In addition to being a great platform for recreating family history, WikiTree is also a brilliant resource for collaborating with others on special community projects. Two such projects currently in the works are for Twins and another for Centenarians.
Our reigning Queen of WikiTree, Joanna Tolson, took the initiative to kick start these pages in an effort to bring together Twins Throughout the Ages and Centenarians: Our Link to Ages Gone By. Wouldn’t it be fascinating to see if there is a deep, historical link to all things twin? Or learning the secrets of living into the truly golden years by connecting with others who are or have known a Centenarian?
If you’d like to take part in these global activities, just create an account and start building your family history. After setting up a twin or centenarian on your tree, you can add these individuals to the respective pages by editing their bios and adding [[Category:Centenarians]] or [[Category:Twins]].
We’ve been making improvements to the category system thanks to input and experimentation by C-G Magnussen and his Italians in Sweden project.
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Categories will be powerful tools for history. They enable WikiTreers to connect records in creative and unusual ways. Imagine connecting the pages of sailors who served on the same ship in World War 2, or neighbors who grew up on the same street, or students who attended the same school.
Categories can be used for your own family history too. WikiTreer extraordinaire Joanna Tolson asked about ways to highlight particular people in her Watchlist, e.g. one who was a professional hockey player, or the family with triplets.
If you don’t mind sharing the category with other WikiTreers, you could create generic categories such as “Professional Hockey Players” and “Triplets”. Simply put something like [[Category:Professional Hockey Players]] in the person’s bio/notes. A category page will instantly be created and anyone else who creates a page for a professional hockey player will be able to add them in the same way.
If you want to keep a personal category for special people in just your family, one way to do it would be a category like [[Category:Select Family Members of Joanna Tolson]].
Another cool thing about category pages is that you can add a description to the top of them. For example, Joanna might want to explain the meaning of her “Select Family Members of Joanna Tolson” page and why people are listed there. To add this description, however, you need to have special “Super” editing rights at WikiTree. Ask me about this when you want to add a description and I can help.
A-1 awesome WikiTreer C-G Magnussen has been pioneering the use of categories on WikiTree.
Those of you familiar with Wikipedia or another wiki may know how categories work. Anyone can instantly connect pages under the umbrella of any category they choose. For example, I could create a category called “Whittens from Fitchburg, Massachusetts” and add my family members to it. I simply go to the Edit page of a family member and enter this anywhere in the main body of the Bio/Notes: [[Category:Whittens from Fitchburg, Massachusetts]]
Without doing anything else, this page is created: http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Whittens_from_Fitchburg%2C_Massachusetts
I can even proceed to make “Whittens from Fitchburg, Massachusetts” a sub-category of something like “Whitten Families” or “Families from Fitchburg, Massachusetts” or both.
C-G’s current interest is Italian immigrants to Sweden so he’s been working on this: http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Italians_in_Sweden.
Categories are potentially very powerful tools for wiki genealogy but they haven’t been optimized for our WikiTree use yet. For example, the links on the category pages appear as file names (aka WikiTree IDs) instead of names, e.g. Whitten-1 instead of Chris Whitten.
Today C-G asked about this: “When I add the category info in the Bio Notes it isn’t showing on that profile unless you have permission to edit. I wonder if the information about what categories a person belongs to should be listed automatically somewhere on the Profile page!? I know I can add the category links manually.”
I think this is a good idea. Does anybody else have input?
