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'd find it useful if when you add a parent/sibling/child on the profile view page, it opened the add to a new tab instead of redirecting your current tab.  (i.e. if it worked the same as when you add a parent/sibling/child from the edit page)

Comments

I don't know.  WT already creates a ton of tabs, and you always have the option of right-clicking on a link and choosing to open it in a new tab if you want.  Just my 2 cents.

Answer 2

I would find it helpful if the location fields on the screen to add a new profile had drop downs of potential locations like the profile edit screen has.  (i.e. potential matching locations with historical year ranges)

The same would also be helpful for the marriage location on the screen used to add marriage details.

Answer 3

Create an improved way to add in-line citations to text.

There are several problems with the current ref tag inline citation system, including (1) the fact that it is difficult for many new WT users to learn to use and (2) the fact that if (as is currently recommended) the full citation (with link) is inserted in the text in the first place the citation is used, the text becomes very bulky and difficult to read and edit in edit more.

As a possible solution, I suggest that edit mode have a separate window (which you could cause to pop up over the regular edit window) where you would put all the full citations. The full citations would not go in the regular edit window (although WT would continue to support that capability). You would not have to use ref tags in the citations window but would need to specify a defined term for each citation you add. Include a button to alphabetize the citations in the citation window by the defined term. To add a citation reference to the text, you would open up the citation window, find the desired citation, and drag and drop the defined term to the desired place in the text, which would insert the proper ref tags for the selected citation definition. The final appearance of the profile in viewer mode would be the same as if the full citation had been inserted in the text where first used or all the full citation definitions were put at the bottom of the profile but hidden by span tags.

The key benefits would be: (1) eliminate the need for users to learn/use ref tags, (2) eliminate the distraction/bulk of having full citations appear throughout the text in the edit window, and (3) provide the user with a easily searchable, all in one place, source citation list to use to select source citations from for use in the text.

Comments

LOVE THIS. Or something similar. I do not like seeing the full citation in the body of the text.

Answer 4

Make our work more open - explicitly use a licence (such as an Open Database licence) so that our work can be re-used - ideally as linked open data.  And restore the JSON download.

Answer 5

I thought of another upgrade which would make adding a profile easier.  How about an auto populate feature where a partner site with name, dates, locations could be used to grab data and populate the fields in place of typing them in.  Something like Find A Grave where you add in the Memorial number and then go and it populates the data available for you review and acceptance.  It could even take that memorial number and set up the source for you too in the {{FindAGrave|xxxxxxxx}} fashion and then let you add anything you want after it.

Comments

Take a look at WikiTree-X, I think it may do much of what you want.

Answer 6

Two tings are irritating:

SOURCES

I would prefer to add my sources for each item when I have added or changed an item. "Date of birth" immediately followed by "source" etc. Instead, I get a machine made report in a language that most of my relatives do not use very often. In that report I am supposed to find each fact and THEN insert the relevant sources by special coding.

FIRST NAMES

I keep getting a prompt to select the correct first name for each person. How am I supposed to know which name they used? 120 or more years ago many boys were given two or more first names and many girls had at least three first names. In Sweden, Jan Gustaf may have been called Jan or Gustaf or Jan-Gustaf. Even if he used the name Gustaf his name would NEVER be written as Gustaf Jan. In Swedish that combination sounds wrong; the rhythm is simply impossible.

Answer 7

How about on every profile page there is a running calculation of the number of direct ancestors and descendants that person has, as well as the number of generations on either side? Could that be a automatic programed feature?

Comments

That would be fascinating!

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I like this idea!

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It would be a nice feature, but could significantly delay the initial display of the profile.  It probably should be a background process with low priority that populates the info when finally calculated, server side.  If there's no such process currently, then it may involve considerable development effort.

Answer 8

Hi, I would love to have an area to put in a baptism date, and place/church but not as a required field but as optional field.  A bit like the marriage field.

Thanks Michelle

Answer 9

A little late to this and I don't know if anybody has already sugested this, but what would be cool is an application on a smart phone that links to wikitree based on the when the gps coordinates of the location on your phone match a field for GPS coordinates in a profile.  So for instance if a manager of a profile put the GPS coordinates of their grave in wikitree, then when someone has the phone app running, and their phone gets close to those coordinates, the profile for that person would pop up on their phone.  It would be best if you could enter multiple locations with the profile.  So  if for instance you added another set of coordinates for where the person lived, then when a phone came close to that location the profile would pop up.  It would be an awesome way for people who are interested in the history of a town to walk through the town and as they walked they would learn all kinds of interesting things about the people who lived in the town through the years.

Answer 10

My wish is a simple one and I have not seen this one mentioned. I would like to see a check box to indicate that a person did not ever have a spouse. This would especially help on people who died as children. They always have "spouse unknown" on their profiles which is not relevant.

Comments

My wish is a simple one and I have not seen this one mentioned. I would like to see a check box to indicate that a person did not ever have a spouse. This would especially help on people who died as children. They always have "spouse unknown" on their profiles which is not relevant.

answered 11 minutes ago by Virginia Fields

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Virginia, you can already do this.  In edit mode on the profile, select the "add spouse" option, then when you get that page up, click "never married".  You can also toggle "no children" while you're in edit mode.  :) 

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Thank you, I knew I could do the children but did not realize the spouse one did the same. Thanks so much!!

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The "Add Spouse", scroll down to "X had no spouse", click, close tab, go back to previous screen and save is rather cumbersome, and I for one would greatly prefer a simple check box for "No Spouse" like the one for "No Children".

Answer 11

Two more minor things that could be improved:

1. On the interface for adding a new person (e.g., spouse, brother, mother), there are two big text boxes. "Sources" and "Comments". But when I later edit a profile, there is only one. I'd like to enter the text straightaway when creating the profile, including <ref> tags, but I don't know which of the two fields to use. So I always have to go via checking that popup box "Sources will be added..." and then edit in the main edit interface. Suggestions: (a) Always show those checkboxes next to the Source field, not only after one clicks the button, (b) have only one textbox input field on that "Add person" page, like it is on the edit page.

2. Disable the popup that calls a person with more than one first name "unusual". It's not unusual and the popup outright annoying. Once I had someone edit one of my profiles by writing only the "first" First name into the First name field, the rest into "Middle Name", and I had to contact that person to ask where he got the information from that that one first name was more important than the others. Needless to say, the person was just doing it because that popup box warned about it, and had no clue what was right.

Answer 12

Something I realised just short ago which is imo annoying: When you create a profile with an Unknown first name, the Preferred name ALSO automatically turns into Unknown. 1. This doesn't happen when you add a name. 2. When you later find out the name and want to correct it, you HAVE TO put a name into the Preferred Name field, otherwise there comes this pop up: "Don't use Anonymous blabla..." And you CANNOT delete this Anonymous or Unknown and simply leave that field blank. There should be something done about that.

Comments

You can't leave that field blank or enter Anonymous,  but you can enter a name in that field, including Unknown.

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You can leave "Preferred Name" empty if you put a name into the "First Name" field as it is not bolded. But if you put "Unknown" into the "First Name" field, the "Preferred Name" field automatically is filled with "Unknown". And when you THEN want to edit the "First Name" field with the real name and want to leave the "Preferred Name" blank because you don't know if the First Name was also the Preferred Name, then the "Preferred Name" field doesn't allow that but is filled automatically with "Anonymous" including the pop-up.

Answer 13

Ability to search on ranges of dates.

be able to limit searches to specific names if you want

rsl

Answer 14

A simple one: a stat for number of profiles you've created.

This is not the same as your watchlist, or contributions, and while it's not essential, I would definitely find it interesting, and would be interested to see it grow over time.

I don't know if you want to go this route, but for example, the geocaching website is free to use and set up accounts, but you can become a paid (premium) member with access to some extra features, one of which is to create personal statistics bling that everybody can see (so the free members can see what they're missing, if they really want to geek out on that kind of thing).

Comments

The mission of WikiTree and the thing Chris really is committed about is: WikiTree is free and will stay free. For him Freemium is no option. See here: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:The_Free_Family_Tree

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I kinda thought that might be the case, but wasn't sure. Thanks for the link.

Answer 15

While I'm thinking of it, a way to see your own G2G posts, answers and comments seems like something that should obviously be there, but I don't see it.  My G2G Feed doesn't include posts like this one, so I have to go searching to find it.

Comments

While I'm thinking of it, a way to see your own G2G posts, answers and comments seems like something that should obviously be there, but I don't see it.  My G2G Feed doesn't include posts like this one, so I have to go searching to find it.

answered 4 minutes ago by R. Neff

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Go to your G2G profile and there is a tab to the right that says "recent activity" that shows whatever you've been particularly active in.  If you like something enough, favourite it and it'll be there under the favourites tab.

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Oh, that's how to find it!  Thank you.  (For me it was on the second row, not on the right, but I did find it).

And it's only in the G2G profile, not the G2G feed for some reason.  So you have to pick the right tab from the right place.

Answer 16

Something that bugs me a little. Working in "all pending merges" > limit to surname > but you have two different (usually spelling) surnames the search only works for one of the surnames. eg. right now Mary Bass-8 and Mary Basse-259. If you put Bass in the surname search, the pending merge does not come up in the list. If you put Basse in the surname search, you get the match.

Answer 17

Side-By-Side Profile Editing

Especially for married couples, but also for parent-child relationships, it would be nice to be able to edit two biographies at the same time.  When describing life events from the nuptuals to death, spouses share most of the same events, and it would be handy to be able to add the description and source references on both at the same time.

Comments

I suspect there's a significant development effort needed for that, 2 editing sessions within one window.

What you can do now is use a browser with tiling.  I use Vivaldi (after finally giving up on Firefox), and it allows you to tile horizontally or vertically.  I can open and edit 2 separate profiles, and cut and paste works fine between the tiles.

Or open 2 different browsers, and size and position them appropriately.

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That's a good idea, Rob.  It should have been obvious to me since I have done that before, but lately most of my contributions have been done using my phone.  

Answer 18

It would be nice if suggestions for matches on new profiles didn’t come up until after you put in birthplace. Yes there are a lot of John Smiths. If I know my John Smith was born in Campbeltown, Scotland, I shouldn’t have to slog through all the John Smiths born in Ohio or Maryland

Answer 19

I would like to see a general search function for topics or questions. It is sometimes very hard to find things on this website.

Answer 20

Improve the "Roots Search" function by prioritising the free sites and showing more sites on the first page. At present only 6 sites appear, and the same ones appear even after they have been disabled on the more sites page. There is no easy way to access the other sites. Wikitree rightly wants well sourced profiles, but the assistance for inexperienced genealogists is poor in this area.