Question of the Week: What WikiTree improvements are on your holiday wishlist? [closed]

Question

As we are excited to head into our 11th (!) year, we'd love to know what WikiTree improvements are on your holiday wishlist? If you could improve one thing about WikiTree, what would it be?

Comments

Patty, 

Three excellent points but first why did I get an email notification that this (your) comment had been added after my comment by Miller Rinehimer?

That name doesn't even appear on this page as far as I can tell. I would post the email notice here but G2G doesn't allow us to cut and paste inside this comment box. Why not is another good question. 

A minor "bug" I realize but I will forward my email notice to you or anyone at WlkiTree who is interested in having the site function  correctly.

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Unless someone is an only child and a childless orphan, the only profile on this site that is 100% theirs is - theirs.  If you have siblings they have just as much to say about your parents as you do.  By gen 4 you have 16 profiles, but they may have hundreds of great grandchildren.

I think there needs to be more protection for hard work put in (and probably an ability to revert if it is not there).

As to the 'like it or leave it' debate, I'm not sure that is how it was meant, but seeing as it was heard that way it could have been said better.

We all feel pride of ownership in our work but these are all shared profiles.  A manager should have more ownership over the profiles they own and no matter their stature, the experts maybe need to tread more lightly on the work of newer members.

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Jeff,

An excellent comment. I couldn't agree more. Thanks

Skip

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I personally don't have a problem with first single name fields as I feel this helps prevent people putting incorrect or middle names in without being noticed.

My problem is with Profiles being set up with out some checkable source, as with a GEDCOM import that proves to wrong.

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I'm with Melanie in spirit:  "wife of" and "husband of" seem a bit precious in this modern climate.  Back in the day, County Clerks often substituted the words "Consort of" in place of "husband or wife of."  I once thought this quaint and old-fashioned, but now I see it quite differently.  Sometimes the older generations were a little wiser about these things.  I guess they spent more time with their nosees to the grindstone instead of the smartphone.  Anyway, "Consort of" satisfied, as best it could, Melanie's issue (I believe).  Most dictionaries define "consort" as husband, wife, or companion, whether legal or not, and, as Oxford puts it, someone who someone habitually associates with, married or not.  I think its high time we bring that word back.

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There is a profound difference between "adding details" and blundering in and making major changes that may or may not be accurate. So far no one has butchered one of my profiles. So far the only changes made have been to add sources and correct typos. As a member of less than two years I already have hundreds of profiles, more senior members obviously have thousands. Over time highly granular details that explain why a conclusion was made that Person X was the grandson of Person Y can get misplaced. No matter how well sourced something is there can still be minor details that tie everything together that can't easily be explained without writing a book. It would be nice to have some level of confidence that some well meaning member won't make wholesale changes to my painstaking work without my knowledge.

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Searching for Related Profiles: If would be AWESOME if I could input a particular profile of an individual that is NOT related to me and have it search automatically for all descendants of that individual that are RELATED TO ME, listed by name, dates, and parents (sortable would be even better!).  

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Watchlist Suggestions only appear for the profiles where I am profile manager. Please could the suggestions be extended to the profiles where I am on the trusted list as well. At present I have to open each trusted list profile from my Watchlist, then go to the menu for the profile, and click on suggestions to see if there might be something wrong.

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I would like to see an easy access list of family ID numbers in my group so I wouldn't have to go back and forth . I can't remember all those numbers

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Take Find a Grave  ,differences of profile, out of suggestions.

Answer 1

I don't know if it's technically possible, but on other forums the threads that had changes or are new since my last login are bolded. That would be a nice treat also to see what's going on G2G.

I support the thing to get a private space to have notes that aren't for the public to see.

I also support either the dot for baptism and burial or the extra field. The "before" date can mean "he was baptised then" but it can also mean, "I don't have a birthdate for him, but he appears on a document on that day". The baptism dot/field could clarify that.

One more thing I support is the Current Location Name field.

Answer 2

The option to select "no middle name" when creating profiles.

Answer 3

On G2G, posts with new answers get bumped to the top of the feed, but posts with new comments currently don't.  That might be a useful feature since sometimes I'm interested in following a discussion but haven't actually participated, so I'm not getting email notifications of new comments.

Comments

I usually view the feed in Recent Activity mode (button at bottom left of the G2G page).  That bumps a thread to the top for any change (even edits to comments).

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Oh, thank you!  I hadn't spotted that.  I thought "Recent Questions and Answers" was the only similar option.  Request withdrawn.  

Answer 4

1. Make marriage one of several options instead of the only option and adjust the profile display accordingly. This would enable the display of non-marriage connections such as unmarried partners (including same sex) that resulted in children (or not) including concubines/mistresses of royalty that were going on at the same time as the royal was married.

2. Enable the attachment of sources to data fields (like WeRelate does). (You asked ;-)

Comments

I endorse the option of including (and specifying) relationships other than marriage in the "marriage" field.

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Polygamy and extra-marital affairs resulting in children are incredibly common and are not catered for in Wikitree. There is also no elegant way to cater for adoption either.

Answer 5

My #1 pet peeve was and still is:

https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/602236/image-upload-code-changes

Comments

While there are many excellent suggestions mentioned here, this would be among the simplest code changes and the one that would have the most impact for me the most often!

Step 1 is simply change the code default on 'primary photo' to OFF. Allow each user to click the button when and IF they decide it is appropriate.

Step 2 is to set 'source' as always on. The goal of this site & the coding should be to provide the most and the most accurate information with the least amount of clicks (and my time). There are some who disagree with this but I see MANY images loaded with neither button clicked. The simple, common sense, mathematically supported method is to default to 'source'. I think that most people can see that the set of images that people upload that are photographs/portraits is ALWAYS going to be MUCH smaller than the set of images which are documents/etc=SOURCES.

Step 3 is to set the default for 'confidence' for people in the image to ON. Thereby allowing the user to click 'not confident' only when that is appropriate--with the aforementioned goal in mind.

I find it not only irritating but very insulting that after all the research I've done and the time I've taken to create profiles and upload supporting sources for this software to then ask me if I'm confident in what I'm doing!!!!! Com'n Really!

Answer 6

I'd like to be able to enter a WT profile and see if the person is related to any of  the presidents. Or Mayflower passengers.  Not check one at a time. 

Answer 7

Make the Tags list sortable alphabetically

Answer 8

I'd like to see that category "picker" tool available on category pages to make tagging of parent categories easier.

Comments

Agreed!

Answer 9

This just in from another thread:  Fix the timestamps so that both the date and the time match the user's location.

Comments

Interesting suggestion. How would this benefit the WikiTree user?

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How do timestamps benefit anyone?  Sometimes you want to know when an action occurred.  If we have timestamps at all, they should be correct.  They currently give the correct time in the user's timezone, but they show the date in Western European Time (UTC +0) regardless of the user's location.

Answer 10

100,000+ contributions badge.

Mine has been on the To-Do list for over a year now, but I am trying to be patient.  https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/518028/100-000-wikitree-contributions?show=518028#q518028

Divide the surname list into paternal and maternal sides.

https://www.wikitree.com/treewidget/Cooper-1/10  The surname list is  wonderful. It would be even more wonderful if a dividing line down the center placed the paternal ancestors and the maternal ancestors on separated sides of the page.

Comments

great idea :-)

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#2: excellent!

Answer 11

Improve the Relationship Finder so you can choose to find just the direct paternal line relationship between two people (or find just the direct maternal line relationship between two people).  This will help when two people are a Y-DNA match (or an mtDNA match).  Currently the Relationship Finder always defaults to show the closest relationship.

Thank you very much for asking this question!

Answer 12

I think for the long term success of WikiTree each name must be at least be located in time and place.  At minimum the birth or death should include at least a country and preferably a town/ city estimate. These can always be edited and correted.  The birth or death year should at least be estimated to quickly filter down to the most relevant matches.

There are so many non-located names in Wikitree it’s already pointless and impossible to sift thru them all for a match so most of us just ignore them.  This polllution of names will just become bigger and bigger and more ridiculous  

 I think the survival of Wikitree relies on this pollution being managed.

Comments

And those who are interested in his location can still have a look at the profile of his daughter, which is linked to him. They will see that she was born in Central Europe and say: "Ok, that can't be my guy." I still don't see a sense in the obligation to type in a location.

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@Jelena: yes, a christening record in Germany is proof of the next generation, even without any other information but the relational data. So, I agree with you!

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Jelena, we shouldn't have to look at a different profile in order to conclude 'that can't be my guy.'  The info needed to rule out 'that guy' should be on his profile.

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If I don't know a location for HIM, I don't put a location on HIS profile. Should be logical, shouldn't it?

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No, it's not logical.  I would call it 'letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.'  Any information entered in a field might be incorrect, and blank is the most incorrect of all.   If you are comfortable with others estimating a parent's location based on his children's profiles, why would you shy away from making the same estimate yourself on his profile?  

It's OK to be incorrect, on a good-faith basis.  What do we ever really 'know?'  Unless you have a primary source for a location, then anything you enter could be incorrect.  Even primary sources sometimes have errors.  Blank is incorrect always.

On the other hand, if you know where a person's children were born, you know the person lived in that place at that time.  Where else would you start looking for him or her?  That's the best first approximation you have for the person's birth or death location (pick one), and you should put it on the profile:  'Europe,' 'Central Europe,'  'Holy Roman Empire,'  'Silesia.'  Something vague is better than nothing.  Click the 'uncertain' button and add all the disclaimers to the bio.

Even if it's off by hundreds of miles, you have done your fellow members a great service.  The next time a member looks at a list of potential matches for that name, he or she can tell at a glance whether that person merits further investigation, just from the info presented in the list.  If the location fields are blank, you deny that member the option.  How collaborative is that?

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I know as much as he is NOT from my ancestral town, because then there would be a birth entry of him. (And the word NOT is an error marker now in the suggestion reports, so I cannot put in: "Not from my ancestral town.")  But I don't know where to look for him, as there is simply nothing, nada, niente in the sources said where he could be from. So who am I to enter anything in a profile when even the people that looked at and collected sources of the parish records for years don't dare to put in a location? No, I don't know where he is from. So I don't put a location in.

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You may not know the town or parish, but you know something.  Enter something.

Take Bob, for example.  Bob starts making a profile for Henry Jones who was born, lived, and died in Tennessee around 1800.  The Add Person page offers up a list of 100 possible matches with similar dates, but 60 of them have blank birth and death locations.  Like a good WikiTreer, Bob starts looking at the 60 unlocated profiles one by one.  He finds that 50 of them had parents or children in Great Britain.  Perhaps those 50 profile managers omitted a location because they didn't know whether their Henry Jones was born or died in Cardiff or York.  If those 50 PMs had simply entered 'Great Britain' in either the birth or death field, Bob would have had 50 fewer Henry Joneses to check for duplication.  In this case, 'Great Britain' is most likely not incorrect, just imprecise.  It's still enormously helpful, even if the Suggestion report flags it.  We should encourage, and maybe even require, our members to be helpful at some minimal level.  One good-faith rough estimate of either a birth or death location is pretty minimal.

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I don't know ANYTHING that is NOT CONNECTED to the dates of his daughter. Those dates belong to his daughter, so they are on his daughter's profile. And NO, I don't know a location. And NO, I can't even do a research in the White Pages to see where he COULD POSSIBLY MAYBE EVENTUALLY be from, as his surname is not so rarely that it appears only in one town. NO, I don't want to SPECULATE, and I don't get any clue of the sources I have. So I don't put in a location. AGAIN, even the people who know the parish entries for YEARS don't do that. So I won't neither.

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No need to shout, Jelena.  You know a lot of places he was not from.  Not the one town.  Not North or South America, not Australia, not Africa.  Maybe not Greenland or Iceland.  Not the British Isles?  Not Asia?  Not the Iberian or Italian Peninsula or the Balkans?  How much can you narrow it down?  Rhetorical questions, no need to answer.  'Europe' (assuming he was from somewhere on the continent) would not be speculating.  That's all I'm saying.

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I do this too. It creates breadcrumbs for myself and the next person but does not pollute the search fields creates problems for others when uploading GEDCOMs and creating new profiles of people with the same name.

Answer 13

The addition of mother and father to the search function has been a great improvement. I understand that spouses are stored differently in the database and that presents certain challenges to duplicating Familysearch's existing functionality in that regard, but it would help cut down on the inadvertant creation of duplicates and it would help zero in on parents for new profiles.

Answer 14

We already have a separate edit screen and display screen.

In the edit screen change "LNAB" to "Surname" or "Surname (LNAB)".  

Default can be to display the surname last, but add the option to display surname first, as is done with East Asian names, (or in the middle, as in some Spanish constructions.)

Result in Display screen -- Surname can be displayed first, and given names second, as selected within the edit screen.

The first leader of the Peoples Republic of China was Mao Ze-dung.  Mao is the surname.  But to display his name right now, you have to jerry rig it, otherwise it displays as "Ze-dung Mao".  This is insulting to people whose names are constructed differently than in Europe or North America.

Comments

I don't see it really.  I'm Horace RJ in alphabetical lists, because the context requires it.  And if I went to China I'd be Horace RJ, because the context requires it.  It wouldn't be wrong just because it's different somewhere else.

Mao should always have been Ze-dung Mao in the western media, so then we'd all know which bit is which.  We'd know that when he's called Chairman Mao, that's his surname.

As it is, when people say Chairman Mao, it feels slightly facetious or insulting, like President Donald or Duke William.

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RJ, I disagree.  Placement of the name is part of the culture of the name, and it should be up to the individual if they want to change their name.  One would NEVER say "Ze dung Mao".  Chinese names begin with the surnames, and his is Mao.  

When our family went to China we were all given Chinese names.  Mine is "Dai Wan Kwang"  Dai is the family name, selected for its similarity to Day.  It goes first.  

Many Asians who come to the US give in and place their surname last, but they shouldn't have to;  typically they also adopt a western nickname.  In Malaysia you will see people with both -- so I would show up as "Jackson Dai Wan Kwang" and then the surname would be in the middle.  

It should be a fairly simple task for WikiTree's programmers to enable one to choose where to display the surname, which would still be the "LNAB" for identification in the system, even though it is no longer "last name."  

The phrase "Last Name" is a pure Americanism because we assume that the surname should be last.  That assumption goes no farther than our borders.

Answer 15

Please, please, please ... bump the long-promised capability to rearrange the order of photos on a profile up to the top of the to-do list.

Comments

Absolutely!

Answer 16

SEARCH!  I haven't found a place to search for a profile via ID.  If I know the ID for William Smith, why isn't there a way to use that ID# near the tope of the find page?  (That window at the bottom of the page is not the same thing.)  Surely searching by ID would make searching for common names much easier.

It seems entirely illogical that a search for William Jackson who died in 1800 in USA returns a possible match to a William Jackson who was born after 1900.  The system should be able to figure out this could not be the same William!

An additional help would be the ability to search with spouse, such as William Jackson and Louisa Nix.  Or even just her first name.  Would surely cut down on the more than 100 William Jacksons to look thru.

Also why do I have to search thru hundreds of William Jacksons when adding William via GEDCOM??  I've already done the search/compare feature but when actually adding his profile, I must check off all possible hundreds of matches again.  Duplicate work.

I would think that improving the search function would be one of the first functions of a genealogy site!

Comments

If you already know the WikiTree-ID, then there's no need to search for the page, just go to the URL: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/WikiTree-ID

like this: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Jackson-10425

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Thank you so much.  Simple to do and I hadn't learned that yet.  But still does seem like one should be able to search by ID using the find/search page. That's what find/search pages are for!

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my kids make fun of me to this day, because once I called one of them (on the phone) to ask them what their phone number was.

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Oh, good one!  I've got an excuse I trot out whenever necessary: I'm nearly 90 years old.  I'm also hard-of-hearing so sometimes answer questions that weren't asked. . . But I do love genealogy for the puzzles it presents and the collaboration of other researchers!  My window to the world!

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Hi Janie,  there is (sort of)  a search box for the Wikitree ID.  If you chose the search link at the top of any profile and the scroll down to option #3, "search for ancestor matches," you can put in the ID.  This will return your person and their info at the top along with suggested matches.  Not elegant, but it works.  I totally agree that searching with an ID number should be on the main search location on the front page of Wikitree.  A related improvement would be to have birth/death dates and locations also on that front page.  Overall, I'd like to see the Wikitree search engine look and work like the one of FamilySearch.org.

Answer 17

I would like to be able to draw out a proper family tree, with cousins, married relationships, in law family etc..   so you can see all the names right on the screen.

Comments

Yes, the ability to switch back and forth between Wikitree’s current tree display of direct ancestors only and a display like Ancestry’s which shows a top down (oldest ancestor) display of all lateral relatives and relatives by marriage would be a godsend.

Answer 18

more real sources, fewer copied Ancestry.com trees

downloadable Ahnentafels, as many generations as needed, just names, dates, places, with higher-numbered references to a person referring back

Having only 127 people is a joke! Consider the ahnentafel of Prince William's children (of which I do have a copy ... its gigantic.)

Answer 19

I would like to be able to delete a profile.

Comments

there are very good reasons why WikiTree doesn't allow deletions.

too easy to vandalize, is a big reason.

by merging duplicates, we are effectively deleting -- yet still retaining the change history (for review, if necessary).

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I have an anonymous profile that I can't get rid of. Is there a way to remove it?

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you mean more than one that represents yourself? merge them together.

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Thank you Dennis. It doesn't represent anyone but I suppose merging would still work.

Answer 20

Some that I haven't seen posted here already:

1. Ability to teach the search engine to recognize additional variant spellings for last names. (This used to exist via Werelate, but the variant spellings list seems to be frozen now. I deal with several names that have known variant spellings that need to be searched individually.)

2. Teach the search engine to recognize variant spellings for first names. The search engine's inability to recognize these is a major "cause" of new duplicate profiles.

3. More and better methods for data output, including printing neatly formatted profiles without webpage clutter, outputting family group sheets and various tree and diagram formats, and generating family books.

4. A less draconian approach to GDPR compliance, particularly for notables. The initial reaction was understandable, but now that the dust has settled a bit, perhaps it's time to acknowledge that (for example) George W. Bush exists and is the son of George H. W. Bush.

Comments

Excellent variant name suggestions!  This would help a great deal in avoiding cuplicates.