Must tagging people in images be the only way to do events?

Question

At the most basic level, genealogy is about events: birth, marriage, death. Our primary sources boil down to statements about what persons were involved, in what capacity, in what place, at what time. The only information we as genealogists add, consists of assertions that a person appearing in one event is the same as one appearing in another.

This can be done at present, as far as I can see, only by uploading an image of the document and tagging the persons on it. Where do we put the transcription? In a photo comment? In the biography of the main person? In the biography of everyone tagged? Who is the main person in the case of a wedding?

Our SA baptisms usually list witnesses (I've seen as many as eight) sometimes with important information like "widow of". Our death notices span three or four generations and may involve so many people that an extra page is needed. Must our tagged images be the only way to convey that information?

Comments

>> Where do we put the transcription?

I would say as a comment and in the bio.

Maybe in the future someone sees the possibilities using pictures as events and then the Photo comment would be a good place to add the transcriptions....

There is a tool Histropedia that generates timelines that now also have the possibility to easy integrate with orther tools see documenation  and examples

Answer 1

Genealogy and structure

Yes 100% agree - genealogy is about events at a specific time and locations.

As you say adding a picture ==> you connect it to one or more profiles and a picture has location and time. The problem is this is not used in the bio to create a timeline or anywhere else... 

WikiTree has just birth and death and marriage as supported events. 

All the rest of a persons life is just plain text in a bio section and you don't connect sources to an event ==> you don't have much support for doing good structured genealogy...

My understanding of the WikiTree tool and community

1. WikiTree has a rather weak database model and are not in a good way supporting events/locations in genealogy. Its more a Wiki with some extra fields for birth date and birth locations....
    
   1. There is no public change management process in WikiTree and the database model has been "stable" for long.
      
      Chris is the father, sponsor and the one who decide about WikiTree see video. My understanding is that he doesnt see this lack of support of events and GPS coordinates as a problem of WikiTree and no plans exist to move WikiTree to the latest version of the platform Wikimedia
       
   2. Structure to a profile could be added by using the standard wiki tool templates see G2G about an event template
      1. Problem is that Chris doesn't push using templates to add structures and/or for external sources/linking which feels odd... instead guidelines are created that more restrict the usage

Answer 2

If there is a lot of information in a single notice one might make a freespace page for it, to link to the individuals mentioned.

One of the things I am currently working on is an analysis of the baptism witnesses for the children of one flock of siblings (in order to support that they are, indeed siblings, since they were all born before the first preserved birth/baptism records). When it got too confusing I made a freespace page where I could list the children of each sibling, with the baptism witnesses, and links to all individuals that are in wikitree. It is still a bit confusing, since there are one or two other families involved in this tight web of kinship. I haven't made a straight transcription, rather an annotated one. I think I may need even more annotation to make this clear to myself.

Anyway, freespace pages can be a very flexible research tool, because of the wikilinking facilities. But it is a lot of manual work, of course.

Comments

Eva you are right and a Space page also has a date and location which could be used

Space:Hed_parish_Sources

• linking to this space page
  • [[Space:Hed_parish_Sources]]
• including this space page on a profile
  • {{Space:Hed_parish_Sources}}
     

Answer 3

Hi Dirk

only by uploading an image of the document and tagging the persons on it. 
What other method would you suggest? At the moment data about events are reflected in the Biography

Where do we put the transcription? 
In the Biography
In a photo comment?
Nothing wrong with adding it with your reference in the photo comment as well. You will find that comments have a character limit.
In the biography of the main person?
Yes, 
In the biography of everyone tagged?
If you think it is relevant to research you have done, I cannot see why you cannot do it. Though I would tag a witness in the transcription with a comment of relevant info and a tag on the witness profile to the main person/s profile 
Who is the main person in the case of a wedding?
Persons would be more correct. The Bride and Groom are both main participants

Our SA baptisms usually list witnesses (I've seen as many as eight) sometimes with important information like "widow of". 
These are gems I would definitely include that information on the Bio of the Witness and a tag on the image as well.

Our death notices span three or four generations and may involve so many people that an extra page is needed.
If it is really large you could add a free space page as suggested by Eva. Another example
Must our tagged images be the only way to convey that information? 
Not quite certain what you are thinking about or maybe suggesting?

From my personal point of view, I am happy to see a source on a profile among so many un-sourced profiles. It is not a rigid exercise and you can be pretty innovative on profiles. There is but a minimum layout standard to structure your data so that the indexes are created and the references are in the right place.