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Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Exploring WikiTree- Post 4: Editing a Person Page

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I uploaded a GEDCOM file to WikiTree in the first post of this series.  In Post 2 in this series, we explored the Family Tree and navigation within the tree on the WikiTree site.  In Post 3, we saw what was included on a Person Page previously edited.

In this post, we will show the process to Edit a Person Page.

As a Profile Manager of a Person's Page, I can edit  the content on that page.  Other registered users, who are on the "Trusted List" for that page, can edit the content also.

Starting from the Person Page for my grandmother, Alma Bessie (Richmond) Seaver (the first screen form Post 3):



To Edit a Person Page, the Profile Manager or Trusted List person clicks on the "Edit" button in the menu line just below the person's name.  The "Edit Profile for..." screen opens:



The information on this person is laid out in fields for each vital record, including:

*  Names fields: Prefix, Proper First Name, Preferred First Name, Other Nicknames, Middle Name, Last Name at Birth, Current Last Name, Other Last Name, and Suffix (bold items are required).
*  Birth fields:  Birth Date, Birth Place.
*  Death fields: Death date, Death Place
*  Gender
*  Email address (if living) [Note: When you add/replace an e-mail address for a living family member they will be invited to join. E-mail addresses aren't used for spam.]

For each of the Name sub-fields, there are check boxes to denote certainty of the entry (uncertain, certain).  For birth dates, there are check boxes to denote about/uncertain, exact/certain, before this date, after this date, and blank for extra privacy. For birth places, the check boxes are for uncertain, certain, and blank for extra privacy.  For death dates, the check boxes are for about/uncertain but definitely not living, exact/certain, before this date, after this date, and still living.  The check boxes for death places are uncertain, certain, and still living.  These vital record entries are very well organized and logical, but it will be a chore to go through each person and check the applicable boxes. 

On the right side of the screen above is the list of the Person's family - their Father, Mother, Siblings, Spouses and Children - with each name linked to their own Person Page.  If a user wants to add a spouse or children, this is one place to add them.  Here is the "Add/Edit Child" page:



If the child already has a WikiTree profile, the user adds their WikiTree ID number to the box in the first line and clicks the "Add Child to the Person and the child is added to the list.  If the "new" child has no profile already, then the fields for names, birth and death can be entered.  There is a box to check or uncheck if the spouse of the mother is correct.  In the screen above, the default last name was the mother's current last name, which was Richmond in her Person Page, rather than Seaver (her husband's name), so users beware!

It appears that WikiTree puts the added child in the correct birth order based on the birth date - I added another child for my grandparents as a trial.  Further down this "Add/Edit Child" screen, the user can remove children from the list by clicking the box next to their name. 

Back to the "Edit Profile for..." screen, and further down the screen is:


On the right side of this screen is an opportunity to add or edit photographs.

The person's biography notes can be edited in the "Edit Bio Notes" section shown above.  The Notes that came across in the GEDCOM file are already here, with some HTML coding.  The Profile Manager and Trusted List users can add or delete information in this Notes section at will.  Since this is a wiki, the Changes are saved (you can see them in the "Changes" button on the Person Page menu).

The Notes section can be edited with fairly primitive tools - the buttons are Bold, Italicize, Internal Link (another person profile), External Link (a web page), a Level 3 Headline, Ignore Wiki formatting, and Horizontal Line (use sparingly).  There are editing Tips in the area to the right of the Notes field with handy methods to help you get links correct in the Notes field. 

The Notes that came over in the GEDCOM file have two colons to denote a line break.  However, even with a double line break, there are no blank lines when the Notes are printed on a Person Profile.  I played around with these for awhile and managed to mess up this profile (all but one paragraph ended up indented about an inch for some reason).  I'll have to go Change it back to the earlier version.

If the editor wants to add text copied from another resource, the editor can use the "Ignore Wiki formatting" editing tool and Paste the text into the area between the HTML code.  Using the NoWiki code messes up the wiki-like text in my recent experience to the point that I don't want to touch it again!

Hmmm, I see a way to see all of the Changes, but don't see a way to revert back to an earlier version.  Perhaps the Help function can tell me; I didn't see anything that helped me revert to an earlier version of a Person Profile.

At the bottom of the "Edit Profile for..." page, the field to enter "Personal Memories of..." is provided for memories from the Trusted List persons.

With any changes to the "Edit Profile for..." page the user has to click on the "Save Changes" button to make them active.

That's enough for today...if you are just starting out with WikiTree, please read my earlier posts and read the WikiTree Help page. 

I will discuss Privacy issues in the next post.  After that, we'll see what develops.

1 comment:

  1. Hi Randy,

    Another great post!

    You're right that the "revert" function is missing. You won't find it in the Help pages. :-)

    Most wikis do have revert functions. When you're looking at previous versions you can revert back to any one of them. Through my experiences with WikiAnswers I learned that revert is a dangerous tool. So, we never included it on WikiTree. I didn't think it would be missed by many people. But now that you point it out, maybe we should consider adding it back, at least for Profile Managers.

    Chris

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