How do related surnames get added to surname pages?

Question

How do "related names" get added to surname pages? Is this a capability that's limited to a certain class of power users? If so, how does one contact those people?

For example, http://www.wikitree.com/genealogy/Van_Schaick should list VanSchaick, Van_Schaack, VanSchaack, Schaack, Shock, and several other variants as related surnames, and all of those related surnames should be similarly cross-referenced.

Answer 1

I believe it's time to ask for a change to WikiTree's methodology for identifying related names tor inclusion on surname pages (and presumably also searches). Reliance on WeRelate.org for identification of variant names isn't working.

Not only does WeRelate fail to identify two-word surnames, but it doesn't log variant spellings that have the same Soundex code and are deemed "rare."

Example: WikiTree has some duplicate profiles related to alternate spellings of the surname: "Traphagen" or "Trophagen." You won't find the alternate spellings at http://www.wikitree.com/genealogy/TRAPHAGEN or http://www.wikitree.com/genealogy/TROPHAGEN. I went to http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Special:Names to add this pair of names to its database, so they would show up here. No luck. According to WeRelate: "The following rare names have the same soundex code [as Traphagen], so they will be matched automatically: trophagen." That means that WeRelate won't ever alert WikiTree to the match...

Not every WikiTree contributor looks at those surname pages, but the failure of those pages to alert contributors to alternative spellings makes it all the harder to prevent creation of duplicate profiles. Would it be possible to enable WikiTree contributors to add alternative spellings to those pages?

Answer 2

I'm limited in my experience with this, but when you search for any one name, (en mass) all the cognate names appear on the upper right of the first page with the number in WikiTree associated with that spelling.

Comments

That happens on some pages, but not all. Look at http://www.wikitree.com/genealogy/Van_Schaick -- there are no related names in the upper right.

After I posted this question, I finally found an earlier G2G question on the same topic (yes, I searched before I asked the question, but I didn't find any related questions until after I posted this one). The response indicated that related names are importted from werelate.org. I've visited that website and I'm joining it, basically to see what happens.

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You're right.  on the other hand I took the Van off and found about 15 other names.

I did qualify may answer in that I was inexperienced with the problem...

Answer 3

The procedure whereby WeRelate is the source of related names is explained at http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Variant_names_project

After visiting WeRelate and adding some name matches there, I've realized that WeRelate doesn't recognize two-word surnames like Van_Schaick. As a result, WikiTree doesn't show any related surnames for names including Van_Schaick, Van_Slyck, and Van_Alen, and it never shows two-word names as possible variants for VanSchaick, Schaick, VanSlyck, and VanAllen. Is there any way to get around this -- so people searching on these types of names can be pointed to related names?