How do I add a cemetery to a sub-category?

+10 votes
466 views
in Policy and Style by Brian Penske G2G6 Mach 6 (64.5k points)
retagged by Anne B

4 Answers

+5 votes
Which cemetery? And which sub-category?
by Eric Weddington G2G6 Pilot (519k points)
+6 votes
I always work my way down.  Go to the find menu up at the right.  Under that is categories, then cemeteries.  I click down until I find the city I want.  I copy and paste that in the description box.  Then add the double brackets.
by Maureen Rosenfeld G2G6 Pilot (202k points)
+4 votes

Rather than adding a cemetery as a new subcategory under the top-level "Cemeteries" category, first consider what you want to use the category for.  Is it for info about the cemetery itself?  Or is to keep track of "Where My Ancestors are Buried"?

There are intriguing, unusual facts about cemeteries -- their history, the famous people who are buried there, cultural differences in burial practices, horror stories, headstone inscriptions, etc.  For some people, that may be the reason they are interested in cemeteries.

For other people, their interest is that they "collect" cemeteries (like Jim Tipton, the guy who started FindAGrave.com, for instance).

But maybe, like me, you just want to know (and keep track of) "Where are the graves of my ancestors?".

Drilling down from the top-level "Cemeteries" category, there are abundant links to cemetery lore.  And yes, one can categoize ancestors into 'their' cemetery -- but they would share that category with everyone else who is interred there, not only your own ancestors.

What I created, and what I'm inviting the WT community to use, is a place (category) for grouping one's OWN ancestors in a given cemetery.  Here's how.

From the top-level list of categories, click on "Family".  From there, click on "Graves".  At present there are only two categories in "Graves": one for *my* ancestors (named "Graves of STRAEHLE-3's Family"), and one for testing purposes ("Graves of SUPERMAN-1's Family").  I invite the WT community to create their own category here.  For instance, a subcategory created by FOGELZUP-17 might be named "Graves of FOGELZUP-17's Family".  Jimmy Ringding might create "Graves of RINGDING-42's Family".  Chris Whitten might create "Graves of WHITTEN-1's Family".

Next step is to create a subcategory for each cemetery where there's an ancestor.  About 20 of my relatives are buried at The Evergreens Cemetery, another dozen at Green-Wood Cemetery, a few at Calverton National Cemetery, another bunch at Oakwood Cemetery, etc.  So within my "Graves of STRAEHLE-3's Family" subcategory, there are further subcategories: "Graves in The Evergreens Cemetery", "Graves in Green-Wood Cemetery", "Graves in Calverton National Cemetery", etc.  

These are the, uh, terminal subcategories.  Once they are created, 'populate' them with profiles.


For those WTers who are already adept at categories, that may be a sufficient explanation.  For those WTers who'd like to categorize your relatives into cemeteries but not quite sure how to accomplish it, give a holler and/or a comment below.  Help is but a question-mark away!

by Living Straehle G2G6 Mach 1 (15.5k points)
The problem I see with this is what would happen if everyone did it?  Now, it's not much problem if [[Category: Graves of Straehle-3's Family]] is placed on your parents and grandparents profiles.  But when you get to great and great-great grandparents, these are graves of a number of descendants.   So the person is categorized as Graves of Smith-44's Family and Jones-23's family, etc.   Not everyone has my distaste for "category clutter" but I personally think that when a profile has more than 10 categories, then all of them lose their value.  And in this case, the whole is of primary interest to you, not to the general user of WikiTree.  So a personal category tied to your own profile #, or better, a listing on a free space page attached to your own profile would be better.  The ultimate nightmare would be Charlemagne, who must have millions of descendants, all of whom might want to categorize his grave as "grave of Day-1904's family.
Hi Juli,

I echo Jack. Though personal categories are encouraged to be used especially for work list sort of situations, this sort of use could get unwieldy quickly. I encourage you to join the Categorization project and discuss some of your ideas there first before encouraging the community to make major undiscussed changes the hierarchy. I am glad you've embraced using them so excitedly, though. They can be a lot of fun. Also, you can narrow down a category so it shows just those on your own watchlist, so it isn't necessary to categorize this way if you know what cemetery your ancestor was buried in. I think a free-space page with notes is definitely a better approach if you need to keep track of things. Thanks!
Unfortunately, there are some things one has to give up to obtain the benefits of a collaborative site like WikiTree.  I love it that all kinds of people can work on the same profile and add to it; the result is inevitably better than all the individual family trees here and there on and off the internet.

But -- on my personal Family Tree Maker collection, I capitalize names of all my ancestors and leave all the cousins and relatives of cousins in plain upper/lower case -- because by the 1600's I just can't remember who's an ancestor and who's not!  So it's very very handy, and I can do that in a collection that is mine alone.  

But imagine trying to do that in WikiTree, because everone is everybody's ancestors, not just Jack Day's!  And it would be tempting to leave some other mark -- maybe a sentence in the narrative "This is Jack Day's ancestor" or note on the side.  But then soon there'd be another note that it's Mary's ancestor and Susan's  and George's and that's all you'd see instead of the person's biography.  So we don't do that, it just wouldn't work if everyone does it, so that's one of the things I give up to be part of WikiTree.  

I do keep several free space pages that only I can see attached to my own profile, which is a good workshop for things I'm working on at the moment, and I can put anything I want to there!
+6 votes
Hi Brian,
We have a lot of cemeteries set up already and the form was discussed for a long time before doing so. What cemetery are you looking at setting up? I am happy to help you put it together correctly.
by Abby Glann G2G6 Pilot (733k points)

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