Can you use the Schema.org mark-up on WikiTree person profiles for your application?

+12 votes
468 views

 

This question is mostly directed at Roland, but I like to keep this sort of discussion open in case anyone else has input or it sparks something.
 
In response to Roland's needs, hashed out in this G2G question, we added Schema.org Person tags to the private versions of our profile pages.
 
Here's an explanation of the tag usage, along with notes and open questions: http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Schema.org
 
Roland, does this meet your needs? What should be changed?
 
Anyone else out there who can use them? If so, do they meet your needs?
in Genealogy Help by Chris Whitten G2G Astronaut (1.5m points)
retagged by Keith Hathaway
Sounds fascinating, but I haven't the foggiest idea how all this is applied. What's it USED for (in plain English, please)? My eyes glazed over when I read Roland's initial g2g question. (And I even consider myself quasi-technical.)

Thanks.

Hi Jillaine. I'll answer you over here: Why does WikiTree use Schema.org tags?

3 Answers

+3 votes
 
Best answer
I just took a quick glance and this looks great so far! Thanks for adding those. Things are quite busy here for me so it might be a few weeks before I can dig into it more.

One thing I want to look into is writing a plugin for Gramps that could keep a local copy of my tree synced with wikitree (One way sync, from WT to Gramps) so I can run some of the GRAMP tools on my portion of the tree to help find areas needing work, etc. Something like this would probably make the tools I have been writing more accessible to other users who are not as familiar with command line applications.
by Roland Arsenault G2G6 Mach 5 (58.3k points)
selected by Michelle Hartley
Awesome! The GRAMPS connection would be terrific, I'm sure it would prove useful for lots of people. Let me know if there's something you need.
I too have used Gramps, MyHeritage, Roots Magic, and WebTrees (free editions) mostly for the validations and the >5 generation navigations and the 'find relationship', then going back to WikiTree to fix the errors it finds. I would love to have even a one-way synch from any external program, assuming it doesn't overload WikiTree too much.
It might take me a little while now that the nice weather is keeping me away from my computer, but I eventually plan on completing the plugin for Gramps to make it easier to do just what you describe!
+4 votes
So, I have finally made use of the Schema.org tags, and they work very well!
 
I did notice one issue about date coding. It seem that dates that don't include a month or day and have 0 in those fields  get interpreted as “the day before the 1st” or “the month before the first month”. So a date with only a year, such as 1895, might show up as 1894-11-29, or a month and a day before Jan 1st, 1895.
 
It's not a big deal for my current use, and I don't think it's worth trying to fix this if limitations of schema.org make it non-trivial to fix, but I did want to point it out in case others might want to use the embeded microdata.
 
I know it took me a while to get around to using this, but thanks again for adding this!
by Roland Arsenault G2G6 Mach 5 (58.3k points)
+4 votes

Hi Chris, I'm also very interested in an API or machine-readable version of WikiTree, and this looks like a great start. It took me very little time to put together a little library that makes it easy to access the data.

If you're interested, please see: https://github.com/jeroenl/wikitree-api

The Schema.org types are not ideal, but it works well enough. One issue I noticed is that the marriage events are not linked to the spouse. Fortunately, a marriage event is always created and listed in the same order as spouses, so it is still possible to link them. However, it would be good to either list the spouse as a 'performer' (closest semantic match that I could see) or extend the Historical Data Schemas to include this link (but that community seems silent at the moment).

Finally, your Wiki page mentions not being sure about how to deal with uncertain dates. The Historical Data Schemas page suggests the Library of Congress' Extended Date Time Format.

Thanks!

 

by Frank Latour G2G Crew (540 points)

Hi Jeroen,

 

Have you seen the WikiTree Apps project?

http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Project:WikiTree_Apps

 

Roland

That looks great, thanks for pointing it out!
Hi Jeroen. I'm so glad you've joined us.

We do have a basic API, to avoid the need to parse the Schema tags. Let's keep this discussion going.
Hi Chris,

That's even better. Where can I find information on it?
The posts I could find referred to the Schema.org tags.

Thanks,
Jeroen
Hi Jeroen. You're right. There's little or no public information on the API. We're trying to correct that. Let me talk to Allen and Lianne and see if either are available in the next couple days to write some things up. Thanks!

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