Ask Aleš (October 2023)

Question

It's time for a new session of "Ask Aleš - What Do You Want To Know About WikiTree Plus?"

See you on Wednesday, October 4, 2023, 9:00am EDT aka 13:00 UTC. 

What questions do you have? You can ask by posting an answer below and your question will be answered on October 4. (It's OK if you don't watch live. The October video will remain on YouTube, like the September video.)

If you want to just watch, use this YouTube link.

Greg Clarke will be my co-host.

Answer 1

_{Hey "Ask Aleš", is there a WT+ format that will give me a list of profiles managed by only Mayflower Project (WikiTree-9) with no other profile managers?} 

2. _{[2:37 PM]}

Comments

https://plus.wikitree.com/default.htm?report=srch1&Query=WikiTree-9+sql%3D%22(%5BManager%5D.%5BManagerUserId%5D.LineCount+%3D+1)%22&MaxProfiles=5000&Format=

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Excellent, thank you so much, Aleš, again!

Answer 2

Hi Aleš,

What is the total number of identified un-sourced profiles on Wikitree, and how many of those profiles (as a percentage) represent persons who were definitely born after 1700 and who are now deceased ?

In last months 'Ask Aleš' you very kindly provided me with the following Text search string :-

unsourced country=england region=cheshire 1820s sql="Not ([Default].[Birth Date].AsString Like '*00')"

i would like to further improve upon this by receiving only profiles where both parents are named, to aid census lookups and possible baptisms.

thanks,

Allan

Comments

Hi Aleš,

In light of my experiences on the recent Source-a-Thon, i have a couple more questions.

My region of interest was England (now UK) from 1700 upto about 1920.

I came across several instances where profiles which had the 'unsourced' sticker category were to my mind and probably most people's - were adequately sourced already.

It looked to me as though they had been sourced already as part of a previous source-a-thon or a sorcerer's challenge and the 'unsourced' sticker had not been removed from the profile.

Now i understand that the Bio Check App by Kay Knight is able to identify if a profile has a 'reliable' source,

so my question is would it be possible to use whatever technique is used by the Bio Check App to do that checking on all of the 'unsourced' profiles and either

1) remove the 'unsourced' sticker

or

2) at least remove those profiles from the report produced - so they they are not identified as being 'unsourced'

And my second question is a further improvement on the search string - can you AND the centuries

so i would like unsourced profiles from England in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries with the additional restriction of full birth date and named parents in one report - not too much to ask Aleš

something like :-

unsourced country=england 18cen 19cen 20cen sql="Not ([Default].[Birth Date].AsString Like '*00')"

thanks,

Allan

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https://plus.wikitree.com/default.htm?report=srch1&Query=unsourced+country%3Dengland+region%3Dcheshire+1820s+sql%3D%22Not+(%5BDefault%5D.%5BBirth+Date%5D.AsString+Like+%27*00%27)+And+(%5BFather%5D.%5BUser+ID%5D.LineCount+%3E+0)+And+(%5BMother%5D.%5BUser+ID%5D.LineCount+%3E+0)%22&MaxProfiles=5000&Format=&ShowRelatives=1

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Example 2:
https://plus.wikitree.com/default.htm?report=srch1&Query=unsourced+country%3Dengland+18cen+sql%3D%22Not+(%5BDefault%5D.%5BBirth+Date%5D.AsString+Like+%27*00%27)%22+OR+unsourced+country%3Dengland+19cen+sql%3D%22Not+(%5BDefault%5D.%5BBirth+Date%5D.AsString+Like+%27*00%27)%22+OR+unsourced+country%3Dengland+20cen+sql%3D%22Not+(%5BDefault%5D.%5BBirth+Date%5D.AsString+Like+%27*00%27)%22+&MaxProfiles=50000&Format=

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Hi Aleš,

Do you have any idea for the first part of my question :-

What is the total number of identified un-sourced profiles on Wikitree, and how many of those profiles (as a percentage)

represent persons who were definitely born after 1700 and who are now deceased ?

and now a separate question :-

what was the day and time of the last data dump ? - that produced your current reports on 'unsourced' profiles.

Just FYI - the reduction in unsourced profiles for England (now UK) 18th, 19th, & 20th centuries was nearly 22%, whereas for the pre-1700 profiles it was just 0.4% - during the recent source-a-thon upto the point of the data-dump.

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Last dump was on Sunday morning, August 1st. So in the middle of the thon.

You can get those numbers from WT+.

Here are some totals:

Unsourced_Profiles: 1014568

Unsourced_Profiles 18cen: 229205
Unsourced_Profiles 19cen: 424953
Unsourced_Profiles 20cen: 206940
Unsourced_Profiles 21cen: 260
Unsourced_Profiles 18-21cen: 861358

Checking for nonliving is pointless, since such profiles are unlisted or profile members.

to see the ones without the death date use d0

Unsourced_Profiles 18cen d0: 93377
Unsourced_Profiles 19cen d0: 178822
Unsourced_Profiles 20cen d0: 45115
Unsourced_Profiles 21cen d0: 135
Unsourced_Profiles 18-21cen d0: 317449

I hope this gives you enough info to get the percentage.

I think there is a problem the reduction in England unsourced profiles. The problem is that there is no location on a lot of unsourced profiles.
Unsourced_Profiles BirthLocation=MissingLocation DeathLocation=MissingLocation: 363735

many of those are also from England.

Answer 3

What is the preferred method and format of sending EditBot requests?

Answer 4

I had it in the back of my head that these sessions were called "Ask Aleš anything", and came here with a question which is not about WikiTree+ ...

Strange things happen in the Connection Finder in the immediate aftermath of major edits like changing LNAB or parents.  Specifically, the first connection becomes "wife" even if she is (or was) a sister or a mother.  I documented a couple of cases in another thread:
https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/1632156

I don't know whether it's coincidence that the first connection was female in the three cases I've noticed.  Perhaps fathers, brothers or sons also briefly become husbands.

If I give the changes a chance to work their way through the system, everything sorts itself out in due course.

This seems like the sort of bug that only Aleš or Greg could get to the bottom of!

Answer 5

This one is WikiTree+ related:

If I click on a link in the name column (2nd column), the WikiTree profile opens within my WikiTree+ tab and displays as if I am not logged in to WikiTree and as if the WikiTree Browser Extension is not installed.

If I click on a link in the WikiTree ID column (1st column), the WikiTree profile opens in a new tab in which I am logged in to WikiTree and the WikiTree Browser Extension is enabled.

Is this a bug or a feature?!

Comments

Paddy, with respect, I think you should give the URL of the WikiTree+ page you are talking about.

I tried this as a random example I had from some time back:

https://plus.wikitree.com/function/WTWebProfileSearch/Profiles.htm?Query=TemplateFull%3DThe_Great_War&MaxProfiles=500&SortOrder=BiDa

The links in the first and second columns both go to the same page, e.g. for the first row

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/39704267

and in each case I'm logged in and WBE activates.

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Fixed.

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Aleš had indeed fixed the bug before I saw Jim's comment.  For completeness, I was starting from an old bookmark to
https://wikitree.sdms.si/default.htm?report=srch1&Query=lastnameatbirth%3Dwaldron+audna&MaxProfiles=500&Format=&PageSize=1000
(and am still wondering whether that query will give me all profiles with autosomal DNA connections and Waldron ancestry - or might also include Waldrons whose DNA connections are through non-Waldron ancestors).

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Thank you Paddy for noticing and reporting this.

Answer 6

Is there a list somewhere of the field names you can use for text SQL queries?

Answer 7

I still have not found a query which will return all profiles with autosomal DNA connections and Waldron ancestry - excluding Waldrons whose DNA connections are through non-Waldron ancestors. I suspect this is beyond the capability of even WikiTree+.

Comments

What exactly do you mean by "Waldron ancestry"? It is a very generic term.

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A direct ancestor with LNAB Waldron.

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So your direct ancestor with lnab waldron.

https://plus.wikitree.com/default.htm?report=srch1&Query=ancestors%3DWaldron-201+LastNameatBirth%3DWaldron

But I guess that is not what you really want.

Using this query, you would get 3 generations of Waldrons.

LastNameatBirth=Waldron audna relation=father LastNameatBirth=Waldron audna relation=father LastNameatBirth=Waldron audna

but I guess that can't be what you are looking for.

Are you looking for Waldrons that have audna test replicated from a person with Waldron LNAB?

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If the last one is what you are looking for you should search for

LastNameatBirth=Waldron audna sql="([Bio].[Replicated auDNA LNABs].AsString Like '*Waldron*')"
https://plus.wikitree.com/default.htm?report=srch1&Query=LastNameatBirth%3DWaldron+audna+sql%3D%22(%5BBio%5D.%5BReplicated+auDNA+LNABs%5D.AsString+Like+%27*Waldron*%27)%22

Answer 8

How do you use WikiTree Plus to find all profiles created by a given member where the biography text contains the Died Young sticker with the parameter

image=Meet_our_Members_Photos-13.png

? See Bruce Simons' question at this link.

Comments

Answered.

templatetext="Meet_our_Members_Photos 13.png"

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Thanks, but where is it documented that you have to replace the hyphen by a space character? That is not at all obvious.

If I remember correctly, I tried using underscores as with the GEDFile parameter, but it didn't work. Do different parameters require different coding of special characters?

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Yes. There are slight variations on some characters.

I think in TemplateText there is no override of the default behaviour and that means that all nonletter characters except underline are replaced with a space.

I do the same in search text for all except - since it can be part of the wikitreeid.

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That's quite obscure :-) It would be useful if the Help page explained it clearly.

Answer 9

I'm not sure whether this is a question for Aleš or for Greg ...

On last Saturday's livecast, Greg mentioned that all of last week's featured profiles (something like migrants from Europe to America who attended the "First Thanksgiving") appeared to be remarkably closely connected to each other.

As well as seeing at the bottom of a profile how the person is connected to each of the week's 12 featured profiles, it would be nice to see how those 12 featured profiles are connected to each other.

This would be a (symmetric) 13x13 matrix, with one row and column for the current profile, and rows and columns for each of the 12 featured profiles, possibly even colour-coded like a heat map.

Is this something that could be done by an App or within a Browser Extension, or even using WikiTree+?

If it didn't impose too big a load on the servers, could it be extended to all the profiles within a category, or to any user-entered list of WikiTree IDs up to some reasonable limit?

Should it go on an idea list for Hacktoberfest 2024?

Comments

That's an interesting idea Paddy .... definitely something for an app since it would take multiple calls from the API to populate that section at the bottom of every profile, which would tax the system.  BUT ... for an app, those calls would only happen when the app was being used intentionally.

Were you thinking just the 13 x 13 matrix of numbers (for this example of 12 notables + profile person) - that's definitely doable - and I like your heat map idea to help visualize the numbers.

- OR -

were you thinking even bigger and somehow expand the view to the list of people in between each connection ... possibly with intermediate MRCAs between more closely connected people?   (We might need a 3D representation to fit all those floating objects together ...)

Very cool idea ...

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I like this idea too. Greg, am I correct that only half of the matrix needs to be calculated since the mirror of each pair is the same result? In fact, it must be less than half as each profile's connection to itself is 0 steps away!

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Correctamundo David!  for an n x n matrix, you would only need to calculate (n)(n-1)/2 connections, which is indeed less than n^2 / 2 !  ..... maybe you are already programming this on the side ???  GO FOR IT !

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Challenge accepted. Watch this space.

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Thanks for accepting the challenge, David.

I was not contemplating any complicated 3-D stuff, Greg, but don't be afraid to let your imagination run away with you.

(I looked for the December Ask Aleš thread before I posted this the other day, but he didn't post that until the following morning, at which point I discovered that I had inadvertently replied to the October thread instead of the November thread!)

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I had a few more ideas when I woke up in the middle of the night!

The old Automobile Association yearbooks used to include a matrix of distances between towns and cities, but used only one side of the diagonal.

The Rand-McNally road atlases of the United States had a similar matrix, but duplicated the information on both sides of the diagonal.

Rather than duplicating information, we could have connection finder distances on one side of the diagonal, and relationship finder information on the other side.  The relationship finder information would need to be abbreviated to something like 19C8R or 8GGP to fit within a matrix of sensible size.

Each cell of the matrix could have both mouseover information and a hyperlink (which would obviously go to the relevant connection finder or relationship finder page).

The mouseover information on the connection finder side of the diagonal could be the branch lengths currently displayed at the top of the connection finder page by the WBE.

The mouseover information on the relationship finder side of the diagonal could be the names or WikiTree IDs of the most recent common ancestral couple or ancestor.

If the app allowed the use of unconnected profiles, then matrix cells where there is no connection (yet) could use the existing orange jigsaw piece symbol currently shown on unconnected profiles when they are viewed by members of the connectors project.  Some similar icon (or just a different colour) could be invented for the relationship finder side of the diagonal, or it could just use an X or a - or NR for "no relationship".

It is decades since I have done any more complicated programming than editing Excel macros recorded in Visual Basic, but maybe it's time to start teaching myself JavaScript or whatever I need to work on this!

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If the matrix was available only for the 12 featured profiles of the week, then it would not impose any additional server load, as the corresponding 66 distances (and 66 relationships) would be the same on every profile.  Those distances between the featured profiles could presumably be cached somewhere at the start of the week, and perhaps recalulated daily or hourly to reflect improvements to the tree during the week.  The remaining 12 distances between the current profile and the featured profiles are already being calculated anyway whenever the profile is visited.