Relive the last frontier west and the Railroads that tamed it

Question

Chug along the tracks of time on the St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern Railway! From the daring first train robbery in Missouri to the final heist in Arkansas, relive the glory days of railroad tycoons Jay and George Gould. Immerse yourself in the charm and culture of rural communities in the South and Midwest, where the Iron Mountain Railway had an unforgettable impact on their growth and prosperity.

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:St._Louis%2C_Iron_Mountain_and_Southern_Railway

Comments

I added the tag westward_ho to this question because the railroads that built the West are one of the topics that the Westward Ho! project was set up.to celebrate and document.

Just as we try to avoid duplicate profiles for humans, we need to align and coordinate our efforts to create content that supports genealogical research and understanding.

Answer 1

Shouldn't space pages have Sources, like profiles should, so others know where you are getting information from? You have individuals mentioned that people may want to create profile for or to expand them, but there are no sources included on the page.

Comments

Which is a great-looking and fascinating page, by the way :-) The numerous individual profiles already linked do have sources.

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And the space page should also have sources so that if someone wants to see where the information came from, they should be able to see it, without having to go other places to try to determine where the information came from.

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It's usually considered a courtesy to the reader to not make them work to find information that could easily be given to them.

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Jim, I looked at several profiles that are linked on that space page and nothing has been recently changed on them.  Some of them have no mention of the Railroad or Robbery or whatever is mentioned in the space page.

An example of a profile that has no mention that is linked in the above space page is [[Younger-317|Robert Ewing Younger (1853-1889)]]

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My concern is different. A lot of work has been done here to generate an attractive and interesting free space page. It is fair to make suggestions for improvement. But at the same time it is courteous and friendly to acknowledge the labour with some kind and positive words as well.

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Well, they certainly could, although most space pages I have viewed don't have sources. I did a couple, one with inline sources and others with just the footnote sources, when I did some of mine disaster pages.

I like to write the profiles offline and then paste them in Wikitree. When I do inline sources, it makes it difficult (at least for me) to proofread because of the source text between the paragraphs. I tried even at one time to simply put them on another page to add in later, but then it became a nightmare to find the correct location to insert.

I will look at my next project and give it another look.  Maybe there is an easier way. But I think most would be easy to find if you google it. If you're looking for one of the people, just the name and railroad usually bring up Wikipedia. I considered using hyperlinks to Wikipedia if they were not in Wikitree, but right now the links let me know if they have a profile or need one.

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I'm not sure what you are looking for when you say "not have to make them work to find something". Even where I list the person's name, you can find them easily if you Google most of them, but you would have to do this anyway to write a biography. I have a lot of information here, but not enough to update the page like it should be.

It would be the equivalent of giving someone a source for military service, but I would still research it to fill in more details. So I don't know I have enough detail so that someone can just copy and paste a biography without doing more leg work.

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Right now, everything is a work in progress. I link the names if they have a Wikitree profile for two reasons.

1) So that someone clicking on the link and seeing the profile lacks detail might take on the responsibility to complete that profile.

2) So that later when I return, I will know which people have profiles and who doesn't.

For every task you do in Wikitree, you generate ten new tasks (or it seems like it). I have to focus on targets, what am I trying to accomplish?  Right now, it is the space pages for the railroads.  Biographies are another day. But I want to leave bread crumbs for future genealogists who might stumble across it.

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Jimmy,  My reason for requesting sources is so that if anyone wants to use the information from a space page in a profile, the space page is not a reliable source, unless it has reliable sources included as to where the information came from.  It is much easier to add sources to a space page, as well as a profile, when the information is being retrieved.

Unfortunately, we have thousands of profiles where PMs say they will go back later and add the sources for them and they either never go back or they can’t remember where the information came from. It is always much better to add sources at the time the information is being added to a profile or space page.

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I would suspect most are not entering sources, because it doesn't mention it in the guidance. Even the examples in the [[https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Free-Space_Profile|help:Free-Space Profile]] don't include any sources.

When you create a space page template, it includes a reference section for sources.  If that is the goal, the space page template (for creating space pages) should be modified to generate a reference section the same as profiles. That would prompt people to use source reference. Even if it is just first or second hand information. I'm not saying to everyone that you have to have sources, it would be nice to have, and the section header reminds me that they would be preferred.

I'm working on inline sources on the next space page and will add a reference section. The above is just a suggestion for future guidance. I just don't want to start a ruckus with the haves and haves not. All space pages are appreciated.

Answer 2

If you like the history of Railroads you might also like to watch this.

A Century In The Sun Henry Flagler and The Making of Modern Florida

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMiuKeKbIr8

Answer 3

Thanks and welcome aboard. I will include your tag in my future post. Just a quick note on how I see it rolling out. We have the United States Railroad page as an anchor and jumping off point to the states. Each state can have their own space page on the rail roads that operated in the state. Most companies span across multiple states, but their interactions and effect on each state, community, etc. will be different. So even though we are writing multiple space pages on the same company, they are unique. A page can be written for each county within the state, where you can explore more in depth, the depots, railroad jobs and short lines.

The category pages were already started. I don't know if we have to live with what is there, but I see some putting subcategories for companies that later merged, and for the same railroad company, but for a particular county. I would rather it be the United States with each railroad company below that. The only reason for a subcategory to the railroad company is if it were a subsidiary.

Each railroad company should have one page to describe the company's history. This is the history of the company, not small town America (which is explained in the state pages), so we should only have one page per company, even though they span multiple states.

I can see later people wanting to do commuter, inter-city and short lines, but these should probably have their own sub-level, not just grouped under the United States page. I don't think you can group these by state or county, because even though some would only service one state or county, others will cross state or county lines.

Anyway, this is my game plan. I don't know if that meets your needs.  I'm open to suggestions.