User talk:Rlward

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System Rights

Robert: I just realized that I had not given you 'sysop' or 'bureaucrat' rights on the wiki. Sysop rights allows you to delete pages and other administrative tasks. Bureaucrat status allows you to grant similar sysop and bureaucrat rights to other users. If you see pages which need to be deleted, you should now see a delete tab at the top of each page (you may need to log off and back on to see this). To rename a page, simply select the Move tab and type in the new name.

Tdoyle 09:01, 17 January 2006 (CST)

Table converter

Robert: As you move data over, you might want to convert HTML-style tables to wik-style tables. You can copy the source to your clipboard, paste it on this website, and it will provide the modified source for you to place in our wiki. Wiki Table Converter.

Divbox feature

Robert: I have just added a new feature. We can decide to use it or not use it. In any case, it's there when and if we need it. Take a look at Template talk:Divbox. This basically gives us an easy way to add a colored box to any page.

Tim, Tdoyle 15:12, 19 January 2006 (CST)

De Salis Fraud

Robert: I see that you've been adding N.B. sections and other comments on pages containing information that came from the De Salis fraud. I'm thinking that we may need to really let people know about this - in a stronger manner. Take a look at Archive:Phoenix, xvi-xxii and you'll see the warning that I have added at the top. If you'd like to change the wording of this message, just edit Template:De Salis Fraud.

Tim, Tdoyle 18:20, 21 January 2006 (CST)

Warning

Robert:

At the top of the page you are working on (with the N.B. at the top), try this instead of your current divbox:

{{Warning|The information given here does contain some errors. Use with care!}}

Which will produce this:

You can add any text that is appropriate and the image will always be displayed. We can upload a larger version of that image for this purpose if we think it'd be better visually. If you prefer, you can also stay with your current method.

Tim, Tdoyle

Userboxes

Robert: Take a look at my user page, above my lineages. These are called userboxes and we can create them as we think of them. It's a great way to get people interested in working with their homepages, and telling others about themselves. I've created one for descendants of John & Henry, and we can add them for other immigrants or groups, locations that members currently live (countries or states), other interests, genealogical certifications, etc.

- Tim Doyle 09:18, 26 January 2006 (CST)

Editing the Main Page

Robert: It looks as though you've already fixed the main page, but I suspect you may not realize it. On that page, I have the following:

===[[Miscellaneous]]===
{{:Miscellaneous}}

• The first line is fairly simple - start a 3rd-level heading (the equal signs) and make the text be a link to the page named 'Miscellaneous'.
• The second line might be a bit confusing - it basically says go grab the contents of the page named 'Miscellaneous' and display them here, as if I had typed them here originally. That's what the {{ and }} characters do. This is how the templates work. By default, these curly braces look for the page you designate in the Template: namespace. Because I wanted to grab the Miscellaneous page from the main namespace, I had to put the : in front of it. In this way, we can display the contents of the Misc. page both on the Misc page as well as on the main page, and only have to edit it once. Why do we have to have it in both places? This goes back to that whole discussion many years ago where I was in favor of a simplified main page, but others wanted the descriptions. We can break this to make it easier to edit by placing the items on both pages, but we'll have to remember to edit both.

- Tim Doyle 21:13, 27 January 2006 (CST)

Citations and Family template

Robert:

The new citation functionality that I was looking into (and had mentioned on my list) turned out to be for a future, as yet unreleased version of the software running this site, and as such, we cannot yet use it. I propose we continue with the current method of citing sources. We can always re-examine this in the future if we choose to, but there's no reason to stop from moving forward now.

I have created a Family Group Record Format page where I have started to add style guidelines as well as a template format that we can use for the Family pages. Take a look at the discussion tab on that article as well - that's where I suggest we discuss issues in the Family namespace.

Thanks,

- Tim Doyle 08:50, 2 February 2006 (CST)

GEDCOMs

Robert:

I have made great progress on getting the GEDCOM data on the wiki. Take a look at John Whitney in Allan Green's database and let me know what you think. Keep in mind that this is a beta version, and that not all of the links presented on those pages work properly, but the links to other people do.

- Tim Doyle 09:59, 3 February 2006 (CST)

Your database

Robert: Take a look at John Whitney in Robert Ward's database. I've noticed a few issues, but it's at least there.

- Tim Doyle 18:56, 3 February 2006 (CST)

Phoenix Format

Robert:

A few questions regarding the Phoenix import:

• Do all pages include the title you currently show at the top of the page?
• Do all pages include the title "Whitney Family" inside the box?

Thanks!

Phoenix Format, part 2

Robert:

I am soon going to take that sample page and start to extract certain repetitive formatting type information out into templates and add the calls to the templates in the page. This will simplify the pages themselves making for easier editing by users, and will put the formatting code in one area, so that if we decide to change it in the future, we can make the change in one place instead of thousands of individual pages. Your information about the headings is very helpful - now I know that I need to do it like I did the Pierce headings, sending in three parameters.

- Tim Doyle 11:07, 15 February 2006 (CST)

Phoenix

Robert:

Take a look at the first page of the Phoenix Test located at Phoenix Test. As you can see, I pulled out all of the formatting code into templates, making the actual pages a lot more readable. Can you verify that the results look correct? Does this format make sense to you?

Thanks,

- Tim Doyle 08:48, 16 February 2006 (CST)

Phoenix

Thank you - I think adding these templates really cleaned up the page and made it easier for editors to understand. It also reduces the chances for typos to throw the whole page out of whack. Feel free to change this page or the templates as desired. Although the test page will eventually be deleted, the templates are there to stay, so it's important that we fine tune them to get them right.

Are the center items ALWAYS italicized? If so, we can change the template to add that. If not, we'll need to change the call to the template to send in the italics when needed.

When pages start with a continuation of an entry, we can either just add a new entry and not pass any parameters to the template for the left and right columns, or we can create a new template called PhoenixEntryContinued and just pass the text for the middle section.

We should probably seperate out the horizontal rule and the title for the new family - so that we can call when needed. This will solve the issue of a page starting with a family group, but no horizontal line needed.

We should probably add a new template to start a new generation, and call it when needed.

I am going to go make these changes, but I'll probably need you to modify the contents of the generation template once I create it.

- Tim Doyle 10:40, 16 February 2006 (CST)

Excellent Progress!

Robert:

You're making excellent progress! I've been very busy with work and haven't had a chance to really sit down and make much progress here other than a page here and there. I'm leaving for California this afternoon, returning Friday, so I probably won't make much progress here before next weekend.

I made a change last night and converted the page Archive:Whitney Whistler, Volume 1, Number 2 that had been entered with <pre> to instead use <p id="Plaintext">. This makes the page look like it's in a pre section, but allows the use of links. As we start to add links from these source material pages to the families, this will become important. No need to go back and convert all of these pages, but we'll need to keep this in mind as we start adding links. Also, this method is a bit fussier than the pre method. It allows the paragraph section to work, but it also opens up other things to start working as well. On this page, I had to 'fix' a line which started with a '#'.

I think I found a way to add my talk page to my signature - if so, you'll see it below.

Thanks,

- Tim Doyle | Talk to me 07:33, 21 February 2006 (CST)

Reverted edit on Thomas' page

Robert:

I saw your two edits and your rollback on the Thomas Whitney page. Were you aware that the rollback feature rolls back multiple edits of a single author? Both of your edits (the descriptive changes for the ancestry as well as the spacing changes were reverted. Was this what you were intending? If not, the bext way to roll back a single change like this is to go to the history page, select the date/time of the version that you want to keep, edit it, and save it. That will make that version the most recent version.

- Tim Doyle | Talk to me 10:05, 28 February 2006 (CST)

Change to Pierce

Robert:

Take a look at this edit: Pierce Edit. Deb Whitney has added a few dates to a section in Pierce. We obviously don't want to lose this information, but I also know that adding it to Pierce is the wrong thing to do. I plan to roll back this change, but where should we record her additions?

Thanks,

- Tim Doyle | Talk to me 14:55, 1 March 2006 (CST)

Errors in Pierce (and elsewhere)

Robert:

I think the idea of adding a warning graphic is a good one. It took us a long time to figure out how to make a graphic image a link, and it's not pretty, but here's how to do it:

- Tim Doyle | Talk to me 10:33, 2 March 2006 (CST)

A better way

Robert:

How's this instead:

We can make a more generic one that can take a page name I think...

- Tim Doyle | Talk to me 11:33, 2 March 2006 (CST)

Printable Version

Blech! That's nasty! I think I know how to fix it though. If I remember correctly, the software has a 'template' for the printable version, so a few tweaks to that should solve things (I hope).

- Tim Doyle | Talk to me 18:38, 2 March 2006 (CST)

Henry Whitney

Robert:

I have added some information to the bottom of the page Henry Whitney's English Ancestry and I thought you would be interested.

Tim

Printable Version

Robert:

Thanks for reminding me about this. I have found where this is being generated, and it appears to be a one line change. I am now working to determine how best to fix it.

- Tim Doyle | Talk to me 10:10, 15 March 2006 (CST)

Printable Version - Fixed

Robert: This has been solved. You may need to force a reload of the page to see the change.

- Tim Doyle | Talk to me 10:15, 15 March 2006 (CST)

Templates & Under Construction

Robert:

I've noticed the new 'Under Construction' banner that you've been adding to the top of the page that you are currently working on. While my guess is that it's not that difficult to add and remove this from the page when you create and finish, I thought this might be a good time to explain a little more about templates. Templates are simply pages in the template namespace - that is - they start with "Template:". If you have content that you need to add to multiple pages, or content which you want to make easier to add to pages, then you can put this content in a template and then include that template on your page by adding {{TemplateName}} to your page(s).

For example... I just created a page named Template:Uc and placed in it the code that you have been adding to the top of your pages to mark them as being under construction. Now all you need to do is to add {{uc}} to the top of your page, which should be easier than typing or copying & pasting the full text.

- Tim Doyle | Talk to me 07:12, 16 March 2006 (CST)

SLC Trip

Robert:

I got your messages and will look at the printable version issue again. I am currently making backups and will send additional information soon.

I am currently looking at the original Isleworth records and they are highly damaged at the bottom of the book. It is possible that the missing children and even perhaps John's marriage to Elinor are there, but we are unable to read the records.

I have made copies of many records and should have some great stuff to put up on the site.

- Tim Doyle | Talk to me 11:03, 21 March 2006 (CST)

Elinor

Interesting... I've found two Elinors baptized during the right time period...

• 31 (Nov?) 1597 Elinor Nichols daughter of (Henry?) Nichols
• 2 Apr 1598 Elinor Baull daughter of Willyam Baull (Bull)

- Tim Doyle | Talk to me 11:17, 21 March 2006 (CST)

Bull / Baull

Robert:

I seem to remember something about a Bull / Baull woman in the information that Paul reed and I were corresponding about. Could you check the file that I sent to you and see what the name of the woman was that ran the inn that the Christopher Marlowe was killed in?

Thank you!

- Tim Doyle | Talk to me 11:52, 21 March 2006 (CST)

A number of issues

Robert:

This message is an attempt to catch up with a number of items that you have mentioned on my talk page...

• Why you don't need a template for Under Construction: I understand completely - sounds as though you have a great system that's working for you. I didn't want to imply that you should use a template for this, just wanted to make sure that you knew that you could.

• Backups: I am currently using the free software MySQL Administrator to back up the SQL databases containing our data. These backup files are then kept on my personal machine here. Since the WRG server is also in my home, the backups are not currently off-site, though I could certainly move them to some machine which is. I am also working to prepare a full system image of the server to reduce downtime should the server ever crash. In addition to the WRG databases, there would be a lot of additional infrastructure which would need to be set up in order to return the site to functionality. With an image, this would make all of that setup a breeze.

• Printable version: I think I made some improvements, and it's actually looking very good in Firefox, but now that I look at it in Explorer, I still see some issues. If you could describe exactly what you're seeing, that would help me to make sure I am not missing something.

• St. Mary Aldermary Changes: Thank you! With this format, there's no longer any questioning - everyone can see exactly what's in the register. Of course, this one only had 3 entries! The other ones will take a bit more to get in place, but I think it'll be worth it.

Now that you have had time to really use and to see the power of the wiki software, how well is it living up to your expectations and vision?

Thanks!

- Tim Doyle | Talk to me 18:47, 27 March 2006 (CST)

Isleworth Records

Robert:

I can confirm that the Isleworth parish registers, as early as 1573 and probably earlier, start the year on March 21st, not January 1st. Although the original records do not indicate "1575/6", they do have the year starting on 3/21. Because of this, the date is listed as 26 Feb 1575, but to us would be considered 26 Feb 1576. Thus, I think the date should properly be listed as "26 Feb 1575[/6]"

- Tim Doyle | Talk to me 08:15, 28 March 2006 (CST)

Replies to your Questions

Importing Status

Congratulations on the completion of the projects you have been working on - we're making great progress! Phoenix is next for me, I just need to find an afternoon or evening that I can devote to writing and testing the conversion code for it.

As far as the photos go, they all need to be imported, but I noticed that several of them were very very large and need to be resized, and some need to be trimmed. Do you know how to do that?

Unattached Families

Robert - How about adding categories with names such as "Unattached Families" or "Uncertain Identifications"? I'm not sure about the category names here, but I think categories would be a good way to go. I can then use the recentpages extension to automatically / dynamically display all pages with this category identification, so we'd have the best of both worlds.

It Finally Happened!

Robert - regarding the case where two individuals of the same name also have the same birth and death information, you're right - we need a way to identify them further. My suggestion would be to either add "(of Gorham, ME)" and "(of Westminster and Fitchburg, MA)" or perhaps their spouse names. If additional information is obtained in the future to differentiate them, we can rename the pages to a more standardized name.

Sources in Footnotes

Robert - I agree - I don't think that we should cite each and every source for an event on the family pages. Let's just cite the primary / best source(s). We should still link the other items to the family page, but we don't need to have reciprocal links for every case. We can always use the 'What links here' feature to find those other sources if needed.

- Tim Doyle | Talk to me 08:24, 11 April 2006 (CDT)

Moses Whitney

Robert:

I've noticed that sometimes you delete pages that have already been created for a given family. I didn't think much about it, but I see that you're currently updating the family of Moses Whitney, and I suspect that when you complete the links, that you will delete the page that I originally created. While this results in all of the links being correct, it completely erases the editing history of the pages before you created the page with the new name. This history could be valuable at some point in the future. I'm not sure if you are doing this because it is easier than renaming the existing page and then updating, or if you are just unaware of the 'correct' way to update the name of a page. Let me know your thoughts.

Thanks!

- Tim Doyle | Talk to me 19:51, 11 April 2006 (CDT)

Renaming Pages

Robert:

Here's the scoop...

To effectively rename a page, simply click the move tab at the top, then type in the new name that you would like it to have. This moves (renames) the existing page, and all of the editing history is saved with the page. In addition, a new page is automatically created with the old page name, and this new page contains a redirect to the new page name. This means that all existing links to the old page name will get to the new page name without any problems.

Personally, I like to 'clean up' after I move/rename a page. To do this, I navigate to the redirect page that was created and then use the what links here feature to determine which pages are linking to the old name. After I update all of them to point to the new name, I simply delete the redirect page. Note that this step is optional - it is perfectly ok to just leave the redirect page in place.

I think it would be better to have redirect pages on the site rather than losing editing history.

- Tim Doyle | Talk to me 08:32, 12 April 2006 (CDT)

Real User Names

Robert:

There is no way to obtain a list of real user names via the Wiki interface, but I can obtain that by accessing the database directly. I've just emailed you the current list.

- Tim Doyle | Talk to me 08:23, 28 April 2006 (CDT)

What Links here / Photos

Hi Robert:

Here's what's going on here....

For each image uploaded, there is

1. The picture itself
2. A page which both describes and includes the picture

If you click on the image, you are taken to the page which describes that picture. Look at the section at the bottom of the page. It lists the pages which link to the image (which is a valid list). When you select 'What Links Here', you're asking for the list of pages which link not to the picture, but to the page that describes the picture, and there are none currently. This may not appear to be correct at first, but once you understand that the picture and that page that describes it are not one and the same, it makes sense.

If my explanation doesn't make sense, please let me know.

Thanks,

- Tim Doyle | Talk to me 09:43, 2 May 2006 (CDT)

New Family Listing

Robert:

Take a look at Whitney Family Groups and let me know what you think of the new family listing. Also, take a look at the bottom of Archives.

- Tim Doyle | Talk to me 09:28, 3 May 2006 (CDT)

Locality Pages

Robert:

Thanks for the comments - I've been meaning to get these listings working and finally had the time to get the new extensions loaded.

Take a look at User:Tdoyle/Sandbox to see what else we can do with this functionality. I have basically called the 'RecentPages' extension and asked it to display all pages in the Family namespace with a category of Vermont, and then did the same thing for the archives. Imagine the possibilities! We could have a page for each State and perhaps even each county or location, though I wouldn't recommend setting all of those up yet. There may be a way that we can have just one page and allow the user to select which state they'd like to view.

- Tim Doyle | Talk to me 12:37, 3 May 2006 (CDT)

Listing of Pages

Robert:

Yes, it's basically the same functionality, but presented in a much better and more customizable fashion. Take a look at the Category:Vermont page now. Note that you can link to a category page without actually adding the page you're placing the link on to that category by this syntax: [[:Category: Vermont]].

- Tim Doyle | Talk to me 13:35, 3 May 2006 (CDT)

Locality Subcategory

Actually, the subcategory is something that I added just today (at least to the Vermont category page). I still have plans to add that to the new page, but I haven't been able to get it to work just yet. Have you played with subcategories before, or did you just see it there after I added it today?

- Tim Doyle | Talk to me 13:44, 3 May 2006 (CDT)

Pierce Error?

Robert:

While importing the page Archive:Who were Calvin and Haynes Whitney, I noticed that the Pierce page does not mention the potential problem. Should a note be added in Pierce?

- Tim Doyle | Talk to me 17:56, 6 May 2006 (CDT)

Census Indexes

I am currently just bringing over the old pages, but my plans include going back and doing additional searches to see if we have missed any. I've also noticed that we have duplicates in our indices, as well as other things such as tax records, etc. These can be great alternatives to missing tax records, but I think they need to be called out more prominently than they are currently. I think there's a whole project around updating the census pages, but right now I'm just working on getting what we have migrated over.

- Tim Doyle | Talk to me 09:03, 8 May 2006 (CDT)

WRG-Robot

Robert:

You may have seen in the Recent Changes logs that I have been experimenting with a 'bot' under the account WRG-Robot. This is simply a set of programs which can be run to do automated tasks on MediaWiki-based websites. For example, data placed into a text file with certain keywords to designate where each page starts, ends, and what the title should be for each can be quickly imported into multiple pages on the site. It can also add, change, or remove categories from pages, make edits to all or a set of pages, etc. In order to do these edits, we must identify a unique pattern for it to follow.

There's nothing that you have to do with this information, but if you find yourself doing repetitive work of any type that you think might be able to be automated, please let me know and we can discuss how and if we can accomplish it with much less effort.

This is half of the effort to get Phoenix imported. The next step will be to analyze the existing pages and convert them to the new format, and add the necessary start/stop/pagename tags.

- Tim Doyle | Talk to me 10:04, 16 May 2006 (CDT)

Family History

I'm not sure where this should be added to the family history page. Can you add for me?

John-1 WHITNEY, m. (1) Elinor ----- ..Richard-2 WHITNEY, m. Martha COLDHAM ....Ebenezer-3 WHITNEY, m. Anna ----- ......Enoch-4 WHITNEY, m. Thankful PARKE ........Hezekiah-5 WHITNEY, m. Olive KNIGHT ..........Elisha-6 WHITNEY, m. Rachel FROST ............Marshall Frost-7 WHITNEY, m. Huldah Roxanna WARNER ..............Jason Frost-8 WHITNEY, m. Ellen Lucena TYLER ................Andrew Clarence-9 WHITNEY, m. Amelia Newman PARRISH ..................Ernest Frost-10 WHITNEY, m. Elizabeth Cargill BRUCE ....................Marian Elizabeth-11 WHITNEY, m. Albert Edward DURRELL ......................Albert Ernest DURRELL, m. Martha Helen BREIT

Thanks, Al Durrell

Family History

Thanks! Al Durrell

New Discussion Forum

Robert:

I've started a new discussion forum at Discussion Forum - Website Discussion so we can try our back and forth communications there. I have just started a discussion thread for the medieval family group pages which we have just started on today.

Thanks!

- Tim Doyle | Talk to me 21:38, 18 June 2006 (CDT)

Whitneys of Whitney

Robert:

Did you see: Whitneys of Whitney?

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 10:24, 23 June 2006 (CDT)

Photograph

Robert:

What would you think about uploading your personal photograph from your professional site and including it on your user page?

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 11:34, 25 June 2006 (CDT)

Conversion

Getting closer! Take a look at this (long) page: User:Tdoyle/Sandbox2.

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 19:53, 26 June 2006 (CDT)

Pierce Sample

Thank you for the comments.

The pagenames and title have been corrected to the correct format (Family:Last, First (dates)).

Titles will be a problem as that's how Pierce has them. I'll have to see if I can pick them out one by one.

The huge narrative is one long paragraph, surprisingly!

Regarding the counties: Yes, it'll be much harder to add in the counties. Also, what county shoudl I add - the county att he time of the event, or the current-day county?

Some of the locations have issues, including the "St." instance that you cited. More work is needed here, but there will be undoubtedly some manual cleanup needed.

Here is my current list of issues to be dealt with:

1. Place categories don't always work
2. Add generation superscripts where needed
3. Indent children of female children
4. Hyphenation not always working
5. SubjectName can sometimes be a link to an error page
6. Sometimes periods after abbreviations can indicate the end of sentence too
7. Wives name(s) need bolding
8. Add Childrens' surnames
9. Done, but some errors - Pagename needs to be Family:Last, First (dates)
10. Weird Family at the top of the output file

Two Columns of Children

Yes, I remember that from the original transcription project, and saw it on one of my passes through the current results. It'll have to be a hand-edit situation.

I have now perfected the pagenames - designations are gone as are several other defects in my original routines.

It's getting closer!

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 10:11, 27 June 2006 (CDT)

Regarding your comments

Titles are done, but they weren't easy - took me several hours this am to get them right. I dealt with titles with periods and names with periods (Wm., middle initials, etc.); titles without periods; titles such as "Ph. D."; improper formatting; improper spelling (Witney, Whtney); and the links to the error page.

You said "I have been changing these links, adding the word "[NOTE]" ... I'll get started right away on finishing that job." I guess I should mention that I am using the files originally imported to the wiki, not the current versions. Obtaining the current versions is possible, but would add another potentially time-consuming project to my list. I had envisioned needing to manually go through the Error page so that adjustments could be made to these family pages (rather than just linking to an explanation). Thoughts?

You said "The surname is ALWAYS Whitney." - not true, see ALBERT APPLETON (WHITNEY) FAY as one of a couple of examples.

Regarding the email you just received - there have been many, many changes since then. Would you like a fresh one so you're not reporting things that have already been fixed?

Regarding the counties: I'll have to think on this one a bit.

Thanks!

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 10:27, 27 June 2006 (CDT)

More Pierce

Robert:

I've just emailed a new names file with corrected date ranges. I found several defects int he way I was parsing them before.

Footnotes in the original - we'll probably have to correct these manually. It is likely that by the time I reach a footnote that I have already completed and saved the family they are referring to. There aren't too many of these, are there?

Child's name is a link - I'll look into this. Do you have an example?

De-hyphenation not working well - watch to see if you are only seeing this problem in the parent text, only in the children text, or both. Please send examples of problem areas.

Thanks!

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 18:43, 27 June 2006 (CDT)

More Pierce

How about just deleting footnotes entirely? - Done.

Child's name is a link:

The two examples you cited are having problems due to the link to the error page. If I remove the link, it should work fine, but the link (and all other links to errors in the children section) will be gone. If I let it go as-is, we have an obvious issue which we would need to deal with manually.

De-hyphenation:

These problems are also caused by the links to the error page. In a 'normal' non-link situation, I am looking for a dash at the end of a line, and then I merge it with the following line. In cases such as these, I would need to recognize the links, find the dash inside the text of the link, try to merge it with the next line, but that has a link too, so I would then need to compare the two links to see if they're going to the same place and if so work to combine the text of the two links into one large link. As you can see, this would be difficult, subject to bugs, and probably more trouble than just manually fixing the issues post-import.

See Joseph3 Whitney (1651-1702) [John2, John1], end of children. There two children are somehow conflated.

This error is caused by the fact that a link to the errors page has been added to the roman numeral, causing my pattern matching to fail. Do you remember if you have added many such links on the roman numerals such as this, or can we safely fix this after the import?

Same Ruth4 Whitney as above, her narrative seems to be messed up somehow.

I will look into this one.

Thank you for looking at these! Anythign we find now will save us time later, though we will need to balance the effort now (in the code) vs. the effort later (manual fixes) as I have done here. Let me know if you feel that any of the above shuld be fixed pre-import.

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 08:27, 28 June 2006 (CDT)

Ruth

Robert:

I've found the defect that caused Ruth's section to be broken into two. I thought I'd show you the power and complexity of one small line in the program I am writing.

Here is the offending line that caused the problem:

 if ( /\s{2,5}\d{1,4}\.\s+(\w+).\s+(.*)/ ) {

It basically says, if we find two to five spaces, followed by one to four numbers, followed by a period, followed by one or more spaces, followed by one or more alphanumeric characters (such as roman numerals), followed by a period, followed by one or more spaces, followed by anything else, then do something (the commands for which are not listed here).

This is basically looking for the children start lines in the form:

    2371. x.     PAUL, b. Mar. 28,...

There are two defects in this command, one which caused Ruth's problem, and another which I have just noticed while typing this explanation.

The line that caused the problem did so becaused it matched when it shouldn't have.

                  1690. He was dismissed from Watertown in the church at Wor-

Now there are certainly more than two to five spaces before we reach the one to four numbers here, but that's the defect - I didn't tell it that the match had to start at the beginning of the line! Once I did that, all of the children stopped working. I then realized that 2-5 spaces was a guess, and now I was expecting accuracy, so I changed the command to:

 if ( /^\s{4,7}\d{1,4}\.\s+(\w+).\s+(.*)/ ) {

What's the last defect? The period after the roman numerals isn't 'escaped', so instead of matching a period, it is matching any character at all. This defect also played into Ruth's problem. The final pattern matching scheme is therefore:

 if ( /^\s{4,7}\d{1,4}\.\s+(\w+)\.\s+(.*)/ ) {

Powerful, but complex, isn't it!

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 08:46, 28 June 2006 (CDT)

Indented Children

Robert:

Take a look at User:Tdoyle/Sandbox3. Was this what you were looking for for indenting the children of the daughters?

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 09:38, 28 June 2006 (CDT)

Remaining Issues

Good morning Robert!

Thank you for the additional abbreviations - I'll add them right away.

Yes, Sandbox4 is discouraging. The number in front C1, etc. is the number in Pierce and is what my program is using as an index. If you or Andaleen could update the links with good, valid links to the correct person (while leaving the index), that would really really help. I started to try to do this in Excel by exporting both that list as well as all of the current family pages, but I'm getting confused as to who is who. I think the bext way would just be a walk through the pages, grabbing each link. This list could be pulled off the site into a text file for easier changes perhaps and then put back when complete. Is this something that you or Andaleen could help with? If not, I'll get to it.

I was pulling my hair out with the wives last night. In order to include the wives on the 'Children of' line and in order to bold them, I have to identify them in the text. In order to do that, I have to narrow down my range using a starting point (after 'married') and an ending point. I'm having difficulties with the ending points, and all sorts of men that the Whitneys did business with, etc. are currently being seen as 'wives'. I then thought I could use a period as my end marker, which worked in 75% of the cases, but failed in others. When I investigated, I found that some dates had not been properly converted and still contained periods. This was because the date spanned from one line to the next. When I tried to move the date conversion from a point in the program when lines had not yet been joined together to a point after they had, the program failed as a certain combination of text in the combined string was breaking the parser. I'm going to give that issue another shot this morning, but if I can't fix it, I may just revert and give up on grabbing and bolding the wives.

Other remaining issue is the counties, which I have not yet looked into.

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 07:23, 29 June 2006 (CDT)

Status

Robert:

Here's what I am currently thinking... We have a holiday weekend approaching. My birthday is on the 4th, and I have about 50 guests coming this Saturday as well as a few out-of-town guests. I would really like to get these pages imported today, or I may not get back to them for a while. With that in mind, I am seriously considering putting on hold the date issue, the wife bolding issue, and the locality (county) issues. I can deal with these later, using the robot approach, and these can be done without being intertwined with the current effort.

That means that the only thing left to do is to update the 5 generation links on sandbox4. I have started to organize these to make it easier to update the links and have started to go through each section. If you edit just a section instead of the whole page, we're less likely to step on each other.

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 08:17, 29 June 2006 (CDT)

Ready?

Robert:

I finished going through sandbox4 and all items are blue or have been marked as having not yet been created. I've also accounted for a number of individuals who I've adjusted parentage for, though I did not do an exhaustive search. As far as I know, I am ready to go when you say you're ready.

I can send another sample output file if you'd like, or I can just go.

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 20:05, 29 June 2006 (CDT)

It's Running

I've just started the program. As soon as it finishes, I'll trim out the first 5 generations (saving them in case we want to add in those few that are missing). Once that is done, I'll start up the TA Robot!

Oh - as far as the conglomeration goes, I think I'll have to just leave that for manual/robot cleaning I think.

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 21:10, 29 June 2006 (CDT)

First Batch

Robert:

I've uploaded the first 36 families. If you look in the Recent Changes list, some of them won't show until you hit the 'show bots' link. I set the WRG-Robot account to 'bot' status halfway through. Start reviewing and if you see a major issue, contact me.

Thanks!

Tim

Dates

That happens because the dates are split between lines in the original. I attempted to fix, but that caused more problems than it was worth. I can always have the bot clean that up afterwards.

It's going fast, isn't it!

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 21:37, 29 June 2006 (CDT)

Oooollllddd

Take a look at the end of the last paragraph - it says he died in that year, but apparently is referring to someone else.

The program stops when it hits a page which already exists. When that happens, I am making note of the page on Sandbox4 so we can manually merge later.

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 21:50, 29 June 2006 (CDT)

Andaleen

Does Andaleen know about this project? We should probably let her know so she doesn't have to import any more of these, or at least knows to merge and not create.

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 21:57, 29 June 2006 (CDT)

Duplicate Page Names overwriting

Good catch!

I'm going to keep going, but I can later generate a list of these problems and go back and correct them.

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 22:16, 29 June 2006 (CDT)

Uploading

Well, the upload has now completed! I'm heading off to bed, and I asume you're no longer around either. I need to review where we're at and what I need to do to fix the page overwrite issue, so please do not move any pages yet (that will complicate any fix I might come up with). If you want to jump in to something, all of the 5 generation pages need to be linked to the newly created 6th generation pages.

I'll also figure out which 5 gen pages I should upload and do that in the morning as well.

Thanks Robert! Great teamwork!

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 23:33, 29 June 2006 (CDT)

Pierce Import Issues

Robert:

Please see Pierce Conversion Project. I have programatically scanned the file created by my program and have identified all of the duplicate page names. I've also created sections for the issues which you have identified. Let's add the issues that we find here. Once we identify issues, I will investigate to find a cause, which will hopefully lead to a solution. Then I can determine if a robot or manual fix is appropriate.

Thanks!

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 08:34, 30 June 2006 (CDT)

Mass Edits

Robert:

Although this approach probably won't work for your current 'Sewing Together' project, I wanted to alert you to something that I think the bot can do rather easily, and I would like to try it at some point.

Let's say you have a pattern that you would like to change - for example, someone's lineage was imported incorrectly, and we need to modify it for each of that person's descendants. Let's say John Whitney had been imported and his lineage on all of his descendant's pages incorrectly listed his father as Moses instead of Isaiah.

We could say that we wanted to replace each instance of this:

[[Family:Whitney, John (1698-1765)|John]]<sup>4</sup>, [[Family:Whitney, Isaiah (1671-1712)|Isaiah]]<sup>3</sup>, [[Family:Whitney, Thomas (1627-1719)|Thomas]]<sup>2</sup>,

with this:

[[Family:Whitney, John (1698-1765)|John]]<sup>4</sup>, [[Family:Whitney, Moses (1655-a1729)|Moses]]<sup>3</sup>, [[Family:Whitney, Richard (1624-a1691)|Richard]]<sup>2</sup>, 

Running that conversion across all Family pages should catch and correct all of his descendant's pages. The next time you identify something like this, please let me know. I'd like to try it to see how well it works. This could be a big time-saver.

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 09:24, 4 July 2006 (CDT)

Pierce Project Page Collisions

Robert:

It looks as though at some point we collided with each other on the Pierce Project page edits and the Misc. Section was deleted. With heavy multi-user edits, the following pointers will help to prevent this:

1. If you edit a section of the page and the incorrect section is displayed in the edit window, back up, refresh the page, and try again.
2. If you attempt to save and a message is displayed indicating that there has been an edit conflict, be very very careful and read the message that is displayed. If you save at that point, one of the edits will be overwritten.

Thanks! It looks like we're making great progress!

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 10:58, 5 July 2006 (CDT)

Misc

Robert:

The comments at the top of the recently imported pages are an artifact of the import process. Although they do not show up on the displayed page, they are unnecessary and might confuse people who edit these pages in the future. As I edit pages, I have been trying to remember to remove these comments. Feel free to do so as well.

<!-- '''Family:Whitney, James (1816-1889)''' -->

It looks as though quite a few of our lineage break issues are a result of the alpha ID numbers. It's too bad I didn't think of this before we imported - could have saved us a lot of work!

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 08:48, 6 July 2006 (CDT)

Further Annoyances

I can only imagine the painstaking process that Pierce had to go through to put his book together - gathering the data, putting it together manually, creating a numbering system as additional information arrived by mail, causing him to have to decide whether to start over or to squeeze in the new information using these alternate numbering schemes. Although an annoyance, I suppose we should be happy that we can so easily change things on-the-fly.

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 10:17, 6 July 2006 (CDT)

Location Categories

Robert:

I am beginning to think about how I will handle the location categories using a bot. Here's what I am thinking:

• Load an array of locations (based upon your geographic index)
• Loop through all Family pages
  • Load the current page
  • Locate all existing catagories on the page, store them in a list, and remove them from the page contents.
  • PERHAPS: Loop through all locations in the master array to see if any others exist which weren't caught in the import
  • PERHAPS: Somehow catch locations that have two words, such as 'Lake Placid' and fix them in the list
  • Loop through all categories in the list
    • Look up location in the array of locations
    • Remove existing category from the list and add in the new one (which includes the county)
    • Add the county category
  • Sort all categories in the list
  • Add list of new categories to the bottom of the page
  • Save the page

While doing this, I could also remove the comment lines. I'd rather not make a full pass of edits just for the comments - each edit makes the database larger, so combining such edits will keep our database size down.

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 10:27, 6 July 2006 (CDT)

Census Records on Family Group pages

Robert:

I am starting to think about how we could facilitate the identification / linking of census records to the family pages. We could just include references to the various enumerations within the text of the family, and that would be the traditional route. However, it seems as though that would be difficult to visually see who had been identified, what was left to be identified, etc. Take a look at User:Tdoyle/Sandbox2 to see one suggestion of how we might handle this. Adding this section with appropriate census years to be identified could be handled via the bot and then populated manually.

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 10:51, 6 July 2006 (CDT)

Mass Changes

Robert:

I have just completed the following mass changes using the bot:

• "Chas. " -> "Charles "
• "Fred'k " -> "Frederick "
• "Fred'K " -> "Frederick "
• "Geo. " -> "George "
• "Jas. " -> "James "
• "Jos. " -> "Joseph "
• "Thos. " -> "Thomas "
• "Wm. " -> "William "
• "WM. " -> "William "

If you find any other such abbreviations, please let me know and I will correct them as well. If you find any issues with the above, please let me know.

Thanks!

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 07:09, 7 July 2006 (CDT)

Auto Lineage Corrections

Robert:

Go to recent changes and select 'Show bot edits'. See the recent edits there correcting the links to Joshua? This is so much faster than manually fixing such issues. Feel free to send me any such change requests. Also, did you notice Mike Poston created a page for Jabez Whitney? Woo hooo!

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 10:06, 7 July 2006 (CDT)

Pierce Places

Robert:

I have now generated a proposed list of places to be converted on the family pages and have placed it on Pierce Conversion Project - Place List. Please review this list and let me know if you see any issues.

Note that I do intend to add category links to the "county, state" as well as the "city, county, state".

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 09:35, 9 July 2006 (CDT)

Places

Robert:

If there are any changes which would be solved more easily by making a programmatical change and re-running the script I wrote to create the page, then any changes you've made to that page would be lost. At some point, when we've ironed out any major issues, then editing that page would be appropriate. Feel free to add comments at the top of that page through for any items found.

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 09:47, 9 July 2006 (CDT)

Whitneys of Clifford

Robert:

While putting together a page for the Whitneys of Clifford, I think I have stumbled across a piece of information that lends substantial backing to the thought that John Whitney of Gorsington, head of the Clifford branch, was indeed John Whitney, second son of Robert Whitney of Whitney. See the Origin section for details. I'm interested in your feedback.

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 11:58, 9 July 2006 (CDT)

James Whitney

Robert:

Could you check out Family:Whitney, Isaac (1770-1817)? According to Pierce, the son James was born in Middlesex Co., NY and d.s.p. 1847. However, he is currently linked to a James Watkins Whitney, b. Italy, NY, son of Fisher Whitney. This doesn't appear to be a correct identification.

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 20:14, 11 July 2006 (CDT)

Never mind - I've figured it out. On p. 241 of Pierce, James Watkins Whitney was given the number 1713 in error. He should be number 1714. An error in 1895....

Upgrades

Robert:

I wanted to give some background on a few upgrades to the website that I plan to make:

• Upgrade from MediaWiki version 1.5.4 (outdated) to 1.5.8 - COMPLETE
• Upgrade from MediaWiki v1.5.8 to v1.6.8 (major underlying database change, first attempt at this ran into problems, attempting to work out now)
• Upgrade from MediaWiki v1.6.8 to v1.7.1 - May or may not do this at this time. Might give us additional features, but the 1.7 branch is fairly new and may still contain defects.
• Install new CreateArticle extension, which could allow us to implement templates for adding extracts for census families, etc.

Nothing that you need to do, other than to watch for and follow the red site notices at the top of the pages.

Thanks!

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 11:43, 15 July 2006 (CDT)

Enhanced Capabilities

Robert:

I have been working on some advanced capabilities to make it much easier for new users to create family group pages. Instead of dropping them into an editing form full of strange formatting characters, I envision presenting them with a form to fill out. They enter the information and then click a button to save it, and a properly formatted family page is generated.

Although it is still far from polished, I do have a working prototype. Take a look at User:Tdoyle/Sandbox3 and try filling it out. When you click the Submit button, you are then shown an edit screen with all of the data you entered filled in. In this way you can see how it works without saving dummy pages on the site. If you look at the contents of User:Tdoyle/Sandbox3, you will see that it is simply an HTML style form, which we can format any way we'd like. When the submit button is selected, it sends the information to a new page/routine called Special:CreateArticle, the code for which I installed yesterday. This code loads up a template, in this case Template:Family Starter, and simply plugs the information in. We can adjust Template:Family Starter in any way we'd like as well. We can use this same feature to allow users to input other data as well, such as census extracts, etc. I am going to continue to tweak and improve this, but would be interested in any comments you might have.

Thanks!

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 09:36, 16 July 2006 (CDT)

Blank White page using form creation page

That's what happens when a program ends unexpectedly - it doesn't return any results whatsoever. Hmmm... something obviously wrong there. I just tried it and it worked fine. Try going back to the page, pressing Ctrl-F5 to reload the page (to make sure you have the latest), then trying again. Try with just minimal information entered at first. Please let me know what you find.

Thanks!

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 13:44, 16 July 2006 (CDT)

Form

Glad to hear it worked! I've corrected Sandbox3 so it now includes the Family: prefix. As far as the question marks go, I will perhaps be able to enter such defaults, but I'm not sure how yet - I'll havw to think about that. My goal here is to provide a method so novice users can enter their family data and create pages which are 90% correctly formatted. Advanced users (you, me, Andaleen) would then go in and properly link in the ancestors, provide general cleanup, etc. We can make improvements along the way, but I know we'll never be 100%

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 13:56, 16 July 2006 (CDT)

Page Names

Ah - I understand and agree completely!

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 14:08, 16 July 2006 (CDT)

Isaac Amsden Whitney

Robert:

Archive:WRG Photo 15 shows a photograph of Isaac Amsden Whitney with the lineage stated as Isaac Amsden6 Whitney (Capt. Jonathan5, Jonathan4, Jonathan3, Benjamin2, John1). However, Family:Whitney, Isaac Amsden (1805-1876) states his lineage as Isaac Amsden7 Whitney (Ami6, Jonathan5, Jonathan4, Jonathan3, Benjamin2, John1). Are these two different people? Was there a mistake made in adding the lineage to the photograph? Was some new piece of data known that corrects Pierce's stated lineage?

Also, I noticed that although Isaac was linked to his father Ami's page, Ami's page was not linked to his. Ami is in the 6th generation and his page was created by Andaleen. Perhaps we missed similar cases when weaving together the families.

Thanks,

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 08:12, 18 July 2006 (CDT)

Trip to Boston

Robert:

I am scheduled to go to Boston from 8/3 to 8/7 to attend the Wikimania 2006 Conference, an annual event related to MediaWiki technology. I am contemplating extending my stay for a day or two to visit the NEHGS. If I were to do this, is there anything pressing that you would like for me to obtain while there?

Thanks!

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 12:53, 18 July 2006 (CDT)

Whitney Count

Robert:

Thank you for the "to-do" list. That will really help me to be productive in Boston!

I have started a small little project for fun which you, being a retired mathematician, may find interesting (or you may just tell me that I am way off on this one!) Take a look at How many Whitneys? I have extracted counts of Whitneys in census records as well as by meticulously counting the number of individuals in the early U.S. history through our family pages. At some point this manual counting method will stop and hopefully we'll have some mathematical way of determining approximate counts. My numbers in red are based upon very rudimentary mathematics, so please feel free to adjust. These numbers may help us in determining how 'complete' our family group pages actually are. Comments welcome.

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 18:34, 18 July 2006 (CDT)

Captain James

Robert:

It looks as though we're both editing this family. You just saved Family:Whitney, James (s1745-a1830) about the same time that I moved the page to Family:Whitney, James (c1746-1830). It appears we have two pages now.

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 09:18, 19 July 2006 (CDT)

How Many Whitneys

Robert:

I took the existing data from the count of how many Whitneys there were in the early years (based upon known family growth data) as well as from later years (from census information) and fed it into a statistical tool called Minitab. Using this, I was able to find a fitted line using quadratic regression using the logten of the population numbers. This resulted in a formula which fits the known data fairly well - S=0.0359676 and R-Sq(adj) of 99.9% Using this formula, I have plotted the known population data in blue and the statistical data in red. I have provided both a standard graph as well as a logarithmic scale graph to demonstrate how well this predictive model fits the known population data. Unless you see a glaring example of what I have done here, I'll add the predicted population numbers to my table and mark them as such.

Thanks!

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 08:00, 20 July 2006 (CDT)

Curve Fit

Robert:

Thank you. I am now trying to adjust my formula to use the actual year instead of an index number (1=1640, etc.) so that it makes a little more sense, and I am having what I believe to be precision issues in the formula that Minitab is reporting to me. I have contacted my Six Sigma Black Belt instructor who happens to be a statistician to help with this. Once I have this, I plan to post the formula on my How many Whitneys page.

I have thought about the 1790 exercise. I want to do two things with this project. First, Make sure our indexes are correct, have all spelling variants, include the population counts, etc. Then I want to link to the families so we can verify we have everyone in both places. This was exactly what I started in Rhode Island which led to the two new family groups yesterday. If that keeps happening, it'll be a slow progressing project! I am planning to do this with the Ancestry databases, but if you want to do it with HQ as well, that'll only improve the accuracy. I'm not sure it's worth the duplicated effort though, especially with as many other projects as you currently have going.

As far as the category changes go, if you have a pattern such as "Castle, New York" to "Seneca Castle, New York", I can easily do this with the bot. I do not yet have code written to do more complex things, such as adding a second category tag for the county, state. Let me know if you'd like the bot to be put to use. For example, I can easily change all of the 1.'s to *'s in the reference.

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 09:19, 20 July 2006 (CDT)

African American Whitneys

Robert:

Yes, I figured that out shortly after I wrote it as I started to trace Belden Whitney through the census records back to 1830, but I haven't changed the wording yet. I'm not sure what the answers are to your other questions. This is a new area for me and I am learning as I go. With 3.5% of all US Whitneys in 1870 being African American, I thought it was time we at least started a page or two to help researchers in this area. I'm sure my current efforts will morph into something much better over time.

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 17:47, 21 July 2006 (CDT)

New Family Creation Page

Robert:

I've been working on my new extension to create a Family Group page. I now have the issue of the long URLS fixed, and am set up to be able to fine-tune the output based upon data not being entered in certain fields. I also still have to change a few things for security reasons. I've enhanced the formatting of the input page as well. Take a look at Create a Family Group Page and let me know what you think.

Good to have you back - I was beginning to wonder if you had gone on vacation or had been sick.

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 14:04, 30 July 2006 (CDT)

Location Categories, IV

Robert:

Excellent to hear that you've finished the categories project! Great work! As far as the Canadian counties, I can't say that I am leaning either way. I've done no Canadian research, so I really don't know if this is common or not. I think the province name is sufficient, but perhaps we should ask some Canadian researchers for their opinions here.

I've noticed that my new Create a Family Group Page is working, but has issues as well. I've managed to lock down the security issue with allowing raw html on any page (we can only add it to the MediaWiki: namespace now, and only sysops can edit this namespace. The save routine is currently saving with the user's IP address instead of their username, and is allowing saves by people who are not logged in. This I need to fix quickly. Once I get that done, I plan to add additional logic to ensure basic information fields (subject first & last names) are entered, and will try to clean up the output when certain fields are not populated.

Once we get this working properly, we can then add additional entry forms. Imagine standardized entry forms for census extracts, etc.

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 07:11, 1 August 2006 (CDT)

Master Place List

Robert:

If I remember correctly, we're going to use that list for the bot to verify / update the location categories. Since that list was originally generated from your original Pierce place list, and because most (all?) of your hand edits were to correct problems with the original script, I would think that most of your changes would not need to be added to this page. I would review it to verify that the before / after examples there are what you would want the bot to do.

Thanks for the comment about the trip. I leave tomorrow for Boston, have the Wiki conference Fri-Sun, and will be doing research Mon & Tues, returning Wed. I'll have my laptop with me and the hotel has high-speed access, so I should be able to continue to monitor the WRG site. My partner will be here at the house and can help out if we have any larger issues (such as restarting the server in the event of a power outage).

I updated my Create a Family Group Page routines this morning to 1) prevent new pages from being saved if a user is not logged in, 2) Ensure the subject's first and last name fields are populated, and 3) Set the birth/death year fields to "?" if they are left blank. I am sure we'll have more such customizations as time goes on.

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 09:20, 2 August 2006 (CDT)

: Family:Whitney, Henry M. (1843-?

Hello Robert -

I took a look and YES I recall discussion that Josiah Dwight is a cousin so I suspect you are correct about this. i am working on my family to get them to write it all down for me and then we can put it in here.

Already, putting the info up online has produced good results, as someone who was trying to get in touch with us has been able to make contact.

Is there a format with which I can submit to you which would be useful in filling in blanks?

Thanks,

Joanna Whitney

Removing a User

Robert:

The basic answer to this is "do not delete users". This causes issues with the underlying database, especially if these users have edited or added any pages. The software does not support this action, and everything I have read says don't do it. One capability that I can add faily easily is the ability to rename accounts. If someone initially registered with thei full email address, for example, and didn't realize how public it would be, I could change that for them. I'll have to install a new extension to make thia happen.

Having a good time here in Boston at the wiki conference. I'll be able to start my researh Monday.

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 14:44, 5 August 2006 (CDT)

NEHGS

Robert:

I am here at the NEHGS Library in Boston. I copied the Paxton & Plymouth vitals (though it looks like we already had them extracted). No Whitneys in Raynham. The 1798 Direct Tax is online, so I'll do that when I get home. I photocopied ME records for Hancock, Penobscot (none), Washington (none), and York. I also went through the list of ME probate records you gave me. I have not done any military records.

I spoke with Gary Boyd Roberts. Did you know he mentioned your Thomas Whitney theory in a book he recently published?

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 12:36, 8 August 2006 (CDT)

Create a Family Form

Robert:

The form is currently in a state where it works, but it is fairly 'dumb'. It takes the information you entered and just replaces it into the template and creates the page. This is why you are seeing ten children (no more, no less), the gender is fixed, etc. Think of this as a "working proof-of-concept". Even with these limitations, I think it's now much easier to add a new family than it was previously, but yes, the results do need tweaking after creation.

How can we improve it? Well, here are some ideas:

• Male/Female checkbox which would alter the pronouns in the template. Need to create a systematic way to mark words to be changed though.
• Implement some method to limit the number of children output.
  • Checkbox to include child? What if you forgot to check it - all data would be lost.
  • Check all fields for input data - if any (other than surname) are filled in, output the child.
  • Ask the user how many children in the family and dynamically modify the input screen - much more difficult to implement.
• etc.

All of these will require me to dedicate some brainstorming and programming time to come up with solutions. These are all ideas that I have been thinking about, but it's a matter of prioritization.

I'm not sure if you saw, but I started to transcribe the Hancock Co. vitals this morning. Not sure if there's anything new in there or not though.

Thanks!

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 07:10, 10 August 2006 (CDT)

Recent Changes Omission

Robert:

I haven't figured out exactly why things sometimes don't appear in the Recent Changes page, but I have noticed that as well. Take a look at the Special:Log page and you should see all of the changes that are things other than edits.

- Tim Doyle - Talk to me 13:18, 20 August 2006 (CDT)