WT+ Suggestion with template parameter seems incorrect [closed]

Question

See profile for Henry T Field (1892-1989). The biography was likely updated by the Wikitree Sourcer browser extension, which includes adding multiple templates.

WT+ gives an Error 897: Error in template parameters for this profile.

The error is described as: 

not a hex number: 5-155: Numbered parameter: 2 ()

{{Ancestry Sharing|4205066|7b22746f6b656e223a2252344746527432774a387776456845786...

The issue is that the link that the template creates seems to work just fine, but WT+ is reporting an error.

The Help page for the Ancestry Sharing template shows an old link format and a new link format. The old link format shows what is probably a hexadecimal number. The new link format is not a hexadecimal number but a very long alphanumeric string. The error message seems to imply that the second parameter requires a hexadecimal number and that it finds a string instead which is not the case. 

Also on the Help page is a note beside the new link format that says "(new link format [2022])". 

Does this mean that the link format changed in 2022 but WT+ did not update to remove the error message?

Could this be investigated please? And be corrected if it that's what is needed?

Answer 1

There is a space in the last parameter of the template:

{{Ancestry Sharing|4205066|7b22746f6b656e223a2252344746527432774a3877764568457867666b6b665573566f734362354649736e44446d72372b496b6c633d222c22746f6b656e5f76657273696f6e223a2 25632227d}}

The number ends with " 25632227d". Someone probably accidentally hit the space bar at some point.

Removing the space should fix the suggestion.

Note that this is a hexadecimal number. Hexadecimal numbers consist of a series of characters each with 16 possible values: 0-9 plus a-f. Though only programmers would probably know that :)

Comments

Hi Rob,

I've got 30+ years in the tech industry, 20+ software engineering on embedded systems and Open Source Software projects. I'm aware ;-)

And thanks for the catch on the space! It's weird that the link seemed to work, like I said.

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The Help page for the template shows an example of the New Format that is NOT a hexadecimal string: fueo0lzU7uYSbCYEezUKuLpE313y4cK2VdcT3PD9vG0%3D

You can see that if you go to the Help page. That's I mentioned it as being alphanumeric.

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Apologies I misread what you said originally!

The help page is a bit out of date in that there is a later format. I put a bit more detail in the WikiTree Sourcer User Guide here.

Ancestry seems to be trying to make them more and more inconvenient to use!

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Again, thanks for catching that space in the string. I got the profile fixed, template works, and the Suggestion is marked as Corrected.