User talk:Dallan/Archive 2012

Upload a Big Gedcom [3 January 2012]

Hallo Dallan,

A Friend Genealogist asks me to upload his Gedcom, but his Gedcom contains 15.000 individuals. His tree is a good addition to my tree, that's why i'd like to have his Gedcom on Werelate. I understand it's going to be a lot of work, but i have uploaded my own tree with a lot of individuals to, i now better understand how Werelate works. Could you give me permission to upload this Gedcom?

JSFaber--Jsfaber 11:07, 3 January 2012 (EST)

Hi Jaap-Sip and Dallan, I hope you don't mind me jumping in here. I have had the experience of uploading a gedcom that was greater than 5000 people, and I would strongly caution against taking this approach. It is far better to split the gedcom into smaller chunks and process each separately. If this is a Dutch gedcom (which based on your message I assume it is) you are going to have many, many family matches. These do take a lot of time to process and clean up. It is also preferable from an administrative standpoint to upload a smaller gedcom because the WR admins can help process it - larger files require Dallan to import the file differently than others. WeRelate does sometimes allow files larger than 5000 people, but this is usually for files that are only slightly above the limit that would be tough to split up. If you need any advice on splitting up a large gedcom, I am sure that Klaas would be able to help. --Jennifer (JBS66) 11:40, 3 January 2012 (EST)

Error message on user talk page [23 January 2012]

Dallan, User:Susan Irish mentioned that when trying to leave a message on a new user's talk page, she received the following error message "This site has restricted the ability to create new pages. You can go back and edit an existing page, or sign in or create an account." The user had not yet been welcomed and no messages appeared on his page. I can see the Add Topic link and can add a message, but Susan cannot. This is not the same message I get when trying to leave a message when not signed in, or on the sandbox when I use a non-admin account. I'm not sure why this might be happening. --Jennifer (JBS66) 16:15, 22 January 2012 (EST)

I fixed this bug and left a message on Jennifer's talk page.--Dallan 10:02, 23 January 2012 (EST)

Changes to search? [23 January 2012]

It seems that changes have been made to search recently. As of 20 Jan I could enter the word Unknown in a given or surname field, and the pages with Unknown in the title would be returned. This is no longer working. --Jennifer (JBS66) 05:06, 23 January 2012 (EST)

Sorry - this is working again now. Over the last couple of days some "Unknown" names will have gotten removed from the index. They'll all show up again in a couple of weeks.--Dallan 10:02, 23 January 2012 (EST)

Deleting trees and watched pages [21 February 2012]

Good morning Dallan. See Family:Kay Ottenberg and Unknown (1). The person page for Kay Ottenberg has been deleted. So the user who was watching the family page is now watching an empty page. Can we minimize the deletion impact by extending the "no deletion" of watched pages to the husband and wife if a person is only watching the family page?--Beth 07:56, 19 February 2012 (EST)

Can you add that as a suggestion to the WeRelate:Suggestions page?--Dallan 21:59, 21 February 2012 (EST)

I added this on the suggestions page. Thanks. --Beth 10:57, 26 February 2012 (EST)

FamilySearch links [11 March 2012]

FamilySearch links from source pages have not been working for a few days. I get various errors, including "An error occurred on the server when processing the URL. Please contact the system administrator." If I change the Eng/Library to eng/library they work again. --Jennifer (JBS66) 12:05, 24 February 2012 (EST)

I sure wish they wouldn't change their URL structure. I know I need to eventually turn the URLs into templates. In the meantime, on Monday I'll lower-case the Eng/Library on the fly when displaying those pages.--Dallan 01:43, 26 February 2012 (EST)

We have the same problem on place pages that have the FHLC link. --Jennifer (JBS66) 10:01, 11 March 2012 (EDT)

I modified the fhlc template to lowercase Eng/Library. I think the take-away is that whenever we link to the fhlc we should do so using templates.--Dallan 22:45, 11 March 2012 (EDT)

Issue with Uploading GedCom [29 February 2012]

Hi Dallan, I don't know where to put this - I am having trouble uploading my GEDcom (new user - your wiki is amazing - I can't wait to delve in!)

So I uploaded my tree two days ago, and yesterday went through and corrected all the warnings and errors. I deleted that tree on WeRelate and uploaded the corrected one last night. It says in the instructions it should take 10-30 minutes but it has been several hours and it still says "PHELPS-Quinton_Hare-McAnelly2.ged Waiting for analysis". I deleted and re-uploaded in the first couple hours to see if that would fix it (it didn't) and it's just been sitting like that for hours now. It worked pretty quickly a couple of days ago, and the tree should only be faster now (fewer errors), so I'm wondering what I should do? Thanks for your help Marilyn--phel0049 05:58, 28 February 2012 (EST)

Every once in awhile the gedcom uploader gets in a situation where it crashes and waits for me to restart it. Yesterday was one of those occasions unfortunately. It looks like it imported successfully, after several hours' wait though.--Dallan 19:05, 29 February 2012 (EST)

Updating an image [8 March 2012]

I've done some additional work on an image, and want to upload a better version of the one I already uploaded. On Wikimedia Commons one can upload improved versions of an image, but I don't see that option here on WeRelate. Is there a way I can do this? Here is the image I want to update: Image:Banks_Family_Home_in_Michigan.jpg. — Parsa 14:25, 3 March 2012 (EST)

There's not a way to do that here, because we had people overwriting others' images with their own. Ideally the system would allow you to overwrite your images but not others' images. In the meantime, if you'll upload the image to a different (temporary) name and let me know what you've titled it, I'll update the original image.--Dallan 14:23, 6 March 2012 (EST)

Thanks, I'll do that. However, I just want to clarify something I saw in the section on uploading instructions I found on the Images Tutorial page. It says, "If your image filename happens to be the same as another already on WeRelate, you will receive warning message. If you choose to upload the image without changing the filename, the existing image will be overwritten." Is that no longer the case? And does the overwriting eliminate any text on the image page as well? — Parsa 19:03, 6 March 2012 (EST)

That used to be the case until just a few days ago, when I disallowed overwriting images because someone overwrote someone else's image and it seemed like disallowing overwrites was better than allowing them. The overwriting doesn't eliminate any text.--Dallan 17:58, 8 March 2012 (EST)

Urgent: GEDCOM Upload Merge Bug [17 March 2012]

I am in the process of merging a GEDCOM file and just started encountering a bug in the last hour or less. Check out the history of the children in this family Family:Samuel Boreman and Mary Betts (1). It appears that 2 updates are being done on some of the children, and the second removes info, such as birth and death events, and in one case, a citation. I have manually fixed the data. I have not yet looked for a pattern, but wonder if it has something to do with whether or not the person has marriages (and the marriage is identified as a potential match in the same GEDCOM file).

I checked out my contributions, and sure enough, they show the following:

01:33, 8 March 2012 (hist) (diff) mFamily:Samuel Boreman and Sarah Steele (1)(Propagate changes to Person:Samuel Boreman (6))

This family is farther down in my GEDCOM family matches, and I have not yet processed it - yet it seems to be updating the record that I am merging (Samuel Boreman (6)) without me being aware of it. There are other records in my contributions like this. As far as I can tell, this issue started with this family. I merged 2 families before this one that included children with marriages (and it looks like I merged info on one of the children, Person:Mercy Boardman (1)), and the double-edit did not seem to happen. Hopes this helps with tracking it down. Let me know if you need more info.

Another thing I have noticed in the last hour or so is that when I search WeRelate, I get all search parameters, not tailored to the namespace I am searching in (e.g., Person). This happened to me before when the javascript was not running correctly, when I was blocking the addthis webpage. As far as I know, I have changed nothing on my side, so I should not be blocking addthis, but maybe something else is getting blocked that is needed, or something else is interfering with javascript on my workstation.

I'll stop doing merges until I hear from you. Thanks--DataAnalyst 21:08, 7 March 2012 (EST)

BTW - I hope that checking into this problem does not require you to remove my GEDCOM file. I have invested several hours in tedious source matching and edits that I would rather not lose. Thanks.

--DataAnalyst 23:24, 7 March 2012 (EST)

Here's what I think is happening. When you match and merge a family, you're updating not only the family page, but you're also potentially updating the person pages for the husband, wife, and children. So in the case of Person:Samuel Boreman (6), his person page was updated when you merged Family:Samuel Boreman and Mary Betts (1), because he's listed as a child in that family. When a person's parents' family and their spouse family are both identified as potential matches, then the person will be updated during whichever merge you do first: either the parents' family or the spouse family. You should be able to continue; we shouldn't need to remove the gedcom file.--Dallan 18:38, 8 March 2012 (EST)

Sorry, Dallan, but I am pretty sure there is a bug. You are right that I was merging the husband, wife and children pages as well. The problem is that the children pages were updated twice - once with the merge that I controlled and that ended in a correct web page, and a second time that I did not submit, and that removed info (such as birth and death dates). If you look at the history, you will see two updates with the same timestamp, both saying "(add data from gedcom)" - but I only did one of those explicitly. The second one was done without my requesting it, and invisible to me, until I went looking for it. Does that make sense?

The GEDCOM upload merge is definitely working differently than it did the last time I used it - I have used it quite a bit and have not had this problem before. Also, I uploaded the exact same GEDCOM file about 3 weeks ago so that I could preview where I needed to manually update WeRelate. At that time, it proposed matches of 187 families. I cancelled it and then uploaded it again, and this time, it proposed matches for 231 families. I checked a few that did not have match proposals last time, and the families it proposed matching to this time were not new data. So the matching algorithm has clearly changed in the last 3 weeks. Could this bug have been introduced at the same time?

I can try out one more upload merge tonight to confirm the bug. --DataAnalyst 19:36, 8 March 2012 (EST)

Merged some more records from my upload that appeared to have the same characteristics as the ones that had the problem. These ones worked correctly - only a single update and no data removed. I will keep going and let you know if I have any more issues. --DataAnalyst 21:13, 8 March 2012 (EST)

Another issue - I was just able to merge a GEDCOM upload with a semi-protected family. All I did was add sources (and in a couple of cases replace existing sources) and correct one death date - however, WeRelate has never allowed me to do this before. I was already on the watch list of the family in question, but I don't think that has made a difference before. The family is Family:Nathaniel Foote and Elizabeth Deming (1). I corrected daughter Frances' death date and replaced 2 sources on daughter Elizabeth's record (in addition to adding sources to some of the other records). (The earlier bug - double-updating - did not occur.)--DataAnalyst 21:57, 8 March 2012 (EST)

Thanks for pointing out that the person had been edited twice in a row. I missed that. Upon further research it appears that the entire family was updated twice, one immediately after the other. This might have happened if the update button was double-clicked, or perhaps there was another reason. Regardless of the reason, on Monday I'm going to keep families from being updated twice in a row during gedcom upload. That should prevent this problem from happening again in the future.

You're able to edit semi-protected pages because you've been listed as a "trusted" gedcom uploader - one who is more careful with updates during gedcom upload.--Dallan 19:38, 11 March 2012 (EDT)

The bug of the double-update during a GEDCOM merge just happened again, on record Person:Samuel Wright (40). The first update was correct, and the second one removed the death date. I manually reverted to the version with the death date. --DataAnalyst 21:27, 14 March 2012 (EDT)

Now that I think about it, it is possible that I selected the update button twice, before the page had refreshed. I had thought my mouse had missed the button the first time - this probably explains the double-update, but not why information was removed in the process. But at least I should be able to avoid the problem if I am a bit more careful about selecting the update button. --DataAnalyst 22:22, 14 March 2012 (EDT)

I've made another change; hopefully it won't happen again. Thanks for your patience.--Dallan 23:21, 17 March 2012 (EDT)

Modifying page date [17 March 2012]

Hi Dallan,

What is the reasoning behind adding an updated modified date to a person page when only the family page of the person has been updated? Sample is this page Person:Walter McManners (1) which I will update soon but have not when this message was posted. Thanks. --Beth 22:38, 13 March 2012 (EDT)

The families that a person belongs to are stored on the person's page, so if a family is added or renamed, the person's page is updated.--Dallan 23:21, 17 March 2012 (EDT)

Places Tab "not matched" for "Facts" from Family Tree Maker gedcom [17 March 2012]

Hi Dallan, Should I worry about this? I'm trying to eliminate all "not matched" places in my Family Tree Maker gedcom, but FTM allows "Facts" to be created with a field called "Place or Description". WeRelate is looking for a "Place" for all facts generating "not matched" if it cannot match a place.

As an example, here is a fact for Military Service that is does not match a Place. (Military Service Fact) Enlisted as a Private in Verona, WI. Mustered into "K" Co. WI, 42nd Infantry.

How should I handle an example like this? Is it better to leave it "not matched", or should I move this information into the "Notes" section and delete the fact?

Thank you, Lou--Donkle3 09:55, 14 March 2012 (EDT)

WeRelate has separate fields for place and description, so if you like, you can edit the pages and move the descriptions from the place field to the description field. But it's not essential - you can leave it unmatched if you like.--Dallan 23:21, 17 March 2012 (EDT)

Bug in transfer of family info to person page? [19 March 2012]

Just did some work on Person:Joseph Daniell (4), now the names of his 3 wives are all blank in the display of facts (they are shown in the infoboxes). They do have the name fields filled in. I tried doing a minor edit and re-save of the page, and also one of the family pages, with no change. --Jrich 12:49, 19 March 2012 (EDT)

I changed the gender on Joseph's page from unknown to Male, and the spouse's names now appear. --Jennifer (JBS66) 12:52, 19 March 2012 (EDT)

Thanks, didn't even notice that, since the page had been previously created. --Jrich 13:01, 19 March 2012 (EDT)

Contained place [20 March 2012]

Hi Dallan, due to a series of redirects, Place:Begraafplaats Eikelenburg, Rijswijk, Zuid-Holland, Netherlands appears as a contained place under both Place:Rijswijk, Zuid-Holland, Netherlands and Place:Rijswijk, Noord-Brabant, Netherlands. It should only appear under Place:Rijswijk, Zuid-Holland, Netherlands. I've tried null edits and deleting redirects, but I can't figure out why it's still showing up under Noord-Brabant. --Jennifer (JBS66) 19:04, 19 March 2012 (EDT)

Thanks for reporting this. It's been fixed now.--Dallan 00:28, 21 March 2012 (EDT)

Selecting tree during edit does not watch page [26 March 2012]

If I click Trees from a page that I am not watching, and select a tree, the page is added to my watchlist. However, when I edit a page that I am not watching and select a tree before saving, the page is not added to my watchlist. I believe this is new behavior, as I've been able to watch pages in the past by selecting a tree during edit. --Jennifer (JBS66) 08:10, 24 March 2012 (EDT)

Working now.--Dallan 23:45, 26 March 2012 (EDT)

Searching Family Search [15 April 2012]

Hi Dallan,

Searching for James Luther Holder died in 1944 in Sabine Texas only brings up the death index searching all collections. Even added the name of his father. Finally found the death certificate image by removing the last name searching the specific database. He is listed as Halder. I noticed that you have changed the name variant pages. So I did confirm that Halder is a variant and saved. Hope these search improvements are added to the FamilySearch database. I don't have any confidence in my search capabilities and the search engines on any site. I cannot eliminate possibilities in research just because I have not found them; one of the frustrations in online research. However the benefits of online research outweigh the alternative of courthouse research.--Beth 20:09, 10 April 2012 (EDT)

A couple of companies have told me that they plan to use the results of the WeRelate:Variant names project. FamilySearch is not one of them yet.--Dallan 11:16, 15 April 2012 (EDT)

Living People [24 April 2012]

I have just recently updated my family tree on WeRelate by importing a new gedcom. I set the flags as 'Exclude details about living people' and 'Change name to 'Living. I was therefore expecting living people, like myself, to appear as 'Living' but without any details. However they haven't appeared at all. What have I done wrong?--Johnstona 17:41, 14 April 2012 (EDT)

You've done it just right. Pages for living people aren't created at WeRelate, unless they're famous enough to have a wikipedia page.--Dallan 11:13, 15 April 2012 (EDT)

Is this something which has happened recently? I restored a previous page and it records the wife as 'Living'.--Johnstona 17:09, 20 April 2012 (EDT)

It's been the policy for awhile now; I've made changes to the gedcom uploader to fairly recently (in the past six months) make it better at identifying and excluding living people fairly recently.--Dallan 20:16, 20 April 2012 (EDT)

The reason I restored the page was that according to my records the person (Simon Peter Dylke) was deceased but had not appeared in my latest GEDCOM upload. I wondered what data I had at the last upload but the restore shows that it is identical to the information I currently have. Why did it appear previously but not in the current upload? Also it is now floating on its own. How do I connect it to the rest of the family because the link is regarded as 'living'? Similarly the son (Simon Ronald Dylke) who is also deceased hasn't appeared. As a result of this I have disappointedly lost a lot of people who were previously published on WeRelate, making it less effective as these are the type of records where I have most hope of making connections with other trees. If I had known this was going to happen I might not have deleted the previous GEDCOM.--Johnstona 19:35, 21 April 2012 (EDT)

Like I said, I changed the gedcom uploader recently to make it better at identifying people who are living. If the person is deceased, go ahead and enter a death date. A death date tells the uploader that the person is deceased. To connect this page to the rest of your tree, say to a family that you have previously added, navigate to the page and click on the "Add parents and siblings" link. Then enter the parents you have previously added, and select that page when it shows up in the search results list.--Dallan 12:06, 22 April 2012 (EDT)

But the problem is that the person who links with the rest of my tree hasn't been imported because she is regarded as 'living'. She probably is deceased but I haven't got a date of death. As a result I can't add her husband (deceased) or children (deceased). Previously these people did appear on WeRelate because she appeared as 'Living' without any of her details appearing.--Johnstona 16:58, 22 April 2012 (EDT)

If you think she is deceased, then you can enter an approximate date for her death date when you create the page for her; e.g., "about 2009" or "before 2012".--Dallan 22:55, 23 April 2012 (EDT)

Very helpful - thanks very much. I'll go through my database and add these.--Johnstona 15:17, 24 April 2012 (EDT)

How do I see the code for ... [20 April 2012]

How can I find the code behind the following? I tried findin by typing the "name(s)" below and also tried to find it as a template.

{{{title-content}}}

{{{title-header}}}

{{{left-content}}}

{{{right-content}}}

What do the three curly braces indicate?

Thanks ...--cowantex 22:29, 17 April 2012 (EDT)

Those are template parameters. The best thing to do when working with templates is to look at the help pages at wikipedia. Just remember that we're using an older version of the wikipedia software, so some things that work there will not work here.--Dallan 09:41, 20 April 2012 (EDT)

Bug? [26 April 2012]

There seems to be a bit of a bug in this agent - see [1] for an example. AndrewRT 17:11, 25 April 2012 (EDT)

If you edit the wikpedia page, it shows {{convert|16|mi|km}} by {{convert|8|mi|km}}. It would appear that those templates are not available to WeRelate. Wonder if the agent tries to run them as WeRelate templates? For simple ones with no names conflicts, the template could just be brought over to WeRelate. For other cases, perhaps not, especially when differences in wiki code versions causes problems or if we already have a template with the same name that does something else. Is the agent even in an environment where it can execute wikipedia templates? If not, what to do? Create the WeRelate page with the raw code embedded it in nowiki tags: <nowiki>{{convert|16|mi|km}}</nowiki>? Some other stub to show there is incomplete text on the page? --Jrich 20:35, 25 April 2012 (EDT)

The problem is the agent isn't smart enough to know whether the templates on the wikipedia page have been duplicated at WeRelate or not. As you say, the problem is especially difficult because the template may exist at WeRelate but be different. I think we can either overlook the problem (like we do now), or we can remove the contents of all templates on Wikipedia pages, or we can put nowiki tags around the templates to display the raw text, as Jrich says. I'm not sure which solution is better.--Dallan 14:32, 26 April 2012 (EDT)

How to remove a spurious husband who hasn't a page [3 May 2012]

http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Person:Ann_Moncrief_%281%29 refers. I've managed to merge the Ann and Annie MONCRIEF(FE)s that existed, one from a fellow researcher's upload and the one from my subsequent update. But there's this spurious "husband" sitting there, and is what stopped my merging Ann and Annie at import time. It's place name, not a person, and if I try to "edit" the family I'm told to create a page. I've been round that circle without solving this so far. Hints please!--LornaHen 21:58, 2 May 2012 (EDT)

I removed the spurious "husband" from Ann's page. Does that solve the problem? I first tried to remove the spouse and children from the spurious family page but was not able to do so. Nor could I delete the page. Problem is the page does not have an ID and suggests you add the page which I did not wish to do. --Beth 07:47, 3 May 2012 (EDT)

Many thanks Beth, yes that solves the problem. thought I'd tried that but obviously not --LornaHen

GEDCOM ?? [17 May 2012]

GEDCOM ? - Just wondered if the last GEDCOM imported was okay . Have not heard or seen it yet merged into the Nash,Mahoney,Finn,Power,Ryan Family tree since upload a week or so ago .

Thanks . --HFR100HFR100

We're talking about mahoneywerelate, right? It looks like that one fell through the cracks. It's still sitting waiting to be reviewed by an admin. I've asked the people who review gedcoms to look at it as soon as they can. Thank you for being patient, and for letting me know about the problem.--Dallan 18:12, 17 May 2012 (EDT)

Next step: Review your GEDCOM [10 June 2012]

You're not done yet!

WeRelate is different from most family tree websites. By contributing to WeRelate you are helping to create Pando for genealogy, a free, unified family tree that combines the best information from all contributors.

Now that you have uploaded test-name.ged, your next step is to review what your pages will look like, review any potential warnings, and combine (merge) people in your GEDCOM with matching people already on WeRelate. You need to review your GEDCOM before it can finish importing. We will keep your GEDCOM in the queue for two weeks to give you time to review it.

Note: if your gedcom contains many errors or multiple families, we’d ask that you resolve and correct the errors, delete this gedcom and re-submit it without the errors before merging it with families already on WeRelate. If the gedcom is very large, we’d suggest breaking it up into separate files (or families) and importing them one at a time, which makes the review and correction process easier.

Click here to review your GEDCOM

Once you have finished your review and marked your GEDCOM Ready to import, one of our administrators will review your GEDCOM and finalize the import. This usually happens within 24 hours. You will receive a message here when the pages have been created.

--WeRelate agent 19:22, 10 June 2012 (EDT)

Redirects in trees [12 August 2012]

Hi Dallan, it appears that page redirects created by a merge still appear in trees (they appear in the tree total # under Manage Trees and in FTE but not in search). Is it possible to remove the redirect page from the Tree during a merge? --Jennifer (JBS66) 13:26, 25 June 2012 (EDT)

I've added this to my ToDo list. I'll implement it in September.

MediaWiki:Place types [29 August 2012]

Dallan What I meant was: can you put a link to MediaWiki:Place types on the editing screen of a place page--right beside the box for "Type"?

I have bookmarked MediaWiki:Place types for my own use in the interim.

Editing suggestions:

• combine "historic" and "historical"
• currently we have "district municipality" and "municpality district"

There are plenty of others, but those are the ones I remember from a browse earlier today.

Don't know whether you have seen my Portal proposal for a cleanup of Ontario (Canada) places. Ottawa is now done and some early-in-the-alphabet counties. /cheers --goldenoldie 11:36, 1 July 2012 (EDT)

I've removed "historic region" and "municipal district" since we have "historical region" and "district municipality". I'd remove "historic county" from the list, but before doing that we'd need to rename the types of about 50 historic counties in England and Wales.

I'll add a link to MediaWiki:Place types next month when I get off vacation.--Dallan 19:40, 12 August 2012 (EDT)

Last week I had a go at sorting out the list of MediaWiki:Place types. This was done "off-piste" and when I work out how to set up a spreadsheet table in wiki-speak I will present it.

But one point that is outside the list itself is that some descriptions fall into the general category of Inhabited Places and some don't.
Example: "hamlet" when written in the Place Type box arrives under Contained Places as "Hamlet" while "village" arrives under "Inhabited Places".
Since there may be little to differentiate between hamlets and villages, could hamlet be joined to the group eligible to be an Inhabited Place? --goldenoldie 06:37, 22 August 2012 (EDT)

That makes sense to me. I'll show Hamlet's under the general heading of "Inhabited Places" when I get off vacation next week.--Dallan 12:49, 22 August 2012 (EDT)

Just a couple of other quickies:

• "town or village" would be better as "village or town" and
• "city or town" better as "town or city"

because that's the way population usually grows.

• and "prefecture" has also got into the list as "perfecture".

Continue to have a good holiday. --goldenoldie 14:02, 22 August 2012 (EDT)

I removed "Perfecture". I can't change "Town or village" or "City or town" right now without changing the type on a number of existing place pages. I've added them to MediaWiki talk:Place types so we don't forget about them. (I added a note about Historic county there as well.)--Dallan 10:29, 29 August 2012 (EDT)

Bible records [12 August 2012]

Hi I was wondering if we have a category for "Family Bible Records"? I was thinking it would be nice to be able to check and have them in one place. --Txbluebell6 08:08, 11 July 2012 (EDT)

We have Category:Family bibles; does that work?--Dallan 19:40, 12 August 2012 (EDT)

Updating GedComs [13 August 2012]

Dallan,

I'm considering resubmitting my Gedcons to We Relate. They hav'nt been updated sense 2010, and I have added a number of people and families.

To do this should I first remove my existing tree, and then proceed with the new expanded Gedcom upload, or can I upload the new without removing the existing?

Jim Tarbet--Tarbet 12:24, 12 July 2012 (EDT)

Tell you what - the gedcom re-upload capability has been completed by User:Npowell. I need to test it and integrate it into the website. This will allow you to re-upload your gedcoms without first deleting the old ones. Once I integrate it, the system will detect which pages in your current gedcom haven't changed since your previous upload, and will ignore those pages. I plan to integrate it into the website sometime in September. How about if you wait until then, and then you can help test it :-). I'll make an announcement on the watercooler when it's ready.--Dallan 19:40, 12 August 2012 (EDT)

Yea!! I have a small GEDCOM (abt 200 persons) with lots of dups that I want to re-submit. I assume that when there are changes to a page, the system will let you select which version to keep, not just automatically keep the latest version.... hoping... I'll be watching for this. --Janiejac 20:54, 12 August 2012 (EDT)

When changes are detected, it will treat it as any other potential match and let you choose which pieces of information to include in the merged page.--Dallan 06:59, 13 August 2012 (EDT)

Place redirects appearing in drop-down boxes [12 August 2012]

Hi Dallan, a few weeks ago, I renamed Place:Friesland Cemetery, Columbia, Wisconsin, United States to Place:Friesland Cemetery, Friesland, Columbia, Wisconsin, United States. I am wondering why both places are still showing up in the drop-down boxes. Thanks, --Jennifer (JBS66) 17:25, 12 July 2012 (EDT)

I'm not sure - only the new title is showing up now.--Dallan 19:40, 12 August 2012 (EDT)

Family from Germany [12 August 2012]

I have several Germanic families. What part of Germany does the ones your searchin for come from. Mine are mainly out of what is now the state of Rhineland Pfalz but was known as the Palatine, Hesse, and Germanic Switzerland. Ben--Treeshaker55 14:44, 11 August 2012 (EDT)

We have people from all over the world. I just did a search and found around 2000 people born in Rhineland Pfalz.--Dallan 19:40, 12 August 2012 (EDT)

Special Gedcom [19 August 2012]

Hi Dallan: I have a special file for pre 1650. As I'm a descendant of Edward Goddard and is connected to many noble and royal famlies of Europe which has been proven. If possible I could post this Gedcom but asking first before attempting.Its a work in progress because so much intermarriage of famlies.But I wonder if others would be intersted to link with that Gedcom for those truly interested in history? Just need a go or no go :>). I m still trying to clean up on the maternal line of both parents before attemptin a gedcom.--Treeshaker55 11:22, 18 August 2012 (EDT)

We already have quite a few pre-1650 people linked into WeRelate, due to Jrm's copying information from Wikipedia. If you were to upload a pre-1650 gedcom, you'd end up matching a lot of those existing people, and the matching would be complicated by name issues, approximate dates, etc. I believe you're better off to see who we don't already have pages for and add them by hand.--Dallan 16:32, 19 August 2012 (EDT)

Possible flash problem [1 September 2012]

Dallan, are you aware of possible problems with the latest version of Flash as they relate to FTE? I've never had a problem moving the vertical divider in FTE, so as to narrow the column of names on the left and widen the page being displayed on the right -- until now. As long as I don't touch the divider with the mouse, it's okay, but the instant I try to click on it, it locks up not only FTE but the whole tab that WeRelate is displayed in. I basically have to reboot the browser to get back to what I was doing. I don't seem to be having problems with other websites that use Flash. My version of Flash 11 is 11.2.202.235, downloaded in May -- I think that's the current one. --Mike^Talk 17:32, 27 August 2012 (EDT)

I just tried moving the vertical divider in Chrome with Flash 11.3.31.225 and it seems to be working fine. What browser are you using? Could you try updating to 11.3?--Dallan 23:16, 28 August 2012 (EDT)

Well, the Flash plugin is now version 11.3.300.262 and I'm using the new Firefox 15.0 -- and the problem still exists. If I try to slide the vertical divider, it completely locks up the browser. I just tried it in Google Chrome and it seems to work okay there -- but I hate the way Chrome handles text-selection and cut-and-paste in wiki editing. Anyway, it appears to be a Firefox problem, but I have no idea what. --Mike^Talk 06:31, 29 August 2012 (EDT)

I'm not sure why it's not working. I just updated Flash in my Firefox browser (it updated to 11.4.402.265) and updated to Firefox 15, and it's still working fine for me. I'm not sure what to try next.--Dallan 10:41, 29 August 2012 (EDT)

Well, Flash just tapped me on the shoulder with another update, which I've just installed -- and I can play the violin again! Or at least move the vertical divider. I'll settle for that. Thanks, Dallan--- --Mike^Talk 21:04, 1 September 2012 (EDT)

Minor issue: user id lost by system [22 September 2012]

Logged in (user id displayed at top), perform "watch" on a page, page refreshed with banner saying you are now watching this page, but top now says "Sign in" and any attempt to do anything requires new login.

Use back arrow, return to last page logged in, now am able to resume work, system thinks I am logged in still.

Logged in, type search criteria into search box. Get to new page, top now shows "Sign in" and must login to edit. However, back up to page where last logged in, follow a link to same page, get there and I am still logged in and able to edit.

??? --Jrich 16:40, 2 September 2012 (EDT)

That's weird. Sounds like something's going wrong with cookies. We use a cookie to keep you logged in. Can you make sure they didn't get turned off in the browser?--Dallan 09:17, 13 September 2012 (EDT)

I can't repeat the search example, but both watch and unwatch seem to consistently produce this same symptom. Other activities don't, suggesting cookies are generally working. --Jrich 09:55, 13 September 2012 (EDT)

Can you tell me what browser you're using? Also, when you click on watch and get signed out, when you hit the back-button where you're still signed in, does the url start with "www.werelate.org" or just "werelate.org"?--Dallan 18:06, 14 September 2012 (EDT)

About Firefox says 15.0.1, Firefox is up to date.

URL displays as werelate.org/wiki/User_talk:Dallan

Perform an unwatch, top of page now says "Sign in"

URL now displays as www.werelate.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Dallan&msg=unwatched. --Jrich 10:18, 15 September 2012 (EDT)

I'm guessing you suspect some issue with werelate.org versus www.werelate.org. Following links that say www.werelate.org (e.g., "Show all pages changed since last visited" link points to http://www.werelate.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Watchlist&changed=yes) seem to give a page that says "sign in", but editing the URL in the navigation bar to remove "www.", then gives you the desired page with the user id displayed at the top (i.e., logged in still even though I navigated through a page that said I wasn't). --Jrich 10:07, 17 September 2012 (EDT)

I'm able to reproduce the no-longer-logged-in problem if I visit a "werelate.org" page (without the www) and click on watch, because it takes me to "www.werelate.org" and my cookie says I'm logged into werelate.org, not www.werelate.org. So I made a change to force all "werelate.org" URLs to automatically rewrite themselves as "www.werelate.org" from now on. That solves that problem at least. Does it solve yours as well?--Dallan 18:11, 22 September 2012 (EDT)

Yes it seems to. Is the problem that my bookmark that I was logging in on was not www.werelate.org? --Jrich 19:05, 22 September 2012 (EDT)

Yes. When you logged in, the cookie that tells the server you're logged in was saved under "werelate.org". But when you watched/unwatched a page, you got redirected to "www.werelate.org". As far as your browser is concerned, that's a different website, so it tells the server you're not logged in. I couldn't think of a reason to treat "werelate.org" and "www.werelate.org" differently given the confusion it causes, so the server now redirects all "werelate.org" requests to "www.werelate.org".--Dallan 19:17, 22 September 2012 (EDT)

Possible change in bot that processes source-wikipedia template [17 September 2012]

I'm taking the liberty of reproducing below an exchange I had w/Amelia:

I've noticed, on a number of pages where a WP copyright notice appears, instead of:

{{wikipedia-notice|William Carey (courtier)}}

You seem to prefer:

<show_sources_images_notes/>

{{wikipedia-notice|William Carey (courtier)}}

Am I correct in this? If so, there's nothing keeping us from making this standard behavior for the script that replaces the {{source-wikipedia|whatever}} template. Do you think this would work correctly on non-Person/Family pages? Do you think it would work correctly if there weren't any sources|images|notes to show?

I don't have a preference for one form versus the other - but I think one should be preferred. If you think we're better served by the second form - let's adopt it! We can ask Dallan to change his script to do that by default. I assume it would be trivial for him to do the in-place replacement of the source template with the specific wp page template, and then separately add the copyright notice at the end of the page. I'll try to remember to make that change when the opportunity presents. Maybe converting old forms could be an early task for those of us who will be beginning bot writers? --jrm03063 11:32, 4 September 2012 (EDT)

I like the latter because I think that "footer" shouldn't go in the middle of the page. Even if there is other content that's not WP, the style of the notice is inappropriate as a divider, at least to my eyes. Hence I add the show line wherever I'm otherwise editing. I assumed that it would break something to have it be automatically added, but that would be lovely.

So - long and short of it - can you add the show_source_images_notes tag to the substitution? When appropriate? Thanks!--jrm03063 08:41, 6 September 2012 (EDT)

Any chance that the <show_sources_images_notes/> XML tag could just be embedded in the wikipedia-notice template? I tried to make a test that would do that, but I'm afraid my wiki syntax wasn't up to the task. --jrm03063 11:06, 7 September 2012 (EDT)

The show_sources_images_notes tag can't be added to the wikipedia-notice template unfortunately, but it would be fairly easy to make the wikipedia-bot add it before the wikipedia-notice template if you like. Another bot would have to be written to update the existing pages - would you like to write that?--Dallan 09:14, 13 September 2012 (EDT)

Sounds like there's plenty to do... :) --jrm03063 13:40, 17 September 2012 (EDT)

New User and Impressed [1 December 2012]

I am new to the wiki, but have been very impressed so far. I have used One Great Family for years and became very dis-heartened when data that I had cleaned up a week before was messed up again. My full line built very fast there and I connected with royalty which sent my line all the way back to Adam by several routes. But I could not download more than a few generations at a time. Large tree sections would take days to try and download. Often the downloads contained zombies, (living people 150 to 6,000 years old). Since they were living their data was not downloaded, just the word "living" and perhaps a surname.

I find the review process of WeRelate very encouraging. Errors are being corrected before trees are connected. This process also helps us to update our data on our home computers and in our favorite genealogy program.

One Great Family, Ancestor.com, and Family Search, and others all just take the gedcom, as it is, and upload it. Errors, zombies, and all are dumped into the database. error corrections are never permanent, and error builds upon error. One of my Thomas Barneses had hundreds of children with different last names. It became impossible to clean up.

You are doing a great job.Keep it up.

Ron--Rgbarnes 11:40, 20 September 2012 (EDT)

Thank you! That's nice to hear :-)--Dallan 18:13, 22 September 2012 (EDT)

I'm also a new user of WeRelate, and as the first user am very impressed with the error correction and clarification process before a gedcom is accepted into the system. It gives me great confidence that any information I gleam for these trees will be well-researched and documented.The site found many errors in my gedcom that had slipped through the cracks till now, and I appreciate getting them corrected in my tree. NOW FOR MY QUESTIONS: First--is this the proper forum to post my questions about anything I can't figure out how to do? Second--I think I've completed going through my gedcom and correcting/documenting everything in all the tabs. Now, how do I indicate I think it's ready to be considered to be a part of the site? I can't find any tabs/menu items that seem to do that. Thanks so much for everything and I look forward to hearing the answers.--Jaynes931 18:32, 23 November 2012 (EST)

This page is meant to serve as a location to post general support requests, although this page is more specific to your query. I regret that I havn't done a GEDCOM upload in a while, and I don't recall the exact nuts and bolts. --jrm03063 20:32, 23 November 2012 (EST)

I'm already enjoying having my tree actually on the site. It's so exciting to learn the things that other people have already researched about my family. Thank you so much for your help. I've noticed a couple of typos in some of my comments and I figure there's a way to edit them, but so far I haven't figured out how. Is there a tutorial teaching me how to use my wonderful new tool? Thanks again, Mary Jean--Jaynes931 00:20, 1 December 2012 (EST)

Thank you! If you want to fix a typo, click on the "Edit" link either in the left-hand sidebar, or to the far right of the heading for the section you're trying to edit. I hope that helps.--Dallan 01:34, 1 December 2012 (EST)

Massachusetts Vital Records Project [23 October 2012]

I sent you some email a while back indicating that I was talking to John Slaughter, steward of Massachusetts Vital Records Project. With data that he provided, I've created a couple of sample transcript pages from the Vital Records for Bradford, Massachusetts, in particular - page 61 and page 215. I would like to know if I can tentatively expect support like that which you provided for Savage. Thanks.--jrm03063 15:12, 23 October 2012 (EDT)

I know this is a late response, but yes. Just let me know when you're ready.--Dallan 07:23, 11 November 2012 (EST)

Duplicate Image [4 November 2012]

I have tried to add a few images. I was having trouble in the beginning but I did work through my confusion. I have 2 of the same images in my file and ask that one of them be deleted. The image is Paul Baier-1867-pg 331, Line 7(pdf file). It was created on 28 oct 2012. I saw a note that send to send a link to the image, but I don't know how to do that. Thank you.

Sharon Reynolds Connolly--SharonReynoldsConnolly 10:08, 4 November 2012 (EST)

Left a message on user's talk page. --Jennifer (JBS66) 16:24, 4 November 2012 (EST)