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Surnames/tags: Research_Template Genealogy WikiTree

Contents 1 Welcome! 1.1 What is a research profile? 1.2 Understanding the Markup Language 1.3 Layout 1.3.1 Timeline

Welcome!

This page is designed to help you become familiarized with the research profile I implement on the profiles I create and or do research for.

What is a research profile?

• A research profile provides a structure to sourcing, putting the information in a table that can be quickly browsed. It's there, in plain sight.

• It demonstrates what's in the source material you've identified, as well as what else could be located (if possible).

• It's flexible, allowing for fields to be hidden or exposed, or added. It provides all the functionality necessary for WikiTree, and even a template for time-lining a biography.

Understanding the Markup Language

When you first look at the text file for the research profile, it's a daunting mass of characters. There is stuff in the file that you may not notice in the actual profile of the ancestor/descendant. The research profile uses hidden comments within the text to hide content that may not be used, applicable, or known.

A hidden comment is started with a left carrot, an exclamation point, followed by two dashes.

Like so:

<!--

A hidden comment is closed with two dashes followed by a right carrot.

Like so:

-->

That's relatively easy to understand, but you'll notice that in some cases, this can have odd effects.

This is because WikiTree when it comes across two <!-- it ignores the second one, and ends the comment with the first hidden comment closing.

So this:

<!--I'm a <!--hidden--> comment that is<!--n't--> turning out right.-->

Becomes this:

comment that is turning out right.-->

So what happened is that WikiTree hid I'm a hidden, showed comment that is, hid n't, and finally showed turning out right.-->. But we didn't want any of this displaying.

It's important to understand how these work, because from time to time you may need to unhid sections, or hide others. By knowing that WikiTree will ignore the starts of hidden comments, when a hidden comment is started without closing it, you can begin to understand why some things may or may not look correct.

The second area of the markup language to understand is a colon.

The colon is used to tab content in paragraph over a set number of spaces.

:1 colon

1 colon

::2 colons

2 colons

:::3 colons

3 colons

Layout

The research profile is laid out into two super-sections, Timeline and Research Profile.

Timeline

Timeline is a Biography subsection that allows a user to easily add a timeline to their profile. Items added to the timeline are organized by Year, and then listed with a specific date, event description, location, and a referenced source.

It looks something like this:

1980

January 01, Birth - Laguna Beach, Orange County, California, United States ^[1]

For the referenced source, you can do one of several things:

• You can type the source in. If you're doing this, it should be a specific as possible.

• You can copy and paste the link from the research profile for the item, as above.

• If the source you're using offers a citation, you could also copy and paste that as a reference source.

This free space will go into detail the mark-up language, as well as the different sections.