Ask Aleš - What Do You Want To Know About WikiTree Plus?

Question

This weekend there is a WikiTree Day event. I will be participating with Ask Aleš - What Do You Want To Know About WikiTree Plus? on Friday, November 4, 2022, 12:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time (EDT). If you have any questions for me you are welcome to join online or/and post questions here, so I can prepare a bit in advance.

Here is a link to the video 

Answer 1

When you showed me how those green question marks take you to the help page with the list of magic words, my life changed dramatically! I hope you'll point that out again during the live event.

Answer 2

WT+ is such a huge part of the functionality of WikiTree, and one of the major ways in which people/apps can locate lists of profiles. What are your plans for continuity, on the unhappy day when you .....win the lottery and decide to stop supporting Wikitree...?

Answer 3

I would like an "idiot's guide"/general introduction to WikiTree Plus - I learn how to use software etc better by demonstration than by reading how to do it.

Comments

Me too, the Idiot's guide would be great

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Great question, Ruth.  I would also really like to know the beginner's stuff.

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This might help a little. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:WikiTree%2B_Tips_-_Netherlands_Project

I put it together for myself as I was learning wikitree+ and then it extended out to other people who work on Netherlands profiles. (The English is below the Dutch on the page). I haven't kept up with all the things Aleš has added.

Answer 4

Explanation in Help Page for all the 'magic words' that can be used, since they are not all explained. One example being what is the difference between Template, Template Full, and TemplateText.

Answer 5

Could you talk a bit about moving results to a map and whether your location table is involved in this? I am wondering about how the location strings are matched up with locations on the map. Also, where do you map things for which only a country is known - is it in the center of the country? Thanks! (And thanks for wikitree+ !)

Comments

Great question. I will explain some details about geolocating locations.

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The map features are amazing. Thanks for explaining so well.

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Thanks! I just watched the video. It was very helpful

Answer 6

I would like to know if there’s a way to search for specific things inly within my Watchlist. For example 18cen Massachusetts NOPARENTS but only in my watchlist.

Also how to know all the keywords I can use like Orphan, Unsourced, Unconnected, NOPARENTS etc.  

Thanks!!!

Comments

Managed list is possible, Watchlist isn't. Usually there is not much difference between the two.

Keywords are all listed on the help page. (green questionmark)

Answer 7

I am so intimidated by WikiTree+ that I don’t even know how to get to it, let alone how to use it if I do find it. I would like two things: 1) Have WT+ somewhere on one of the drop downs on each page, and 2) An “Idiot’s Guide”, please!

I do realize its value, and wish I understood it. I will be there tomorrow!

Comments

How to get to Wikitree Plus

In many places where you see the Wikitree+ logo, just click on it, and you will automatically be taken to the Wikitree+ default page.

Another way to get there ...

If any member is on their own wikitree profile navigation page, you can look to the top right section for the dropdown menus.

Click on the member profile id (for you it would be Kirch-132) to bring up the dropdown menu.

Go to the very bottom and click on SUGGESTIONS.
Next in the upper left hand corner you will see the wikitree+ logo.
Click on it and you are taken to the wikitree+ default home page.

Simply entering your wikitree ID in the text box and clicking enter will result in showing you a bunch of suggestions for the wikitree profiles you manage.

From this default pages you can do many different kinds of searches ... many more than I know how to explain.

I am a wikitree Connector and that is what I use wikitree+ for ... and what I can explain. Below is the process, I used a couple of years ago to connect Aleš branch to the one global wikitree :)

I go down to the tab called SEARCH (5 tabs up from screen bottom) and enter an unconnected branch from
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Largest_Unconnected_Branches

For an example ... choosing the 100 profiles branch I enter Sneberk-2 and click through and it shows me all the profiles in that unconnected branch.

My next step would be to use my browser's FIND option to look for anyone who may have emigrated to the USA, so that I can use my American ancestry.com subscription to search for relevant sources that I can use for creating wikitree profiles of any relatives.

Answer 8

Alas, I'm far too late for the video session, but here's a question that I've been meaning to ask for months:

When I do my surname reports each month, I run reports to check how many people with the surname I'm studying are unlinked to any other profiles by running a search like this:

https://wikitree.sdms.si/function/WTWebProfileSearch/Profiles.htm?Query=unlinked+slade

I also check to to how many profiles have a category from the "Needs More Records" hierarchy by running a search like this:

https://wikitree.sdms.si/function/WTWebProfileSearch/Profiles.htm?Query=needs+record+slade

Those searches work fine in most cases, but for some surnames, I get way more hits than I should. In the case of "West" (which is one of the surnames in my family tree), I get hits for people in West Virginia, West Germany, etc. (I assume that people working on surnames like "North" would encounter similar issues.) In the case of "Guy", I get hits for people whose first name is Guy, and also for people with nicknames like "The Computer Guy". I assume that there must be some way to specify "lastname=x" in searches like that, but I never got around to asking before.

Comments

I find the list of field names under https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:WikiTree_Plus#Text_search_2 to be very useful (you have to scroll down a bit to get to that list). The one you want is, for example, LastNameatBirth=West.

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I added a AllLastNames=West to the index. It will be available after this week's data publish. AllLastNames searches all 3 lastname fields.

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Thank you. That gives me what I needed. In fact, it improved my numbers on other surnames because it turned out I was getting false positives on things like county names.

Answer 9

I would like to find all the profiles I created that don't have all of the spouses attached to it. I thought a good way to help me do that would be:

1. LastNameatBirth != CurrentLastName
2. LastNameOther != ""

Are searches like these possible in WikiTree+?

Comments

Actual data conditions between the data are not possible. I guess I could make them available but I would have to implement some safeguards not to validate such query on 30 million profiles since it would take a few minutes to compete.

I runned the query on 1417 profiles you created and 86 match the condition. Here they are.

Barringer-1121, Coleman-16587, McGhee-1397, Wilson-92021, McGee-5761, Thompson-70510, Thompson-70517, Allen-54559, Strozier-210, Pegues-381, Raliford-1, Strozier-41, Price-25175, Maze-464, Pegues-141, Pegues-133, Driver-3961, Johnson-122453, Woolfolk-248, Johnson-122451, McCastle-4, Ridgle-5, Wadley-254, Williamson-15850, Pegues-349, Price-28328, Herod-255, Herod-252, Clerk-377, Matthews-17283, Gates-7673, Smith-288062, Austin-14092, Longley-1407, Kirkwood-1737, Flemmons-10, Brown-135618, Pegues-97, Collins-32143, Avant-321, Glover-8344, Strozier-95, Farmer-7465, Cook-40679, McFergerson-2, Collins-35408, Crawford-23997, Thrower-2048, Jenkins-20524, Scott-53002, Richardson-33617, Unknown-593829, McGee-6392, Kimmons-222, Rogers-40389, Webb-24680, Dennis-8703, Howell-13585, Draine-67, Bowman-14047, Taylor-91773, Breckenridge-873, Taylor-91798, Barringer-1127, Upshur-55, Henry-16506, Shaw-26423, Farmer-7450, Weathersbee-169, Buford-731, Pegues-288, Pegues-289, Taylor-90593, McKinney-7503, Blake-10840, Caldwell-10278, Clayton-7731, Sanders-18757, Flemmon-5, Strozier-100, Smith-264708, Dorn-991, Cuthbert-1094, Unknown-588690, Downs-4446, Jeffries-2515, 

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Thank  you for running the query.