Invalid ID message when awarding badge?

+7 votes
506 views
When I try to award a project badge to O’Neil-1258 I repeatedly get an invalid ID message. Can someone investigate what may be occurring? Thanks.
in WikiTree Tech by T Stanton G2G6 Pilot (350k points)
It's the apostrophe.

Try using O'Neil-1258 and see if that works.
Yes, an iPad issue. It worked fine from PC desktop.

1 Answer

+8 votes
 
Best answer
That is an invalid WikiTree ID, which is why it won't let you do that. If you attempt to bring up a profile with that exact WikiTree ID, it comes up as good old error 404.

Look closer where you have referenced that person previously (probably in G2G), follow their name through the link and you'll probably see that there's a different character for the apostrophe where WikiTree is probably using one of the ASCII characters (usually something like %39) or it's spelled slightly differently.

If you can point out where you saw this originally, I might be able to trace it for you.
by Scott Fulkerson G2G Astronaut (1.5m points)
selected by Susan Laursen
I would guess it's meant to be O'Neil-1258.  Perhaps T's computer is not set to use "straight" quotes and apostrophes.
Ah - now THAT works! Nice one Melanie!! Curved apostrophe instead of straight. Good catch!
Well... or slanted at least. Needed to be a straight one.
Yeah, it's a "quirk" of Wikitree that the "smart" quotes just don't work - or, if they do work, they throw errors.
Yes, O'Neil-1258. The culprit was the iPad and how that apostrophe is set. When I just used the desktop, it awarded the badge without issue. Anyone know how to deal with that issue on the iPad?
Try using the entity number.

Hi T. To disable smart apostrophes and quotation marks on the iPad, try going to

Settings > General > Keyboard

and turning off Smart Punctuation in the ALL KEYBOARDS section.

Thank you, Jim! It worked!! I work on an iPad and never understood that problem. smiley

Glad that's helpful, Missy! If you're not writing a novel but instead doing anything technical, smart punctuation is just a nuisance in my opinion.

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