Is there a way to add a forth tag to a One Name Study? [closed]

Question

I have just started a One Name Study the problem I face is that in the last two hundred years family members have spelt the name four different ways.  So I would like to tag the site with all four of the variations.  Any suggestions?

Comments

Charles ~

I had the same issue on a Free Space page.  If there is a way to add a fourth tag, I couldn't find it.  

This item might suit your purpose: Adding Redirects for Project Tag Alternates

You can find it here: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Project_Pages#Adding_Redirects_for_Project_Tag_Alternates 

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Perhaps you could have a tag for Spelling_variations and a Redirect for the different spellings.  If that would work (I haven't actually explored it). 

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Thank you Mary -

The redirect is working when I manually enter the web address.  But at this time none  of the tags are working properly.  This might be because free-space has not listed the projects yet. The Feuston Genealogist page still says "Nobody has started a FEUSTON Project yet.".  However I am confident it will change to "Join the [Feuston project] to collaborate." in the near future, and at that time will redirect to the Fueston project.  Thank you for you suggestion. - Charles 

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Your welcome, Charles!  I hope it works out.  It might be nice to have more tags as an option though.  I suppose the concern may be that it could result in too many projects/categories muddled on one page, or something.

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There's no point in using tags that nobody is following.  If you use the 3 most common spellings and all interested parties follow one of those spellings, nobody misses anything.

If one branch has a particular unusual spelling and somebody follows only that spelling, you can create another Space page with that tag.  Then cross-reference and update as appropriate.

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To sort out the "Nobody has started a FEUSTON Project yet." someone needs to contact Doug Lockwood and ask him to do the redirection. I had that problem with the Thomas Name Study and Doug fixed it for me pronto. 

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Thank y’all for your feedback and suggestions. - Happy (Ancestor) Hunting, Charles

Answer 1

I've been there with the same question. It appears 3 is an arbitrary limit, probably based on the likelihood that if there is no limit, someone is going to overdo it. It was a little irritating to me as there are exactly four major variants of my surname (in order of frequency: Beasley, Beesley Beazley, and Beezley) and mine is the fourth. "Just one more space, please." was my thought. My solution was that Beasley is the lead name everywhere and the most likely to be sought and found, so I used the tag spaces for the other three. (So if you want 5, that's not going to work.)

My conclusion is that there are many ways in which surnames are "discovered" in WT, not just from Tags, so it isn't worth fussing about. (NTL, I'd like just one more space, please.)

On a side note, in a One-Name Study, there is a distinction between "variants" and "deviants". I think people doing name studies should give consideration of this. It is a judgment call, but I think that within each surname, it would be possible to make a standardized distinction. I think the instructions for a Name-Study at WT are pretty good but I would like to see references to definitions at the Guild of One-Name Studies

Answer 2

Apparently, if I've got this right, there are two ways to follow a Space page via a tag.

One is to attach the tag to the page.

The other is to have a Project page with the name of the tag and redirected to the Space page.

That way, more than 3 following tags are possible.  But the problem is, you can only redirect to one page.  A tag should follow all relevant pages.  If the project expands to use a bunch of Space pages, the cutting edge where the updates are happening won't usually be the "home" page.

But you could advertise.  On the home page, have a list of the other pages and when they were last updated.  When updating any page, update the last-updated date on the home page.  Then, anybody following the home page gets nudges for updates on the other pages.

You could also pick a lead profile for each spelling of the name, and advertise on that.  This would cover all spellings of the name without the need for redirected Project pages.

But Project pages are the only way to get rid of the pesky "Nobody has started a" messages on the Genealogists page.

Answer 3

What I did for the Tuck Name Study, which I literally started yesterday, was to go to profile pages of each variant name spelling I knew of and add them to the category, which is like over 15 versions. Eventually adding them all over time and hoping others who are profile managers of multiple profiles of that spelling will help out. This way while people are searching through other profiles with the same last name they will see the trend of being apart of the One Name Study. It's the next best thing I could think of to cover every difference in spelling. Hope this help and can be a solution for others and this problem.