Why is wikitree sourcer 'failing to initialize"? [closed]

Question

I am trying to create the family of [[Swafford-2350|Thomas Harmon Swafford (1881-1950)]] from Ancestry and Find A Grave. After each child I have to shut down my chrome app or I get the error --

The content script did not respond. Cannot initialize the WikiTree Sourcer menu
Error:
The message port closed before a response was received.

I am able to read in the data fine, it is during the create when I activate to fill in the fields. I am using the create narrative and citation.  Perhaps Ancestry is doing something? Or maybe something to do with the update yesterday? Also, can you have it pull the birth location from Ancestry?

Answer 1

Hi Lance,

Could you clarify the issue a bit. I'm not sure that I understand the exact steps you are doing.

Is this it:

1. Go to Swafford-2350
2. Go into edit mode
3. Click on add/remove child
4. select "Create a new profile for his child" and continue
5. In another tab use Sourcer to Save Person Data or create a citation
6. Switch back to the EditFamily tab and fill the fields from the Sourcer menu
7. Proceed through the steps to create the child
8. Back in the original tab for Swafford-2350 in edit mode do add/remove child again
9. select "Create a new profile for his child" and continue
10. In another tab use Sourcer to Save Person Data or create a citation
11. Switch back to the EditFamily tab and fill the fields from the Sourcer menu

It sound like you are getting an error at step 11 is that right?

I have used the flow myself quite a lot and haven't seen issues. I would have to find some people to add to one of my profiles to test it out right now.

Comments

I am sorry. I cannot make it fail consistently, until it starts failing, then it fails consistently. I am suprised no one else is experiencing it, but it is frustrating and I often just stop my work and move on to something else leaving family members unattached.

I do it a bit differently. I first go to the findagrave site and load the information in. Then I go to the parent or sibling and add relative (create profile) and then activate sourcer again to fill in the fields.   

Because the new profile system creates an edit screen every time you create a profile I have multiple tabs open depending on how many people I am adding.

I genearally just keep adding and adding until I hit the people with no Find A Grave links.

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I found one that continues to fail to initialize even after a complete reset of my computer. 

Go to https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Lampman-735 and add a sibling from Find A Grave. 

1. Open new window and page for https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/12097739/seward-stark-lampman Build Narrative

2. Go to open window Harriet. Add sibling create.  Hangs while initializing. 

I added the other siblings by going to the parent and adding a child, not a problem. The thing is Harriet does not have a mother tied to her. I am not confident the mother's profile is correct. Maybe that is the problem? 

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Thanks Lance, that is definitely a bug and I am able to reproduce it, thanks for the links.

I have a fix ready for the next release, which I will try to get out before the Connect-a-thon.

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The bug occurred when adding a sibling of a person where one of the parents is not known in WikiTree. In this case WikiTree doesn't ask you to confirm that the father is the same.

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A workaround is to add this person as the child of the father rather than as a sibling.

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Hello Rob, just giving the WikiTree sourcer a first try, on Firefox, on an existing WikiTree page [[Macdonald-18311|Roderick Macdonald (1777-)]]

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Macdonald-18311

I get "Waiting for page to respond" for 10 seconds, and then "Cannot initialize the WikiTree Sourcer menu. Error: Could not establish connection. Receiving end does not exist."

and then "WikiTree Sourcer doesn't know how to extract data from this page. It looks like a WikiTree page but not a person profile."

Have I done something wrong? Perhaps it gets blocked if I also have other extensions like Ghostery or Ublock Origin running?

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Hi Keith,

I don't think it is anything specific about that WikiTree profile. I just tried it in Chrome and Firefox and Sourcer worked OK for me.

Did you reload the page after installing the extension? It may be an initial setup problem. If you can't get it to work try restarting Firefox now that the extension is installed.

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@Rob

"Have you tried turning it off and back on again?"

After a reboot, it's working fine!