How will we handle people and graves?

Hi David, first of all,thanks for hosting this new and valuable information database.  There are very few places where such information is made available for free and researchers will find this a very useful method of gaining details of relevant family members.

I've read your comments regarding your plans to store PERSON and GRAVE separately and would just say that if possible, it would be preferable for the information to be stored together. Maybe if the PERSON has a lot of information there could be a simple link opening from the grave details into a new pop up window with the narrative. That way the viewer still can have the information available to them open on the grave but at the same time, read about the person concerned.

As newcomers find Gwulo.com (particularly those just starting out their searchers) they might find the two separate searches a little confusing.  You've probably looked at www.findagrave.com to see how they do it, I also like the layout of the Commonwealth War Graves Photographic Project website and search facilities (I'm a volunteer for them)  http://www.twgpp.org/index.php, which I think could be adapted for Gwulo.com's requirements here.

Hope this helps.

best wishes

Liz

I agree with Liz that it would be preferable to store the grave and the info on the person together. In my experience  it took many years to get going for precisely the reason that nobody in my immediate family knew of anybody but our shared great grandfather. It was only when other names emerged did things fall into place.

Had there been a database saying he had brothers etc., my search would have been so much easier.

I suspect many people would find the same thing.

I also agre with Liz that newcomers might find two searches a problem. OK you can open tabs etc., but a lot of people have very little or no technical ability. I think that simplicity of use should be the mantra.

Also, if grave and info are linked it is far more likely that a dedicated trawl will yield something for the searcher who maybe needs to go through several names whithin which there might be a vital link.

It is entirely possible that by adding as much info as possible to the name of the buried person researchers looking for something entirely different may find something of interest which applies to their particular research area. As an aside it it would also provide fascinating insights.

The HK Census documents are of little use except for statistical matters, and the Jurors Lists are somewhat fickle and as yet we don't lknow why. As well as this we know there has been much destruction of documents. Thus, I think that it highly likely that combining grave and info as available could be a spark which would ignite a forest fire of info for some people.

War graves work very well - have visited my fathers - but unless things have changed they do not give directions. Just names of dead and cemetery name. So, if there are several graveyards in the area - as in Holland - you can spend some time finding the right local to point you in the right direction! I know from experience.

Therefore, I also think that a map of the cemetery as it is now with the sections demarcated, and the best way to get there, would be of help. It would also be useful to include a map of how the place was demarcated before the building and restructuring took place.

Again thanks for all you are doing. It's easy to sit back and make suggestions when one does not have a clue as to how they might be achieved.

Armchair generals!

Regards,

Sean

This armchair general is happy to go long with your proposals.

All seem emininently sound and logical.

I look forward to being able to browse my way happily through the project. And it is some project.

Thanks to you David and again thanks to Patricia Lim.

Regards,

Sean

Hi David,

Great job you're doing.  I think you've pretty well covered the important information to be included.  You could include "Spouse/Partner name", "date of marriage".  However, it really depends how much you want to become a genealogical database website with this project.  You will find that it will grow like a mushroom once its up and running.  If its any help to you I can take a screenshot of my own "events/attributes" listing from my database and you can see if there is anything there that you would like to add to your list above.

Liz

If you're logged in, you should see a new option for 'Person' under the 'Create Content' menu on the left of the screen.

Please could you try and create a Person, with real data if possible.

A couple of notes:

• It is not beautiful! It's a work in progress, but the basic functionality is there.
• You won't see any mention of Graves yet. They will come later.
• 'Country of birth:' uses a new feature. If you click the drop-down box you'll see one option is <create new item>. Click that to add a new country to the list
• I'm trying to handle approximate dates better. You'll see checkboxes to tick if part(s) of the date are approximate, then you'll see what is hopefully a sensible summary displayed based on those values.
• The title isn't typed in like you would with a Place or an Image. Instead it is built up automatically from the other pieces of information you type in.
• As this is still under development, any Person data that is entered may be lost. Don't use it for any serious work just yet.

I'm looking for feedback on:

• Anything that seems confusing, and would benefit from some help text.
• Anything not working.
• The 'approximate dates' feature

Thanks & regards, David

Feedback from Liz Chater by email:

I’ve been trying to post a comment on the website, but when I press save it wipes my comment out and says “comment field required”.  I’ve logged off and back in again but still no joy.  It was doing this last week too, but I ignored it, thinking it would right itself.  Also, when I tried to right click an copy what I had typed (trying to save it in case I lost my text, which I ultimately did anyway)it wouldn’t let me right click and there was no way for me to copy at all.

Thanks very much for the quick feedback, and apologies for the battle with the comments. I confirm there is something definitely broken, where it isn't possible to leave a comment to a Person right now (comments elsewhere on the site are working ok). I'll take a look at that.

I was commenting that I had entered Sir Catchick Paul Chater all went well except when I created country of birth I put in Calcutta India, instead of just India.  I didn’t see below that you had County or Town separately.  So maybe the ability to be able to edit newly created countries for spelling errors etc would be useful?? 

There's no easy way to allow editing everyone to of edit the country, so I'll go in as Admin and make the change. But I can see why you typed it the way you did. I'll adjust the descriptions and order (so Town first), which should make it clearer.

I'll also hide that 'other reference' field. It's really meant for bulk imports. Links to other sites are best put in the 'Notes:', so they're converted to clickable links.

Also I find your dating system a little awkward.  Much prefer “day month year” rather than “year month day”.

Sorry we're stuck with the current date format for now - I'm sure you're not the only person who doesn't like it.

Thanks again for your help. Other feedback is very welcome.

My next task is to find out how to import Patricia's database in to this new Person format.

Regards, David

Comments on 'Person' should be working ok now.

Regards, David

David,

A great idea and hopefully most useful for future researchers.

One small problem I encountered. I could not enter John 1's country of birth. Maybe me but could not make the box work so I put Sweden in with the town.

Seems to me that the data is easier read that way anyhow. Place of birth and country perhaps should be in same box.

Otherwise great. Thanks for all your hard work.

Finally, are these entries to be included in the Hong Kong Memory Project? Having just ordered Patricia Lim's book, which I see is to be included, it seems to me that there is every case for this material you are prompting on your site to transfer across.

Sean

Hi David,

Hopefully my messages will get through now. I take on board what you say about date formatting. I shall continue to see if I can pick up on anything else that may be of use.

Liz

Hi David,

Your fix works like a dream and I can understand the reasons for doing it that way.

As far as the HK Memory Project is concerned I too had not heard of it until I ordered Patricia's book. Surely, surely, surely, Gwulo should be included. The amount of information on this site is huge and when I Googled the project I nearly fell out of my chair when I saw the figure allotted. Would love to know how it is being spent.

Maybe HKU can tell us.

Sean

David,

Thanks for your input. For PERSON,

• age at death: initially I'm only storing dates for birth & death. I agree age is a useful thing to know, and may add it as a third field calculated from the above dates.

  - names - in more than one language: we can use the 'Alias' field to store that.

  - maiden name: yes, that's stored (click http://gwulo.com/node/add/person to see how it looks)

  - parents' name(s): I do plan to store that information, but not initially. The idea is that a parent would be entered in their own PERSON record, with a 'parent-child' relationship between them.

I haven't finalised the format for a GRAVE record yet, so your input is very helpful thanks. I'd like to see your list of fields, but unfortunately I don't know your email address. Please could you send a copy to me at:

Thanks & regards, David

For family relationships I suggest we link to a genealogy online programs.  I happen to use GENI.com. They can do a much better job than we can hope to do starting from scratch.  Also, family relationships are trivial to define in genealogy programs which will be a real boon to people doing their own research.

Let's not re-invent the wheel.

Here are the fields in Geni:

------

Status
    Living Deceased

Name

Display Name

Gender
    Male Female Unknown

Date of Birth
    Circa

Place of Birth
    Edit Location Details

Birth Order
    1 (Change Birth Order)

Add baptism Information

Date of Death
    Circa

Place of Death
    Edit Location Details

Cause of Death:

Date of Burial
    Circa

Place of Burial
    Edit Location Details

Hi Annelise,

Geni have a good way of storing the information. They're one of the sites I look at when I'm thinking about this.

At some point I'll build relationships into this site. It will be a much more general approach, eg PERSON lived-in PLACE, and as part of that it will be possible to define family relationships. But that isn't going to happen any time soon. And even when it's working, I forsee frequent links out to external sites like Geni.

Sean's work is a good example - some of the key players in his story may get defined as PERSON records here on gwulo.com, but with a link to Sean's website for detailed information about relationships, family trees, etc.

Regards, David

I think the idea of this database is a way for people doing a general Google search of a name to find that there is a grave of a specific person they are interested in, in Hong Kong.  Usually someone to whom the visitor has a personal connection.  We then point them to other, more detailed research. 

So, Gwulo is the entry point for interested people, not the storybook.  The jury list is the same.  Since we are volunteers, we don't try to be comprehensive and link to every story ourselves,  We rely on the visitors to Gwulo to create the "person" page and tell the story.  That is the power of Gwulo, getting the interested people to post.

I, myself, perceive Gwulo as an index, not a tour.

I wonder is the group mentioned by Shyama as being part of HKU ys in any way attached to the memory project which has been mentioned before. Patricia Lim's new book fits into that category and the Royal Asiaitic Society seems to be involved.

Would be interested to hear if there is any truth in what Shyama has heard.

Could I also make a plea that anybody doing such research credits their sources. All of us who have spent much time researching families and happenings know the importance of clearly identifying the source of statements and facts.

Sean

Thanks for the continued feedback on this.

Shyama, I haven't explained it very well - hopefully it will be easier to see when it's all working. When entering information, I do want to keep items more separate. So individual database records for a PERSON, GRAVE, and any photos. But when they're presented to the user they'll all be shown on the one screen.

There are a couple of advantages of this approach over having one big document (eg the Macau cemetery write-up):

• easier for other contributors to add comments to a given PERSON with other information they know
• easier to  re-use the information in other ways. eg Although we're starting out as a list of people buried in Hongkong Cemetery, it could easily be reformatted to produce lists of, eg people of a given profession, or who served in a given regiment, or ...

I haven't heard anything about the Biographical Dictionary. Can anyone else shed any light on that?

Annelise, I like Index & Storybook as descriptions of what's going on at Gwulo.com. Patricia's notes and the gravestone inscriptions will mean that entries for some people get a head-start towards Storybook status.

And as you say, I hope the entries will act like a honeypot to draw in interested people. If they already have a web presence, a link to that will be great. Or if they have research that isn't online yet, I hope they'll post it here for us to see.

And I'll add my vote for crediting sources. It adss credibility to the information here, and also helps us all learn about new sources.

Regards, David