Is it OK to link to persons in the FamilySearch tree?

Question

Recently I adopted a few profiles with an FSFTID attribute in the biography. Since I know that this ID is used by desktop software to identify matches with the FamilySearch tree, I keep these ID's, and group them under a single heading when I find more than 1.

When I searched for the first ID that I kept in the DeWitt-63 profile, I found a merged FS profile here:

https://familysearch.org/tree/#view=ancestor&person=LH7M-NXM

Replacing the FSFTID's with links like these would make it easier to navigate from WikiTree to profiles on FamilySearch, but like links to persons on Ancestry (and Geni) a login is required for this.

Is it OK to put these type of links in the biography when I edit that? Access to the FS tree is free, so I personally think that it can be helpful.

Answer 1

Hi Enno,

Of course! That's great!

WikiTree is all about the sharing of information. Links are always encouraged.

It's been on the to-do list (for a long time, unfortunately) to create a tool using FS's API that would make it easy to discover whether someone is on the FS Tree and if so, add a link.

Chris

Comments

Ah, yes, that API is on my wish list for Gramps too, but there we seem to have the problem that there is no certification process for OSS yet. I think there is for sites, and with the competition scanning WikiTree profiles, I sure think it would be nice to do this the other way around too.

Answer 2

Don't quote me on it as the final recommendations for biography from the Style committee will be published next week but it seems to me that if the FamilySearch IDs are linkable and shows actual helpful information, it will be fine to leave them.

Comments

OK. I assume that style directions for links will be part of that, right?

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Enno, what do you mean by *style* directions for links?

The technical directions for links are as I used above, namely:

[http://www.puttheurlhere.com Title of the Link]

Did you mean something else?

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When I write style, I refer to something EE like, or like the directions that we have in our edit screen, right next to the biography edit box.

For links to external sites, that style involves a simple formatting of page/site title, and author/publisher, and in most cases, that's about it.

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Enno, your points above about this being a consumer oriented site and the need for something simple are right-on. Frankly, as much as I am a promoter of good citations and consider myself more or less a follower of Elizabeth Shown Mills, I would rather see ANY source information than no sources. So I don't want us to make it so difficult that people go running to the hills.

I don't think that what's on the current Source help page is sufficient and while I love the examples on Category:Source Citation Formats, most people-- myself included-- won't have the patience to use the excellent templates displayed there.

The key point of a source citation is to help the reader a) judge the value of the evidence being used to support a claim, and b) be able to find the source so that they can examine it themselves.

So my intent here at Wikitree would be to encourage people to at least provide the basics of a source citation, and not beat them over the head with exactly HOW to do it. 

my $.02

 

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Hi Jillaine, as a genealogist who doesn't publish much, except through GEDCOM and WikiTree, my main concern is that the parameters are there, and where ESM tells you what information to collect, I'm all for applying EE.

As a WikiTree user, I'm also interested in source references (citations) that are easy to read, and I think that such a thing can best be accomplished with templates, also because they can be interpreted by software, making the site more semantic in a way.

Such templates may then be specific ones for books, sites, etc., and I prefer those over a manual lay-out made by a member, because templates allow WikiTree to decide on whether the citation output on screen can be formatted in an EE or MLA or whatever fashion WikiTree likes. And IMO that's better than one member using EE style and another member using another.

Answer 3

I would add that you might want to put in parentheses behind the link: "(free registration required)"

And such links should go under a heading like == External Links == UNLESS the link is being used as a Source for some data in the profile in which case, it would be something like this (see Evidence Explained for exact "proper" citation format):

<ref>[https://familysearch.org/tree/#view=ancestor&person=LH7M-NXM Taatje De Witt (FamilySearch Tree)], The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, accessed 19 December 2013 (free registration required)</ref>

 

Comments

I like the idea of using that heading, but I don't plan to buy EE for that purpose. I'm quite allergic to it, because of its senseless complexity.

That said, I'm all for a standardized style for citations here on WikiTree, which should then be described on this site, and follow what people are used to.

For records, FS has a button that copies a standardized citation to the clipboard. Would be nice if they add that for persons too.

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Enno,

As someone who is fairly involved in the citation issue, you hit the problem on the head- citations should "follow what people are used to" - unfortunately there are so many competing ctation styles that are in use in different regions and fields, people are used to alot of different citation styles.

Evidence Explained is largely used in Genealogy because it is the only style that has tackled, in-depth, most of the difficulties of clearly citing specific records of the types we commonly encounter. With that said, my personal preference is MLA, because that is what I am accustomed to - and I didn't have to buy it. :D

While it is still a work-in-progress, perhaps you may be interested in looking at this: http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Source_Citations_Formatting

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Hi Rob,

Thanks for your comments. I'm a part time developer of Gramps, and ran into quite a heated discussion about the possible implementation of evidence style citations in that. Reason for me to oppose was that the choice of templates that we would have to implement is way too large for the intended audience, I think, and that applies to WikiTree too.

I have a registered copy of RootsMagic here, and the amount of EE based templates in that is so large that I see no point in using them. It's like Tamura Jones once said, you need a wizard to choose the template used in their citation wizard. Moreover, when RM generated GEDCOM's are uploaded here, they create an awful mess in the biographies, because of all the _TMPLT stuff in there.

I know the value of citations in science, but as an engineer I try to stay on the practical side of this, which means that citing is something that must be so simple that I can remember it. EE and the formatting rules that you refer to go way beyond what I can do from the top of my head, and as far as I can see WikiTree is mainly a consumer oriented site. You need to learn a little wiki language for the biographies, but that's about it, and that's how it should be, I think.

Working from the top of head means that I can memorize a handful of template parameters like author, title, date, url, but having to choose a specific template before I cite anything goes way beyond my time and capabilities.

IMO, our citation rules must be so simple that they can shown in the edit screen that we have now, i.e. right to the biography edit box. Anything beyond that will most probably not be used by the vast majority of WikiTree members.

regards,

Enno

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Enno,

I do not have the EE book, and I also do not use RM so I cannot comment too much on those tools - but what little I can see of RM templates it looks as if someone tossed the programmer a copy of EE, and the quick check models and said "we want templates to handle all these types of citations" so that's exactly what they got - however many hundreds of templates are in the EE book.

The in-progress citation templates try to reflect the idea that you are getting at about only memorizing a handful of template parameters. And while they are able to handle a few more parameters than just author title date, and url, I do not believe they "go way beyond what [you] can do from the top of [your] head".

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Rob, You're right on both. The RM list is big, and the problem I have with that is that it had hundreds of different attributes, i.e. what you call parameters in the templates you made. There is a lot of overlap in the meaning of those EE attributes, which IMO is a waste. Your page scared me at first, because the list of parameters looks quite large too, but when I skip the first and last name constructs, the resulting list looks good to me, and I'd even like to add a few things. :-) There are some other things that I have an opinion about, but those are probably better to be addressed in the templates project. thanks Enno

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This thread had me go download the latest version of Rootsmagic, which was the only sorrow I felt when I left windows for apple. They finally have a solid app for running it on a Mac via something called Crossover.  

The citation templates are amazing.  I love them.  I'm not having any trouble using them.  

;-)

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To add my 2c worth, I use Family Tree Maker 2014 which also has EE source templates. I just tested uploading a GEDCom of 1 person with sources created from FTM's templates and the result was so unreadable that I deleted all source information.

I'm just feeling my way around using Wiki's and I'm a firm believer in the KISS principle. Using sources generated by FTM doesn't comply with that at all.

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Rosemary,

the unread -ability of uploaded source info is a function of wikitree's conversion of sources, not the EE template or any other source formatting. Pls don't delete source info in the future.  Even if poorly formatted, it's better than no source information.  Thanks.

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Right. Most of the information in those imported templates can be reformatted into a better looking citation, with or without the WikiTree templates.

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Jilliane,

I plan on redoing it. A lot of the clutter is caused by how I use citation details in Family Tree Maker making it self-inflicted.

Also, I'm not familiar enough with either wiki or HTML to do this easily. And I'm finding this one of the big problems with using WikiTree. I was a Systems Engineer in another life and have been programming for over 40 years so that I'm familiar with mark-up languages but not these ones.

Rosemary

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Rosemary,

One thing you can do to get some formatting in citation details is to use one or more colons (:) at the start of a line, so that they looks like the date and place of a birth after import.

This is just one way. Other ways of course are the classic citations with comma separated fields.

regards,

Enno

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Thanks Enno.