Send Wikimedia-genealogy mailing list submissions to
        wikimedia-genealogy@lists.wikimedia.org

To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
        https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-genealogy
or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
        wikimedia-genealogy-request@lists.wikimedia.org

You can reach the person managing the list at
        wikimedia-genealogy-owner@lists.wikimedia.org

When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
than "Re: Contents of Wikimedia-genealogy digest..."


Today's Topics:

   1. Re: Is the delivery of software fundamental to this project?
      (James Mason)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Fri, 01 Sep 2017 11:57:52 -0400
From: James Mason <jrm@slashmail.org>
To: sam@samwilson.id.au
Cc: "Discussion about the Wikimedia genealogy project."
        <wikimedia-genealogy@lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-genealogy] Is the delivery of software
        fundamental to this project?
Message-ID: <a3565c2b902568905123b9f06f9df49c@slashmail.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

I'm concerned that we're trying to find a perfect media-wiki software
solution - but there aren't enough people listening to know if we've
arrived.  In any case - the real truth is you never get to perfect.  I
think we find something that's good enough to start - hopefully a user
community starts to gel around that - then we evolve over time to
something better (but probably never perfect).

I certainly have a personal preference for WeRelate - I think it gets a
number of important things right - but the dated wiki base is becoming a
problem.  A key to understanding WeRelate is that DallanQ started with
the idea of maintaining the semantics of an uploaded GEDCOM.  With that
in mind - I think most everything you find on the site starts to make
sense.

The WR software is freely available - have you considered starting from
that base instead?  Is there something that's fundamentally wrong - such
that attempting to evolve a WR 2.0 on new wiki base software - isn't a
reasonable way to go?

-jrm

On 2017-08-31 20:15, Sam Wilson wrote:

> This is a really good point.
>
> I'm certainly not keen to develop yet another software system for genealogy (although, I've tinkered with doing so and am using such software as one of my main research systems at the moment... oops). But I think there's space for multiple options.
>
> As far as existing systems go, I would say that WeRelate is the best: it's a wiki, and so very flexible; it's big and has an active user base; it's properly licenced. The reason I don't currently use it personally is that its software is very out of date and so hard to work with (it's basically a fork of MediaWiki from ten years ago), and I feel like the software tries to do things (such as citation management) that I don't believe should be part of genealogy software.
>
> The other thing I feel might be possible is Wikidata as a central repository (and I know you say it can't because of notability, but I'm not so sure; there's more to be discussed here I think). The problem then is that there's nowhere for the 'other' genealogy data to go, apart from notable individuals who can go on Wikipedia.
>
> My personal approach these days is that everyone should host their own wikis, and pull what data they can from Wikidata and link where they can to Wikipedia.
>
> All up, I really do think that some software development, on some front, is required. (Hmm... but then, I'm a software engineer, so everything does rather look like a code-shaped nail to me!)
>
> --Sam.
>
> On Fri, 1 Sep 2017, at 01:50 AM, James Mason wrote:
>
>> Several different systems have been put forward as candidates to be "the" Wikimedia genealogy project.  Of those, several have been in existence for a number of years and are in regular use.  Yet I have seen very little on the question of why any of those may or may not have been chosen as a starting point.
>>
>> It now sounds like more effort is being invested in a project to develop another such system - but I wonder how it can succeed.  Since there isn't clarity about why any of the existing projects were not selected - how can another hope to be "more" successful.  I'm not trying to throw cold water on the good intentions of people who wish to design or implement such software - but neither would I want to see their efforts come to naught.
>>
>> I wonder if the better approach is to try to select a reasonable interim system?  With the dual goals of beginning to accumulate a genealogy database AND serving as an example against which new software ideas can be compared?  Or perhaps - taking the approach of creating something rather more like Wikidata - intended more as a centralized genealogy data repository usable by a variety of consumers (I know LDS was working on something like this - but I don't know where it stands at present).  (FYI - I assume that Wikidata proper really can't be such a database - on the basis of notability requirements - however limited).
>>
>> Please forgive me if my remarks are hopelessly out of step with what others may be thinking...   :) !
>>
>> -jrm
>>
>> James Mason; Nashua, NH, USA
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikimedia-genealogy mailing list
>> Wikimedia-genealogy@lists.wikimedia.org
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-genealogy
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-genealogy mailing list
> Wikimedia-genealogy@lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-genealogy
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-genealogy/attachments/20170901/8096cb33/attachment-0001.html>

------------------------------

Subject: Digest Footer

_______________________________________________
Wikimedia-genealogy mailing list
Wikimedia-genealogy@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-genealogy


------------------------------

End of Wikimedia-genealogy Digest, Vol 5, Issue 2
*************************************************