Question of the Week: What is on your wishlist for 2020 WikiTree improvements? [closed]

Question

Hi WikiTreers,

What is on your wishlist for 2020 WikiTree improvements? If there could be just one new feature or change, what would you want it to be?

Happy holidays!

Comments

Great question! Hope you generate some good suggestions from the community discussion.

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Why does G2G keep doing this to me? I click "answer", fill it in, and submit, but now suddenly somehow it's a comment. You can convert an answer to a comment, but not the other way around.

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How to deal with pre-existing transcription errors, mainly from commercial sites like My Heritage and Family Search?  For instance, in the 1881 Canada Census for Halifax, Nova Scotia, under children of James Francis Rodgers there is a son whose name appears to be labelled Zarene,  and so cited in a Family Search file. Well, "Zarene" does not exist, never has, but lives on in the world of pixels. The name of that individual, it turns out, is "Lawrence", documented through Nova Scotia archives, but misspelled "Larenc/Larens" on the handwritten original and OFFICIAL Census for Halifax, in the 1881 census. Someone misread the capital L in longhand for a Z and Laurence becomes Zarene, all over the place. . . I can make the notes and enter the correct information in my Wiki tree, but the OTHER non-wiki files preserve and spread the error(s). Meanwhile, in that same document "Hugh" is "Huie",  Patrick is "Batrick", Margaret is "Magie", Jerome is "Romi/Roni", Matthew is "Mathiu". It is beyond frustrating.

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(Nitpick: FamilySearch is not a commercial site.)

Marilyn, first, don't mistake the finding aid for the historical record. What's in the index doesn't change what's in the record; it just makes it slightly harder to find.

Second, the 1881 Canada census is among the collections that now allows editing of names in the index on FS. This means that you can correct "Zarene" to whatever is actually on the image: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MV6P-MQZ (For what it's worth, I think it says Laranc.) And you have always been able to correct names on FS's Family Tree: there is absolutely no reason for his profile (https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/L81P-WK5) to still say Zarene.

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I really really, sincerely wish the Categories box would be visible "inside" the profile area, ...not at the very bottom of the page where they dont even seem relevant, ...way under the Memories box, ...way under the Comments boxes, ...way under the Matches and Merges box, and even ...way under the x degrees from random people connections box.

Please seriously reconsider this improvement which would improve nearly every profile I create and work on.

Thank you and, Happy New Year to all our amazing volunteer teammates!

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I took a walk through this thread and collected what I like to see and added a few things that were not mentioned before:

1. In the Private Profile view there are buttons to "add child", to add the parents and to add one spouse. Considering how many people married several times because the spouse died, there should be an "add spouse" button as well.

2. I would love to have an optional modern day location field. This is important especially for the German roots profiles, because there were so many administrative changes in the German areas, that a modern day location field can show in which country a document has to be ordered, which archive is "responsible" for the person etc. etc.

3. Remove the middle name fields. I showed my reasoning in the respective thread

4. Eliminate the "unsourced tree" as source. 

5. Give us a "between dates" option. This can further narrow the dates of an event.

6. The "edit the section" button on FreeSpace-pages helps loads when you have Pages that have a ton of names on it.

7. For the internationalization of Wikitree a polyglott interface is paramount. I know of many not English-native users who complain that they have problems to use the site because it is only in English.

8. Restore the Categories to the top. Down there on the botttom they are virtually invisible.

9. Bold threads that have changed since a user was logged in the last time. This is simplifying the usage of the G2G-forum.

This is my quarter Dollar to add to the thread.

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Regarding #1, Jelena, when editing a profile, on the right side under spouse, you can add as many spouses as needed.

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I know, I do that all the time. But why do I have to go into the Edit menu for spouses, when I don't have when I want to add children?

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Sounds like the transcriber was a drunk monkey. They let you add corrections on ancestry for stuff like this there must be a way on other sites surely?

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Would love to see GG better organized or explained better for beginners... I constantly have trouble locating specific thre ads...

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I agree. It used to be at the top. After the change when they were moved to the bottom and weren't clearly visible I contacted a project manager and told her a bunch of categories were missing from all the profiles we had added to, and if they had been removed because they no longer existed. Thinking that was a lot of work for nothing, lol. She informed me they were now at the bottom of the profile.

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I know it would be quite some work, but would it be possible to follow up on the responses given here and give an overview of which ones are still open, which ones are not going to be implemented and which ones have been granted?

I am assuming there will be a new call opening soon

Answer 1

Enable the possibility to see unread items in g2g. I'd like to be able to follow a thread with having to read through all the responses and comments that I've already read.

Comments

In other forums threads that have changed since I was last time active are bolded. It would be great to have that here as well.

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Yes. And the similar ability to click a link taking you to the answer from your G2G Discussion Feed for Answered by xxx

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Kay, yes! That, too!

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I second this idea. I think the G2G forum technology is very 'outdated' and there are far more user-friendly fora techniques available.

Answer 2

I would like to be able to enter data for witnesses on BMD-acts

Comments

Although I can see the value it could get clumsy. Perhaps this is best handled in the biography, where you can also describe the relationship and link to the profile. For example, her sister xxx and his brother xxx were witnesses to the marriage. It also handles some unique cases -- several US states have a delayed birth certificate that includes statements/evidence of birth - these were used where birth certificates were not recorded (before 1880), but proof was needed for social security retirement benefits.

Answer 3

I would like to be able to enter age - instead of date - as in certain acts someone age is given which establishes their birthday within a 2 year frame..

I have seen subsequent censusdata where the person matches but the age differs form the expected value by several years (someone mentioned as 28 instead of 43)

Answer 4

Add an "Undersourced" category for profiles that give birth, date, residence, and other information with only a Findagrave.com memorial link or comparably thin evidence to support it all.

(It won't happen, but I'm interested in any other serious effort to get us thinking about how we support the information we post.)

Comments

Agree. And I'd add profiles that cite only a census record for specific birth dates, birthplaces, and relationships that the record does not specify.

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We're actually already using [[Category:Needs More Records]] (or [[Category:Placename, Needs More Records]]) to identify profiles which have some kind of source, but need more and better ones.

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That's great.

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Agree, although I would do this slightly differently.

Perhaps we should acknowledge that rather than a binary sourced/unsourced difference, there are actually a range of situations, from one where assertions are thoroughly sourced to multiple reliable evidence all the way through to one where you have only partial sourcing to unreliable evidence

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I'm fairly new at this game, but how would one assess "low confidence" versus "rock solid evidence" without some manual review? Can't use number of sources because 1 DNA trumps 100 findagrave references.

Maybe its a five star rating kind of thing, so that if newbie me thinks they are rock solid with a birth certificate, i rate it 5 stars. Then you two folks come along and notice that the name is the same but the place is wrong enough to be in question or something so you rate it 2 stars, and it pulls down the overall quality? Still the wisdom of the crowd approach, but maybe it allows for more targeted identification of the sliding scale?

Lastly, from an ROI perspective, does it matter? If you have a current method to identify the worst offender profiles (categories mentioned by Greg Slade) then does a sliding scale really help you, or are you just going to focus on 1-2 star profiles anyway, which probably deseeve the categories mentioned?

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In my history courses in school, the instructors drew a sharp distinction between primary sources and secondary sources. Primary sources would date from the time of the event (or shortly thereafter), and ideally be recorded by somebody who actually witnessed the event. Secondary sources would be pretty much everything else. A secondary source might draw on primary sources, but never actually becomes one, however accurate and carefully researched it is. 

When it comes to genealogy, primary sources would be things like birth certificates, census records, military records, marriage certificates, death certificates, and so on.

The measure I use in the One Name Studies that I manage is derived from Paul Gierszewski's WikiTree Statistics page. On his page, Paul's system is outlined thus:

Profiles are randomly sampled and assigned to the following categories:

• 3 or more sources, where sources are likely original records or books.
• 1 or 2 sources
• Poorly sourced, such as a link to an Ancestry tree or another website, or vague source description
• Unsourced
• Unavailable for analysis (Unlisted, Red or Orange privacy)

For the sake of deriving an average score, I have put numerical values on Paul's system, thus:

3 = 3 or more primary sources, possibly plus secondary sources

2 = 2 primary sources, possibly plus secondary sources

1 = 1 primary source, possibly plus secondary sources

0.5 = One or more secondary sources, no primary sources

0 = Unsourced or unavailable for analysis due to privacy settings

I have set up my spreadsheets to give me a "sourcing sum", which is the total number of source level values for each data set. Then I add add up the sourcing sums from all the data sets I'm using, and divide it by the number of WikiTree profiles in those same data sets to give a picture of how well (or poorly) sourced the profiles in each study are. 

 

Notes: 

1. In my system, a "primary" source is a birth, baptism, census, marriage, military, death, or burial record. A "secondary" source is an entry in Wikipedia or some other encyclopedia, ThePeerage.com, an online family tree, or a book or article which covers (or at least mentions) that person.
2. I don't use scores like 1.5, 2.5, etc. The 0.5 score is only to show that there is something in that profile which is "better than nothing", like an entry in ThePeerage, Wikipedia, or some family tree online somewhere.) 

 

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A source's status as primary or secondary depends wholly upon the fact that the source supports. A death certificate is a primary source for death facts, but it's a secondary source for birth facts.

And I find the genealogy field's distinction between "primary source information" and an "original source" not to be a useful one. The originality of a source often depends greatly upon the information it contains. And when we're supporting historical facts, it's all about the information, when it was recorded, and by whom.

Answer 5

Relationship finder links () in the preview pop-up would be helpful.

Answer 6

Increase the number of Followed Tags from 20 to a larger number.

Comments

Oh, yeah!

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Please!

Answer 7

Automatically include your relevant  test ID number in the "compare DNA results" input box.  Also move profile DNA info to the top left area on the profile page so that users using mobile devices won't have to scroll halfway down the page to see DNA test info.

Answer 8

Give active WikiTree members the option of two profile pages - a public one and a private one. The public one would show WikiTree interests etc.; the private one would be the actual biography (with sources, photos etc.) that could be opened at a later point e.g. posthumously. We spend a lot of time creating profiles for dead people, but it is difficult to create private profiles about ourselves.

Comments

I have long thought that it would be nice to have some kind of flag to mark sections of our own profiles to hide, but your system might well be easier to implement.

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I love this! I've considered creating a private free space page with this info, and then directing someone to copy that text over in the event of my demise.

Answer 9

I would like a way to find easily which of my ancestors are NOT yet on WikiTree. Perhaps the compact tree which shows eight generations could default to the current list but have a checkbox toggle to show "No Profile Yet" for missing people.

Of the possible 256 ancestors in that list, I only have 148 on WikiTree. I have a lot of work to do, but first I have to find the missing people.

Comments

Bennet, I see from your profile that when I click on "Ancestors," your first four generations are complete.  If you click on any one of the oldest generation, e.g. James George, and then view his ancestors, you can see at a glance where they are incomplete.  Yes, you have to do it 16 times, but it isn't terribly hard.

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There's the Ancestor List (they took it off the menu, so it's well hidden)

https://www.wikitree.com/treewidget/George-3849/9

The numbering matches the Compact Tree.  But it's one generation shorter.

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Thanks, RJ. That appears to be exactly what I wanted.

Answer 10

To be able to specify a country when specifying names to tag and follow. This would reduce the number of irrelevant notifications.

Answer 11

One issue I run into a lot is that with immigrants, wiki requires their first name at birth. I often know the name that they had once here, but not necessarily their birth name. Sometimes it is similar, but other times it is not. So my father-in-law, born Mordechai, became Aron in the US. This means that if all I have is the American name, I am forced to state this is their given name, or not make them a profile at all. I would like to be able to enter either the given name OR the "preferred" name, and not have to pretend the american name was the one they were born with in order to make a profile.

Comments

Can't you just enter the american name in the field and make a note in the biography that this is the name he adopted when he immigrated to the USA?

No reason for this to prevent you from inputting his profile onto WikiTree.

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Yes, my point is that it REQUIRES a proper birth name, so if I put the american name in, that is not the proper birth name. I was just suggesting that perhaps they could allow birth OR preferred, so that I wasn't having to say that a name I know is not the proper birth name is, in order to do the profile. I do them anyway, and either make my best guess for proper name or use the american name, depending on what I know. Rose, for example, is almost always some form of Rachel for the Eastern European Jewry.

Answer 12

I would love to be able to see, in a list, all of the profiles I am managing. That is all, carry on.

Comments

I agree. The Watchlist is sort of like this except that it includes profiles for which we are on the trusted list as well as those we manage. It would be nice for the Watchlist to have an additional filter so that we could see just those we manage.

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If it has a little 'M' next to it, that's a profile you manage.

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Ros, I had never noticed the "M" before! We can't sort or filter that column, but having the "M" there is very helpful now that I know about it.

Answer 13

Being able to upload Ancestry.com Trees to WikiTree. I already have a lot of my family tree worked out and really don't feel like typing it all in again. If someone already knows how to do this, please let me know.

Comments

Upload a GEDCOM you create from your Ancestry.com Tree. Complete the GEDCompare report, checking for duplicates. Use the "ADD" buttons to create profiles for those in your tree which are not duplicates. Then clean up your GEDCOM-created profiles and associated sources. (Note: if your GEDCOM is larger than 5000 individuals you cannot do this.) WikiTree has lots of help pages for this. To find them go to the drop-down menus above under the "Help" tab, go to "Help Index." Use the search box and put in the term GEDCOM and you will get a list of pages to check out.

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Another option is to use the WikiTree-X app to scrape the data from your Ancestry profiles to new WikiTree profiles. It can also be used to create individual source citations.

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:WikiTree_X

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Please go slower and start with only like 100 profiles of your newest ancestors, with each having at least one valid source and then be sure to go look for profiles already on Wiki and merge them right after your upload. Many do the whole tree and it creates so much work for data doctors, especially since many have no source, or just a tree as a source.  You're probably going to find when you get back about 1700 and back most already have a profile you can just contribute to.  Good advice above on how to's.

Answer 14

I would like to be able to create a profile using the date of any event in the life. Many profiles are known for example by only a marriage date, or some event they have been attending, and neither birth or death date are known. So I suggest an (optional field) : "alive by" or "living by". It would be better and more accurate that a wild guess about birth date.

Comments

you can click on the radio button "before that date" or "after that date". That's what I did with my 10xgreatgranddad.

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Yes I know and use this. But it's giving a very imprecise information where you could give a precise one, like : alive at date X, attending event Y, in place Z.

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Such information can be noted in the profile

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Russ, I know that, but my point is to be able to create the profile when I know neither the birth nor death date, but for example the marriage date, and not to have to guess a birth date.

Answer 15

I would like to see a differentiation-only in the edit mode-between the biography statements and the sources within the reference tags by color coding either one or the other. When I go back to a profile to add or take out information or sources, I have difficulty finding my place as it all runs together.

Comments

At the bottom of the edit box there is a button labeled "Turn on Enhanced Editor." Click on that. It leaves the bio statements unhighlighted but the sources between ref tags are highlighted in light blue (on my computer.)

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Thanks!

Answer 16

I’d love to be able to search for Freespace pages within Wikitree instead of having to do a google search. Currently you can only search for people.

Also could the people search include dates field so I can restrict to a certain timeframe.

Answer 17

Search option for "Contributions" just our own of course.

Comments

From the MyWikiTree menu, pick Contributions

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I meant to search the contents of my contributions. Like if I come across something that relates to a profile I had previously worked on but  isn't one I am a pm of and would like to add to it but can only remember the last name, I have to look through page after page of my contributions to find it. That becomes quite difficult if there are a few hundred edits from a source a thon before it. Or it was 1-2 years ago.

Answer 18

I would like to be able to follow different tags in G2G to the surnames or places that I follow.

Some tags are both a place and a surname and I may have no interest in the surname but want to follow place discussion. E.g England

Answer 19

2020 is a year to reflect on inclusion of baptismal and burial records as part of the profile rather than in the Biography. For all those Wikitreers whose ancestry leads back to the British Isles this be an enormous step. I know it has been discussed before, including Chris Whitten's correspondence with me. Could it be a majority of wikitree profiles that lead back to this? 

It would also be time to trash those IGI records that claim birth and death dates from Baptismal and Burial records.

Happy 2020 to everyone and particularly to those of us who are aqua impulsum colle (try to push water uphill).

Comments

Check out my post on page 1 of this thread, requesting this, and Chris's reply.

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I concur.

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Burial location would definitely be a nice improvement!

Answer 20

My wish list for 2020:

- Carry parent "stickers" forward to their children (Jewish Roots Sticker, German Roots Sticker)

- When editing profiles, display references in a different color