How to transfer sources and citations with web links efficiently from Gramps to WikiTree?

Question

I have used Gramps in my genealogy activities, and I have exported the result to Geneanet for sharing with relatives.

Since I came in contact with WikiTree, I have been quite impressed by the additional results it has provided me with. So I thought I should transfer my data into WikiTree. As a start, I did some GEDCOMpare, and yesterday I tried creating my part of the tree by adding from that comparison result.

It has resulted in a few disappointments.

Background: The export to Geneanet from Gramps has been very good, meaning that all my references, sources and citations appear perfectly well.

The corresponding does not work at all in WikiTree, neither when using the GEDCOM file directly exported from Gramps, nor when using a GEDCOM file exported from Geneanet. (They are different.)

Is there a way to get it working without a lot of manual editing of links and insertion of <ref> and </ref> and so on?

It is not just that. Some links even seem to be distorted, or misunderstood. At least they do not open the web page they should, although they did in the original environment.

I fully understand some need for editing, and in particular the need for checking other profiles for possible match, but if this part regarding citations and links to sources can not be transfered in a more efficient way, I will not continue with the transfer.

Answer 1

If you have the perfect way, please let me know as well.

One tip is to export complete families, and a limited number of them. That will increase the chance you have all sources included.

Then the links should be in the notes. But sources get numbered and you will need manual sorting out of that, meaning moving around the details. Same holds for repositories.

Do you have an example for a URL that does not work well?

Please note that Geneanet is completely different from Wikitree. At Wikitree there is a unique profile page per person. So it is really important to make sure you link to the possible profiles that already exist. That is also the major advantage: no double work, if the profile already exists.

Comments

This complaint comes up a lot, is there a way for people to share their gedcoms or post a gedcompare link that others can access? Is there a crew already that works to help people that don't think they can take the time?

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I can only state from my experience with importing via a GedCom from Gramps. Links work, as do sources. But.. it is quite a lot of manual labour to move the sources into their respective <ref> tags and replace the GrampIDs for the sources. Like most on WikiTree really

Wikitree is not for the quick publication of a personal tree. And Gramps can do everything so you end up with a lot of extra information that WikiTree does not accept. Also note that GedCom was invented before linking data via the internet (Linked Open Data, Unique identifiers etc) was invented.

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...is there a way for people to share their gedcoms or post a gedcompare link that others can access?

Jonathon, see if this works: https://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Special:UploadGedcom&action=process&gu_id=170542

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"You did not upload that Gedcom data".

So maybe there should be a setting to opt into allowing others to see your file and gedcompare?

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I have never seen a public link (and hope actually it does not work).

But.. it would be nice if you could have a trusted list of some kind.

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I did now a test with only three persons in the GEDCOM exported from Gramps. Yes, my URL links are in the notes as you suggested they should be. From the GEDCOMpare result I added one person, Carl Erik Andersson who is now Andersson-12538. The links in his profile do not work, and they appear under a heading "Notes" instead of being inserted at correct places under the heading "Sources". The only editing I have done was to remove some parts in the biography. I can easily see why the first link does not work: It has lost the slash that the original link had between "volume" and v72422". The same error occurs in all links in this profile: A slash has been removed!

The links I am referring to are only URL links for my citations to sources like church records, not links to other persons.

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Here's a link to the GEDCOM file I used:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Cs6rHAPbZEhANaaZWi3Q0yorpYAmSdKC/view?usp=sharing

Although I exported only three persons, the file seems to contain every note, source and repository I have used. This makes it a bit long.

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Hey,

The location of the link is taken from the GedCom field. In this case notes. That is unfortunately currently the way it works. There is an app to clean up gedcom imports, I do not know if that helps for the notes reallocation.

In the profile you mention you see three references to sources created. I just imported one profile with sources that also have the dates and notes. You can find it here: Driehuizen-73 (I might clean it in a few days though). That looks similar to yours. It for sure does require manual editing. But as said: this is a Wiki and not a real database system, so editing is what is unfortunately required quite a lot.

Yes, I remember the slash issue.... but cannot find the related question here. Maybe Abbie has marked it in the bug list. Can you add the tag 'bug' to your question? She will pop in then.

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On the contents of the GedCom:

You can tweak the export settings in Grams a bit more on the type of notes to include. That might save some time in cleaning up.

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I tried the app 'WikiTree AGC', which I suppose is the one you refer to for cleaning up. It improves the result a bit, but leaves a few named strings unsubstituted. That app looks promising, but needs a bit further work.

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The app WikiTree AGC has now been updated to version 0.1.13 which addressed my problem pretty well, so can perhaps proceed with my transfer of data from Gramps. 

I have all links placed in notes in Gramps, and that is probably related to the vanishing slash in them. This ought to be taken care of by a correction in GEDCompare. The other problem still remaining is that GEDCompare doesn't copy all needed sources and notes from the GEDCOM file to the profile. An example line in a GEDCOM file (concerning a marriage):

2 SOUR @S0092@

references the lines:

0 @S0092@ SOUR
1 TITL Hed(U) EI:5 Lysnings- och vigselbok 1862-1881
1 REPO @R0002@

but these lines are not included in the GEDCompare result for the profile referencing them.

I will perhaps follow the advice given, to make smaller GEDCOM exports. The reason would be that it takes too long time to finish adding all persons from one big GEDCompare result before it becomes obsolete (profiles added later by other users may match persons in my export that initially didn't have any matching profile). This would of course give me a book-keeping problem: Which parts of my family tree have I already transferred? I will need to keep track of that. I will also check if the gedcom splitting post would help me.

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What I do for bookkeeping is to copy the created WikiTree profile link to an internet link field for the person in Gramps.

Answer 2

Check this discussion perhaps, I do not use Gramps, so can't comment on its effectiveness: https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/1037716/splitting-gedcoms-with-gramps-a-guide