B8kne_%281%29 Annema 12:06, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

I uploaded the document again and named it Image:Lesja I Overlie.jpg. It seems the error was caused by the Ø in the title. I will mention this bug to Dallan. --Jennifer (JBS66) 12:34, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Help with email verification please [1 October 2013]

I have set up a werelate account for my best friend on Friday night. I have tried several times to verify her email address & although I have sent several email verification emails, they have not made it to her email account. All of her information is correct & her email account is working. Dallan emailed me & said there were some hardware issues but I am still not able to confirm Tracey's email account. Any help would be most appreciated.

Jules--JulesLonghurstStiles 21:14, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Just to follow up, it looks like your friend's email was confirmed on the 24th. Let me know if there is still a problem.--Dallan 20:46, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi Dallan I used my alternate email to verify my friend's werelate account. Which works just fine since I check my email often which my gf does not lol. I hope this is not a problem.--JulesLonghurstStiles 16:30, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Links to other websites are not allowed [29 September 2013]

Help please,

I am working on my profile page and added some external links and got the following error message when I tried to save the page:

"Links to other websites are not allowed"

Since when can we not use links to other websites? Why are there directions in the Help section on how to create external links if we are not allowed to use them?

A little confused here... :(

Thanks for your input!--Marytennessee 13:42, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Mary, I attempted to recreate your situation. I added an external link on my profile page and did not get any error message. Jillaine 22:00, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi Jillaine! Thanks for your help! I tried the link again and it worked this time. WeRelate was having a bad hair day, I guess... :) Ruth--Marytennessee 22:50, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

GEDCOM review [2 October 2013]

Is every GEDCOM reviewed by an administrator prior to finalizing the import process? I understand that things need to be double-checked, but my hands are completely tied, waiting for an ok on my gedcom. Very frustrating. I was wondering if this will be a problem every time I try to import a .ged file.

Thanks--Marytennessee 00:17, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Every GEDCOM gets a review prior to finalizing the import. It helps keep out bad GEDCOMs. Typically the review happens within 24 hours (sometimes it's 48). We would welcome more volunteers to help review if anyone is interested.--Dallan 20:46, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Let's talk a bit about GEDCOM review. Marytennessee, I share your frustration over what feels like such a long delay in waiting for the final review. Where can we read about what is involved with this review? I would hesitate to volunteer without knowing more about it. I know the time required must depend on the size of the upload but what can a volunteer expect? And how much volunteering would be expected if one signs up? --janiejac 07:35, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm glad you're interested! You can find out more here. Checking the list of GEDCOMs to be reviewed just once a day would be a big help. Most of the time there won't be any to review. For example, Solveig spends an average of 15 minutes a day but as more people get involved that number would decrease. If you're interested, leave a message on the talk page.--Dallan 02:30, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

rearranging order of marriages [4 October 2013]

I think I read somewhere that there was a way to list marriages in the proper chronological order when lack of marriage dates causes them to be listed out of order. I don't remember how to do that. How do I rearrange them properly?--janiejac 00:12, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Go to the edit screen for the person - to the 'Spouse and children family' section where there are 2 families listed. Hover your mouse arrow just to the left of one of the families. Your mouse pointer will change from a single arrow to 4 arrows pointing N-S-E-W. When your pointer changes to that, hold the left mouse button and drag the box either up or down to rearrange. --Jennifer (JBS66) 10:52, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! It was easy once I knew how! Now if we just had the ability to re-order the sources. Maybe sometime in the future. --janiejac 13:46, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Family tree search disgorges stale data [18 October 2013]

I cleaned up tree Jhamstra/Wilson one to two weeks ago, removing perhaps half of the entries. Yet these entries that are no longer in the trees still show up whenever I do a search. I have cleared my browser cache and they still do not go away.

Apparently they are cached somewhere within WeRelate server. Please clear this cache as it is tedious and impractical to find current entries in a search with all this old garbage coming back.

At what point should your cache of searches refresh itself?

--Jhamstra 19:56, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

It should refresh within 10-15 minutes. Can you give me the title of a page that's still showing up in searches? That will help me track down the problem.--Dallan 19:34, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Well the very first person displayed in my Wilson tree is Charlemagne. They say that all Europe is descended from this gentleman so perhaps he should be in this tree but he is not. He was there some time ago as a result of experimenting I did with FTE and tree update etc.--Jhamstra 22:29, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

It looks like when you remove pages from your tree, the pages don't get re-indexed so they stay connected to your tree until they get edited or someone watches/unwatches them. I've configured the indexer to re-index all pages over the next several days so the pages should start being removed from your tree soon. I'm heading out of town tomorrow; I'll fix the bug when I get back on Monday. Thanks for letting me know.--Dallan 23:18, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Charlemagne no longer appears but now his son Louis appears first. More importantly the search results for this tree now contain about 1000 fewer hits so I guess the re-indexing is making progress. Will check back again later. Thanks. --Jhamstra 09:04, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Russian place names not showing Located In correctly [18 October 2013]

It looks like Russian place name that include a form of accent over combinations of letters cause an error in the "located in" display, as if the commas in the name are being ignored. See Zaporiz︠h︡z︠h︡i︠a︡, Zaporizhia, Ukraine, which gives its "located in" as Ukraine, as a case in point.--DataAnalyst 23:05, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

An apostrophe at the end of a name causes the same problem (but not the searching problem mentioned below). Check out Place:Melitopol′, Tavrida, Russia.--DataAnalyst 01:55, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

I'll fix that when I get back next week as well.--Dallan 23:20, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Dallan. I realized yesterday that what I was looking at was not an accent, but an indication that 2 letters were the result of transliterating a single Cyrillic letter (e.g., z︠h︡ represents the Cyrillic letter ж). It does not appear that this indicator is common practice (see Google maps), or necessary. The downside is not only the problem with the commas, but also that it interferes with the search engine. (When I search with the exact phrase "Nyzhnia Khortytsia", it does not find Place:Nyz︠h︡ni︠a︡ Khortyt︠s︡i︠a︡, Zaporiz︠h︡z︠h︡i︠a︡, Zaporizhia, Ukraine). I'm wondering if WeRelate should drop these indicators in place names (which seem to have been picked up solely from the Family History Library Catalogue). If they were to be removed through automation, I assume that duplicate place page names might result. (For example, Place:Verkhna Khortytsya, Zaporizhia, Ukraine and Place:Verkhni︠a︡ Khortyt︠s︡ya, Zaporizhia, Ukraine are almost identical other than the indicators.) This would result in a bit more work (to identify and merge the duplicates), but would result in better overall quality. I'll let you think about the best way to proceed on this (fix all bugs related to the indicators or simply remove them). --DataAnalyst 16:46, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Removal of some content [10 December 2013]

How do I go about removing content relating to a descendant? Although it may be factually correct, it serves no purpose being placed here.--LAPace 14:25, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Do you mean that there is narrative on a person's page that gives information on the person's descendant and you don't think it belongs on that page? If so, you can edit the page and remove the content. In the summary, note what you have done and why (e.g., "removed info about a descendant - does not belong on this page").

Does that answer your question? If not, can you indicate which page you are thinking of and maybe I can take a look.--DataAnalyst 02:55, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

correcting a family [3 November 2013]

I have removed the incorrect wife of Person:Thomas Rockwell (11), however her name still appears with an "add" link.

How can I get a correct page for Thomas T. Rockwell, Sr?--Prcb 19:02, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

You would need to go to the family page, click the Rename link on the left, and enter Family:Thomas Rockwell and Unknown as the new title. Don't include a number after it (the system will assign this for you). --Jennifer (JBS66) 19:07, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

That's it, thanks!--Prcb 12:52, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

About East Asian language support. [15 November 2013]

Hi, I am just wondering how well does this site support on East Asian languages, i.e. Chinese (either traditional or simplified), Japanese or Korean etc. I have tried to import a GEDCOM file, exported from GRAMPS, containing Chinese character as well as other Chinese name styles (aka courtesy name). Then I found out the GEDCOM validation shows that most of the entries were excluded (Not sure why, but one warning caught my attention: 'There is only one character in surname').

A little short bio about myself: I am currently trying to trace my heritage of my family, which could go back to 17th century. I was happy using GRAMPS on building the huge heritage tree, then I realize that I need something like a wikipedia to call out others and toegether to finis this work. That is how I came across to this website. I love the concept and layout/visuals of the family tree. However, the first thing I stumbled is that it seemly support most of the English-like language (or fusional language perhaps). I have a CS background and have been programming for many years. If there is anything that I can help with this website, please let me know - I notice this is an open source project:).--Shannaracat 02:08, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Hello and welcome!! I'm pretty sure that the WeRelate interface can handle any UTF-8 strings as far as encoding, but I think that there may be other parts (such as the GEDCOM importer) that may have English-language-based assumptions (such as dates, name length, etc.). If you can figure out why your imports are failing, I would file a request at WeRelate:Suggestions to fix it.

Then, ideally, come help us at WeRelate:Website_features to fix it! User:Dallan is the original developer of much of the site, and has recently open-sourced the code. A number of us are working on getting it really up-and-running as an open source project (with "us" being used loosely, as I haven't done much yet). We'd love to have your help. -- Jdfoote1 19:50, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for the swift reply. I browsed the source code on git a little bit, and found out that the majority of the code that involve with naming convention / format is currently English-language-based. Convention such as 'People from East Asian countries where the surname comes first' does not seem to be fully supported yet. I would love to offer my help on this (i18n) topic or other technical subjects as well:) Is there anyone that I could contact with in learning about the overview / future road map of this project? Thanks in advance.--Shannaracat 10:15, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Keeper of the roadmap for I18N? I guess that would be me. I'll write more on your talk page. --Pkeegstra 11:32, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

The near-term goal is to get WeRelate migrated to the latest version of MediaWiki. I need to review the modifications to the mediawiki-core code and re-make them on the latest version or see if new hooks have been added now. Once that's done I think we'll be ready for additional contributions; we'd love to have your help!--Dallan 04:26, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Dallan :) Let me know if there is anything I could help you with. Great site!--Shannaracat 03:38, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Collection of formatting guidelines or best practices [10 November 2013]

I'm wondering if there exists a page that outlines the best way to put together a page for a person. If WeRelate truly seeks to be a collaborative effort, it seems like we should aim for uniformity in the style of the pages that we create, no?

For example, I've been wondering:

• Do I attach a census to an individual page or the family page for the family he was in at the time?
• Should I attach images of a census?
  • If so, should they be the whole page, or just a crop around the family?
• Should I transcribe the census in the source entry?
• Where is the best place to link to so others can find the source? Archive.org? FamilySearch.org? Ancestry?
• How long should a life sketch be, and what should the format be?

It seems like it would be great to have some basic guidelines on some of these questions. Maybe that already exists somewhere, but I haven't seen it? - Jdfoote1 17:31, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

GEDCOM upload to Record name field? [12 November 2013]

Is there a GEDCOM tag that will upload to the Record name field within a source citation?--DataAnalyst 02:16, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Actually, there isn't a GEDCOM tag that will upload to the Record name field.--Dallan 04:26, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Removing GEDCOMs [14 November 2013]

Is there a way to delete a specific offending uploaded GEDCOM from my tree without deleting the entire tree and starting over?--Av 01:30, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Places not shown on map [14 November 2013]

Some Finnish places are not shown on the map - can you please help in this! http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Place:Tampere%2C_H%C3%A4me%2C_Finland http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Place:H%C3%A4meenlinna%2C_H%C3%A4me%2C_Finland http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Place:Dragsfj%C3%A4rd%2C_Turku-Pori%2C_Finland http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Place:Kemi%C3%B6%2C_Turku-Pori%2C_Finland They are not all small municipalities - Tampere is the 2nd biggest city of Finland. In some cases, it helped to add coordinates or change the place name into its current, not historical name. Werelate is very US Centric, there you often can tag places even within metropolitan regions. To make this great platform really work, also non-US locations should be made visible! I'm volunteering to correct these if only I get some info on how to do it.--Sjundea 21:12, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Submitted gedcom on Kelly family. [16 November 2013]

Can you remove the name of Anna Clara Kelly's great-granddaughter? She is a living person. Thanks, EKBDVA--EKBDVA 20:55, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Do you have a link to this page on WeRelate, or is this an item that is in your GEDCOM that is still in user review? --Jennifer (JBS66) 20:58, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Still in review--EKBDVA 22:02, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Since the file is still in review, no page has been created to delete. You would need to go into the file review (instructions are on your talk page under Next step: Review your GEDCOM). On the People tab, there are check boxes on the left side to exclude pages from import. However, I don't see anyone in the file still living, perhaps she wasn't included in your upload? If you would like to proceed with importing this GEDCOM, you would need to review the file then go to the Import tab and press Ready to Import. --Jennifer (JBS66) 12:09, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Warning: Elmira Kelly [18 November 2013]

More research reveals Elmira's maiden name was Bamberger. Can I edit this or must you do it from your end?

The date of Herbert's birth is correct. He was born out of wedlock and his mother later married Frank Bamberger who adopted Herbert.--EKBDVA 16:19, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Would you happen to have a link for the page you're referring?--Khaentlahn 17:09, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

I am very new to your website and having trouble moving around within it. Elmira Kelly is the wife of Richard Kelly, look for David Kelly.--EKBDVA 18:17, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

If you look at the top of the page for the person you're referencing, there is the menu showing Home | Search | List | Add | My Relate | Admin. Directly under Home should be a Person: or Family: designation, such as Person:Richard Kelly (13) or Family:John Kelly and Letitia Horton (1). You can click on either of these examples to help explain further. From this, can you determine the Person or Family designation for your individuals so we might help more effectively?--Khaentlahn 18:46, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Similar to the question above, this file is still in GEDCOM review. You would need to make these edits on your home software and resubmit the file for review. --Jennifer (JBS66) 18:55, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Unaware this was a GEDCOM review question. My apologies.--Khaentlahn 19:17, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Maps all Global? [8 January 2014]

Did something change in the Google Maps call semantics? All the maps, no matter how tight the cluster of points, seem to be coming out global. --Pkeegstra 11:47, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

It appears that way. This would need to be fixed on Dallan's end. --Jennifer (JBS66) 19:06, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Would it be possible to return to the old "closer to the location" map on the place pages soon?

• We use the maps to verify if the place we have selected is the correct one of a number with similar names.
• We may be adding the coords to a place and want to check if we have mis-keyed and placed it incorrectly (like in the middle of an ocean).

The whole world map is not helpful. Expanding it brings up another world map on which we have to pinpoint the area we are working on. And the pinpointing takes a long time when you are working on a relatively small area in terms of world-space like one county in the United Kingdom.

Into the bargain the global map takes a long time to load. This is frustrating when a county page is being used as an index, and we are waiting for ctrl+f to come up to find the link we want. (The map has to load completely before ctrl+f works.)

If we can't have the old map image back, can we at least have an explanation why?--Goldenoldie 07:14, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

So glad to see the former, "closer to the location", Google map back on the Place Pages. I have already replaced unintentional "E"s with "W"s today and thus put several places in Yorkshire back on dry land again. All the best to everyone for 2014. --Goldenoldie 16:00, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

Alas, is it my imagination or have we lost the capability to click on the full-page map to retrieve coordinates? I used to use that all the time in constructing place pages. --Pkeegstra 19:20, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Connecting person pages to an Article page [25 November 2013]

A friend and I are working on a project in which we are recording records for orphans which attended a specific Civil war orphan school in Pennsylvania. I have built an article page and there is a box on the edit for adding persons I attempted to add a person page that my friend built. However the entry I made says the page doesn't exist and it will not let me kill the created empty page. i also cannot load the correct person page.

Is there a way to connect these two pages http://www.werelate.org/wiki/White_Hall_School%2C_A_Summary and the person page http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Person:Clarence_Keiffer_%284%29 Thanks--Mm103 23:43, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Hi - sounds like a great project! The easiest way to connect people to a page is just to make a link to the people in the body of the page. I've taken the liberty of creating a "Students" section, and adding a link to Clarence Keiffer, so that you can see how the formatting works. this page may help you to figure out the syntax. It looks confusing at first, but it isn't bad at all once you get the hang of it. -- Jdfoote1 03:08, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

person married himself [4 December 2013]

On the person page for James Arthur Matthews, Jr (http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Person:James_Matthews_%2867%29), under Facts & Events, it shows James Matthews is married to himself. But on the Family Page, it shows him correctly married to Sara Belle Turner. Any way to correct this? What might be part of the problem is the fact that James & Sara were 1st cousins. James' mother and Sara's father were siblings. Maybe this is confusing the software?--Marytennessee 13:50, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

This happened because James' gender was set to Female. I changed it to male which corrected the Facts and Events listing. --Jennifer (JBS66) 13:55, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Sources for info in Place pages [7 December 2013]

I just updated Place:Delmas, Saskatchewan, Canada based upon information I found in the book People Places: Saskatchewan ad its People by Bill Barry. I wanted to provide the source for my paraphrase and used the Source function, but it appears as a full inclusion of the source page. I removed the source function and linked to the source page instead.

Is there a better method to include a source reference on place pages?--RGMoffat 17:49, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

Renaming Vienna [8 December 2013]

I have tried to rename Vienna "Wien", but I need an administrator to do it because it has subordinate places attached to it.--Werebear 14:29, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Sandbox GEDCOM - Cannot Review [10 December 2013]

I submitted a GEDCOM to the sandbox and got the "Next Step: Review your GEDCOM" message, but the GedcomReviewMessage template is sitting there ( http://sandbox.werelate.org/wiki/User_talk:DataAnalyst ) and not resolved to a link. I think I figured out that the link should be sandbox.werelate.org/gedcom/index.php?gedcomid=3, but when I tried that, there was an error.

Sorry to be a pain needing support in the Sandbox, and this is not urgent, but I would appreciate this being fixed (soon if possible). I can easily upload the GEDCOM again if necessary. Thanks--DataAnalyst 00:14, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

fhlc template problem [10 December 2013]

{{source-fhlc|26375}} contains a list of 3 items for a place named Myton in Yorkshire.

There are two Mytons in Yorkshire. One is a suburb of Hull (source:GENUKI) and the other is a village named Myton-on-Swale. The three items in the fhlc list are entitled Cemeteries, Church Records and History. Cemeteries definitely refers to Myton-on-Swale, the Church Records are for Myton in Hull, and the History is more likely for Myton-on-Swale considering the people listed in Wikipedia who lived there, but either might be possible.

Suggestions, please. I would like to redirect Myton to Myton-on-Swale. --Goldenoldie 16:46, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

merging cemetery pages [14 December 2013]

There are two pages for Place:Mount Olivet Cemetery, Parkersburg, Wood, West Virginia, United States and Place:Mt. Olivet Cemetery, Parkersburg, Wood, West Virginia, United States

I'm not sure how to merge them. Could someone please do that? --janiejac 02:38, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Done.--Khaentlahn 03:04, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

image on person page [29 December 2013]

Someone has uploaded and attached a photo to the Person:William Jackson (348) page. The photo falls at the bottom of the page but would look so much better at the top of the page with the text wrapping to the side and then on down the page. Can that be done? --janiejac 15:59, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

I've moved the image to the main box - is this what you had in mind? AndrewRT 20:03, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that's exactly what I had in mind! Thank you Andrew! The picture was added by a new user who has also added a lot of detail to this family. --janiejac 20:11, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Problem on Watercooler page [5 January 2014]

For the past 12 hours the Watercooler page is displaying at 1-1/2 the width of the screen in "View the Changes" mode. Is this a WR problem or something in my browser? I haven't noticed it on any other website. --Goldenoldie 10:09, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

It looks fine on my browser. But I've seen that happen when a long URL is written without protecting it in []. If you still see it, it would be helpful if you could go back thru the page history and tell us which revision first has the problem. --Pkeegstra 12:27, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Email notification for propagated changes [6 January 2014]

I often get email notifications where a page has been changed to propagate changes on other pages (e.g. changes to the person on a family page). These change notifications are rarely useful as I am normally watching the actual page that has changed. Is there any way to change the settings so that I can disable email notifications from such propagated changes? AndrewRT 14:31, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Wrong redirect [10 January 2014]

Person:Margaret Unknown (1923) died at "Holcomb, near Dawlish", i.e. Holcombe, Teignbridge, Devon, England. However, if I enter that, an automatic redirect is made to Holcombe Rogus, which is also in Devon, but a different village. How can this be fixed?--schneid9 16:56, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

It's not a redirect, just a placepipe. But there is no place defined at 50.5647 N 3.47667 W. Once an appropriate place is defined, the person page can be editted to point to that place page. P.S. is this Hollacombe yet another distinct place? --Pkeegstra 19:19, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

OK, but in this case I would have preferred the software to create a red link rather than "high-handedly" link to the wrong place. Holcombe, Holcombe Rogus and Hollacombe are indeed three different places in Devon. In any case, being rather new here, I don't feel competent yet to create a new place page ... -- schneid9 21:58, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

The software has certain heuristics so that it can identify places even in the absence of a literal match. In this case those heuristics were confused because there was no page for the right place. If none of our England subject matter experts creates the page by this weekend, I'll go ahead and do that. Is "Holcomb Teignbridge" a good name? --Pkeegstra 11:28, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Well, Wikipedia uses that name (with a comma), Teignbridge being the local government district, but the semi-official website of the village itself just says Holcombe. As the other two villages are called Holcombe Rogus and Hollacombe respectively, I think that in principle Holcombe alone would be sufficient. In any case, thanks for your efforts. -- schneid9 13:43, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

OK, Holcombe as primary and Holcomb Teignbridge as alt name sounds like a plan then.....

PS. I saw multiple places in Devon with markers in the ocean. It would be great if one of our England subject matter experts could have a look at that. --Pkeegstra 16:09, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Only three I could see on Devon's north coast and none on the south. The worst is Lynton and it is marked on the map directly south of the marker, so it shouldn't be difficult for anyone to sort out. I'd tackle them, but I've been working on Yorkshire and I don't want to be tempted off it. --Goldenoldie 21:35, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

I'll take that as encouragement that if I have a look, I can't make things too much worse..... --Pkeegstra 11:25, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

I shouldn't think so. I use Wikipedia's longitude and latitude entries for places in England. They are always different than Getty, but when I check them they seem to be pretty accurate. If Wikipedia isn't forthcoming, I get out GoogleEarth and copy them down from there. Neither site will let you copy and paste, so paper and pen have to be to hand.

Scotland has a very good map website (National Library for Scotland) which I wish stretched below the border. "A Vision of Britain through Time" does not supply co-ordinates. --Goldenoldie 12:01, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

red person pages ?? [17 January 2014]

Perhaps there was a tree deleted that caused these red person pages that show up here: Person:Daniel McHenry (6) but I'm only guessing. I would like to merge Person Jane McHenry (5) with Person: Jane McHenry (9) but the system won't allow that. What to do? --janiejac 21:08, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

You created 'Person Jane McHenry (5)' as an article, not a person page. That's why you can't merge it. Note that it is missing the colon after 'Person'. Daniel Maxwell 21:12, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Relative Borre Johnson [21 January 2014]

Good Evening

I am trying to contact Sarah_Russell23 owner of a family tree that contains shared relatives. I am research my husband's great grandfather Borre Johnson and he is listed on one of Sarah's web pages. Am I able to email her? Thanks.

Brenda Johnson--Brejohns 01:55, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi Brenda, I searched WeRelate, and I don't see a user by the name of Sarah_Russell23, nor do a see a page for a person named Borre Johnson. I did a Google search and saw a discussion about this in relation to a tree on http://www.ancestry.com. If Sarah_Russell23 is indeed at Ancestry.com, then you would need to contact her via that website. If I'm mistaken, and you did see that page here on WeRelate, you could go to her User Page and click More>Email this user. If the user has set their preferences to accept emails, you would be able to contact them this way. Otherwise, you could leave a message on her User Talk page. --Jennifer (JBS66) 12:06, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Gedcom import [21 January 2014]

I imported my first Gedcom to this site yesterday. Will you notify me by email when it is approved and ready for me to edit?--Mlmetz5612 20:39, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi Mlmetz5612, you received messages about the GEDCOM via your User Talk page. Depending on the preferences in your Settings, and if you've provided an email address, you may have also received an email. There is a link on your talk page and instructions for reviewing your GEDCOM. If you have additional questions, just let me know. --Jennifer (JBS66) 12:11, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Source not showing on person pg [24 January 2014]

Would someone have a look at Person:Joseph Jackson (98). There are a total of 5 sources there, two of them census records for 1850 and 1860. But look at the edit page and see that I've input census source for 1850, 1860, 1870 and 1880. The last two do not show up on the person page. I first thought it was because I did not use S1, S1 etc but that's not it; so what could be the reason all the sources do not appear on the person page? --janiejac 03:43, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

I see 7 sources. S1 and S2 appear to be duplicates.

Jillaine 09:28, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

That is so strange! I see only 5 sources. And yes, S1 and S2 are the same source. I'm using Mozilla firefox.

first GEDCOM review & manual entry review [1 February 2014]

May I ask for input on my first manual entry (Daniel Bury), and also for clarification if my GEDCOM has been reviewed.--Diane Hosler 22:02, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

What type of input are you desiring? Also, if you check your talk page, you should see a notification on the day you imported the file that it was accepted and entered into the WeRelate system. You may also check your Contributions page, which will indicate any pages you have either created or changed on this system. If you are needing further clarification, please let us know!--Khaentlahn 22:55, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Welcome to WeRelate, Diane! This looks like a well-researched, well-sourced page. I haven't seen any guidelines for what to include, or what a page "should" look like, but I made a few changes that I think most would agree about. First, I gave the alternate last names for Daniel the category of "alt name". I also changed some of the citations to "sources". This page should help to give you an idea of the differences between sources and citations. -- Jdfoote1 23:19, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks to both of you! I saw the approval for the GEDCOM that came very quickly...just thought I read that there was suppose to be a separate review by a person. Glad it passed. For the manual input, didn't realize there were drop-down options for the citations/sources and appreciate the cleanup. The sample page that I found on one of the clicks was very helpful. This is a quite a learning curve. Diane--Diane Hosler 23:42, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

GEDCOMs are approved by human review, which means that while your GEDCOM went through rather quickly, keep in mind that it may not always do so in the future and while there is a steep learning curve at the beginning, once you get the hang of it, it's fairly easy to continue and maintain pages on WeRelate. I hope you enjoy your time here!--Khaentlahn 00:43, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

images [7 February 2014]

image on Magdalena Bury and Sophia Bury at not showing. Coach me on what I did wrong, please.--Diane Hosler 23:29, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

For Sophia, the trouble is the double single quote in the title of the JPEG. The wiki system translates double single quotes to mean "begin italics here" and is therefore showing incorrectly. If you were to remove one of the single quotes in the file on your computer and upload that version, that should correct the problem. As for Magdalena, the file you've uploaded is a PDF file and, while you can upload PDF files to this wiki, they do not display as JPEG or other image type files. You will instead see the Adobe icon, but the file is still there. If you click on the PDF file icon on her page, then click it again on the image page, you can view it from your end there. It takes a little more effort than a basic image, but it is there to be viewed. I hope this helps!--Khaentlahn 04:11, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, again. I won't be using the PDF image if you want to delete it. Where did I see the guidelines for sharing our WeRelate with family members and others.--Diane Hosler 16:27, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

redirected page loses its 'talk' discussion? [9 February 2014]

Family:William Norris and Hannah Bell (1) is a page redirected from an earlier version. This new page says 'see the talk page' in blue but there is nothing on the talk page. So was there something on the previous page that is now lost? --janiejac 03:54, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

Going through the history, it does not appear so. It appears as if the page was created to be created. I'm not completely sure why, but I cannot find any more content.--Khaentlahn 04:14, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

I found the predecessor talk page, and the only thing it ever had was a nomerge template. --Pkeegstra 11:23, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

I have noticed before that if something was on the Talk page but got removed so that it is completely blank, the "see talk page" in blue still shows up. I have found this mildly annoying but not sufficiently so as to request Dallan to change it, given all the other things on his plate.--DataAnalyst 23:36, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

I think it is best to list this on the suggestion page or Dallan may not ever know about it. He'll get to those suggestions in the order it is best for him. But at least there will be some record that it eventually needs fixed. --janiejac 04:36, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

I added it.--DataAnalyst 20:06, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

speedy delete [9 February 2014]

where is the text box to insert a speedy delete template for duplicate person page--Diane Hosler 19:57, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

If you are looking for instructions on how to use the "speedy delete" template, they are here. However, if you have accidentally created a duplicate page and you are the only one watching it, I believe that you can delete it yourself by selecting "more" and then "Delete" from the list of actions on the left hand side of the screen. If you come across duplicates that others have created, it is better to merge them than delete them, because there may be links to them. The Help for merge is here - you can also ask for help and someone is sure to help you through a merge if you have not done it before.--DataAnalyst 22:52, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

Adding places--content in brackets [11 February 2014]

Whenever I add a place and have to differentiate from another place of the same name, e.g., Catton (near Thirsk) and Catton (near Pocklington), the capitalized word in brackets comes up with a small letter, e.g., Catton (near pocklington). As a result, I have to go back and rename the new entry as well.

This may seem like a small difficulty, but there are an awful lot of duplicated placenames in England, especially Yorkshire. Can someone iron out this small bug, please. --Goldenoldie 08:14, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

adding gedcom to tree [16 February 2014]

hello I downloaded a gedcom yesterday and not all of the names went through my ggmother was married 5 times and I thought I had included the husbands and children. Perhaps I mislinked her to another page instead of including her new information. can I remove tree and try again? or Is there an easy remedy to add spouses and children via gedcom rather than inputting everything separately? Perhaps add the spouses and make family page for them? by importing gedcom with all their names???Thanks for your help.--Mfunk 22:11, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

Hi - I am not an expert on GEDCOM upload since I do not use that feature. However I do have a distant cousin with 8 recorded marriages to 7 different men so I think I can help you get this right 8-). First I would search for the Person pages for each of the spouses to see if they are in the database. Then I would inspect each Person page to see what marriages exist. Depending on what you find you can either use Add Family manually for the missing marriages, or you can use Add Person and then Add Family for the missing persons, or if they appear married to the wrong Person or you find a duplicate Person or Family you can remove the wrong marriages from the Person pages, delete erroneous Persons or Families, remove duplicate Persons or Families, etc. I think this will be a much better way to clean-up after your GEDCOM upload. As long as most of your GEDCOM uploaded correctly you can probably fix things more quickly using regular WeRelate functions than you can figure out how to get the "perfect" GEDCOM upload.

Also if you do not have the actual marriage dates for each of these multiple marriages, you should supply estimated dates (about yyyy, before yyyy, after yyyy, etc) so the marriages display in the correct order.

Hope this helps you! --Jhamstra 09:38, 16 February 2014 (UTC)

Getting Started Tutorials [20 March 2014]

Why do the pages shown on the tutorials not match the people pages I am viewing? Are the tutorials showing a planned update?--genehuntr 03:03, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Tutorials in general need to be updated to the current system. A preliminary update has been done to the first two lessons of the Person pages tutorial. Would you be so kind as to go through those two lessons and determine if they are now more helpful? Any assistance in this regard would be appreciated.--Khaentlahn 18:12, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Duplicate Source pages [27 February 2014]

Source:Biographical Review : This Volume Contains Biographical Sketches of the Leading Citizens of Livingston and Wyoming Counties, New York (correct title)

Source:Biographical Review : This Volume Contains Biographical Sketches of Livingston and Wyoming Counties, New York (abridged title)

--Jhamstra 17:21, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

You might know this already, but you can merge these yourself. First see if there is any helpful info on the page you don't want to keep that is not on the other page (such as repositories, year range, etc.) and copy it to the page you want to keep. Then edit the page you don't want to keep and replace all notes with #REDIRECT [[Source:<page to keep>]]. The preview shows the redirect statement, but when you save, it should redirect to the source you want to keep. Just in case you want to handle this yourself.--DataAnalyst 02:42, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks - it worked! i knew there was a way to fix this but I have not had to do manual page patches previously.--Jhamstra 03:48, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

GEDCOM [12 March 2014]

Is there a limatation to the size of GEDCOMS? Will you accept a GEDCOM with over 11,000 entries??? It will be from eight Family Origins or Roots Magic. The reason I wish to upload so much data is to give "others" a chance to use my data. Please answer me at lledoogf@yahoo.com Thanks, Fred--FREDITO 15:04, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

I think the limit is currently 5000 individuals. You can split your database into smaller files for loading. I helped another person split her 20,000-person into smaller pieces - it took a weekend to do because of the high degree of interconnections within her database.

Based on my previous experience, I would also recommend that you use the error-checking and duplicate search features in RootsMagic and correct errors prior to attempting to load it into WeRelate. When I helped load the 20,000-person database, the majority of time was spent cleansing the data prior to loading it (because we chose to be a bit picky about it).--DataAnalyst 00:49, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Images from Wikimedia Commons [18 March 2014]

I would like to use a map found in Wikimedia Commons on a WR place page. The Download Screen offers a Page URL and a File URL. Which one do I use? Can I load the image straight to WR or must I first download it to my own computer? What is the maximum recommended width (in pixels) for an image on a WR page? The attribution is given and the image is in the public domain.

Is this information in the Help pages? I can see instructions for Ancestry, FamilySearch and Fold3, but not for Wikimedia Commons.--Goldenoldie 16:33, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

I believe that anything that appears on Wikipedia Commons will be OK to use as far as rights - they are more restrictive than WR (I believe). There is a way to directly use things from Wikimedia Commons called Instant Commons, but I just tried it, and it looks like it isn't enabled, so you will need to download the image, and upload it again here. -- Jdfoote1 14:21, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. --Goldenoldie 16:27, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

How to get gedcom file from the Mormon LDS church [21 March 2014]

Several years ago, I transmitted a gedcom file to the LDS church. Can you tell me how to retrieve the file? LDS personnel have been unable to help. Thanks. ..--JoDawg 01:18, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

Do you mean from the FamilySearch website?--Khaentlahn 20:56, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

This file was sent to the Mormon church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day-Saints in Salt Lake City.--JoDawg 18:52, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

If your GEDCOM was submitted to them to be included in either of the Ancestral File or the Pedigree Resource File, your information should be available on FamilySearch's Genealogies page. That being said, according to their FAQ:

Can you download submitted data to a GEDCOM?

You cannot download submitted tree data in GEDCOM format. To save FamilySearch lineage linked data on your device please use a record manager that syncs with the FamilySearch Family Tree – these can be found on the products page.

After a little digging, the Partner Products page was found. RootsMagic is listed as being the "Eastist to Sync", but there are other options on the page as well. Their FAQ also indicates that while you cannot search the Ancestral File or Pedigree Resource File by submitter, they are planning to add that feature in the future.

If your GEDCOM was not submitted to be included in either of these databases, then that is knowledge beyond my understanding. Perhaps someone else can help if this is the case.--Khaentlahn 19:17, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for your info, Khaethahn. I will check that out.--JoDawg 01:59, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

Redirecting a Place. Effect on Sources? [1 April 2014]

I redirected Place:Standish, Lancashire, England to Place:Standish-with-Langtree, Lancashire, England, which was the urban district including both places for the greater part of the 20th century. If I make a Category entitled Standish-with-Langtree, will all the Sources originally under the Category entitled Standish transfer automatically to the new Category? I notice that after the redirection the Category:Standish, Lancashire, England is not found. --Goldenoldie 09:13, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

It looks like you need to edit each source page to get it to transfer to the new category. For example: here is the old category for Standish. It has one source left in it. This source used to be in it, but when I edited the source page (didn't change anything, just hit edit and save), the category was updated to the new category.--Dallan 16:10, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

That's what I started doing. I was just wondering if there were something more automatic. --Goldenoldie 19:01, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Something went wrong [5 April 2014]

Something went wrong? http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Arcadium --Lidewij 18:13, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

I'd guess that it's supposed to be Cyrillic, and was uploaded in a character set other than the one WR was expecting (which I believe is UTF-8). --pkeegstra 20:35, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

I agree - I've improved our character-set recognition since then. Should we delete these pages?--Dallan 15:15, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Let me try one thing first, to see if I can recover the intended characters. --pkeegstra 15:34, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Marriage sources [11 April 2014]

Did something recently change? Today I noticed on Person pages, the marriages show the source numbers. This is misleading because the sources attached to a marriage date aren't on the Person page, and clicking the superscipt 1 takes you to source 1 on the Person page. For example, Person:Thomas West (38). Can't imagine this is browser related but I am using Firefox. --Jrich 17:31, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

I have a feeling it's related to the new "Find records" links on Person pages that Dallan mentioned in the "Links to FindARecord.com" post on the Watercooler. It's working this way for me too, and you're right, it is misleading. Would you mind leaving a message on the Watercooler post about this so Dallan will see it? --Jennifer (JBS66) 17:40, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

It is, sorry about that. I'll correct it tomorrow.--Dallan 04:25, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

How to cancel a duplicate personal account [14 April 2014]

I've got two accounts here...one is the correct one "artistswife" and the other is "artistswife2". How can I cancel the "2" version?--Artistswife 04:43, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

The software doesn't have a way to cancel accounts or merge them unfortunately. If you like I can keep the 2 version from sending you change notifications.--Dallan 04:24, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

Dallan, thank you. Please do stop the emails for artistswife2. artistswife

Done.--Dallan 16:51, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Thank you.--Artistswife 21:23, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

cwgccem Template doesn't seem to work [21 April 2014]

While adding categories to a number of cemeteris for France, I noticed one was using the above template. I have been unable to get it to work on so I cam using an embedded link, but would like to understand if this template should be used.

When I click on the template for find a grave at the bottom of an edit page, I am directed to a page containing comments on how to use the template. This is not the case on the Commonwealth war Graves Commision template page.

Camments anyone?--RGMoffat 05:26, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Rename ... a french département [25 April 2014]

Please ! Place:Basses-Alpes, France Basses-Alpes exist no more --> Alpes-de-Haute-Provence (April 1970) : https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpes-de-Haute-Provence - Amicalement - Marc ROUSSEL - --Markus3 08:03, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

What was the situation at 1900? --Lidewij 09:20, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

There is nothing wrong with the name. Groetjes, --Lidewij 09:46, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Place:Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, France redirect was made --Lidewij 09:58, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Thank you ! I always forget this "WeRelate 1900 rule" for the places which is strange and complicated for wikipedians and genealogists from France. Amicalement - Marc ROUSSEL - --Markus3 13:27, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Something runs wrong [6 May 2014]

Some places (were and) are automatically modified by Gedcom import or after, when a contributor is fixing a field. I have already discussed this issue with Jennifer and given examples (... Canteleu/Rouen + a village in Aisne). Other "automatic stupidities" are still active ... for example, when Y (meaning "yes) is in place field (death, marriage, occupation, etc) --> I saw meany times "Place:Y, Somme, France (I have not yet fully corrected) and Y ... 2 or 3 times this morning --> the last one here - Amicalement - Marc ROUSSEL - --Markus3 08:29, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

And ... this (2007-2009) - Amicalement - Marc ROUSSEL - --Markus3 08:49, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

An other example (I found sometimes this "error ?" for several months ---> La Rochelle --> Charente-Maritime / Haute-Saône) : [1], but this page Person:John Witt (2) seems "strange" (merging, etc). Could someone fix it ? Amicalement - Marc ROUSSEL - --Markus3 06:14, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

What it does now and what it did a long time ago are two different things. Automated place matching and cleanup of some of the junk in GEDCOMs is, I believe, better now. The real problem being, of course, that people use their home system however they want and the GEDCOM must figure out how to deal with all sorts of unique ways of arranging data. If the problem occurred during a recent GEDCOM upload, so that it is currently happening that way, a suggestion could be submitted. You may have noticed, the list of suggestions is pretty long.

There are about 100 pages listed when I do a What Links Here on Place:Y, Somme, France. It is usually pretty easy to tell which need to be fixed. There are many case, not so humorous, that some of us have cleaned up. People intended to input Kingston, Mass., but don't qualify it properly, and there are many Kingstons around the world that get matched to, for example (Jamaica, Canada, down under, etc.). Cleaning up pages like John Witt should really be done by someone familiar with his case: a GEDCOM did actually list La Rochelle as an alternate birthplace [2]. Did they know something or is it garbage? Somebody that is knowledgable and cares is in a much better position to decide. --Jrich 14:24, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Not only that. In the original he was married in his birth year. --Goldenoldie 15:57, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Word Wrap turned off in Personal History section [10 May 2014]

Can someone tell me why word wrap is not working on the Person:Robert Riddell (2) page? Thx Rick--RGMoffat 14:53, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

In the S8 source text field, there was a } at the end of the URL instead of a ]. I made the change, and the page aligns properly now. --Jennifer (JBS66) 21:14, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Merging pages [16 May 2014]

Hi there

I wonder if someone could point me in a direction. I was trying to import (this is my first ever Gedcom import) parents for a person (Jan Wouthuis) who I already have a page for. So I imported a Gedcom for his birth, expecting that a duplicate would be found for him that I could link to, and that pages would be created for his parents.

The only thing that happened was I got warnings because there were no genders for the parents. I added the genders. Nothing about the duplicate.

Now I'm not sure if my gedcom is still waiting for review or if I got an email because there is something wrong with it?--MWalker 08:30, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

OK, I think I have found the problem. I did a GEDcom export from Allegroningers, and for some reason they have put the birthdates of his parents as being in 1970. Unlikely considering he got married in 1842.

I'm guessing that I'm going to have to put a bit more effort into making GEDcom work for me...

Now how do I delete that GEDcom? Is that not possible while it is awaiting (a now unnecessary) review?--MWalker 09:04, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

You can remove it by clicking on the review link, then clicking on the "Remove this GEDCOM" button.--Dallan 04:23, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Bispham, Lancashire, England [12 May 2014]

There were two places named Bispham in Lancashire. One (officially named Bispham-with-Norbreck) was absorbed into Blackpool during the 19th century; the other still exists in West Lancashire District. I have just added (West Lancashire) to it to differentiate the two.

It would appear from looking at "What links here" that the Sources for the two places have been intermixed. I haven't had time as yet to investigate this more fully. But out of curiosity I looked at the Family:Willard Weekes and Elizabeth Avenell (1). I think we should get rid of this one, but how do we go about it?

--Goldenoldie 16:22, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Just FYI the husband looks like a real person and probably worth saving, the wife and family don't belong to him. Whether they are real or not is another question. --Jrich 18:07, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

If I "remove" either the wife or husband from the marriage, will both of them remain on our database?

--Goldenoldie 19:42, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Re your specific question: you can "remove" (i.e., unlink) the husband, and the family page will remain, and the husband's person page will remain with no marriage showing. They will just not be linked together. The family page probably needs to remain to collect the children, or else you need to delete all of them too. Even with the husband unlinked, whether the husband's name remaining embedded in the Family page title goes with the wife or not is of course unknown? One approach would be to rename the Family page to Unknown and the wife. --Jrich 19:58, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks --Goldenoldie 20:19, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

GEDCOM format error [16 June 2014]

When an exported GEDCOM is imported in Gramps, Gramps shows an error message saying:

"GEDCOM form not supported Line 10: 2 FORM LINEAGE_LINKED"

The error is shown, because the proper FORM is LINEAGE-LINKED, as shown in [3].

Can this be corrected? The Gramps bug report is registered here[4].

Thanks. --Enno 10:27, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Hi, Unfortunately, the programmer is on vacation. We should have an answer for you in 2-3 weeks. Thanks, --sq 15:31, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

fixed--Dallan 20:11, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Copyright questions (2) [27 May 2014]

I have an 'autobiography' of a person in my family tree. She self-published, has a 2006 copyright, and she died 2007. I have written the elderly person who helped her write it, who so far has not responded. Can I include pictures from the book under the historical picture classification?

Also, I have a 1990 Canadian paper feature story about a person. Can I include a copy of it on his page?--Diane Hosler 03:10, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Hi,

WeRelate is not allowed to give you legal advice. This is the way it works: People upload images they believe are legal. If someone complains of copyright infringement, we are required by the federal government to delete the image. No arguments.

Whether you can copy someone else's copy of public domain images is hotly debated especially by companies like Ancestry. They copy censuses and other public domain documents and then sell them to us. As you can imagine, they claim their particular copy is proprietary. However, many believe that any copy of a public domain image is also public domain. There are various court opinions.

That said, the purpose of copyright law is to keep one person from profiting from the work of another. You are allowed "fair use" of copyrighted material as long as it doesn't impact the author's ability to market his/her creation. Generally, this means you can use any image as long as you reduce the resolution. When we reduce the size of a scanned image, the resolution is automatically reduced. What that means is that copy cannot be blown up to its original size and still look good enough to compete with the original. See Help:Image_licensing#If_the_image_is_still_under_copyright_and_you_are_unable_to_ask_the_copyright_owner_for_a_license

Hope this helps, --sq 16:00, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

Very interesting and helpful. Am putting a copy in my WeRelate 'manual'. Thank you.--Diane Hosler 03:13, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Search for source not working with accented characters [16 June 2014]

When I search sources for a Norwegian parish with an accented character in the name (e.g., Tønsberg), I don't get any results. If I search without using the accent (i.e., Tonsberg), it still doesn't find the relevant sources (e.g., Source:Tønsberg, Vestfold, Norway. Kirkebøker, 1688-1962). Searching on accented characters for place names seems to work, but the exactly matching place name is not in bold as it would be with unaccented characters. Both these problems need to be fixed, but I think the former one (searching sources) is more important. Is this a small bug that can be fixed quickly, or do I need to add it to the Suggestions list?--DataAnalyst 16:29, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

I just realized that if I search with "oe" for "ø" (i.e. Toensberg), I get the correct result (although the matching word is still not in bold). But I think the search should work when I use the accented character in the search string. Thanks.--DataAnalyst 16:33, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

I've added this to the bug list.--Dallan 20:15, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Help menu broken [25 June 2014]

It was pointed out to me by janiejac that help menu is broken. It appears it is linking to general articles (i.e., no namespace specified) instead of pages in the WeRelate Talk namespace. --Jrich 15:43, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

Invoking "Source Citations" section on Place pages [30 June 2014]

How do we do this? Adding a {{reflist tag at the bottom of the text editing block does not do anything... thnx --Artefacts 23:11, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

• <ref>...</ref>
• <references/>

--Lidewij 23:23, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

• cheers!--Artefacts 00:56, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

need help placing image; also cemetery page question [4 July 2014]

I have uploaded an image and it is showing on Person:Samuel Jackson (49) but it is not placed where I want it. Would someone either move it or tell me how to move it so that it shows in the subsection 'Burial' instead of at the bottom of the page.

Also wondering about the cemetery pages I am creating. Should cemeteries show up on the county page or on the page for the locality within the county? I used the Franklin City Cemetery and it shows up in that category, but it doesn't show on the Morgan County page. Perhaps it would be better if I left off Franklin from the location so that one could easily find all the cemeteries in the county instead of the cemeteries being scattered on various place pages of the county. (And woops! now this category is showing at the bottom of THIS support page! Boy it is too easy to mess up! Somebody pls fix it.) --janiejac 04:27, 4 July 2014 (UTC) Well, that didn't work. You have to 'edit' the paragraph to read what I'm trying to say. As I said, too easy to mess up! --janiejac 04:30, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

I fixed the image placement on Samuel Jackson's page, and put a colon in front of the category here. I believe the policy for cemeteries is to place them under the city if they are inside a city, or to place them under the county otherwise. Since the cemetery you created is under the city, it won't show up on the county page.--Dallan 05:10, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

The suggestion for Illinois is to put cemeteries as applicable in the city or the township; if the township is not known, please create the cemetery page under the county as opposed to not creating it at all. At some point a local expert will rename it appropriately. In addition, some but not all WR contributors who work in the US midwest make it a point to create also-located-in links for cemeteries to the county. --pkeegstra 13:53, 4 July 2014 (UTC) (I just added the usual "bells and whistles" for Franklin City Cemetery. Note that the conventional category is Cemeteries of Morgan, Illinois, United States, which now has 4 entries. --pkeegstra 14:09, 4 July 2014 (UTC))

Further question on placing an image [22 July 2014]

Following on from User:janiejac's question above, can an image be placed in the heading box at the top of a Person: page? To the right, opposite the name, like the maps are on Place: pages?

--Goldenoldie 13:24, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

Images can be placed in the heading box, on the left to replace the standard silhouette. Place the image title in the Image section of the person's page and check the Primary box to the left of the image title. This also works for Family pages with the image being placed between the spouses' data in the header. --Jennifer (JBS66) 13:54, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. Too bad Person:John Neilson (19) wasn't looking the other way! --Goldenoldie 14:00, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

Source page not letting me add website URL [28 July 2014]

Hi,

Trying to add my first source - Auckland Libraries Photographers Database [It won't let me add the link here either!]

I can't seem to save the hyperlink anywhere in the record without it objecting to the hyperlink. Can someone tell me what I'm doing wrong? It's just not letting me save the hyperlink anywhere... I keep getting the message "Links to other websites are not allowed". How am I supposed to add the source link in without it objecting to it??? This is driving me crazy.--EdenGardener 02:58, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure where you went wrong. The URL that was on the page at Source:Auckland_Libraries_Photographers_Database didn't have the http:// header in front of it, but the URL also didn't resolve. I did a quick Google search for Auckland Libraries photographers database, and found this site, and added it to the page. As you can see if you look at the source of my post, to add links to another page on the wiki, you use two brackets on either side, e.g. [[ExamplePage]], and to add a link to a URL on another site, you just use one bracket, e.g,, [http://www.example.com example website]. Thiw Wikipedia page explains this, as well as lots of other things about MediaWiki formating. It's all confusing at first, but once you get the hang of it, it's pretty easy to work with. - Jdfoote1 02:39, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

Cemetery category [31 July 2014]

I just created the cemetery page: Place:Grindstaff Cemetery, Carter, Tennessee, United States. Maybe I'm blind but I don't see why the category page is red. What am I missing?--janiejac 20:51, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

The cemetery county category page needed to be created. Conventionally that is done by adding a reference to the state cemetery category page, so I went ahead and did that. --pkeegstra 23:37, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

The Redirect Procedure [5 August 2014]

In the past couple of weeks I have found the following page when I want to rename a place page and the place is already there.

http://www.werelate.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Movepage&action=submit

I am working with places in the UK where there have been two nationwide municipal reorganizations since 1974. These reorganizations have resulted in changes to parishes, districts, or counties. Every once in a while I come across a place that has been entered with both its county pre-1974 and the district that replaced the county since that year. If there is a description for the pre-1974 place entry, I do not want to replace it with the post-1974 entry (which is probably blank) and rewrite the existing description; I want to delete the post-1974 entry. But the new page asks a question that could be answered 'yes' or 'no', but appears to only accept the answer 'yes'. The answer 'no' equates to 'delete', but can we do that without going to "Speedy Delete"?--Goldenoldie 11:05, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

I think it's asking whether you want to delete the existing page and replace it with the page that you're renaming. Go ahead and check "yes". I think it's ok to replace the page without going through speedy delete.--sq 03:39, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

How to define and document a report as a source. [24 August 2014]

I am working on the project of the Pennsylvania Soldiers' Orphans Schools. The person who began this project is no longer able to do it due to poor health. She gave me some documents she had obtained from the Pennsylvania State Library in Harrisburg. The document in question is titled: "PA Orphans 1881 Report. Source: Annual Report of the Superintendent of Soldiers' Orphans of Pennsylvania for the year 1881".

My first idea is to use the My Source, but I would welcome suggestions or instructions. I await your reply.--EKBDVA 18:33, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

Hello. Since this record has information for many unrelated people, it could be added as a regular Source. MySources are usually used for records that refer to only one person or family, such as a family bible or a scanned birth certificate.

Are you transcribing the record? If so, you can put the transcription in the Transcription namespace, (when adding the page, title it Transcription:Name of your project) or make it an Article, see Help:Articles. --sq 01:13, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

matching families during GEDCOM review [28 August 2014]

It looks to me like there should be a way to 'exclude' upload of families that match but have conflicting dates or localities. I am seeing this in during a current review of my GEDCOM. I know the family is a match but I don't want to match to it or update it because of the conflict in data. I'd rather wait and check the other sources before deciding what to do. So there is no way to exclude my family until later. If I don't update it, will there then be a duplicate family that somebody will try to deal with before I get around to it? --janiejac 03:04, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

editing cemetery place pg - bug? [31 August 2014]

I've been trying to edit Hunt Cemetery, Calhoun, West Virginia, United States but it keeps giving me this msg:

You must correct the errors before saving

The place type must now be chosen from a drop-down list. The list will appear as you enter the type.

I've tried typing in 'Cemetery' and or leaving it blank, even tried to get ANYTHING to populate the window but appears to have no drop down list. So I haven't been able to edit and save the page. --janiejac 16:39, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

I'm getting that same error Janie. Things are buggy with WR in general in the last hour. Pages are loading very slowly and I'm getting alt text tags like <edithelptext>. --Jennifer (JBS66) 16:47, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

Same here. Being in a different time zone (GDT) I have been troubled since I first signed on at 7am this morning.

I can't do any editing of place pages and the "rename" facility has completely disappeared.

--Goldenoldie 18:16, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

I agree with Jennifer that the biggest impact I see is an all-around sluggishness. I can replicate the bug in the place editor, too. --pkeegstra 18:55, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

I haven't tried editing Place pages, but all my editing is working, just very slowly. I assumed we were running a wikipedia refresh... --Jrich 19:17, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

It looks like the server needed to be rebooted. Sorry for the inconvenience.--Dallan 05:30, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

incomplete edit page [31 aug 2014]

When I tried to edit Place:Sliedrecht, I saw this on top: <edithelptext> and didn't see my trees at the bottom. Then I couldn't store any changes, probably because of this (irrelevant) error text:

 The place type must now be chosen from a drop-down list. The list will appear as you enter the type.

(I didn't change the type, and no drop-down list seemed to work)

Also, my dashboard shows just the template; not data for me. --DiBa 20:06, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

It looks like the server needed to be rebooted. Sorry for the inconvenience.--Dallan 05:30, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

All the numbers on my Dashboard have disappeared

Is this just mine ? or has anyone else experienced this ? --SkippyG 23:13, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

It looks like the server needed to be rebooted. Sorry for the inconvenience.--Dallan 05:30, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

wife not showing on husband's page [2 September 2014]

Family:Ashley Haines and Lucy Ferrell (1) looks good; Person:Lucy Ferrell (1) shows her husband to be Person:Ashley Haines (1) but his page does not show a link to his wife. Can't figure this one out. What am I missing? --janiejac 21:57, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

It's showing on my screen (I'm using Crome) but over to the far right hand side. I think the problem is with the line breaking on the main body text. AndrewRT 22:03, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

I think it's fixed now - could you check? AndrewRT 22:05, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Yes, it's fixed now. Thanks, I didn't know how to fix that! --janiejac 03:09, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

The Pedigree Map function does not appear to work [7 September 2014]

When I select Pedigree Map, the screen says "working" for a brief period, then stops, but no Pedigree Map appears. Why? Am I doing something wrong?--Innesaj 14:28, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Having persevered, it appears that the Pedigree Map works under Google Chrome for Windows 8 but not under Internet Explorer 11. This may be because Chrome has, and automatically maintains, Adobe Flash Player which WeRelate requires. It would be helpful if someone could confirm and explain this.--Innesaj 15:17, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Upload a file to a MySource (birth or death certificate) [7 September 2014]

I can't seem to figure out how to upload a file attachment to a MySource. Specifically, a birth or death certificate pdf. I currently have a few of these uploaded as images, but after learning about MySource pages it seemed to make more sense that these sources should properly exist as a "MySource" but it does not look like uploading a file is allowed. I can include the URL to the state website where I obtained the death certificates, but I would prefer to upload the file directly in case the URL changes or the availability of these records on the source website goes away completely.--Ktaustin2 13:20, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

If you have already created an image page for the document, you can call that image on the MySource page by placing [[Image:xxx.JPG]] in the text box. Hope that helps. --Cos1776 18:49, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Note also that if you just want a link to the image, you can preceed it with a colon: [[:Image:xxx.JPG]] --pkeegstra 21:09, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, I forgot about using internal references like that. That makes sense to me.--ktaustin2 19:21, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Adding link footnote to personal history section of a person page [8 September 2014]

Is there a way to add hyperlinked footnotes within the narrative personal history of a person page? For example, I have one page that has multiple conflicting sources and I wrote a narrative personal history in which just about every sentence includes a source reference to make it clear where each point of information is coming from. I just added [S1], [S2], etc in the text but this is not showing up as a link to the source citation at the bottom of that person page.--Ktaustin2 13:31, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

The Help FAQ has a references and footnotes section that should help you on this. It's a bit different than using MySource and Source in the timeline area. Remember the {{cite|S1}} part of the instructions.

--Goldenoldie 14:53, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

The (<)ref name="S1"/(>) format is exactly what I was trying to do, thanks.--ktaustin2 10:56, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Search Options [15 September 2014]

When I search among my Watched persons for Edward L. Jackson I get only one result; that of Audie Lee Jackson. I was expecting to get Edward Lafayette Jackson among the options. Now I'm wondering why isn't Edward Lafayette Jackson offered as a result when searching for Edward L. Jackson??

Even when I change to searching among "Watched and unwatched" Edward Lafayette Jackson does not come up when searching for Edward L. Jackson. If search can find "Audie Lee Jackson" why can't it find "Edward Lafayette Jackson" when I ask for Edward L. Jackson?

Hmm.. Here is another Edward L. Jackson, Jr. who doesn't appear when searching for Edward L. Jackson!
And another Edward L. Jackson who doesn't appear in the results list! It seems to me that when one searches for Edward L. Jackson that ALL the Edward L. Jacksons should show first and then all the Edwards who have a middle name starting with the letter 'L' should be listed next. This isn't happening and I wonder why!! --janiejac 16:14, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

Where are you searching? Is it under list (i.e., Special:ListPages?) or the main search page or somewhere else? When I used the main search page, both Edward L. Jackson's showed up. -- Jdfoote1 17:30, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

Hi Janie - I also ran a couple of scenarios to see if I could duplicate the issue. First, I added myself to the watch list for your Edward Lafayette Jackson page and then I searched in my watched pages, like you did. What I found was that the Match options and/or the use of the middle initial in the search determined whether or not the desired page appeared. So:

• "Edward L Jackson" and "Exact Match Only" = NO
• "Edward L Jackson" and "Exact & close match" = NO
• "Edward L Jackson" and "Exact, close, & partial" = YES
• "Edward Jackson" and "Exact Match Only" = YES
• "Edward Jackson" and "Exact & close match" = YES
• "Edward Jackson" and "Exact, close, & partial" = YES

So as you can see, it is better to cast your net wide first and then work in. HTH. --Cos1776 17:43, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

I was using the search link on the top menu list: Home - Search - List - Add - My Relate - Admin

I searched both Watch and unwatched with no dates or locations so I thought using just the name with middle initial was a very broad search! The default is 'exact and close match' which I didn't even notice. So wouldn't close match have been able to find it? Apparently NOT! From the example above only Exact, close & partial will find Edward Lafayette when searching for Edward L. Jackson. It's my opinion that is cutting it too close - especially for the casual viewer coming by. Let's not make it any harder for viewers than necessary! I don't like searching without the middle initial because then there are SO MANY to search through! Can I get enough agreement on this to ask Dallan to change this? Thanks to both of you for responding to this. I'll pay more attention to Exact, close & partial from now on. --janiejac 23:27, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

My two cents. Computers are dumb. While you recognize that "L" or "L." means middle initial, typically a computer will think it means that is the literal middle name. Like the rebellious kid in my high school class that put his middle names as X: not Xavier, not a middle initial, his entire middle name was simply X. Edward Lafayette Jackson works great, and Edward Jackson works better than Edward L. Jackson because the "L." makes it try to find someone with the literal middle name "L." which it can't. To change the behavior requires adding programming to create non-intuitive (for a computer) behavior (i.e, so that it thinks more like a human), and all extra programming like this makes WeRelate harder to upgrade to the next version of wiki software. Every search engine on the Internet has its own quirks, but once you learn them you can take advantage of them. books.google.com looks only for whole words spelled exactly the same, Find A Grave will match your target string or something longer (at least sometimes), matching a name in a name field uses alternate names while names in the keywords field is a literal match, etc. --Jrich 03:06, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

How can I show living people in family tree? [24 September 2014]

Request for help: I know pages cannot be created for living people. Then how do I include living people in my family tree? Or living people cannot be family tree? My wish family free need to include all people dead as well as lining people. Thanks in advance. Mahajanga@gmail.com--Girish 10:45, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

I use my own family tree software on my own computer to create trees and other reports that involve living people. Jillaine 12:29, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

I toyed around with software on my local computer for living relatives, but I found it easier to just keep a spreadsheet. Each family is grouped together, with columns for generation number, parents/spouse, and any contact info available. Of course I am an Engineer so I am pretty comfortable working with spreadsheets. This also makes it easy to share your database with your living relatives without requiring special software.--ktaustin2 10:57, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

What is the opinion of others re making a note under the Personal History heading of any person with living descendants such as "This person has living descendants." or, in the case of a couple, "This couple has living descendants"?

Our aim in withholding information about living people is to respect other people's privacy inside and outside the genealogical community.

--Goldenoldie 18:14, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

I have made statements before like "they had x children" which is vague enough. I wouldn't mention a living person on a dead relatives page, but I have referenced online obituaries which usually have names of survivors and that is public record.--ktaustin2 02:49, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

Importing a complete genealogy research site from another website [8 October 2014]

I already have a fully functional research website that used to be free. Now a monthly fee is being charged. What is the procedure to import that website from Wikispaces.com to werelate.org? Contact: italheritagesearch@yahoo.com--Heritagesearch 19:31, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

The import procedure for WeRelate is to upload a GEDCOM file. There is information on how to do this on the FAQ page. Since the intent of WeRelate is to have a single page per person, the upload process will attempt to match your records to records already in WeRelate so that you can merge any records that match instead of creating new pages. This makes the upload process an interactive process. (Note that matching is done at the couple level.) The current limit is 5000 individuals per GEDCOM file.

When you upload your GEDCOM, WeRelate will also attempt to match place names to existing place pages, and will give you the option of matching your sources to existing source pages. These features enhance the consistency of the end result, but are not essential - they are not intended to be barriers to getting your pages uploaded. I have found the place matching to be of high quality for US places and of mixed quality for other places, but always worth a review to ensure the matching is accurate.

Note that there is also a review process for GEDCOM's to mitigate the types of issues that happened some years ago when some files with few dates and sources were uploaded.

If you have pages that are not person or family specific (e.g., a discussion of an event), you can create them in WeRelate, but I am not aware of any way of directly importing those.

If you could give me a sense of the characteristics of your tree (number of people, how tightly interconnected the lines are, whether you have standardized place names, whether you have used a tool that helps identify issues such as potential duplicates or impossible date combinations), I might be able to give you a sense of how much work this would be. I helped another user to upload her file of approx. 20,000 individuals (see my talk page - topic Example of Collaboration ....).

Hope this helps and that you choose to contribute to WeRelate.--DataAnalyst 00:07, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

Related pages [20 October 2014]

Can someone help me understand how the "related pages" work? Is there a reason why I would not want to add the pages that come up to my tree? Assuming that they only show up on this page if someone has added decendents or ancestors to people in my tree?

Thanks!--Jonmcrawford 01:58, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Numbers [19 November 2014]

Hi...can you explain what the numbers beside each person are? I was thinking that they may be in numerical order but some have the same number

Thank you--Heatherb.1950 05:55, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Hi Heather, the numbers in brackets next to a person's name are used to differentiate people with the same name in the system -- when you add someone whose first and last name combination has never been assigned to a person page, they get (1) but you will notice that many people end up with later numbers because there is already a person page with that name. Hope that helps --Artefacts 06:06, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Deleting my account [1 December 2014]

I manage my GEDCOM file in a manner that is not compatible with your system and do not want to conform. I wish to leave We Relate. How do I delete my account.--Jim Muir 06:11, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Changing surnames question [2 December 2014]

I am new here (so forgive me if this is a dumb question or if I am asking it in the wrong place); I could use some advice on surname changes. One of my ancestors used the surname Van Bunschoten, several generations later it was changed to Van Benschoten, and then a couple generations later it was changed to Benschoter. I would think that the variant used by the person when they were alive is the correct one to use.

The problem is that there are duplicate pages for some of those ancestors and those pages use the later variant of the name. Also those pages have very little information and no sources (both of which I want to rectify).

I would think the correct course of action would be to merge the duplicate pages and then rename the pages with the correct surname (or maybe vice-versa). Or is it safer to just leave the misnamed pages as is? Or should I try to start a discussion on the talk page and try to get a consensus? Or should I "be bold" per wiki etiquette and charge ahead?

Thanks for any guidance.--Trentf 02:01, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

If the generations you refer to are relatively recent, and it was truly a shift in the spelling/usage of the name (e.g., dropping "van"), then I would go ahead and merge duplicate pages and rename them according to common usage of the time.

Keep in mind, though, that surname variations are a bit tricky, because there is good reason to standardize spelling for earlier generations when standardized spelling was uncommon. The same person might be referred to in written records as Brownson, Bronson and Brunson, not necessarily reflecting a shift in the spelling of the name (although this particular name did seem to shift from Brownson to Bronson/Brunson upon immigration to New England).

Also, keep in mind that as name spelling became standardized, different siblings sometimes chose different variations, as in the David and Maria de Fehr family. "De Fehr" became a common (or at least, standardized) spelling in South Russia (amongst other variations); immigrants to Canada tended to either keep "de Fehr" or use "Fehr". Those that stayed in Russia tended to use the "Veer" spelling. ("Fehr" and "Veer" are both pronounced the same - like the English word "fair".)

Hint: If you try to start a discussion, you may wish to check out the talk pages and contributions of the people who are watching the page. If there is no evidence of activity for the last several years, don't wait too long for an answer.--DataAnalyst 03:16, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

For names in a non-standardized name period, considering using the "alt name" field to hold the name variants that are less common in whatever documentation you can find, or that later descendants may expect. Definitely merge confirmed duplicates and then rename if appropriate based on source documents as well as alt name. --Artefacts 04:28, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for the advice. These ancestors are a very long time ago (17th and 18th centuries), and the earliest one rarely even used the surname. The book I am using for my primary source has a long discussion about the "various curtailments and perversions of the name." Therefore, I will tread lightly on the name variation and use alternate names. Though I will charge ahead with the merges of duplicates.--Trentf 13:29, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Redirect sent to wrong place [7 December 2014]

The only entry in the history for [[Place:Egerton, Greater Manchester|Egerton, Greater Manchester]] is:

(cur) (last) 19:50, 15 December 2007 WeRelate agent (Talk | contribs | block) (Place:Egerton, Greater Manchester moved to Place:Egerton, Cheshire, England: Renaming page to new title)

This is incorrect. [[Place:Egerton, Greater Manchester|Egerton, Greater Manchester]] should be moved to [[Place:Egerton, Lancashire, England|Egerton, Lancashire, England]]

There is an Egerton in Cheshire but it is not within the part of Cheshire that became Greater Manchester.

I would make the move myself if I could see how. Thanks.

--Goldenoldie 15:03, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

What I did was go to the page Place:Egerton, Greater Manchester having the redirection and edit it. (It will redirect you, so follow the link back at the top of the page.) Is it as you expect now?

Do we want "not to be confused with" links between the two Egertons?

--pkeegstra 21:14, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. I knew there was a way but my brain was not functioning at 100% strength this morning.

Believe it or not, WR has a whole family of Egertons linked to Egerton, Cheshire despite the fact that it is closer to being a hamlet than a village. The Egertons got into the history books in more than one generation. --Goldenoldie 21:47, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Removing a bad link [28 December 2014]

I accidentily linked Samuel Bassett to Mary Huckins. How do I delete this?--Riti 03:44, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Removing a bad link [28 December 2014]

I accidentily linked Samuel Bassett to Mary Huckins. How do I delete this?--Riti 03:44, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

I deleted it for you, but since you were the only watcher you could have deleted it yourself. For future reference the delete option is one of the options under "more" in the commands on the left-hand side of the page. --pkeegstra 11:36, 28 December 2014 (UTC)