Freeserve.co.uk

Question

In June or July, all freeserve content was wiped by ee.com who now own freeserve. References to these sources is no longer valid although they might be accessible through waybackmachine.org etc.

My question is whether a programer could write a subroutine (?) which might be replace (all?) so users are redirected?

Comments

Best practice on a wiki is to use Templates when linking to external sites....

With a template this problem would have been fixed in 1 minute....Having external links not using templates is like asking for problems .....

 

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Magnus

Thanks for this, it answers a problem that I had recognised, but didn't know how to address. The one drawback with this as a general proposition is that you need to be a wikitree leader in order to create and edit templates. While you are one, I am not and neither are the majority of people who might use such a facility.

My own issue (perhaps you could oblige with a template, or tell me who to ask?):

In some of my profiles here I would like to link to document transcriptions on my own one-name study website. Although the internal structure of the website is under my control, the web address is not and it's always possible that I may change host in the future. To address this it would be useful for me to have a template input of the form:

{{Kingsman ONS | folder= | page= }}

so that within a profile I could place something like:

{{Kingsman ONS | folder=documents/ | page=kingsman/1550thomaserneley1595will.html}}

which would then output as :

http://kingsman.one-name.net/documents/kingsman/1550thomaserneley1595will.html

and if I write the whole thing as:

[{{Kingsman ONS | folder=documents | page=kingsman/1550thomaserneley1595will.html}} | Will of Thomas Erneley]

I should get the format that I want and the facility to easily change the IP address for all such in the future should it become necessary.

Thanks for your help. I don't know if this sort of facility would have appeal to other ONS project leaders, it might be useful to have a more general template where the name of the ONS is also a variable and links to the appropriate IP address, but I don't know how the syntax for that would look.

Derrick

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You can always create a Free space and send in a paramater ...{{Space:xxx|my para 1|my para 2}}

Let me know if I should do something....

External linking is a problem 2016... what we can do 

1. Use templates if possible
2. Have bots that check that links are working....

I am spending maybe 100 hours to find usage of Wikipedia links between WikiTree profiles and the same person at Wikipedia. If we have used templates it would have been done in 10 minutes....In Wikipedia land people can have 180 templates on a profile just because its useful.... 

Good thing is that now Wikidata/Wikipedia has good structure so we can do some of the reports in Wikidata....

   

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<includeonly>[http://kingsman.one-name.net/{{{1}}}{{{2}}}</includeonly>

Will take the parameter 1 and parameter 2 and output it ==>

you can write
{{Space:Kingsman ONS|documents/|kingsman/1550thomaserneley1595will.html}}

If you would to also support named parameters it will be a little bit more advanced....

 

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That's excellent, thanks for showing me how.

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Regarding Wikipedia.. Are notables supposed to have some template for links to their biographies on Wikitree? I have been adding a few notables to my tree, but I did not realize that there was a specific way to link to the Wikipedia article. I do not think it is outlined in the notables project.

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If you ask me use templates to avoid problems like with Freeserve.co.uk. Problem is inside WikiTree people use Templates just for adding graphics and not external links. Don't ask me why.... My understanding templates was designed for avoid broken links etc....

{{Notables}} is ok to use but using a template to avoid problem is not.     

Moscone-4 ==> I should

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Moscone
   I should use
   [[Wikipedia:George_Moscone]] 
   or
   [[Wikipedia:George_Moscone|Wikipedia]] George Moscone
   to avoid having an URL
    
2. His Wikidata item is Q705708 ==>
   {{Wikidata|Q705708}}
    
3. In Wikidata we find following links 
   1. his FindAGrave ID 3247 ==>
      {{FindAGrave|3247}}
       
   2. NNDB 000047722
      No template available
      
       
4. In FindAGrave you also find the coordinates of his grave 37.67015, -122.44067 but today we have no template for that so that can only be added hardcoded

As always in Wikitree land hardcoded links is what people use..... maybe they are easier to edit maybe not..... but its asking for problems in the long run and it makes it more or less impossible to check WikiTree with other sites....

I also added in WikiData the 

1. WikiTreeID property P2949 for him ==> you will get him on list like Aleš are creating. Today +8000 people has this attribute.
    
2. I added Place of Burial Holy Cross Cemetery
   1. Burial plot reference: St. Michael, Row 22, Grave 42, Five rows down from statue in center
   2. coordinate locations 37°40'12.54"N, 122°26'26.41"W
   3. A reference to were I got this information  http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=3247

Having a Wikidata profile opens up new possibilities and you can use query tools and also timelines see G2G  ==> you will now find George on this timeline http://tinyurl.com/hspbtl8 that is a Timeline with all +8000 profiles WikiTree profiles connected to Wikidata or get a list of people in Wikipedia buried in the same cemetery....

1. All people buried on same cemetery ==> you find out that also other WikiTree people are on the same cemetery
   1. Brown-42120  
      Plot: Section D, Row 10, Area 1, Plot 1
      GPS (lat/lon): 37.66942, -122.44805
   2. Casserly-17 
   3. Crosetti-1
   4. .....

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Thank you very much Magnus. I will put these suggestions into practice.

Answer 1

I did check the biographies and Freeserve.co.uk doesn't appear in any profile. Maybe in private profile or FreeSpace page.

Comments

No, I don't think they have been fixed.

Certainly not the ones Ales found.

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Working on it

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Done those.  Did most with a template, but I've had to subst it out.

(A lot were only email addresses, so nothing to do)

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Cool

"Substitute it out"

Did you use SUBST

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Thanks RJ,

So I can remove this report?

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No. There are many of them.

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The links are all in column 1 in this table

http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Profiles_Citing_Freeserve

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@RJ Horace I created a Category for templates for external links

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Maybe we should have template for specific and custom events. Like:

{{Event
| baptism
| date=20140302
| loc=Some church, Ljubljana, Slovenia
| locLonLat=15,45
| locWD=Q1234
| src=Source text
| srcLink=Source link
}}

Or

{{EventBaptism
| date=20140302
| loc=Ljubljana, Slovenia
}}

{{EventBaptism|20140302|Ljubljana, Slovenia}}

Ouput of this event could be a nice sentance with all important data attached to it. Looks like we won't get any new fields in Wikitree, so this could be the way to make information readable by computers.

Similarrly we could any number of custom events like residence, workplace, burrial, awards, medals, battles, scholl,...

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Yes that is my idea and then you use Histropedia to create on the fly timeline.... and maybe we also could get emigration maps on the fly....

Best would be if we start create templates that generates machine readable codes (microformats)