Familly history Wikis

[Steve Hayes]

For a few years we had a family history Wiki on Wikispaces, but we are now
being forced to close it down -- see:

http://hayesgreene.blogspot.com/2014/09/closing-of-family-wiki-on-wikispaces.html

I've downloaded and saved the material that was on the site, in case we can
find another host for it, but I won't be looking very hard for another site.

The experiment seems to have failed.

It seemed that a Wiki would be a good place for collaborative family history
research, where people could share anecdotes and other material and so built
up a more complete picture of the family.

The trouble is that no one ever did. Though the site received about 50-80
visitors a day, no one ever contributed anything, or even left a messagbe to
say whether they had found what they were looking for, or even what they were
looking for.

I've found that newsgroups, mailing lists and blogs are far better for
collaboration, even though a Wiki would logically seem a most useful tool,
nobody seemed to use it.

So I'm just wondering if anyone *has* successfully used a Wiki for family
history research.


--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
Web: http://www.khanya.org.za/stevesig.htm
Blog: http://khanya.wordpress.com
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk

[Justin York via]

WeRelate <http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Main_Page> and WikiTree
<http://www.wikitree.com/> are good examples of thriving wiki communities.

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[Enno Borgsteede]

> WeRelate <http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Main_Page> and WikiTree
> <http://www.wikitree.com/> are good examples of thriving wiki communities.

They look more like niches now, with both FamilySearch and Geni offering similar functionality, and much bigger trees. I don't have figures on FamilySearch, but the tree on Geni is 10 times the size of wikitree's, 20 times WeRelate.

[Denis Beauregard]

On Wed, 1 Oct 2014 15:48:03 -0700 (PDT), Enno Borgsteede
<enno...@gmail.com> wrote in soc.genealogy.computing:

>> WeRelate <http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Main_Page> and WikiTree
>> <http://www.wikitree.com/> are good examples of thriving wiki communities.
>
>They look more like niches now, with both FamilySearch and Geni offering similar functionality, and much bigger trees. I don't have figures on FamilySearch, but the tree on Geni is 10 times the size of wikitree's, 20 times WeRelate.

I remember a bot from werelate harvested my own site...

Now I can check how many visitors I have from those sites

In August and September :

geni.com - 87
ancestry - 17
wikitree - 13
werelate - 6

None from familysearch in my log file.

This gives an idea of the size of each site...


Denis

--
Denis Beauregard - généalogiste émérite (FQSG)
Les Français d'Amérique du Nord - www.francogene.com/genealogie--quebec/
French in North America before 1722 - www.francogene.com/quebec--genealogy/
Sur cédérom à 1785 - On CD-ROM to 1785

[singhals via]

Denis Beauregard via wrote:
> On Wed, 1 Oct 2014 15:48:03 -0700 (PDT), Enno Borgsteede
> <enno...@gmail.com> wrote in soc.genealogy.computing:
>
>>> WeRelate<http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Main_Page> and WikiTree
>>> <http://www.wikitree.com/> are good examples of thriving wiki communities.
>>
>> They look more like niches now, with both FamilySearch and Geni offering similar functionality, and much bigger trees. I don't have figures on FamilySearch, but the tree on Geni is 10 times the size of wikitree's, 20 times WeRelate.
>
> I remember a bot from werelate harvested my own site...
>
> Now I can check how many visitors I have from those sites
>
> In August and September :
>
> geni.com - 87
> ancestry - 17
> wikitree - 13
> werelate - 6
>
> None from familysearch in my log file.
>
> This gives an idea of the size of each site...

Well, oui, it does, quantity-wise. No stats will answer the
question of quality, though. :) One visitor with info I
don't have is better than 100 who say "Send me everything on
the Bourbon family ..."

IMO, that is.

Cheryl

[Denis Beauregard]

On Wed, 01 Oct 2014 20:52:47 -0400, singhals via <gen...@rootsweb.com>
wrote in soc.genealogy.computing:

But these visitors come to my site because my site is the source
for information found on these sites and my site is hosting no
primary record. I am using the more accurate databases I know,
but a good searcher should check in the same original sources
I used to be sure I made no mistake in building my site.

[Steve Hayes]

On Wed, 01 Oct 2014 20:41:42 -0400, Denis Beauregard
<denis.b-at-f...@fr.invalid> wrote:

>On Wed, 1 Oct 2014 15:48:03 -0700 (PDT), Enno Borgsteede
><enno...@gmail.com> wrote in soc.genealogy.computing:
>
>>> WeRelate <http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Main_Page> and WikiTree
>>> <http://www.wikitree.com/> are good examples of thriving wiki communities.
>>
>>They look more like niches now, with both FamilySearch and Geni offering similar functionality, and much bigger trees. I don't have figures on FamilySearch, but the tree on Geni is 10 times the size of wikitree's, 20 times WeRelate.
>
>I remember a bot from werelate harvested my own site...
>
>Now I can check how many visitors I have from those sites
>
>In August and September :
>
>geni.com - 87
>ancestry - 17
>wikitree - 13
>werelate - 6
>
>None from familysearch in my log file.
>
>This gives an idea of the size of each site...

I know nothing about werelate, but neither geni.com nor ancestry are wikis,
and nor is FamilySearch.

WikiTree is a wiki, but there are too many hoops to jump through.

[Denis Beauregard]

On Thu, 02 Oct 2014 05:05:17 +0200, Steve Hayes
<haye...@telkomsa.net> wrote in soc.genealogy.computing:

>On Wed, 01 Oct 2014 20:41:42 -0400, Denis Beauregard
><denis.b-at-f...@fr.invalid> wrote:
>
>>On Wed, 1 Oct 2014 15:48:03 -0700 (PDT), Enno Borgsteede
>><enno...@gmail.com> wrote in soc.genealogy.computing:
>>
>>>> WeRelate <http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Main_Page> and WikiTree
>>>> <http://www.wikitree.com/> are good examples of thriving wiki communities.
>>>
>>>They look more like niches now, with both FamilySearch and Geni offering similar functionality, and much bigger trees. I don't have figures on FamilySearch, but the tree on Geni is 10 times the size of wikitree's, 20 times WeRelate.
>>
>>I remember a bot from werelate harvested my own site...
>>
>>Now I can check how many visitors I have from those sites
>>
>>In August and September :
>>
>>geni.com - 87
>>ancestry - 17
>>wikitree - 13
>>werelate - 6
>>
>>None from familysearch in my log file.
>>
>>This gives an idea of the size of each site...
>
>I know nothing about werelate, but neither geni.com nor ancestry are wikis,
>and nor is FamilySearch.

It depends on how you define a wiki ! If you define a wiki as a web
site where anyone may enter anything and the opposite, then geni is
one and the personal trees on ancestry and familysearch are too.

If you define a wiki as having "wiki" in its name, then they are not.

And if you define a wiki as having the wiki software on it, then
wikitree is probably not a wiki.

>WikiTree is a wiki, but there are too many hoops to jump through.

[Steve Hayes]

On Wed, 01 Oct 2014 23:31:03 -0400, Denis Beauregard

In which case, none of them are wikis.

[Enno Borgsteede]

> >And if you define a wiki as having the wiki software on it, then
> >wikitree is probably not a wiki.
>

> In which case, none of them are wikis.

Both WeRelate and WikiTree use MediaWiki software. The MediaWiki logo is visible on the former, and the use on the latter was confirmed to me by staff.

[Enno Borgsteede]

> It depends on how you define a wiki ! If you define a wiki as a web
> site where anyone may enter anything and the opposite, then geni is
> one and the personal trees on ancestry and familysearch are too.

To me, personal looks like opposite to wiki, so I wouldn't call Ancestry a wiki, even though one can invite editors there. The Family Tree on FamilySearch is open, not personal, so that is wiki like.

When you define open in the sense that anyone can edit, merge duplicates, and so forth, WeRelate.org is the only other wiki. Geni and WikiTree have too many restrictions to meet that criterium.

[singhals via]

The problem of having an open tree that anyone and his dog
can change in any way is -- people will change it. This is
*not* universally a good thing, because not all
researchers/changers are competent researchers but everyone
thinks he is compentent, even expert.

Perhaps not me or thee, but others ... ;)

Cheryl

[Tim Powys-Lybbe]

On 1 Oct at 14:56, Justin York via <gen...@rootsweb.com> wrote:

> WeRelate <http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Main_Page> and WikiTree
> <http://www.wikitree.com/> are good examples of thriving wiki
> communities.

They may thrive but I've had a look at a microcosm of the latter and it
has problems:

No source documentation that I could see.

Names wrong or missing

Whole generations omitted altogether.

Certainly I found scores of troubled entries and I could imagine that
there are hundreds if not thousands. It would take ages to go through
them one by one and amend all errors and deficiencies.

Possibly I could drop in a GEDCOM but this would duplicate people, just
like Ancestry and FamilySearch and cause all sorts of confusion.

My view is that the process of creating big collaborative trees is
likely to go wrong and needs some stronger standards and policing to be
of any sensible value.

--
Tim Powys-Lybbe t...@powys.org
for a miscellany of bygones: http://powys.org/

[Ian Goddard]

On 04/10/14 21:21, Tim Powys-Lybbe wrote:
> On 1 Oct at 14:56, Justin York via <gen...@rootsweb.com> wrote:
>
>> WeRelate <http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Main_Page> and WikiTree
>> <http://www.wikitree.com/> are good examples of thriving wiki
>> communities.
>
> They may thrive but I've had a look at a microcosm of the latter and it
> has problems:
>
> No source documentation that I could see.
>
> Names wrong or missing
>
> Whole generations omitted altogether.
>
> Certainly I found scores of troubled entries and I could imagine that
> there are hundreds if not thousands. It would take ages to go through
> them one by one and amend all errors and deficiencies.

I didn't look through as much as you but at first sight it seemed as if
some of it is stuff people found on IGI.

--
Ian

The Hotmail address is my spam-bin. Real mail address is iang
at austonley org uk