Did you see today's changes on search/surname pages and invitations?

Question

Hi WikiTreers,

A few minutes ago we released a round of significant changes.

First, we improved our search engine: results now appear in a table, instead of a list, so they can be more easily scanned and sorted. You can sort by privacy level and last edit date now, in addition to first name, birth date, or death date. You can reverse the sort order, and add a secondary sort. These search results can include everyone with a surname.

In the past, you needed to use surname pages for this functionality (e.g. SMITH). The user interface on those pages was complex and our back-end methods for maintaining them were becoming unsustainable. Now, these pages are not intended to be used by members for any practical purpose at all. They're intended for:

1. New visitors, to showcase the breadth and depth of what our community has to offer related to a surname that interests them.
2. Google, to help make sure that our most-recently added and edited profiles appear in Google search results. 

Please note that we are planning further design improvements to search results and surname index pages, along with other pages. As many of you know, we are working on a complete website redesign.

Today we also released what we believe are major improvements to how we invite family members to join us on WikiTree. The way to invite someone is to add an email address to their profile. But our privacy policies became more conservative over the years, especially after 2018, and we established a rule that said you should not create a profile for a living person without their permission. So, you were essentially supposed to ask them if you could invite them. That's unnecessarily complex. It discouraged what should be one of the primary usages of WikiTree: sharing family history with our loved ones.

Now, we are again whole-heartedly encouraging you to invite living family members. If they don't accept the invitation, the profile you created will become an anonymous placeholder that helps protect their privacy. To understand this better, see the sample invitation on Help:Invitations.

Today's changes touch a lot of different systems. If you spot what could be a bug, whether or not you think it could be related, please post an answer here. (Comments at the top will be moved or hidden once read.) Thank you!

Onward and upward,

Chris and the WikiTree Team

Answer 1

Where does one find the One Name Study page for the surname?

I miss the recent photos added for the surname.  I'm probably missing something, but it seems more was deleted than added.

Comments

I don't know if there's a way of finding one-name studies from the newly formatted surname genealogy pages. A workaround is to look in

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:One_Name_Studies

Answer 2

Just wanted to register my disappointment that the surname pages are now limited to those with that LNAB. Previously one could encode non-LNAB surname owners in the URL as (e.g.) https://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Special:Surname&s=SMITH&cln=1&order=toucheddn but this now redirects to https://www.wikitree.com/genealogy/SMITH with no entries of current last name. Previously I was able to find unlinked families to add to the ONS I manage using this method.

I get that the team want me to use Special:SearchPerson for this functionality but I mentioned previously why this is not practical for my use case.

Comments

We did make sure people could use parameters so they could bookmark searches, which should help:

https://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Special:SearchPerson&wpSearch=1&wpLast=Smith&skip_variants=1&last_name_match=all&sort=toucheddn

Also, the Surname pages with various links are still available: https://www.wikitree.com/genealogy/SMITH

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Ah, excellent; completely missed this. This solves all my previous issues and so I withdraw my disappointment :-)

Thanks Jamie.

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Sorry; a genealogy site should make a surname search one of the easiest options - not bury it.

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The surname search is easier now -- previously if you searched for a surname, it didn't do a search at all and just sent you to a pre-compiled page. Now it actually performs the search.

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Jamie, how do you get to the pre-compiled page, for example if you want to see the surname variant list or the box of tools? Is it linked from the Search page somewhere?

The only way I can see to find it now is either to modify the sample URL with SMITH you gave above, or to find a profile with the desired surname and click on it in the name display just above the birth date line.

Answer 3

Another change that I don't appreciate: When I look for a certain spelling of a surname, I now get also spelling variants in the table, no matter if I check under the table that I don't want to see spelling variants.

When I look for Cummings, I don't want to see Cummin or Cummins. In case I need the other names because of spelling changes during the generations I can look for it myself. But adding those variants to the table, increases the lists and makes searching for the fitting person - see above - extremely time consuming.

Comments

Well said, Jelena.  Yes, this new system really favors common names.  I was looking for Jaycox and got box after box of Jackson.  Under the old system WikiTree would show me how many Jaycox they had on one page with other variants like Jacox and Jacocks.  I loved that.  It was so helpful.  I wish they would include a "this spelling only" button.

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Pam, it doesn't even help to look for a common surname. When I look for "Baker" I get in the list also "Becker" and "Baxter". No, I don't look for Baxter or Becker. The list of the "200 recently edited profiles" says there are 60k+ profiles with "Baker". The list then shows more than 108k profiles. Sorry, but when I look for a profile to get an anchor profile for a connection, I still didn't need newly edited profiles, but profiles I can scan fast for the dates and places I work on currently. This new surname list is not ideal to say it slightly.

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Agreed! For some reason, WikiTree now believes that anyone searching on surname "McCool" wants to see results from 20 unrelated surnames - but not McCool.

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Isabelle had above the hint how to get to the "only my name" version. You click on "Click here to search all [name] profiles". That brings you to the list with all variants. Then you scroll down, check the "no, only exact name matches" radio button and then click again on "Search". Then all Baxters and Beckers are gone when you want Baker.

Why simple when you can make it complicated?

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Thank you, Jelena.  It worked. I could check all the Jaycox profiles without having to wade through thousands of Jackson profiles first.  So problem solved if I want exact spelling.  But I miss that page where they had many variants and I could see all the ways a surname was spelled, sometimes helpful in my research.  It was a nice page with a couple of photos of ancestors or document and it came up as soon as you typed in a surname.  Can't find it now.

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I don't know an obvious way of finding it now, Pat, but the link is

https://www.wikitree.com/genealogy/JAYCOX

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Yes, Jim, that is what I was talking about.  I used to put in any surname under search and a page for that surname, like the Jaycox example, would pop up.  Now you have to LEAVE WikiTree and go to Google and type in the link you gave substituting any name you want in capitals.  I just did that for another surname and it worked. But how sad is that.  You have to leave WikiTree to access a feature of WikiTree.  That said, thank you, Jim.  At least now I know what hoop I have to jump through to get what I want.

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There are lots of places on WikiTree that link to the surname pages -- the homepage, profile pages, G2G tags, your watchlist...

But we are adding a link when you search to make it easier to get there.

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Thank you, Jamie.  I certainly hope they add this new link you are speaking about.  Can't get there now by homepage.  That's what I was using and all the name-in-boxes came up.  No surname page. I just tried watchlist and profile pages and it's the same thing...your new box-per-name.  They used to give the Surname page.  Not now.  So until you add this new link I will still leave WikiTree to access the Surname Page feature.

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Pat, on profile pages if you click on the last name link, it will take you to the surname page.

But a quick link was added to the search results last night. If you do a search, you should see a [NAME home page] link next to the [edit] link.

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Yes, Jamie.  I noticed their new link yesterday and wrote an answer, thanking them for the improvement.  I like that about WikiTree.  Very quick to respond to issues.

Answer 4

Chris, It was a big shock to find this major change this morning, but I'm trying to get to grips with it and not make knee-jerk comments. I realise that part of the reasoning is to update and (perhaps) make things more user-friendly, but not everyone uses the General Search for the purpose of finding possible relatives.

Picking up on some of the comments already made...

• Finding Orphaned Profiles - this can still be achieved (albeit not from the General Search box at the top of each screen) by using the dropdown menu on FIND at the top of the screen. It's an extra step, but still OK - please don't change this.
• Density of display - large is too large for ease of scanning down the list; small is too small. Can we have a happy medium?
• Number of profiles per search page - the 5000 per page / list all nnnn profiles (where the number of profiles is >1000) was a useful feature for high volume last names. Please can that be reinstated as part of the new Search? Possibly include as an option with the number per page?
• Number of profiles per page - please put this at the top of the list as well as, or instead of, at the bottom.
• Radio buttons - for me, these make things more confusing; the two green boxes on the right of the old Search page were much more straightforward.
• Default setting for name search - it's really great that we can now have spelling variations and soundalikes in with the search. As a member of the Connectors Project who spends a lot of time scanning down name lists for possible duplicate profiles, I've often wished for this feature. But it's difficult enough talking about duplicates with  Wikitree profile managers who may only be here infrequently and only have a very basic idea of how it's all supposed to work, when you might have found two profiles with only very minor differences, let alone getting to grips with what may appear to be (to the relative novice) more major differences to be resolved. So, if votes count, I would prefer to have exact spelling as the default.

Just my tuppenceworth from someone who does a lot of Wikitree tidying.

Answer 5

I noticed that the new update got rid of the family "index" selection. Is there a reason why for that? That was very helpful in seeing if there were any duplicate profiles to be merged as well as quickly looking for possible family members rather than having to type in each individual name and then scroll through numerous profiles.

I also miss when you used to be able to hover over a name a get a preview of birth/death dates, etc instead of having to click on the profile to see that information.

Answer 6

Thanks Chris, this will probably make things much easier when looking  for a couple, since the spousal name is also showing in search results.  

By the way, you picked a poor day to announce this on, I was sure you were leading me on.    

Comments

As an autistic person this has made the search engine absolutely useless for me.   Very disappointed.

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Tim, this should be an answer of your own, not a response to mine.

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That's what I wanted to do, but could find an easy/straightforward way of doing so.

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there's a big button marked Answer just below the question, you click that.  Gives you a box to enter your answer in.

Answer 7

I like the new listing and the option to make it denser.  Two questions:

1.  What name table is used to generate a list?  When I use the new search function I get about 65000 entries for the name Bourque (unfiltered).  This includes names like Burch, Brock, Berkey, and so on.  When I use the One Name Tree app I get on the order of 4,000 that are actually similar.  The advanced search allows only exact (maybe too few) or all "variants" which is too many.

2.  We used to be able to hover over the name and get the parents or spouse.  I seem to have lost that some time ago.  Can that be brought back, or is it a setting somewhere?

Thank you.

Comments

Cindy, if you're talking about the profile previews, you should be able to fix that by going to...
 My WikiTree > Settings > Profile Previews
... and unchecking the box that says 'Disable Profile Previews'.
(That's probably the solution, anyway.)

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You are right that box was checked.  So I unchecked it.  No change.  When I roll over a name it only says Profile of Antoine Bourg.  No spouses no parents.  You must click the whole name, open the profile and look.  Then close it and do that for the next one, etc.  I really liked the preview when I had it.

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Did you scroll down and click the 'Save Settings' button?

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Ian, you know me too well.  Of course I didn't scroll all the way down!  Can I have the Stupid Award for today?  Now it's working and I love it.  Thank you, once again, for your patience.

Answer 8

If a profile becomes an anonymous placeholder, does that mean that the biography and sources are deleted, or  are only the name (other than LNAB), date, and place fields cleared?

Comments

Good question, Sharon. Also: are relationships deleted or kept?

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The biography and sources and fields are all deleted. The relationships are kept, because that's what makes them a placeholder for that person.

Edit: See https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Anonymous_Placeholder

Answer 9

In WBE Preview 1.16.0.1, I've changed the 'Surname and Watchlist Table Options' feature into a 'Search and Watchlist Table Options' feature.  I've also added an option to 'Remember search options' (so that you don't have to keep remembering to hit the button to exclude name variants).

Please (whoever has Preview) take a look and let me know if I've broken anything.  Thanks.

(It's live now, by the way.)

Comments

Looks okay to me, but since this is so new and so different than what we have been used to, I'm not sure if I would be able to tell if something wasn't right. It will take some time to get totally familiar with it, but I think with the WBE extension it will do all the things I want it to do. For those who don't want to install the WBE extension (or can't), it may leave some things to be desired.

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Thanks, Nelda.

Answer 10

I miss being able to just sort by birth date when you first search a surname. It was the main way I was able to easily scan the surname list for connections to make.

https://www.wikitree.com/genealogy/KNIPHORST

I now have to click "Click here to search all x" and then sort by birth date. That isn't really a huge leap, but I'm not sure I understand the need for the extra click to search and sort them.

I also don't understand why I automatically get surname variants when I search a surname instead of just exact matches. I know I can scroll down and then set it to exact matches only, but (for me at least) the point of searching a surname is to get exactly that surname.

So, for example, now when I search "muurling" at the top in the last name box, I automatically get every variant and have to scroll down to get exact matches.

I understand how to still do all the things I was doing using this function before, but now it's just more tedious for someone who connects using the surname search almost daily.

Answer 11

Hi,

Yes I have seen this and sadly it's a bit of a backward step, using the old search produced just those people with my surname, just shy of 200 now I'm presented with 15,800 hits most of which have nothing to do with the surname VAUGH.

What happened to the exact search or are we consigned to searching through piles of nonsence to find those people with a particular surname?

This has now rendered a useful tool to an useless one.

Answer 12

UPDATE: most/all of my concerns (and of many others) have now been addressed. Thanks for the fast response!

My original comment:

Sorry, the new surname search seems extremely counter-intuitive to me - and a huge step backwards in usability.

1. When I search on surname "McCool", my goal is (unsurprisingly) to see a results list of profiles of people named McCool (like I did before). Instead, I get a table of utterly unrelated names (although most of them include a "C"). Of the first 100 people presented in the new search, only three have surname McCool.
2. I no longer see how many McCool profiles there are on WikiTree. My recollection is that there are about 1,500 - so it's astonishing to get a table of 64,184 profiles (but not surprising that few of them are named anything similar to McCool).
3. I no longer am informed that there's a McCool surname project.
4. I no longer see information about McCool G2G questions, etc.

I appreciate everyone's efforts, but this is awful.

Comments

I, too, really like the surname pages and find them useful. The surname pages have not totally gone away (yet.) They're just not as easy to get to and some of the functionality was moved to the new search pages. But you might want to bookmark the McCool Surname Page and any others you feel like you might refer to often.

Answer 13

It seems very strange that a great genealogy site like WikiTree thinks that users are no longer interested in a surname search.

Yes, I see that it's still possible to get to a surname page - but it's MUCH harder for the average user to find. I don't consider that to be an improvement.

Comments

I appreciate very much any updates made for surname search. I do surname searches fairly often. So anything to make it easier.

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The continued changes to the search page since this post have addressed most/all of my concerns. Thanks for being so responsive!

Answer 14

I used to use the family Index often for matching and merging. Now having to use the search function I find it impossible to clearly see the entries.

Many of us with older eyes developing cataracts find glare to be a problem, whether a car headlight at night, or a bright sunny day. Now with the Wikitree ID number highlighted in bright yellow so near the listed name entry makes it very difficult to see the paler name entry. Please, please consider a different and less glaring highlight. Otherwise, I will not be able to search for duplicates.

Answer 15

I've read all the comments, but didn't see my question.  I used to click on LNAB to get a list of all Michauds (for instance), not just the ones on my watchlist.  From there I could click on "suggestion", "unsourced", etc.  Now I can't find how to do that.  

This new system is too complicated with having to reset the search to "exact spelling" and then reset to list 1000 results.   I appreciate the need for progress, streamlining, watching bandwidth usage, etc., but please, please, there's got to be a more user-friendly way to do so.  I hate being lost.

Comments

Hi Karen. A partial answer is to go to

https://www.wikitree.com/genealogy/MICHAUD

(or replace MICHAUD with another surname), then look in the box "Michaud tools for members" on the right hand side.

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THANK YOU!  (Putting down the whiskey now.)

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Jim, how do you get to this page

https://www.wikitree.com/genealogy/MICHAUD

What menu option did you start with?

Or should i save that link to my scratch pad and just change the last name each time i want to see all the unconnected by a certain surname

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S, when I wrote the comment above, a reasonable approach was the one in your last paragraph, of keeping a copy of the link and varying the surname as desired.

Since then, this has become unnecessary, because links to the genealogy pages have been added in the new format of search results. For example, if you search for Last Name Stevenson, and anything you like as First Name, say Annette (or blank), the search results page will have at the top something like

Search Results: 2,301 Matches for Annette Stevenson [edit search] [STEVENSON home page]

Here the "home page" bit is a link to

https://www.wikitree.com/genealogy/STEVENSON

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Thanks!!!

Answer 16

Please give us back the old table form single exact surname pages or a way to get there.

Comments

I logged on today and this has been fixed, thank you. When I click on a surname it takes me to the exact surname first.

Answer 17

I found another problem with your 'new' formatting:

After viewing a number of generation screens and clicking back many times, the program acts for conformation before going back to the search screen.

Answer 18

After a few days, I still dislike the changes. I loved the features of the old search page: Unsourced profiles, unconnected profiles, Suggestions, orphaned profiles.

And being able to sort by oldest edit has been very helpful to me.  I used that function to find old profiles created by GEDCOMs that had never been properly sourced.  

I've been working on Morse's since 2018.  Now I'm the Morse One Name Study leader.  And I feel like I really need those functions.  Awhile back I did put links to some of those lists on our Name Space Page.  I'm glad I did so since I can't use the Search Page anymore.

• Morse Unsourced Profiles
• Morse Unconnected Profiles
• Suggestions to Improve Morse Profiles on Wikitree
• Adopt Orphaned Morse Profiles

Answer 19

Can Current Last Names and Other Last Names be included in the search?

For example, profile: Gourdineau-2
Someone might have a marriage record with the name Gordenau and not be able to find a birth record. The person searches for Gordenau on WT but doesn't find it because the LNAB is Gourdineau. The person might be able to find the death record with the name Gordunou. This name is also not found in the search because CLN is not included. The person doesn't search for more options (because I've come across 50+ name variations in my research of this name) or misses 1 of the possible variations while searching (with wildcards even). The person will proceed to make a new duplicate profile while having CLN & OLN available in the search would've prevented that.

I know it might not be desirable when searching for an American person named Smith (birthname) and Johnson (married name) but it would be good to have the option available for names like Gordinou de Gouberville (with all it's variations).

_{Edit: above section was based on an error on my side and is now answered.}

Makes me wonder if it is possible to add profiles like Gourdineau-2 to something like a family group with the most used name. To make Gourdineau-2 part of family group "Gordinou de Gouberville" (contemporary and most used spelling of the name), a name variation that she herself did not use. This might also be useful to separate between different families with the same name. Would be great to be able to count the number of different families with the same name.

Comments

Current last names and other last names should already be included in the search results (although only the LNAB and current last name are displayed in the results table). If I search for "Anna Gordenau" or even just "Gordenau" or "Gordunou", the search finds Gourdineau-2 for me.

At some point, WikiTree will move its variant names database to the actual WikiTree website (right now we are using the WeRelate database). In the meantime, we can continue to add alternate spellings to the OLN fields in individual profiles.

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Thanks for your comment. I see that "Include married/current last name matches?" was not set to "yes" on my side. My bad. 

Can I make "yes" default?

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Lars, do you have the WikiTree Browser Extension?  There's a Search and Watchlist Tables Options feature (currently only on the Preview version for testing, but you can install that) and that gives you an option to have your search options remembered.   I think it will be useful.

Otherwise, the answer is "no, you can't make the options default to anything..."

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I do use the WBE yes, I'll keep that in mind, thanks.

Answer 20

The search results table is a big improvement. It is now much easier to read the dates and locations, especially the death data.

I'm also very happy that I can now just enter a last name (with nothing entered in the "first name" field) and all profiles with that last name are displayed, whether it's LNAB, CLN, or OLN. This makes a big difference for all the Norwegian profiles that have their farm names entered as Other Last Names. Edit: it looks like this change was reverted now in the search bar at the top of the page, so only exact surnames and only LNAB are the results when nothing is entered in the first name field. I still think it would be best to include check boxes for "exact" and "only LNAB" so it is clear to members exactly what they are searching for.

If I could make a suggestion: right now LNAB and CLN are displayed in the results table. Could the OLN also be displayed somehow? In WikiTree+ it shows an "aka" and then displays the OLN.

I also don't think the DNA icons are really necessary to display in the search results. Lots of profiles have DNA connections and I feel like they kind of clutter up the display.

Here's a pic of how I'd want it to look, displaying the OLN: