Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Genealogy/Archive 2
 | This is an archive of past discussions about Wikipedia:WikiProject Genealogy. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
| Archive 1 | Archive 2 |
Need for Accurate and Well-Sourced Genealogical Sources
I think there may a need for more accurate and well-sourced genealogical sources in Wikipedia articles. I came across this on the talk page for the John Alden article. It made me wonder if there are more articles relying on outdated sources or even myths or legends for genealogical information on real historical figures. Would anyone on this WikiProject like to start hunting for articles with genealogical information that need to be better sourced or updated? Tea and crumpets (talk) 23:48, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
Reuse existing templates
Why not reuse existing genealogical trees, for instance, Gedcom or the new open source GedcomX? Shimmy (talk) 20:25, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
WikiProject Genealogy - newsletter No.5 -2017
Newsletter Nr 5, 2017-12-30, for WikiProject Genealogy (and Wikimedia genealogy project on Meta)
 Participation: This is the fifth newsletter sent by mass mail to members in Wikipedia:WikiProject Genealogy, to everyone who voted a support for establishing a potential Wikimedia genealogy project on meta, and anyone who during the years showed an interest in genealogy on talk pages and likewise. (To discontinue receiving Project Genealogy newsletters, please see below) A demo wiki is up and running! Dear members of WikiProject Genealogy, this will be the last newsletter for 2017, but maybe the most important one! You can already now try out the demo for a genealogy wiki at https://tools.wmflabs.org/genealogy/wiki/Main_Page and try out the functions. You will find parts of the 18th Pharao dynasty and other records submitted by the 7 first users, and it would be great if you would add some records. And with those great news we want to wish you a creative New Year 2018!
Cheers from your WikiProject Genealogy coordinator Dan Koehl. To discontinue receiving Project Genealogy newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.
Newsletter delivered by MediaWiki message delivery |
- @Dan Koehl: please can you update this project newsletter so that in future it will use Category:Wikipedians who opt out of message delivery rather than Category:Opted-out of message delivery? – Fayenatic London 15:42, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
- Yes, no problem @Fayenatic london:, thanks for the headsup and advice! Dan Koehl (talk) 15:55, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
"Henry" versus "Henri" for historical French figures
Please see Talk:Henry III of France#Why the anglicized "Henry"?
— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 07:18, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
WikiProject collaboration notice from the Portals WikiProject
The reason I am contacting you is because there are one or more portals that fall under this subject, and the Portals WikiProject is currently undertaking a major drive to automate portals that may affect them.
Portals are being redesigned.
The new design features are being applied to existing portals.
At present, we are gearing up for a maintenance pass of portals in which the introduction section will be upgraded to no longer need a subpage. In place of static copied and pasted excerpts will be self-updating excerpts displayed through selective transclusion, using the template {{Transclude lead excerpt}}.
The discussion about this can be found here.
Maintainers of specific portals are encouraged to sign up as project members here, noting the portals they maintain, so that those portals are skipped by the maintenance pass. Currently, we are interested in upgrading neglected and abandoned portals. There will be opportunity for maintained portals to opt-in later, or the portal maintainers can handle upgrading (the portals they maintain) personally at any time.
Background
On April 8th, 2018, an RfC ("Request for comment") proposal was made to eliminate all portals and the portal namespace. On April 17th, the Portals WikiProject was rebooted to handle the revitalization of the portal system. On May 12th, the RfC was closed with the result to keep portals, by a margin of about 2 to 1 in favor of keeping portals.
Since the reboot, the Portals WikiProject has been busy building tools and components to upgrade portals.
So far, 84 editors have joined.
If you would like to keep abreast of what is happening with portals, see the newsletter archive.
If you have any questions about what is happening with portals or the Portals WikiProject, please post them on the WikiProject's talk page.
Thank you. — The Transhumanist 07:39, 30 May 2018 (UTC)
Other than custom, why are genealogical charts in Wikipedia arranged according to fathers, and not mothers? BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 17:58, 6 July 2018 (UTC)
- I'm not sure what you mean exactly but we should probably use the most common organisation of charts as they are used in reliable sources. This also makes it easier for readers as they will be more familiar with a given style. However, I do not support standardization as more important than following sources (nb. I don't think my view here is universal) so if for a certain family or cultural group, another style is usually used in RS, we can and I think should use the other style. I'm not sure this comment is helpful though and am very interested in what you mean and what alternatives exist. Smmurphy(Talk) 10:21, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
House of Spencer listed at Requested moves
A requested move discussion has been initiated for House of Spencer to be moved to Spencer family. This page is of interest to this WikiProject and interested members may want to participate in the discussion here. —RMCD bot 08:44, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
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RfC being planned
Please see WP:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Primary_genetics_studies. Jytdog (talk) 23:41, 6 September 2018 (UTC)
- Now archived at Archive 249#Primary genetics studies
Contributions
I'm interested in contributing to this project but I'm unclear whether its scope is primarily the representation of lineage on Wikipedia or the coverage of all genealogical topics on Wikipedia. There are certainly many topics not covered, such as FHISO, of which I am currently vice-chair, and various research projects into the digital representation of history as opposed to just lineage.
While I'm asking this, I'd also like to raise awareness of a free tool for laying out lineage representations and then producing an SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) version of it for blogs and other Web sites: SVG Family-Tree Generator (v5.0). One feature of particular interest in this tool is that the generated SVG is interactive, and clicks (either on the boxes or optional buttons within) can easily be customised to deliver more details of a person or family. The cited article demonstrates this better than my words. TonyP (talk) 10:00, 20 September 2018 (UTC)
- The scope covers both, but note that in terms of the expansion of the depiction of lineage, in many instances, this might run counter to the policy WP:NOTGENEALOGY which specifies that genealogical material is only to be included when it helps to understand the article's subject, so we don't want to give a genealogy just because we can. Agricolae (talk) 16:02, 20 September 2018 (UTC)
- Dear @Tonyproctor: and @Agricolae:, may I ask you both to sign your support and interest for a Genealogy Project on Meta, your 2 votes will give us the final 2 votes, to reach 100 votes pro (there's presently 25 against). After that, you may be interested to try out an experimental project at wmflabs (here is Akhenaten from the 18th dynasty in Egypt). Dan Koehl (talk) 16:29, 20 September 2018 (UTC)
- With all due respect, @Dan Koehl:, I DON'T support it, not even close. I think it is a terrible idea. Agricolae (talk) 16:52, 20 September 2018 (UTC)
- I'm not fond of the idea of making another "genealogy" Website along the lines of the commercial ones. The majority of online trees are unsourced, and a significant number are downright wrong! Contrast this with written research, such as Boots Made For Walking, which contain source citations and inferences. This is different from simply including a bunch of electronic links to census pages, and the like, which may or may not be relevant to the person's actual lineage. The SVG approach that I mentioned is my own way of delivering the tree visualisation but with clickable actions connecting parts to biographies or full research articles, as well as to image galleries. In effect, I see the need for visualisations of lineage when that lineage is relevant to an article, and wanted to suggest ways that it could be made more dynamic, but making it into another "unified (world) tree" is fraught with practical difficulties: not everyone will put the necessary research effort in, and it's still a minority of so-called genealogists who properly handle their evidence. Finally, even respected genealogists can disagree on the interpretation of evidence and so any scheme must accommodate alternative conclusions -- something that the big online unified trees suffer with every day. TonyP (talk) 17:07, 20 September 2018 (UTC)
- There is a long history of sloppy publication in genealogy, yet these all would be 'reliable sources' as defined by Wikimedia. On the other hand, the type of careful work in the documentary record required to show this published material wrong would be original research, which is forbidden. The egalitarian crowdsourcing ethos of Wikimedia means that anyone who might actually have expertise on any particular line will be overwhelmed by the enthusiastic novices and ancestor-collectors - careful documentation takes more time than sloppy work, and weeks of careful work can be overturned by the next editor whose downloaded GEDCOM file says something different. (This happens on Wikipedia - there is one editor in particular who is simply too prolific for me to keep up with and reign in their excesses.) As a result, just like the other online projects, any resulting Wikimedia genealogy project will be too big to police and too sloppy to trust. Agricolae (talk) 17:29, 20 September 2018 (UTC)
- Other than "vanity" genealogies and "town histories" from about 1865 to 1910, and "royal European genealogies" going much before Charlemagne, most genealogical works meet current standards pretty well. LDS sites contain a lot of iffy connections, but DAR and SMD are quite accurate, and the US census records are rather thorough, and I could think that a Wikiproject might make sense, just not useful for Wikipedia in itself. Collect (talk) 17:44, 20 September 2018 (UTC)
- For every good book you cite, I could name a bad one, and they are still being published, more frequently than competent ones. In terms of both DAR/SAR and SMD, the modern stuff is pretty good but there are a lot of 'legacy' lineages that have appeared in their published works that are based on personal attestation or 'name's-the-same' identifications that would not be supportable based on modern standards. As to censuses (and the same applies to church registers and other primary documents), the challenge comes when you try to relate names in the census to names in other censuses and in your database. This is often obvious, but is sometimes deceptive - sometimes just finding someone with the same name isn't good enough, and genealogy, like nature, abhors a vacuum, so if there is a connection to be made, somebody will make it even if with more information it would be obvious that the two people are distinct. I am not saying that competent genealogists couldn't put together a small reliable database. I am saying that competent genealogists represent a very small proportion compared to the ancestor-collectors and naive incompetents that make a hash of things, and as soon as you open it up to general contribution, the quality plummets precipitously and the competent genealogists can't keep up with the nonsense. You are left with something little better than the monstrosities that are already out there. Agricolae (talk) 19:24, 20 September 2018 (UTC)
- The "legacy lineages" are quite weeded out, by the way, especially for SMD. There are currently several hundred quite competent workers, such as Paul Prindle (dec'd) and the like, and the project could establish a list of "generally recognized researchers" as being the equivalent of WP:RS sources. And the current wide availability of US census records and immigration records was not around in the 1865 to 1910 period where the worst offenses occurred. [1] clearly gives a good start (167 names). Collect (talk) 20:48, 20 September 2018 (UTC)
- No, the 'legacy lineages' are not all 'quite weeded out' for SMD. I myself torpedoed one not too long ago, and it would be foolish to think that was the very last one - even the relatively small number of lines SMD has accepted over the years far exceeds the ability of experts to go back through and reevaluate all of them - there just isn't the time it would take, so they did it for the 5 generation 'silver books' and stopped at that. As to record availability, it can help those who know how to use the sources, but it also provides the raw material for the monumental levels of inaccuracy seen on some of the existing sites. All it does is make genealogy of both of the competent and incompetent varieties easier. There may well be several hundred competent genealogical researchers, but about a million that are not (or at least are not recognized as such) and by nature of being crowdsourced, a lot more work by the latter group will be added than the former. Just look at Wikipedia, where for every Good Article that is fully referenced with scholarly sources, there are many many pages that don't have a single reliable source, too many to keep up with - that is what will happen on any crowdsourced genealogy project and is happening on the ones that already exist. The only way this can be avoided is by severely restricting who is allowed to contribute, and that limits the amount of material that it could possibly contain, and flies in the face of the ethos here. There is simply no point to creating yet another online body of crowdsourced genealogy of highly variable quality - enough of these exist already. Agricolae (talk) 20:10, 8 October 2018 (UTC)
- The "legacy lineages" are quite weeded out, by the way, especially for SMD. There are currently several hundred quite competent workers, such as Paul Prindle (dec'd) and the like, and the project could establish a list of "generally recognized researchers" as being the equivalent of WP:RS sources. And the current wide availability of US census records and immigration records was not around in the 1865 to 1910 period where the worst offenses occurred. [1] clearly gives a good start (167 names). Collect (talk) 20:48, 20 September 2018 (UTC)
- For every good book you cite, I could name a bad one, and they are still being published, more frequently than competent ones. In terms of both DAR/SAR and SMD, the modern stuff is pretty good but there are a lot of 'legacy' lineages that have appeared in their published works that are based on personal attestation or 'name's-the-same' identifications that would not be supportable based on modern standards. As to censuses (and the same applies to church registers and other primary documents), the challenge comes when you try to relate names in the census to names in other censuses and in your database. This is often obvious, but is sometimes deceptive - sometimes just finding someone with the same name isn't good enough, and genealogy, like nature, abhors a vacuum, so if there is a connection to be made, somebody will make it even if with more information it would be obvious that the two people are distinct. I am not saying that competent genealogists couldn't put together a small reliable database. I am saying that competent genealogists represent a very small proportion compared to the ancestor-collectors and naive incompetents that make a hash of things, and as soon as you open it up to general contribution, the quality plummets precipitously and the competent genealogists can't keep up with the nonsense. You are left with something little better than the monstrosities that are already out there. Agricolae (talk) 19:24, 20 September 2018 (UTC)
WikiProject Genealogy - newsletter No.6
| Newsletter Nr 6, 2018-12-25, for WikiProject Genealogy (and Wikimedia genealogy project on Meta)
Participation: This is the sixth newsletter sent by mass mail to members in Wikipedia:WikiProject Genealogy, to everyone who voted a support for establishing a potential Wikimedia genealogy project on meta, and anyone who during the years showed an interest in genealogy on talk pages and likewise. (To discontinue receiving Project Genealogy newsletters, please see below) Now 100 supportersAt 3 December 2018, the list of users who support the potential Wikimedia genealogy project, reached 100! A demo wiki is up and running!You can already now try out the demo for a genealogy wiki at https://tools.wmflabs.org/genealogy/wiki/Main_Page and try out the functions. You will find parts of the 18th Pharao dynasty and other records submitted by the 7 first users, and it would be great if you would add some records. And with those great news we want to wish you a creative New Year 2019!
Cheers from your WikiProject Genealogy coordinator Dan Koehl. To discontinue receiving Project Genealogy newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.
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Identity protection concerns
When I first started wikipedia a month or so ago, the potential for sharing genealogical came into the forefront of my mind. However, while mulling it over, I've become concerned about personal security. Do I really want my name, birthday, and parents and their birthdays on the internet. Such information could fall into the wrong hands. Maybe 20th and 21st century information should be left out of the public access? Help me out here with this concern i've voiced. Have you thought about it too? Kingturtle 08:10 Apr 16, 2003 (UTC)
Request for comment on Biographies of living people
Hello Wikiproject! Currently there is a discussion which will decide whether wikipedia will delete 49,000 articles about a living person without references, here:
Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people
Since biographies of living people covers so many topics, nearly all wikiproject topics will be effected.
The two opposing positions which have the most support is:
- supports the deletion of unreferenced articles about a living person, User:Jehochman
- opposes the deletion of unreferenced articles about a living person, except in limited circumstances, User:Collect
Comments are welcome. Keep in mind that by default, editor's comments are hidden. Simply press edit next to the section to add your comment.
Please keep in mind that at this point, it seems that editors support deleting unreferenced article if they are not sourced, so your project may want to pursue the projects below.
WikiProject Genealogy - newsletter No.2
| Newsletter Nr 2 for WikiProject Genealogy (and Wikimedia genealogy project on Meta)
Participation: This is the second newsletter sent by mass mail to members in Wikipedia:WikiProject Genealogy, to everyone who voted a support for establishing a potential Wikimedia genealogy project on meta, and anyone who during the years showed an interest in genealogy on talk pages and likewise. (To discontinue receiving Project Genealogy newsletters, please see below) Progress report: In order to improve communication between genealogy interested wikipedians, as well talking in chat mode about the potential new wiki, a new irc channel has been setup, and you are welcome to visit and try it out at: #wikimedia-genealogy connect (In case you are not familiar with IRC, or would prefer some info and intro, please see Wikipedias IRC tutorial) At m:Talk:Wikimedia_genealogy_project#Wikimedia_user_group is discussed the possibility of creating a genealogy-related Wikimedia user group: please submit comments and suggestions, and whether you would like to be a member in such a group. Prime goal for the group is the creation of a new, free, genealogy wiki, but there is also a discussion weather we should propose a new project or support the adoption of an existing project? Read more at Meta; Wikimedia genealogy project where you also can support the creation with your vote, in case you haven't done so already. Future: The future of the Genealogy project, and creation of a new Wikimedia Genealogy Project, is something where you can make a an input. You can
Don't want newsletters? If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself from the mailing list or alternatively to opt-out of all massmessage mailings, you may add Category:Opted-out of message delivery to your user talk page. Cheers from your WikiProject Genealogy coordinator Dan Koehl. To discontinue receiving Project Genealogy newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.
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Genealogy project need your vote for creation of an email list
| Newsletter Nr 3 for WikiProject Genealogy (and Wikimedia genealogy project on Meta)
Participation: This is the third newsletter sent by mass mail to members in Wikipedia:WikiProject Genealogy, to everyone who voted a support for establishing a potential Wikimedia genealogy project on meta, and anyone who during the years showed an interest in genealogy on talk pages and likewise. (To discontinue receiving Project Genealogy newsletters, please see below) Request: In order to improve communication between genealogy interested wikipedians, as well as taking new, important steps towards a creation of a new project site, we need to make communication between the users easier and more effective. At Mail list on meta is discussed the possibility of creating a genealogy-related Wikimedia email list. In order to request the creation of such a list, we need your voice and your vote. In order to create a new list, we need to put a request it in Phabricator, and add a link to reasoning/explanation of purpose, and link to community consensus. Therefore we need your vote for this now, so we can request the creation of the mail list. Read more about this email list at Meta; Wikimedia genealogy project mail list where you can support the creation of the mail list with your vote, in case you haven't done so already. Future:
Don't want newsletters? If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself from the mailing list or alternatively to opt-out of all massmessage mailings, you may add Category:Opted-out of message delivery to your user talk page. Cheers from your WikiProject Genealogy coordinator Dan Koehl. To discontinue receiving Project Genealogy newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.
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WikiProject Genealogy - newsletter No.4: Mail list created!
| Newsletter Nr 4, 2017-03-24, for WikiProject Genealogy (and Wikimedia genealogy project on Meta)
Participation: This is the fourth newsletter sent by mass mail to members in Wikipedia:WikiProject Genealogy, to everyone who voted a support for establishing a potential Wikimedia genealogy project on meta, and anyone who during the years showed an interest in genealogy on talk pages and likewise. (To discontinue receiving Project Genealogy newsletters, please see below) Mail list is created: The project email list is now created and ready to use! Please feel free to subscribe at https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-genealogy Future:
Don't want newsletters? If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself from the mailing list or alternatively to opt-out of all massmessage mailings, you may add Category:Opted-out of message delivery to your user talk page. Cheers from your WikiProject Genealogy coordinator Dan Koehl. To discontinue receiving Project Genealogy newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.
Newsletter delivered by MediaWiki message delivery |
A new newsletter directory is out!
A new Newsletter directory has been created to replace the old, out-of-date one. If your WikiProject and its taskforces have newsletters (even inactive ones), or if you know of a missing newsletter (including from sister projects like WikiSpecies), please include it in the directory! The template can be a bit tricky, so if you need help, just post the newsletter on the template's talk page and someone will add it for you.
- – Sent on behalf of Headbomb. 03:11, 11 April 2019 (UTC)
5 generational ahnentafel "overdetailed"?
For discussion, please see here: Template_talk:Ahnentafel#Ancestry_of_5_generations_"overdetailed"?. PPEMES (talk) 10:55, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
Russian Journal of Genetic Genealogy
There is a discussion about whether the Russian Journal of Genetic Genealogy should be regarded as a reliable source at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#Russian Journal of Genetic Genealogy that could use input from this project.--Ermenrich (talk) 01:10, 13 April 2019 (UTC)
Category:Descendants has been nominated for discussion
Category:Descendants, which you created, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Place Clichy (talk) 15:20, 18 April 2019 (UTC)
MfD nomination of Portal:Genealogy
Portal:Genealogy, a page which you created or substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; you may participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Genealogy and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Portal:Genealogy during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. UnitedStatesian (talk) 04:01, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
List of hereditary and lineage organizations listed at Requested moves
A requested move discussion has been initiated for List of hereditary and lineage organizations to be moved to Hereditary society. This page is of interest to this WikiProject and interested members may want to participate in the discussion here. —RMCD bot 10:45, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
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RfC: Ancestry of 5 generations "overdetailed"?
There is an RfC about how many generations ought to be included in an Ahnentafel tree taking place at Template talk:Ahnentafel#Ancestry of 5 generations "overdetailed"? which may interest participants in this project. NB there was a debate proposing an RfC and then an Rfc "here" -- PBS (talk) 07:49, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
Assessment
I created an assessment scale for article importance on the main WikiProject page. Your feedback is welcome. - Tea and crumpets (talk) 01:21, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
French monarchs family tree listed at Requested moves
A requested move discussion has been initiated for French monarchs family tree to be moved to Family tree of the French monarchs. This page is of interest to this WikiProject and interested members may want to participate in the discussion here. —RMCD bot 09:15, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
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Scope of WikiProject Genealogy
So apparently the purpose of this Wikiproject is to organize support for the creation of a separate Wikimedia site devoted to genealogy. There is nothing wrong with doing that, but isn't there more we can do with regards to genealogy on Wikipedia itself?
I am talking about:
- Articles related to genealogy as a profession and as a hobby that need to be expanded, e.g. Genealogy, FamilySearch, Ancestry.com, Board for Certification of Genealogists, etc.
- "Notable Descendants" on biography pages: are these adequately sourced?
- Categories and lists grouping descendants of individuals: are these adequately sourced?
- Claims to ethnic heritage in biographies and categories grouping people: are these adequately sourced?
- Create a guideline for proving such things for Wikipedia using reliable sources and not original research.
Is there anyone else here who would be interested in working on such things (I apologize if you are already doing this and I just didn't notice)? Can it fall under the scope of this Wikiproject, or should I create a new project? Tea and crumpets (talk) 21:15, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
- Creation of a separate genealogy site is not really the purpose of this project - it is a goal of some individual participants in this project. In general, this project is about standardizing and promoting genealogical material on Wikipedia. That being said, there is a large amount of debate over exactly how much genealogical material is appropriate for Wikipedia, given the policy WP:NOTGENEALOGY, which places limits on the amount of genealogical information that should be present in biographical articles (and of course, this being Wikipedia, there is differing opinion of how to interpret NOTGENEALOGY). Your goals regarding adequate sourcing seem reasonable enough in isolation and fall under this project, but there is even disagreement on whether Notable Descendants lists and Descendant categories have a place on Wikipedia. For example, for the Descendants categories, the general rule for categories is that to be included the relevant article should contain a qualifying statement to that effect ("X was a descendant of Y" in this case), yet you are likely to see pushback against including statements of distant ancestry in biographical articles, even if the descent can be documented in genealogical sources, because such statements of distant descent are extremely rare in modern biographies of similar length to a Wikipedia biography (e.g. what you would find in ODNB, HOP, Who's Who, etc.). For the sake of full disclosure, I am one of those who thinks that in most cases such statements are inappropriate (unless a biographer, not just a genealogist, has deemed it particularly noteworthy - explicit mention in a short biography, extensive or repeated mention in a long-form biography like a book), but I recognize that is a minority view among those who have signed on to this project. Agricolae (talk) 23:22, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
- Agricolae, you bring up a good point. Are lists of descendants ever notable enough to include in Wikipedia, and if they are, how do we determine if they have a place here? Is there a way we can come to a consensus about this, or is it something we just have to decide on a case by case basis? Personally, I feel like "Notable descendants" lists or family trees are useful on some pages that have strong genealogical interest, such as early American colonials or Royalty. However, I also think they tend to be overused. They also tend to be a magnet for spam and self-promotion. Tea and crumpets (talk) 22:34, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
- The rule of thumb I use is that for a descendant (or ancestor) to be noteworthy, a 'typical' biography of the person would need to comment on the relationship, or there would have to be frequent mention in non-biographical accounts. It need not be reciprocal. It may be that enough of a big deal was made of Diana, Princess of Wales, being a descendant of Charles I that it is worth mentioning on her page, while accounts of Charles I don't seem to care that she was one of his descendants. The problem with descendants lists is that they are almost always compiled: by original research (WP:OR - people putting their own genealogical research online), synthesis (WP:SYNTH - the individual generation connections can be documented, but must be put together by the Wikipedia editor to reconstruct the whole line), or represent a special-interest perspective (WP:PROPORTION - the descent is interesting to those also descended from the immigrant who like claiming famous kin, but not of general interest). The problem with Royalty is that they are ancestors of, literally, millions of people. It is estimated that everyone in England is descended from William the Conqueror. Listing them ends up not really telling you anything all that informative about William the Conqueror. Likewise, we are now as much as 15 generations removed from Colonial times, and that a particular actor descended from some Mayflower passenger is more genealogical happenstance than an informative relationship that better helps you understand the actor's life and career, unless media coverage indicates that it represents a significant aspect of their personal identity. I can see how more immediate descendants are relevant to a colonial immigrant might be relevant, given the somewhat clannish nature of colonial societies, but with each generation removed, the informative value lessens. I just don't think it is anything but trivia that an immigrant's descendant 15 generations later was a particular current actor. That is just my opinion, not policy or consensus. Agricolae (talk) 00:18, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Sorry but that all English descend from William the Conqueror is an exaggeration. That is pure speculation !.
Take, for example, the DNA companies and scientists. They say you descend from such an ethnic group. But in your family tree of more than ten generations you have no coincidence with the population established by the company of DNA. It's time for the DNA companys and the scientists to tell us, we do not know where their ancestors came from. Most likely from some place on the planet, but we do not know ... Do not bother us!
Finally, I believe that a large part of the British population descends from the Normans who arrived after the Battle of Hastings, who probably had ancestors in common with William the Conqueror.
I have also heard from scientists that the contribution of the Nordic invaders in southern Europe, and of the Romans in the British islands, has left no genetic traces in the populations... Or not?
It is unlikely that all those conquerors or invaders maintained chastity during their incursions.
The only reliable way to prove ancestry is with parish records.
And I also believe that only a small percentage of people can descend from the Kings of Europe or wherever, only have passed little more than 900 years since the death of William the Conqueror, that time in genetics is very little. We must also remember the high mortality in the child population. Not all the great-grandchildren of William the Conqueror must have reached adulthood
If they can do the count five generations per century for 900 years.
We all share ancestors in common but that is thousands of years ago! BC.RichardEagless (talk) 01:09, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
- I disagree with either the factual accuracy or the relevance of just about everything you said here, but this is not the place to debate it. Agricolae (talk) 02:23, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
Ok ... I just say that it is impossible that a significant percentage of people to descend of the Kings in 1000 or 2000 years. But through the parish records you can prove the ancestry and descent of the people, whether by noble descent or not. RichardEagless (talk) 02:35, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
- And I say it isn't impossible - do the maths. A person living now had as many theoretical ancestors in 1500 as the entire population of England, yet not one of them was a royal, nor one of the nobility who almost all in 1500 have documented royal descents, nor one of the many gentry of 1500 with documented royal descents, not to mention any of the commoners in 1500 descended from a milkmaid or chambermaid who had a roll in the hay with His Majesty or with any of the royally-descended nobility or gentry over the preceding 400 years? It would take a combination of severe inbreeding and unlikely chance to not have a single one of these thousands of royally descended people of 1500 as an ancestor. We could both go on arguing our different perspectives, but as I said, this is not the place for it, and it wouldn't really answer Tea and crumpets' question. Agricolae (talk) 03:28, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
Ok .. do not forget that William the Conqueror, did not have illegitimate children. Perhaps through his descendants his lineage is mixed with the local population. But do not forget that this is speculation. I do not remember they have performed a DNA test on the remains of William the Conqueror or one of his descendants.
It would even be very unlikely that any of these bastard descendants possess any genetic kinship with William the Conqueror.RichardEagless (talk) 03:55, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
- William had no acknowledged illegitimate children, which is not always the same thing as not having any illegitimate children. His son Henry I had about two dozens of them, and that is just the ones he formally recognised, and John and Henry II held up their end as well, with every one of these who remained in England and lived to reproduce establishing a whole additional set of descendants that had hundreds of years to spread the bloodline. (And these were usually just the ones born to the ladies of the court. The downstairs women in similar circumstances were typically just sent home with a parting gift and a bad reputation.) This is not something DNA can answer, it is not genealogy and it is not speculation, it is statistics. Agricolae (talk) 05:30, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
Do not forget that statistics evaluate the probabilities. In my opinion a single person can not be the ancestor of millions of people in only nine hundred years, mathematically I do not think it is probable.
Forgive me if I return to the subject of the DNA companies. It is likely that if you do an autosomal DNA test with several companies it will differ in the result. Almost all people in Western and Northern Europe have the same genetic makeup. Western Hunter Gatherer, First Farmers, and Iron Age.
But these companies can not differentiate between a Portuguese and a Spanish or a Basque, or Populations of southern France, which are not only different physically but also culturally. That's why when they give you a result based on their tests collected around the world, they give you the percentage of DNA they speculate you belong to.
It's just about probabilities, they say!. All these companies can only be certain in a Y chromosome or mitochondrial test. Or that you are lucky enough to meet a cousin who descended from your great-great-grandfather's brother ... Please, it's like winning the lottery.
Let me tell you that geneticists speculate much more than genealogists, who only collect data in parish books. And that's like saying that God attests to your ancestry.
All people can get parish records since the 16th century, and if you descend from some noble you can trace your line to the House of Normandy or other.
I could talk and talk about it for hours, I would even like to discuss it with a famous geneticist. They try to tell us that we are all the same. But please! ... it is not only genetics that differentiates people, it is the culture of the villages where their ancestors lived for hundreds of thousands of years. We only have to look at the inhabitants of the British Isles and Ireland, they are totally different from the rest of the human populations, not because of their race, but because of their culture, different from the rest of Europeans.
The best for you!. RichardEagless (talk) 01:29, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
- Ranting about geneticists doesn't change the maths: you get to a million a lot quicker than 900 years. Agricolae (talk) 02:38, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
Ok .. the descendants of William the Conqueror must have had a wonderful sexual life.
About geneticists, or rather the DNA companies, earn millions of dollars with their speculations. RichardEagless (talk) 02:44, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
- If I may gently add, this space is not for discussion of DNA companies or the progeny of William the Conquerer or anyone else. It's purpose is discussion a WikiProject. Going back to Tea and crumpets's initial post, since I'm skeptical that an entire Wikimedia project could get off the ground, I agree that WikiProject Genealogy could do a lot more to enhance articles that it decides falls under its domain. - kosboot (talk) 12:13, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
- Thanks for bringing things back on topic, kosboot. - Tea and crumpets (talk) 23:02, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
Since this project seems to be inactive, I am going ahead with the following:
- Redefining project goals
- Re-assessing article importance within the new project scope
- Rewriting the WikiProject: Genealogy page
- Trying to recruit new participants.
Any help is appreciated. Tea and crumpets (talk) 20:03, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
Request for information on WP1.0 web tool
Hello and greetings from the maintainers of the WP 1.0 Bot! As you may or may not know, we are currently involved in an overhaul of the bot, in order to make it more modern and maintainable. As part of this process, we will be rewriting the web tool that is part of the project. You might have noticed this tool if you click through the links on the project assessment summary tables.
We'd like to collect information on how the current tool is used by....you! How do you yourself and the other maintainers of your project use the web tool? Which of its features do you need? How frequently do you use these features? And what features is the tool missing that would be useful to you? We have collected all of these questions at this Google form where you can leave your response. Walkerma (talk) 04:24, 27 October 2019 (UTC)
Genealogy Day
When is Genealogy Day? 14th March ?, March 9? or other?--Kaiyr (talk) 08:04, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
Family articles contents presentation standardisation?
Please see: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography. PPEMES (talk) 16:38, 27 February 2020 (UTC)
Created an article on the Sedgwick family is anyone is interested in reviewing and copy editing.--Prisencolin (talk) 06:38, 29 February 2020 (UTC)
- @Prisencolin: I am not fond of this style of article - a two-sentence introduction and then a large, completely unreferenced family tree with a whole lot of people in it we are only learning about for the first time, followed by a list of 'connected people' mostly without an explanation of the connection, and again entirely unreferenced. I would suggest that if the family is worthy of an article at all, the article should describe the family in detail, over time, and that a tree is intended to make the relationships in the text more clear, not as a substitution for text that describes the people, and the whole thing must be referenced. If one cannot write a fully-referenced article about the family, maybe it is not notable, as a family (even if the family had a lot of notable members, that does not automatically make it a notable family). I also question the focus - it describes it like it is about all of the Sedgwicks descended from the immigrant, and yet only one line of descendants are followed down to the 19th century in the tree, and then we see a major expansion. It looks to me like it is really about the family of Thomas, who descends from the immigrant, rather than about the family of the immigrant, who was ancestor of Thomas' line plus a whole lot of other lines not covered. Agricolae (talk) 20:16, 4 March 2020 (UTC)
Merge of charts templates
Help needed. Please see: Template talk:Family tree. PPEMES (talk) 15:54, 8 April 2020 (UTC)
Wikidata
I saw a really interesting project from Heritage Connector - a coalition of cultural institutions in the UK. One of them was showing the residences of 3,141 people who were accused of being witches in Scotland. Another was plotting the sites of....I forget but it was where people had resided. And all this was done with Wikidata using nifty visualizations done with other programs familiar to digital humanists. So that got me to thinking: One could take a graveyard (or portion thereof) make items for all the residents. Then one could do things like indicate who are family members, indicate average dates of death, span of deaths, etc. One could do all sorts of interesting things with the data. Of course it would take a while to input all that information. As far as I know there's no WikiProject Genealogy on Wikidata, but the possibilities can be amazing. The project dealing with witches can be found at: http://witches.is.ed.ac.uk/. I strongly encourage members to play around with the visualization and think of what could be done with a small graveyard. - kosboot (talk) 21:37, 19 June 2020 (UTC)
A family tree template from it.wiki
I created Template:Lineage + Module:Lineage (originally it:template:discendenza) as a simpliest alternative to Template:Tree chart. Can someone verify the doc subpage? Thanks. --M.casanova (talk) 09:02, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
- Really nice! I love the clean-looking output. MichaelMaggs (talk) 10:03, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
- I thought I'd use it to update Wuthering_Heights#Family_relationships_map, but is there any way to show marriages, and have multiple people on the first line, not just a single progenitor? MichaelMaggs (talk) 10:11, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
- @MichaelMaggs: Sorry, it's only to show offspring of a single family (e.g. Lincoln family on italian Wikipedia). --M.casanova (talk) 10:38, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
Category:Wikipedians by ancestry has been nominated for discussion
Category:Wikipedians by ancestry has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Buaidh (talk • contribs) 17:03, 14 May 2021 (UTC)
Mabel (singer) & talk page discussion
Hi
We are a bit confused as to whether the term neice applies when the parent and their sibling are half-brother and sister.
Mabel's mother is Neneh Cherry, and she is half-sister to her sibling, Eagle-Eye Cherry.
I have never heard anyone differentiate between niece and nephew when their parents are half-siblings.
Talk:Mabel_(singer)#Don_Cherry
Mabel: "She is the youngest child of English music producer Cameron McVey and Swedish singer Neneh Cherry.[7] Through her mother, Mabel is the niece of singer Eagle-Eye Cherry.[8] Her sister Tyson, half-sister Naima and half-brother Marlon Roudette are also singers."
Neneh: "Cherry was born as Neneh Mariann Karlsson in Stockholm, Sweden, the daughter of Monika "Moki" Karlsson (1943–2009), a Swedish painter and textile artist, and the musician Ahmadu Jah (1936–2018). Jah was born in Sierra Leone, West Africa, the son of a tribal chief, and went to Stockholm to study engineering at university.[5]
Cherry's parents separated early and her mother married the influential American jazz musician Don Cherry, who helped raise Cherry since birth. Cherry took her stepfather's surname.[3]
From her mother's side, Cherry also has a half-brother, musician Eagle-Eye Cherry. From stepfather Don Cherry's side, she has a stepsister, violinist Jan Cherry, and a stepbrother, jazz musician David Ornette Cherry. Through her father Ahmadu Jah's marriage to Maylen Jah (née Bergström), Cherry is the half-sister of singer Titiyo and record producer Cherno Jah."
Eagle-Eye: "son of American jazz artist Don Cherry and Swedish painter/textile artist Monika Cherry (née Karlsson). He is the half-brother of singer Neneh Cherry (his mother's daughter with Ahmadu Jah) [...] Other half-siblings are violinist Jan Cherry, Christian Cherry, and jazz musician David Ornette Cherry."
Can anyone shed some light on the matter? It gets confusing with the differing parents of all the children!
Any help would be appreciated :¬) Chaosdruid (talk) 13:27, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
Assistance expanding a family tree
Hello! I write seeking help with a family tree I would like to update with two recent entries I’ve written, but am struggling with how to do so.
The family tree is at Chamorro (family) and the people I’d like to add are:
- Jaime Chamorro Cardenal, another son of Margarita Cardenal Argüello and Pedro Joaquín Chamorro Zelaya
- Juan Sebastián Chamorro, son of Xavier Chamorro Cardenal and Sonia García Cordova (who is not currently displayed either—ideally she would be added too)
I tried looking into the source code and while I’ve been able to tinker with people already listed, I couldn’t suss out how to add more (and in the appropriate place). If anyone is willing to lend me a hand, I would be grateful! Innisfree987 (talk) 20:00, 1 August 2021 (UTC)
User script to detect unreliable sources
I have (with the help of others) made a small user script to detect and highlight various links to unreliable sources and predatory journals. Some of you may already be familiar with it, given it is currently the 39th most imported script on Wikipedia. The idea is that it takes something like
- John Smith "Article of things" Deprecated.com. Accessed 2020-02-14. (
John Smith "[https://www.deprecated.com/article Article of things]" ''Deprecated.com''. Accessed 2020-02-14.)
and turns it into something like
- John Smith "Article of things" Deprecated.com. Accessed 2020-02-14.
It will work on a variety of links, including those from {{cite web}}, {{cite journal}} and {{doi}}.
The script is mostly based on WP:RSPSOURCES, WP:NPPSG and WP:CITEWATCH and a good dose of common sense. I'm always expanding coverage and tweaking the script's logic, so general feedback and suggestions to expand coverage to other unreliable sources are always welcomed.
Do note that this is not a script to be mindlessly used, and several caveats apply. Details and instructions are available at User:Headbomb/unreliable. Questions, comments and requests can be made at User talk:Headbomb/unreliable.
This is a one time notice and can't be unsubscribed from. Delivered by: MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:01, 29 April 2022 (UTC)
Project-independent quality assessments
Quality assessments by Wikipedia editors rate articles in terms of completeness, organization, prose quality, sourcing, etc. Most wikiprojects follow the general guidelines at Wikipedia:Content assessment, but some have specialized assessment guidelines. A recent Village pump proposal was approved and has been implemented to add a |class= parameter to {{WikiProject banner shell}}, which can display a general quality assessment for an article, and to let project banner templates "inherit" this assessment.
No action is required if your wikiproject follows the standard assessment approach. Over time, quality assessments will be migrated up to {{WikiProject banner shell}}, and your project banner will automatically "inherit" any changes to the general assessments for the purpose of assigning categories.
However, if your project has decided to "opt out" and follow a non-standard quality assessment approach, all you have to do is modify your wikiproject banner template to pass {{WPBannerMeta}} a new |QUALITY_CRITERIA=custom parameter. If this is done, changes to the general quality assessment will be ignored, and your project-level assessment will be displayed and used to create categories, as at present. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:07, 11 April 2023 (UTC)