Db_errors and EuroAristo naming standards

+17 votes
1.1k views

There are a couple of db_errors that are at odds with the current Euro Aristo naming standards.  One in particular that is being discussed at the moment is db_error_733 Prefix in Preferred Name, and there needs to be some more input to reach some agreement about what to do about this.

The EuroAristo naming standard is that the preferred name includes the number attached to a ruler.  See the profile below for Edward II where Edward is his first name and Edward II is the preferred name, but that then comes up as an error.

Although I admit that having the numeral in the preferred name is a bit of a problem because a search for Edward Plantagenet, won't easily differentiate between Edward II, his father Edward I or his son Edward III.  However I'm not sure where else you would put the numeral.  It could go in the Proper First Name field, but that is usually for the first name at birth, and except for a few rare occasions most rulers didn't become so at birth.

There is a suggestion that it goes in the suffix field but in the case of Edward II that would end up looking like this 

Edward "King of England, Prince of Wales, of Caernarfon" of England formerly Plantagenet II

The other option is that there is no change to the EuroAristo naming standards in relation to preferred name, and the error is discounted or marked as false in regards to rulers (of all nationalities)

Perhaps there are other suggestions?

WikiTree profile: Edward II of England
in Policy and Style by John Atkinson G2G6 Pilot (626k points)
retagged by Dorothy Barry

From Space:Database_Errors_Project_2016-08-14

My understanding its the following errors

just my $.02 - I don't think that db_errors should be the reason for changes in established policy. If a project feels that a change is needed because of the recent changes in how names are displayed, that's a different issue (my opinion- "your mileage may vary"... do folks still use IMHOYMMV?).

Cheers, Liz

@Liz that is not the case....its the otherway around db_error tries to understand what is decided and see that we follow the rules

I think user requirements should always be the driven force for all changes....

The db_error project is just a tool to tell that we are following the rules defined....

Right now I miss some good basic change management

  1. What changes has Wikitree done to the name fields and changes to the layout
     
  2. What rules do we have for different profiles in WikiTree and how do we identify the people belonging to this group (category, templates?!?!?) is this documented (see question)?
     
    1. Have those rules defined been updated because of changes in WikiTree?

Answer to your question 1: I check tag/announcements for changes ... harder to find info on older changes now because db_errors uses the tag for its weekly update, but the one about name display was only one page in: http://www.wikitree.com/g2g/175710/have-you-noticed-the-new-name-display-formats

Your question 2 has already been answered elsewhere - yes, project boxes (which are templates). I think EuroAristo project answered that one. I work with two projects that have naming standards & use project boxes on profiles that the project covers (New Netherland Settlers and Cymru projects). As far as I know, all projects that have refined WikiTree's name field guidelines add their project box to applicable profiles. The link you have for "see question" above actually took me to the answer posted in that discussion to the question posed, so I'm not sure what you're really asking in 2.

to answer your second question 1, under question 2: not that I'm aware of.

Cheers, Liz

http://www.formsofaddress.info/Questions/html,

The correct form to address a King or Queen of the United Kingdom, and every King or Queen of the World. is directly addressed as Your Majesty. A  queen's name is never used in direct address. When in the media we hear "Queen Elizabeth", it is a kind of short hand,  For example:-   Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, Queen of the United Kingdom and Her Other Realms and Territories, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith  – which is Quite a mouthful. and for The Prince Philip is not a Highness, he is a Royal Highness, and the correct address is Your Royal Highness. From the Book Honor & Respect,  ​by  Robert Hickey. Perhaps the best method of recording numeric succession is simply in the Individual's Biography.  

Thanks Doug, but I think the appropriate way to address a monarch or other person from a Royal family and what names we use on Wikitree don't have to coincide?

@Doug Re: Spoken Style

In the English Wikipedia I have seen they have started to add an infobox  Template:Infobox_royal_styles with the information you speak about

  • Reference style
  • Spoken Style
  • Alternative Style

It's used on the following Wikipedia profiles  



{{Infobox hrhstyles
| royal name = Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden, Duchess of Västergötland
| image      = [[File:Royal Monogram of Princess Victoria of Sweden.svg|centre|60px]]
| dipstyle   = [[Royal Highness|Her Royal Highness]]
| offstyle   = Your Royal Highness
| altstyle   = Ma'am
}}


See also navigational Template:Royal_styles

4 Answers

+11 votes
I am not part of the projects involved with this but I feel if we have standards set for naming then the errors project should take those existing standards into account and they should not be marked as errors in the first place. So I would say "no change to the EuroAristo naming standards in relation to preferred name, and the error is discounted or marked as false in regards to rulers (of all nationalities)" unless other projects have different standards for their rulers.
by Dale Byers G2G Astronaut (1.7m points)

I have been told that it was a name formatting change in WikiTree some months ago see G2G maybe that open up new possibilities...

The normal way of doing IT solutions is that you write down the user requirements and then find a solution....

My understanding is that "todays" solution has problems... 

  1. a search for Edward Plantagenet, won't easily differentiate between Edward II, his father Edward I or his son Edward III.
     
    1. Henry VIII is almost impossible to find on wikitree. Easiest is to start on Wikipedia, go to Wikidata (sqid), go to Wikitree.
       
  2. profiles like Sachsen-Coburg_und_Gotha-18 looks unreadable...
    1. And also the family tree view has too many names Family tree Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha-Family-Tree-18

Dale, standard is set http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Name_Fields#Suffix and III should be in suffix. EuroAristo made exception to this rule (or maybe there was no rule at that time), but the problem is identifing EuroAristo profiles to make an exception.

Thanks to your answer below I checked the links and found that in the first example you gave it allows the use of numerals in the preferred name. You responded that you thought it would be a bad idea to allow it, but it is permitted by the guidelines.
It is permitted by Euroaristo guidelines, but the problem is to identify those profiles.

So we need to find the way to identify all profiles or maybe adjust Euroaristo guidelines, if that is acceptable and there is some added value (wisible in links, search results,...).

Actually Henry VIII is much easier to find. You can -

  1. Search for Henry Tudor as you have done, uncheck the search for variants, which will leave you with 13, put them in birth date order, and if you know anything about Henry VIII, he is easy to find.  Also there are only 2 profiles that are Henry (Tudor) of England, and they end up 2nd and 3rd in the list.
  2. You can use the Google Search for any text function in Wikitree and searching for Henry VIII will find that his profile is 3rd in the list (the first 2 are G2G questions about him)
  3. You can search Google using the terms Wikitree Henry VIII and his profile turns up top of the list of results
  4. There are probably other methods that I don't use - certainly there are many other names that are much more difficult to find.

Magnus in regard to your comments about Sachsen-Gotha und Coburg-18 

There have been plenty of comments over the years on G2G that the naming fields on Wikitree, don't fit very well with complicated names (such as any royals, or with naming patterns from other cultures) but we have to use what we have and fit names around what exists.

So I'm not sure what you would suggest instead? Or what you would leave out?

And I'm sorry but I don't understand what you mean by your comment that the 'family tree view has too many names'?

@John I feel it's too much information and it's difficult to see number of children etc....

Compare sqid displaying data for Princess Alice of the United Kingdom

They use 

  1. show hide/show of sections
  2. more than 3 children then just show 3 children and add an expand option
  3. smaller fonts for less important information
  4. mouse over you get more information (something also WikiTree has and maybe can be used more)
  5. expand a person to see references....

Big pic

 

See video me commenting that user interface


Change or not change ?

  1. The question is do we want a new design?
  2. Does Chris have resources to change it....
  3. Maybe just using Short Name on more pages is a solution to what I feel looks odd 

EDIT: another video displaying the House Wettin and some searches.... 

A nice more modern user interface you have also in the search interface from Aleš http://wikitree.sdms.si/default.htm expanding/minimize sections... video

Easiest way to find anything on Wikitree is to use google and do a site search. Wikitree should just explain that to people and give up with strange un-natural names which are supposed to be needed for "technical reasons" (whereas as of course this explanation puts things in reverse).
+7 votes

First rule for naming conventions is:

http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Name_Fields

And here are rules for showing names in different places:

http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Name_Displays

Then there are exceptions for different groups of people.

http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Name_Field_Guidelines

And starting point of this discussion: 

http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Name_Fields_for_European_Aristocrats

Main problem for all exceptions is to identify profiles, for which the rule applies. Euro Aristo doesn't have a category or template, that would be common for all profiles. That is why it cannot be checked according to their rules and exceptions for general rule must be made. I already fine tuned error 753 Nicknames, to allow 6th King... 

I can also also allow VIII in prefered name, but my opinion is, that it is bad solution.

Example: Henry VIII is almost impossible to find on wikitree. I had to search for it on Google, go to Wikipedia, go to Wikidata, goto Wikitree.

Searching on wikitree for Henry VIII didn't find anything usefull. Even after I searched for Henry Tudor or Henry VIII Tudor, there are 40 profiles, and none has VIII in it. My conclusion. Impossible to find it. With VIII in suffix it is displayed everywhere and easier to locate between 40 matches. BTW: Tudor-4 is the correct profile (again only visible on mouse hint).

by Aleš Trtnik G2G6 Pilot (813k points)

A search what we have today in WikiData and  WikiTree profiles connected

  1. People part of a Nobel house
    1.  with WIkiTree ID = 853 people report
    2. All people connected to a Nobel house 4263 people 
  2. Royal Houses see also my blog
    1. 330 people 
    2. 144 people also connected to WikiTree
    3. Number of WikiTree people per Nobelhouse 
  3. Number of people per Nobel house
    1. On WikiData as bubblechart 1733 nobel houses has 1 or more people
    2. On WikiData with a connection to WikiTree 171 nobel houses as bubblechart

 

Thanks Magnus, but I think you are using the category names, House of .....  Darlene and I were thinking about the templates we place on Euroaristo profiles.  There are 5 templates that align with the 5 sub-projects in the overall Euroaristo project.

Ok​ ==> all profiles with Template:Euro_Prior_to_742 can have one set of rules

Magnus, what do you mean about profiles with the Euro Prior to 742 template having one set of rules?  All of the EuroAristo profiles have the same 'rules', i.e. Euro Prior to 742, Euro 742-1499, Euro 1500-Present, British Isles 742-1499, and British Isles 1500-Present.

Can you make it work so any profiles with any of those five templates doesn't show up with an error message due to the use of roman numerals in the name field?

That's great that you connected 4,500 profiles, but we're dealing with 50,000 to 100,000+ (my guestimate) profiles...

House of Categories

  1. House of van Muijlwijck ‎(281 members)
  2. House of van Merwede ‎(234 members)
  3. European Noble Houses ‎(208 members)
  4. House of Hohenzollern ‎(186 members)
  5. House of Percy ‎(183 members)
  6. House of Plantagenet ‎(142 members)
  7. House of Wessex ‎(141 members)
  8. Pending Noble Houses ‎(108 members)
  9. House of Habsburg ‎(98 members)
  10. House of Neville ‎(97 members)
  11. House of Bourbon ‎(86 members)
  12. House of Orange-Nassau ‎(78 members)
  13. House of Wittelsbach ‎(67 members)
  14. House of Árpád ‎(58 members)
  15. House of Oldenburg ‎(58 members)
  16. House of Burgess, Virginia Colony ‎(56 members)
  17. House of Bourbon-Two Sicilies ‎(47 members)
  18. House of Beaufort ‎(46 members)
  19. House of Tudor ‎(46 members)
  20. House of Bernadotte ‎(45 members)

Part 2 (problem with G2G and long text)

  1. House of Hanover ‎(27 members)
  2. House of Thurn and Taxis ‎(27 members)
  3. House of Bigod ‎(26 members)
  4. House of Aminoff ‎(25 members)
  5. House of Mecklenburg ‎(25 members)
  6. House of Ribbing ‎(25 members)
  7. House of Holstein-Gottorp ‎(24 members)
  8. House of Amsberg ‎(23 members)
  9. House of Bourbon-Parma ‎(23 members)
  10. House of Lippe ‎(23 members)
  11. House of Rääf i Småland ‎(23 members)
  12. House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha ‎(23 members)
  13. House of Welf ‎(23 members)
  14. House of Anjou ‎(22 members)
  15. House of Boleyn ‎(22 members)
  16. House of Howard ‎(22 members)
  17. House of Mowbray ‎(22 members)
  18. House of Alpin ‎(21 members)
  19. House of Montfort-l'Amaury ‎(21 members)
  20. House of Yngling ‎(21 members)
  21. House of Beauchamp ‎(20 members)
  22. House of Medici ‎(20 members)
  23. House of Normandie ‎(20 members)
  24. House of Bourgogne ‎(19 members)
  25. House of Stuart ‎(19 members)
  26. House of Dunkeld ‎(18 members)
  27. House of Piast ‎(18 members)
  28. House of Gyldenstolpe ‎(17 members)
  29. House of Hesse ‎(17 members)
  30. House of Tosny ‎(17 members)
  31. House of Ascania ‎(16 members)
  32. House of Farnese ‎(14 members)
  33. House of Flanders ‎(14 members)
  34. House of Hesse-Darmstadt ‎(14 members)
  35. House of Trastámara ‎(14 members)
  36. House of Zähringen ‎(14 members)

3004 profiles in the above categories

For a better list see Google calc and the video


Big pic
 

Hi Darlene

Its Aleš who is the guru and doing enormous amount of coding my understanding is that he is away in Germany this week... so next week something I guess will happen.... 

As he is getting in the dump from Chris the templates and the categories that means if projects are structured then rules can be defined to get better quality...

Challenge WIkiTree 2016 quality

My biggest concern with WikiTree is the low quality we have  on the profiles created. if we compare with FindAGrave and Wikidata is that I think we lack a quality process maybe some projects has that ..... but overall it feels like a problem.... 

In Wikidata they have a much more active community and FindAGrave approve every edit you do on a profile ==> more quality..... 

Maybe we can define new rules that are specific for e.g. EuroAristo or the House of categories to get better quality? 

I am so impressed of the work Aleš has done so use his skills is my advice.

Today he has just concentrated on obvious logical errors.... 

Next step could be to validate the data using Wikipedia/ FindAGrave to validate dates/sources... etc. could be one way forward.....  
  
If you could define what the criteria is for people to be part of a House maybe that could be a rule to add to the Database Project example

  1. People that should be in the Category House of xxx but is not
  2. People in Wikipedia in the House of yyy but is not in WikiTree

I did some comparing and adding profile for House of Bernadotte ==>
Category:House_of_Bernadotte

they have now a list of all people in Wikipedia 

  1. marked as member(P53) of House of Bernadotte (Q201625)  
  2. Displays also the WikiTreeID (P2949) we have connected to Wikipedia/Wikidata

    see list (images) and also google calc i created to track that what is the difference between WikiTree and Wikipedia 

      ?person wdt:P53 wd:Q201625 # Q201625 is house of Bernadotte

 

 

 

 

>> That's great that you connected 4,500 profiles, but we're dealing with 50,000 to 100,000+ (my guestimate) profiles...

The problem with WikiTree is that we have no structure linking a profile from WikiTree to Wikipedia ==> you have to do this by hand and guess

Suggestion A: Use templates always when linking 
something like 

{{Wikipedia|Jean-Évangéliste_Bernadotte}} 
{{WikiData|Q236196}} 

We have created a template that connects to WikiData the "database" of Wikipedia. Wikidata contains more people like father, chrildren etc.. compared to Wikipedia ... so that is a step in the right direction see current usage but as long as people dont use it we will get problems....

{{WikiData|Q236196}} used on a Wikitree profile tells 

  1. profile is connected to Wikidata object Q236196 
    1. Q236196 then is connected to all the Wikilanguage versions that exists about her
      1. ar سيسيل أميرة اليونان والدنمارك
      2. ca Cecília de Grècia
      3. da Cecilie af Grækenland
      4. de Cecilia von Griechenland
      5. el Πριγκίπισσα Καικιλία της Ελλάδας και της Δανίας
      6. en Princess Cecilie of Greece and Denmark
      7. es Cecilia de Grecia y Dinamarca
      8. fr Cécile de Grèce
      9. hu Cecília görög hercegnő
      10. it Cecilia di Grecia
      11. ja ツェツィーリア・フォン・グリーヒェンラント
      12. nl Cecilia van Griekenland en Denemarken
      13. no Cecilie av Hellas og Danmark
      14. pt Cecília da Grécia e Dinamarca
      15. ro Prințesa Cecilie a Greciei și Danemarcei
      16. ru Сесилия Греческая
      17. sv Cecilia av Grekland och Danmark
      18. zh 塞西莉娅公主 (希腊)
    2. Or other external sources....

Lesson learned is that the names of Wikipedia profiles changes you get disambiguation pages etc...  so linking on the Q number is more stable plus that WikiTree is connected in WikiData ==> all profiles in Wikipedia we have found has a corresponding profile in WikiTree gets the Property P2949 set see sqid for a list of people with P2949 set and all the people has an unique Q number in WikiData....

Ales I think it needs to be said that the naming conventions on Wikitree are controversial. You only need to look through G2G. They are not what any historian or genealogist would chose IMHO, but the constant response to all concerns is that we have no choice and the rules come from technical needs of Wikitree, not genealogical preferences.

Of course many people realize that is the reverse of normal logic and a misunderstanding about what can be done technically, but it leads to a circular problem in any case if people looking at the technical issues thinks that those rules represent the desires of genealogists for genealogical purposes.

Actually the rules apparently developed as a sort of mixture of what genealogists thought was technically necessary, and what the more technical members of the project think was requested for genealogical reasons. It is neither, but now has a life of its own.
+4 votes
My thought on this is that Aleš's approach is correct and the right way round.   The change that is needed is in Name Display rather than Fields
by William Arbuthnot of Kittybrewster G2G6 Pilot (184k points)
+4 votes
Is there some further conclusions on other G2G postings?

Just wondered where this stood. In the real world we do have circumstantial and variable historical narratives. My point being that we do need to recognize everything doesnt have just one simple answer. but we can still have high quality
by Marty Ormond G2G6 Mach 5 (57.4k points)

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