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

Question

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

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.

commented Dec 25, 2019 by Marilyn McIntosh G2G Rookie (160 points)

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.

commented Dec 28, 2019 by Jelena Eckstädt G2G Astronaut (1.5m points)

110 Answers

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Answer 1 · 2019-12-23T15:15:05+0000

No. I know I'm repeating myself, but here is my reasoning again:

The church records of one of my ancestral towns are transcribed and put online. They start at the end of the 1500s. There, many of the oldest records (e.g. parents of children born in the town) don't have locations. My 10xggrandfather is one of those records. He doesn't even have neither a birthdate nor a date of death. I accidently found him as sponsor of a distant relative, so could put the date of that baptism as "died after that date".

The town of my ancestors is on an important trader's route from that time. The prince of the territory (remember the Holy Roman Empire was a collection of seemingly hundreds of little territories) also invited people from abroad either to help the area economically or to come as refugees from hundreds of kilometers away (hello to the Huguenots in my distant family). I also know there were people who stayed in the area after they fought for Sweden in the 30-years-war, and there are people among my ancestors who likely came from the Netherlands, maybe when Napoleon thought it would be nice to invade them. The spelling of their surname gives the Dutch away, but I can't prove it til now, because I don't have the link yet.

But this is the folks where there ARE some hints in the church records. There are also records that don't give away any location, no matter how deep the people digged, who worked for years with these records before putting them online. When they don't (dare to) put a location in it, who am I to do so?

Edited to correct the starting date of the records

commented Dec 23, 2019 by Jelena Eckstädt G2G Astronaut (1.5m points)
edited Dec 23, 2019 by Jelena Eckstädt

I overthought this. Again and again. In my opinion this is a very very bad change to WikiTree. I know that the majority of the userbase deals with records that give explicit information about the birth / death locations, but... okay, there we go:

I have quite some ancestors for who I cannot make a save assumption for the country of birth at all, and have no death information. Putting in just "Europe" wouldn't really be of help either. It will also not allow users to create profiles for people they have little information on: lists of names of soldiers stationed at someones house for example! Or what about the brothers of my ancestors "who stayed in Russia" my grandmother still remembered? I have no clue when or where they died during that campaign, and as WikiTree doesnt allow user to define "proximate" locations the baptism location will not suffice as a birth place. I cannot put in uncertain/approximate because I'm not uncertain, after all.

I think that real uncertainty surrounding locations should not reach into the persons locations fields. Putting in a continent will not solve any issues, and I can already see people struggle a lot with this. Not so much in the standard case, but for every 20th profile involving "yeah I dont know where uncle Bernard was born but I dont just want to put in only England either".

Please refrain from doing this and adding new factors of annoyance similar to the "multiple names in first name field is wrong" debacle.

commented Dec 23, 2019 by Willem Vermeulen G2G6 Mach 3 (34.4k points)
edited Dec 23, 2019 by Willem Vermeulen

Jelena, that is the issue. Members who add nothing and don’t provide sources which suggest a location make it difficult to avoid duplicates, connect families or to find sources. While Europe might be a bit broad it at least means you know where NOT to look, or that someone is likely to have emigrated. If the family is in the USA, you at least know not to look for parents’ births and marriages there. I’d rather have Germany/Prussia or Europe (if boundaries are disputed with a note on the profile) rather than a blank. A location requirement would also get members to put in the location of a country or a state/province which is clear from the source provided on profile creation, but which members avoid because a town isn’t mentioned.

commented Dec 24, 2019 by Fiona McMichael G2G6 Pilot (210k points)

Kay and Fiona,

I don't know if you really get what I talk about. These online profiles in the Online Heritage Books are the SUMMARIZED results of ALL information that is found in the church records, the censuses the Prince of the territory made, and the town history that was done when the town partied its 750 year's birthday. Hugely likely there is NO other information available about the people in the profiles.

Again: "Europe" alone is too inclusive for me, it includes literally everyone except my aunt on Bermudas and her family from the first marriage. In the profiles of the Online Heritage book I simply don't read info in things where there is no info. As I said above, the people who created the Online Heritage Book worked for years with the original records. When they don't type in a location, that means there is no location available. And now you tell me I should guess a location? No way!

And please don't think you are the only person in the WikiTree-Universe fighting with duplicates. I have relatives in the Online Heritage Books, who have the same name (both two given names and the surname is the same), who are born in the same year and even in the same month. The only way to discern them is looking at the women in their lives.

commented Dec 24, 2019 by Jelena Eckstädt G2G Astronaut (1.5m points)

And again: The online source I give as source contains ALL information ALL sources make available in a summarized way. It is similar to a WikiTree profile. As example I give you the profile of my 3xgreatgrandfather. You have his name, his DOB and DOD and (in his case) the place where he was born and died, because the church records are showing that. Then there is his spouse and all the children he got, even a still born child. But the record doesn't show if the child was a boy or a girl, so this is not shown. In other cases, where it's written in the records, the profile shows the sex of the child. Then you have his parents and his siblings. And then there is the text in the right column. The second part (with the hyperlink) says: "If you have questions, additions or corrections to this entry, please send them (there and there)." The above part says: "In this report are all informations about Ludwig Heinrich Seher summarized. The shown names are hyperlinked (as long as they don't underlie GDPR) and refer to the respective profile." In the "homepage" of the town, which explains the history of the town, the used sources are explained.

As I said, this was the profile of my 3xggranddad. It is complete. But for my 10xgreatgranddad there are NO locations in there. And where there are no locations I don't guess a location.

A small addition: The grandfather of the guy in the example profile was born in a town, which (seems to be) nearby. There is a Guntersdorf only 8km from Edingen. But they didn't write that he came from that Guntersdorf. Because, and this is what I found out: There is a Guntersdorf in Austria, and according to the Austrian white pages, there are people with his surname in that town. This little tidbit shows clearly that when the people who work with this Online Heritage Book aren't 100% sure if a location is correct, they don't type it in. In the case of my 10x ggranddad (who died after 1654) I am very sure that there are no sources about his locations.

commented Dec 25, 2019 by Jelena Eckstädt G2G Astronaut (1.5m points)
edited Dec 25, 2019 by Jelena Eckstädt

@KaySands @FionaMcMichael, @JelenaEckstädt
1st remark was made about the upset caused because "there was no mention of sources" : well this not about sources its about the mandatory character of BMD-location.
2nd remark was about the fact that in any given source (BMD acts, not for census or passenger manifests ) the following locations can be established as "certain"
1- the location of the establishement of the BMD-act ( certainty 100%);

2- the Blocation of the principal subject(s) with a certainty 100% for locally born people, 75% of adjacent municipalities and less then 50% for any person born elsewhere

3- only in 50 % of cases the living location is established for parents or other family members mentioned in the act, and less then 50% for BMorD location of the same parents or other family members mentioned in the act.

In my case , often new Profiles will be created for parents based on the birth- marriage act however no information is available

I do understand about matching profiles and the importance of location in that process but

- prefer blank BMD locations or if a location is mentioned then the certainty indicator should be applied and only certain if the primary source has established that location
- we might get a living location
- especially in Europe ( and Low countries are my area of expertise ) location change names frequently without ever having moved house my mother, grandmother, 2x and 3x grandmother were born, married and died in at least 4 differently named places and everyone had at least one name change in her lifetime.

I suggest that we don't make BMD- locations mandatory unless we have the original BMorD act from which we can establish the correct location,
simply because there is not enough certainty in secondary sources from acts or because that info simply isn't available upon creation of the record

commented Dec 25, 2019 by Derek Giroulle G2G6 Mach 1 (13.2k points)

@Derek

Remember that location is a hierarchical description that may begin with continent then be further divided into administrative entities.

There are often cases where there is no BMD record but there are secondary references that provide evidence of location. Consider for example Jane Whiting. When she was born in 1834 town or administrative records were not kept. If there were church records they were lost to fire. Her parents were likely married before the local church was established. There are about 90 profiles for a Jane Whiting-2417, and many more for the Whiton, Whitton, White and Whitney variants. It helps us all to provide some location.

One thing that is obvious is that European and United States research each bring their own set of challenges, and that we as the WikiTree community need to work together to understand our differences and build a world tree.

Let me know if you need any help in New York State in the early 1800s.

commented Dec 25, 2019 by Kay Knight G2G6 Pilot (604k points)

@KaySands ,
I'm well aware of the hierarchical nature of location, but how insignificant are indications like "Europe Spain or France" when the perceived size of the visible world in the 16th and 19th century as less than 15 km in radius.

Allow me to explain the historic evolution in Belgium as an example; pls use the links below to get more info

*before the French occupation of the low countries 1792 (during the -feudal- Ancien Régime) there were cities (with charters, defences and freedoms, hence the name "vrijheid") and Low:countries ; Heerlijkheden (Herrschaften, or fiefdom of a feudal Lord) and both would have Hamlets on their territory. The cities, fiefs and their hamlets were part of the Earldoms, Counties, Duchies or Prince-Bishopries that answered to the King/Emperor

* During the French occupation Municipalities were created by the French Directoire : there were nearly 2800 administrative entities at municipal level and a hierarchy of cantons, arrondissements, departements and prefectures. Many of the rural municipalities were composed of several hamlets and a main village (until they had about 5000 inhabitants)

*Those municipalities were maintained after the independance of belgium in 1830 , and for Belgium grouped in Arrondissements and Provinces (Wikipedia (ENG) : municipalities of Belgium ) and from 2800 we went to about 1700 in 1970 are now we are at just under 600. Naming is therefore date dependant, a location might change names quicker that some people changed trouser in rural flanders a century or more ago...

Given the ways in which people were named in rural areas with patronymics, names based origin from topo-/geographic locations, crafts or trades, and given the fact that many hamlets had the same name but were attached to a different fief or city, and that people with a patronymic name changed names after they moved to another city complicates that matter.
I researched a man named after his father Diederickssone, who moved form kortijk to Utrecht where he was named "Diederickszoon van Cortrycke" in all kinds of documents.

Therefore using the correct name for a location is paramount and trumps the want for an approximated birth location. Accuracy of location weighs in as more important that the lack of location.

A marriage act (of say the municipality of "Waarloos") could mention that the father of the groom was "from St Catherine's" , now we could assume that he's from a hamlet by that name ( one of the hamlets of "St Cathelijne Waver", which is a municipality adjacent to "Waarloos"), while in reality he's form several dozens of kilometers away, when we look for his birth certificate in the adjacent municipality we might find a man by a similar name at birthday that roughly matches the age mentioned in the act. the combined errors links a man who is not the father of the groom but could be anything from a family member more than 5 generations apart, to impossble to discern a family link at all ...
By comparison the fact that he was born in Europe is irrelevant, except for the relatives of an emigrated family branch,
Ff both of those men were born in the Duchy of Brabant which covered approx 10.000 km2, they could be more then 100 km apart
but the location of Duchy of Brabant is still a useless identifier to distinguish those men people

You may think that Iḿ talking about an oddball example, as a matter of iḿ not. Before 1800 about 30% of marriages remained unregistered, were unmarried couples who acted like they were married and registered their kids and deaths. Another 10 % lied about their identity or origins at marriage and another 10% changed their names in the course of their lives, prisoners would lie about their names and origins etc. Error would already occur for people living in different hamlets outside the main village of municipality.
In my research I found that about 60% of people in marriage registers would be locally born ( that is in the same jurisdiction), less than 15 % of the cases bride and groom would be both locally born and their parents too. The data from other jurisdictions would not be verified for the parents only for the bride an groom a birth certificate was needed.

The result is that the collected data are hearsay and dependant on the correct recollection of the bride or groom of data of his parents, the correct pronounciation of the location by the groom or bride and the correct understanding by the acting registrar of the data , imho that is 1/8 chances that the data transmitted is actually correctly represented on paper, (and that is without the possibility of errors while translating/reading handwritten acts form microfilm) and we may be lucky that so much of the info is still useful

The fact that a person lived from date1 -> date2 in location ABC with a certainty of over 50% is far more relevant

I spoke about the low countries (which is contemporary Belgium Netherlands Luxemburg north of France and the German Rhineland). But i'm under the distinct impression that the same is true for most of Europe, including the UK , just to cite one example is the naming convention for London : the Boroughs, the Counties etc over time...

commented Dec 26, 2019 by Derek Giroulle G2G6 Mach 1 (13.2k points)

Jelena, I am talking about relatively modern (post 1837) instances where there are reasonable records and it is clear enough to me from the sources where a person was born or died. A birth would not have been registered if it had occurred in another country, a burial would not have happened far from a death place. A poor person buried in the South of England is unlikely to have died in Scotland. If the person were an aristocrat, yes, there is the outside chance that a death country may be different. I’m suggesting that if no place is filled in for one location that there is a warning box. The profile could still be saved (and it might prompt people to go and look for a source). Today I found a whole family of 12 children with no places at all. I’ll source them and connect them - but as I know where their parents are buried now, I am sure I can actually predict the country most were born in and where they died. As I stated, I know there are occasional issues like your 10xgreat grandfather in 1654, border dwellers and countries which change their names. However, I’d rather have Europe as a starting point for my 18th and 19th research than trying to look in the UK, North America, South Africa and Australia as well.

commented Dec 27, 2019 by Fiona McMichael G2G6 Pilot (210k points)

"and it might prompt people to go and look for a source"

How often am I to repeat it? There is a 99,9999...% chance that there is no source of location for my 10xgreatgrandfather! I'm not sure you are aware how often there are (still nowadays) administrative changes in locations. Let's have a look at the territorial history of my ancestor's town (scroll down to the table with the year numbers). Or let's take the life of my family in Belgrade, starting actually in the birth town of my grandmother.

She was born in Austrohungary, married there and then moved to Belgrade. When she moved, Belgrade belonged to the (1) Kingdom of Yugoslavia. There my mother was born. When she was a toddler, there was the (2) Democratic Federal Yugoslavia. When she started school there was the (3) Federal People's Republic Yugoslavia. During her studies (yay, we have a period of more than 20 years!) the name was changed into (4) Socialist Federal Republic Yugoslavia. This is the Yugoslavia I know. After Slovenia and Croatia declared their independence, the remaining republics created the (5) Federal Republic Yugoslavia. When also Bosnia and Macedonia went out of that, the remaining territory was called (6) Serbia and Montenegro. In 2006, when Montenegro voted for independence, the remaining State was called (7) Republic of Serbia. So during the lifetime of my mother, Belgrade changed six times its administrative order.

Having no location is no "issue", it is simply a "missing fact". And sometimes this missing fact has to stay missing. The word "issue" is for me just as not fitting in the context of location, sources, dates etc as the word "obnoxious" for bad sourcing or "offenders" for genealogists who just learn to use Wikitree.

commented Dec 27, 2019 by Jelena Eckstädt G2G Astronaut (1.5m points)

why should I do that? I know WHEN (at which date) my relatives are born, which is the main distinguisher about which administrative unit to use.

If the creators would simply include the country, I would not have to open the profile to see it is definitely not what I am looking for.

Most biographies out there on the internet, especially outside of Wikitree and Wikipedia, are NOT made for genealogical use, but to inform about something absolutely not genealogy-related. I just found the other day vital dates about a relative of Hermann von Helmholtz on a website about submarines. But, there is no date about WHERE the guy is born.... and you want to tell me, essencially, I am not allowed to use that website as a source, because it doesn't show a location? You have to be kidding me. In the past several weeks I added literally hundreds profiles, partly notable, but also partly only mentioned as relative in Wikipedia-articles. When there is a mention at wikipedia about relatives that had a normal life, there is hardly a location mentioned. So there will be no profile for these persons without a location on Wikitree? This is actually against the mission of Wikitree. The mission of WIkitree is an "accurate" single family tree. If I can't add a person, because I can't find a location for the life of me, then Wikitree can't be as accurate as it could be if I was allowed to add people only with their vital dates.

commented Dec 27, 2019 by Jelena Eckstädt G2G Astronaut (1.5m points)

Jelena, listing no location would be understandable if one didn't care about sharing profiles. I don't think any of us are saying that you cannot use a website as a source unless there is a location. Surely you have a clue as to at least a modern country area when creating these profiles? Or an ancient location? But to create a profile without any location makes it impossible to know if we have the right person represented by the profile

What we are saying is that in order to research a family and connect them up with other family members we need to be able to distinguish them from other people of the same name. Otherwise, a list of matching names without locations listed is a huge waste of time.

Besides WikiTree has not set a standard which requires an infallible primary source before listing a probable location.

commented Dec 27, 2019 by Edie Kohutek G2G6 Mach 9 (98.3k points)

Edie, you don't seem to get it: If a location is put as mandatory, this means I cannot create profiles that do not have a location. This means that person is missing on WikiTree aka WikiTree is not as correct as it could be. A profile created without a location is still more correct than a profile that is not created at all, because there can't be found a location.

As I said above (somewhere in my earlier replies) I DO NOT read anything in sources that don't tell any location. A profile with a German name can come from these modern days locations (and I am only counting the locations since the start of the German Empire 1871 and am not sure that I recollect all of them):

Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, South Tyrolia, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, the Ukraine, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Romania, France, Belgium, Luxembourg.

And you want me to tell where the person is from when I only find a source with a birthdate or a date of death? Ok. Then the Big Tree stays more incorrect than it would be without a mandatory location. But this actually cannot be the goal of the WikiTree-team.

commented Dec 27, 2019 by Jelena Eckstädt G2G Astronaut (1.5m points)

I have reacted earlier on in this thread and from what I've read so far I notice that a lot of people fail to think outside of the "easy research" part where there's censuses, civil registration and church records. Records that prove direct evidence for some pinpointing towards a point of origin. I get that from that point of view it might be very nice indeed to require locations.

However, I love to take up some medieval research every now and then, working with charters. Most of those really don't provide any context on the birth or death location of a person. In most cases in literature, you will find that those people are mentioned by their "mentioned in records" years. I can get why a date is needed, and often you can estimate some "after" or "before" death date to fill out that field. However, for locations you cannot do that. WikiTree doesn't allow for burial locations, and requiring a death location would require users to just fill in more information there is just no evidence for, because of the nature of the data they have to use. The fact that you in your situation do not experience many of such situations doesn't mean that it will really create big issues to quite some WikiTree users.

Believe me, I do love to fill out my birth and death locations, up till "house level" if I have evidence for it. It's great to be able to see the right context (which really is house level for my European families that stayed in the same villages for hundreds of years, unlike other users state "municipal level" really is not enough detail), but sometimes you just have to accept there is no further evidence on the birth or death location of an individual. Sometimes I'm able to fill out the exact house someone was born in, sometimes a city, and sometimes a barony or county, and sometimes, sometimes, just nothing at all. In those cases you have the biography to show evidence of events during the life of a person, which I think should be enough.

Please don't create any standards that will just stop WikiTree to function for a group of users, when there is no necessity to do so. Like Edie already arguments, we care about sharing information. Information that is right. Following her argumentation, we really cannot force users to put in locations when we have absolutely no clues about birth or death locations. Being able to distinguish profiles with ease is a whole different problem, which might need different solutions - like displaying the names of partners and children by default on mouse-over.

commented Dec 27, 2019 by Willem Vermeulen G2G6 Mach 3 (34.4k points)

I agree with @Jelena_Eckstädt and @Willem_Vermeulen

a- Making BMD locations mandatory for profile creation makes Wikitree impractical for most European users, it will stop working, at time of creation of a profile I will be looking at someone else documents where none of these data a mentioned. the closest thing is a living location with a applicable date.
b- I understand the problems regarding matching and i do agree that most 20th century data and a significant number of late 19th century data from cities provide relevant data, those form rural areas are not quite as accurate we could wish for, and you might need historical background to determine the exact denomination of the location,
but that doesn't imply one should not mention a location form any document (even with the qualifier uncertain) or even when an incorrect modern denomination for the correct location

c- burial and death locations and birth and baptism are in many cases "closely linked", but might be in a significant portion of cases be far apart, so it's safer not to make assumptions not even with the qualifier uncertain , BTW an increasing number of people are buried several 1000 miles away form the location where they deceased (due to migration or tourism) with the births happening in maternity wards people are not born where they live and were "baptised" ( we need to find another term for this)

commented Dec 28, 2019 by Derek Giroulle G2G6 Mach 1 (13.2k points)

Answer 2 · 2019-12-23T15:47:21+0000

I do agree with the wish for such life event fields but then we should also modify our current setup for the union of 2 people
Marriage is a christian concept not a universal one, but "UNION " is

i would like to change the basic idea of events
birth and death are truely universal events and unique elements in an inidivudals life.

the Union is another TYPE of event, in that it is a ritualistic event but a person may have multiple unions, burial or baptism/christenig are alos ritualistic events

imho we should use following concept for such ritula events:
-Field type of event : values start of life, end of life, union/partnership, conversion, rites of passage

-Field name/description of event : values, baptism, christening, marriage, civil union, civil partnership, nikkah, bar mitzvah, burial

- other fields decribing the event would be location , date , source , comment to clarify

but I do get that this would complicate matters

commented Dec 28, 2019 by Derek Giroulle G2G6 Mach 1 (13.2k points)

Answer 3 · 2019-12-23T16:36:34+0000

Show 22 previous comments

I have been following this discussion and i hope my contribution will bring different views closer to consensus.

In view of universality of wikitree, i would say that "removal of the middle name field" might be a little too far fetched.
In many countries the given name concept exists, with mulitple names given to a new born, where alos and the "first name" represents the "call name" or a name that would be in preferred name field. That preferred name is sometimes the first in the line of given names, and might a combined name ( like marie-jeanne or jean-pierre) or an abbreviated or translated name ( like Frans for Franciscus) .

I would suggest that the middle name field is made conditional that means the user will have to indicate that this profile uses middle names, or was born in a area where the use of middle names is common or habitual, and then the user can enter the middle names for that profile .
If you are in area where the concept of middle name is alien but mulitple first names are given all the names are put in the same field ( currently first name) and the call name would in the preferred name field.

I think we should use common sense and settle this locally with naming conventions

commented Jan 2, 2020 by Derek Giroulle G2G6 Mach 1 (13.2k points)

@Leandra Ford: "Are you all running around calling everyone by 6 names?" : No, you call someone by their "call name" or "preferred name". For example Benny Andersson of ABBA is called ... well, you guessed it ... "Benny Andersson". You don't call him "Göran Bror Benny Andersson", and you don't call him "Göran Andersson". If he was an unknown person from the 1800s in your tree which you had just found the birth notice for you would just write "Göran Bror Benny" in the given name field of your genealogical database program and not fill in the call name field at all until you find some information about that.

"At the end of the day, what difference does it make to the profile if you place 1 given name in the first name field, with the other 5 in the middle names field": Being forced to enter data in a bogus way leads to problems and misunderstandings every day. The fields are handled differently on the site (of course), and every way that they are handled differently is one source of problems.

Below is an example of how name entry can look in proper genealogical software, in this case Gramps. There is a field for "Call [name]" where "Sara" or "Lotta" could be entered if there is any evidence for that, but in this case the field is still empty. In Wikitree that is not possible.

commented Oct 11, 2020 by Per Starbäck G2G6 Mach 3 (39.4k points)

Wikitree has a preferred name and an other nicknames field. It works very nicely for my grandfather Howard Clive Engstrom, who was known as Clive to family and friends.

I'm from South Australia, where Prussian immigrants often had 3 and sometimes 4 given names, with a custom to using the name immediately before the surname as their preferred name. When they registered BMDs, which was interacting with a British based system, sometimes the record has their full name, sometimes only the first given name, sometimes only the preferred call name. The Wikitree fields handle all of that. A middle name is simply the name between the first and the last one, and its interchangeable with the term "second given name".

Here's an example of a profile for a Prussian immigrant that I manage. His full name is Friedrich Wilhelm Albert Carl Launer, and he was known as Carl to his family and friends. No matter whether Friedrich or Carl has been used in records where only one of his names is recorded, anyone can search and find his profile here. How is this a problem?
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Launer-63

commented Oct 11, 2020 by Living Ford G2G6 Pilot (160k points)
edited Oct 11, 2020 by Living Ford

Answer 4 · 2019-12-23T18:07:23+0000

Until I started helping on Data Doctors , I didn't know that there is a standardized way to cite Find A Grave on Wiki Tree and most do not do it correctly. Go to the bottom of the Find a grave page of person and click Source Citation, copy what comes up paste in profile. Copy URL link paste at end. After memorial page for xyz place the symbol I (it's above the\ , forward slash on the keyboard ). Type profile name and-#. This will link to the profile. Now I am not saying I have fixed every profile of mine after learning this. And I personally think just a URL link to Find a grave is fine. Just saying that Wiki Tree already has a standard for citation. Would be much easier with some kind of template.

commented Dec 29, 2019 by Loretta Morrison G2G6 Pilot (179k points)

I partially agree with this (some kind of standardisation), but I think better approach would be to let users insert only pure data and let WikiTree handle the rest. Imagine inserting an url and (if the website is known - FindAGrave, Billiongraves, FamilySearch,...) let WikiTree prefill all the fields with with the option to correct it by hand. After confirming data, WikiTree would format it using some standardised way.

That would have other implication - easier work with data itself (sorting, filtering,...)

Moreover, many resources are referencing more than one person (birth certificate = child + mother + father + their parents; census = all people living at that place at that time; school records = all children visiting the school - or particular class; ...) so it's nonsense to have resource so tightly coupled with only one person without any possibility to reuse it at another profile.

commented Jan 26, 2020 by Michal Vašut G2G6 (7.4k points)
edited Jan 26, 2020 by Michal Vašut

Answer 5 · 2019-12-23T18:26:50+0000

No middle name option when creating profiles.

Connecting historical place names in our database with geographic coordinates so that locations can be used more effectively.

Internationalisation of Name fields and LNAB

Answer 6 · 2019-12-23T18:42:03+0000

I agree, Lydia. Some people want to stick all of their living relatives as profile managers on the profiles of their ancestors ... and their family members aren't even active WikiTreers. I asked one WikiTreer to not add his nephew as a PM because there were so many PM's. Then he asked if I wanted to be the only one. I said not at all and explained the purpose of PM's. So that fixed one profile. But he has another one which now has 7 profile managers. The way this happens is he creates a duplicate then forces a merge. Now he's a profile manager ready to add more and wreak havoc. And yes I went through the problems with members process.

Edit: That wasn't the main problem I was having with him. It was the purposeful creation of duplicates, and hundreds of edits and changes in parentage without collaboration with the other PM's.

commented Dec 24, 2019 by Edie Kohutek G2G6 Mach 9 (98.3k points)
edited Dec 26, 2019 by Edie Kohutek

Answer 7 · 2019-12-23T18:43:35+0000

Add Watson to Wikitree, to find/add family members, sources, and build the biography. OK so I'm dreaming. Maybe someday. But for 2020 I'd like to see some work done on location fields.

Make Location field a relational field with date, location name and event. This would allow for a nice chronology of their life. This would also solve the problem of christening, burial and would allow for search on someone who moved many times.

On the lookup of the location field, it could link to a date range. This secondary relational field would then add the correct location name for that time frame and add the location Category. This would solve most of the 600's errors.

Answer 8 · 2019-12-23T18:52:35+0000

For one, I'd like to have an invite link tool that helps connect DNA matches more quickly to WikiTree, as previously suggested. The invite process really could be streamlined. Right now it's either (A) you have the person's email and a profile set up for that person already or (B) just "hey, you should join WikiTree, there's a profile for your great grandfather here...." But getting that person connected is a massive hassle.

Another change that would be small but beneficial: Having visible roles on G2G. It does not help me, the random user, to know that Eowyn is a "G2G Astronaut". It would help me to know that she's "WikiTree Staff". Or that Jillaine Smith is a "Project Leader". The Astronaut, Pilot, G2G6 names are cute, but not very informative when it comes to providing clear lines of communication and authoritative answers, especially when an "official answer" is provided. Many other forum sites do this, including permitting the "moderator flair" to be turned on or off, depending on whether they are giving an official answer.

Answer 9 · 2019-12-23T23:06:43+0000

I have a few ideas, so I'm putting them as separate answers (hope that's ok!)

Develop a separate "location" namespace that you can link profiles too rather than just clicking through to a google map.

WeRelate did this quite well - eg see https://www.werelate.org/wiki/Place:Wimbotsham%2C_Norfolk%2C_England

You can also link in the GENUKI and FamilySearch wiki pages

Answer 10 · 2019-12-23T23:10:22+0000

Uploading a Gedcom to WikiTree is an incredibly slow business, largely due to the need to check through possible matches before adding each profile. This might not seem like much of an issue to those who don't want to do things that way, but it will be putting some people off WikiTree I'm sure.

Even when adding a single profile, it is a pain to have to go through pages of suggested matches for John Smiths or Thomas Woods, checking each one, and it would help immensely if even rudimentary checking could be added to eliminate ones that were born or died in obviously different places than the person one is adding. When in both cases the country has been specified and differs, surely the suggested match could be suppressed relatively easily? I understand places can be named in varying ways and eliminating all inappropriate suggestions could be very difficult, but getting rid of the obvious ones would be a great improvement.

This is probably the wrong place to mention it, but I'm pretty sure there are also currently some bugs in the suggested match generation process - I've occasionally found a profile for someone already existed after creating it that I don't think had been suggested, and sometimes when I add the person's birth date after their death date, the match suggestions don't update unless I tinker with the death date field again.

commented Dec 25, 2019 by Corinne Morris G2G6 Mach 2 (25.8k points)

anonymous · Answer 11 · 2019-12-23T23:14:54+0000

I understand how furstrating it is to have unsourced profiles

I inherited my family approx 3500 profiles from my parents who lived in a different era.

They had a off line DB tool called Aldfaer, which is very appreciated. BUT they put in references
so when they located/read a BMD document teh duely noted
What document, what registry, year and number, and 99.99% of their documents are in either the national archives of the city archives ...
However the volumes and microfilms they consulted 25 years ago are no longer available
although my tree is sourced i cannot in all honesty say that their work contains a valid source.
So i do mention unsourced family tree ... while i revisit all the sources and correct the references and collect photographic copies of those documents for my personal archive ( which was also impossble 20 years ago)

commented Dec 26, 2019 by Derek Giroulle G2G6 Mach 1 (13.2k points)

Answer 12 · 2019-12-23T23:18:36+0000

Restore categories if 3 or fewer to the top of the profile again. I miss categories on those rare occasions when I remember they exist.

Answer 13 · 2019-12-24T01:47:43+0000

Restore the size of the suffix field so we don't have to use workarounds for what should be standard nomenclature. Having to put titles into the nicknames field creates ugly, inaccurate display names which are frankly embarrassing to wikitree. The inability to get something as basic as names right is one of the reasons wikitree is not taken more seriously.

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

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