What do you want in WBE?

Question

I've been (slowly) moving features from WikiTree BEE into the WikiTree Browser Extension (WBE). Sorry it's taking so long.

Apart from the sourcing features (more about that later), here's what's left in the BEE: 

*Links to WikiTree apps

*Descendant count: Adds a count of descendants to the top of the descendants tree.

*FamilySearch search links: Adds a button (to the Research section) to add a matching profile on FamilySearch and two other links to easily search the FamilySearch tree and FamilySearch records.

*Shareable Sources: When you create a new profile, you may want to easily copy in citations from the family member that you're attaching the new profile person to. So I've put the source citations of the first person on the new profile page of the second person for you to easily click to add to the Notes or Sources box.

*Surname Pages: More comprehensive details on surname pages, including missing parents, orphaned profiles, and more.

*Search Results Page: Allows fetching and viewing parents and spouses' data, remembers your 'name variants' and 'date range' selections.

*Find Ancestor Matches Page: Offers a sortable table with filters.

*Sortable Watchlist

*Unconnected Branch Tables on 'unconnected' space pages

*Table Button on Category Pages (including special tables for the Centenarians and Supercentenarians category page tables).

*PM Tags on the Family Tree Page: Makes it easier to see which of your ancestors you manage.

*See WikiTree IDs on the Family List Page.

*Last Contribution Column on the My Cousins Page: Helps track active cousins with sortable column.

*Empty 'last name' Search Box Option: An option to not pre-fill the last name search box.

My question is "Do you want/need any of these in WBE?"

About the sourcing side of the BEE... The BEE has a handy feature to get citations from various sites (we added four(!)  yesterday) while you're waiting for them to be added to WikiTree Sourcer. If you have any requests for this kind of thing, let me know.  Some can be added quite quickly.

And... If you have any other great ideas for WBE, let us know.

Thanks.

Answer 1

The ones in the above list that I use the most (and would miss if BEE goes away and they are not ported) are (in no particular order):

• Links to WikiTree apps
• FamilySearch search links
• Unconnected Branch Tables
• PM Tags on the Family Tree Page

Comments

Thanks.

Answer 2

Firstly thank you for your efforts! have often used the Bee app and have found it very useful.

See WikiTree IDs on the Family List Page.  A definite want to me as I keep track on my home database by this ID as I slowly add profiles.

Links to WikiTree apps, Sharable sources and decendant count, I might find useful as well.

I am not sure if this is a Bee issue, but I find the new Bio Builder useful,  I find it grating that it completely wipes any census table I have in the profile.  It would be nice to have some options for the bio builder.

Comments

Hi NG.  The good news is that the WBE Auto Bio doesn't wipe anything unless you ask it to.  It generates a biography based on the information available to it.  Anything in the original bio that is not included in the generated bio can be copied and pasted.  Please send me details of your issue and I'll try to improve it.  Please also give me details of what options you would like so that I can add them to the current list of options (see below).

Auto Bio options:

1. Bold names for profile person and spouse(s)

2. Death details immediately after birth details

3. Inline citations

4. Only the South Africa Project style

5. Include ages at marriage

6. Include age at death

Censuses:

1. Family narrative from census records (when possible)

2. Household table in the biography (when possible)

Wording:

1. Birth details order: Date + Place or Place + Date

2. Name format: Include current last name (if different from last name at birth) (e.g. Mary (Jones) Smith) or Birth name (e.g. Mary Jones)

3. Marriage Format: X married Y (born ...; child of ...) on ... in ... or X and Y were married on ... in ... Y was born .... He/She was the child of ...

4. 'Died' or 'passed away': died or passed away

Timeline:

1. Type of timeline: Table, South Africa Project style or None

2. Locations: Full or Minimal

Dates:

1. Date format: November 24, 1859, 24 November 1859, Nov 24, 1859, 24 Nov 1859

2. Full date status format: Words (before, after, about), Abbreviations (bef., aft., abt.) or Symbols (<, >, ~)

3. Only years date status format (e.g. (1823–1889)): Words (before, after, about), Abbreviations (bef., aft., abt.) or Symbols (<, >, ~)

Categories and stickers:

1. Add location categories

2. Add Needs Profiles Created category

3. Add occupation category

4. Add Died Young sticker for people who died aged 16 or younger

5. Add One Name Study stickers for profiles with surnames with a name study

6. Add Australia '... born in' stickers

7. Add Unsourced template/category to unsourced profiles: Template, Category or No

Spouse:

1. Include spouse details

2. Also include spouse parent details

3. Include spouse's dates

4. Include spouse's parents' dates

Family lists:

1. Include parents' dates

2. Sibling list

3. Child list

4. Style: Bullets or Numbers

5. Add 'known' when the 'No more children' box is not checked

6. Use long dates (e.g. 24 November 1859)

7. Do not show death dates

Fix locations:

1. Remove 'United States' before the state joined the Union (and change the state name to its pre-Union name where applicable). Add 'United States' if it's missing.

2. Change 'United States' variants (e.g. 'USA') to 'United States'.

3. Expand state abbreviations to the full name (e.g. 'MA' to 'Massachusetts')

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Hi, I find Bee great but like NG Hill I find the failure to include the census tables a pain, and won't use autobio on profiles with tables, yes we can past them back in before deleting the old bio, but that could be up to 8 cut and pastes.
 An option to include the census tables would be good.

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Gary:  Please show me an example.

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OK, I'll try and find a good example, but probably won't be until after the connect-a-thon.
 I'm thinking of English profiles with someone in the 1840 census as an infant and who could be in every census until 1921.

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I've experienced some disturbing instances where automated edits, I think by AutoBio (I'm not the one who made these edits, so I don't know the whole story), overwrote quite a lot of content in profiles, including removing project boxes, removing extensive content, and converting <ref>tag footnotes to bulleted entries at the end of the profile.

Ian, I'll send you links so you can see what I'm concerned about.

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Hi Ellen.  I took a look at one of the profiles and I see that someone used the Auto Bio to edit the profile.  This profile already had a lengthy bio text, which is not really when the intention of the Auto Bio.  It's not AI and it can't parse the existing prose to find its meaning and include it in a structured generated biography.  

I see that the Auto Bio's message text was also on the page (below). 

NEXT:

1. Edit the new biography (above), checking the output carefully and adding any useful information which Auto Bio may have missed from the old biography.

2. Delete this message and the old biography (below) by clicking the 'Delete Old Bio' button (above).

Thank you.

This message shouldn't actually have been saved.  The idea is to... Well, I think point #1 says it clearly enough. But the point is that the message is there and anything deleted from the biography is not the fault of the tool but that of the person using it.  

Having said that, as the biography already had a lengthy written text, I suspect that the editor wanted only one or two of the things that the Auto Bio does - perhaps, a list of siblings or children. I've already made the part that adds categories to profiles a stand-alone feature (Auto Categories). And I plan to make the family lists stand-alone, too.

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Thanks for your reply, Ian. The editor was making a whole lot of edits in pretty quick succession, working on "cleaning up" a category that they thought consisted solely of minimally developed profiles. That wasn't true, and sadly, I don't think they looked at the profiles before editing them.

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NG and Gary,

If you can send me an example of where the Auto Bio will not pick up the tables, I can fix it...

Answer 3

I would like to have the following options:

• Links to WikiTree apps
• Descendant count: Adds a count of descendants to the top of the descendants tree.
• Surname Pages: More comprehensive details on surname pages, including missing parents, orphaned profiles, and more.
• Sortable Watchlist
• Unconnected Branch Tables on 'unconnected' space pages
• Table Button on Category Pages (including special tables for the Centenarians and Supercentenarians category page tables).
• Last Contribution Column on the My Cousins Page: Helps track active cousins with sortable column.

Comments

Thanks.

Answer 4

I'd like an option to insert just the family member links and member's info only. Useful when editing an existing well sourced profile especially when there are census tables.

Comments

That's on my list.

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Thankyou.

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Good news.  I've done this.  It's in the Preview version now as Family Lists.  Let me know if you see any problems with it.

Answer 5

I use the Anniversary List every day. Could WBE make changes to it so that it is sortable and filterable? And includes a woman's maiden name? And includes relationships to me, if any, and the CC7 number? I know that's asking a lot.

I very much appreciate all you have done and continue to do to make WBE provide more useful functions.

Comments

That sounds doable.

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I know you know, Nelda, but for anyone else...

This is done (in Preview now).

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I used it this morning, some. I love the ability to sort and filter and have the maiden names for the women and all the other options!

Answer 6

I use Bee to create a new WT profile from the Findagrave profile. I would prefer to do that with the sourcer (as I do with FS and Ancestry) and maybe that works, but I haven't figured it out yet.

Thanks for all you do to improve the functionality of WT every day!

Answer 7

Customized Change Explanations, where I can have my "regularly used" verbiage added to the Change Explanation radio buttons

Comments

Isn't this it?

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:WikiTree_Browser_Extension#Change_Summary_Options

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Looks like it, thanks Jim!

Answer 8

Must admit I have no overview at the moment, what is where, so just in case:

*Empty 'last name' Search Box Option:

*FamilySearch search links:

*Shareable Sources: