[Foundation-l] Re: Project Proposal: GlobalFamilyTree

[Michael Snow]

Daniel Mayer wrote:

>--- Joel Konkle-Parker <jjk3 at msstate.edu> wrote:
>  
>
>>Quoting Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com>:
>>    
>>
>>>I've already proposed that at http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimorial .
>>>
>>>The idea is to simply expand the focus of the the Sep11wiki (which is a rather lonely place).
>>>
>>>The only major stumbling block was the name - some people didn't like 'Wikimorial'. Other ideas were:
>>>*Wikimedia Memorial (generic and boring, IMO),
>>>*Wikipeople (I liked this one so I bought the domain names),
>>>*Wikifamily (another one I liked - although in the U.S. right-wing
>>>      
>>>
>>Christian
>>    
>>
>>>fundamentalists have co-opted the word "family").
>>>      
>>>
>>Well, I guess I missed that one. It sounds like our end goal is the same, but for different reasons. Your description and name (Wikimorial) implies a memorial/obituary/mourning project, more than a living global genealogy. But perhaps this is not the case?
>>    
>>
>It would be both. There would be individual pages on individual people and there also would be memorial pages that list people who died in some
>disaster/military assault/terrorist act/industrial accident/whatever. The
>"memorial"-type names were just an emphasis on that aspect. 
>
>I would also like to see actual family trees constructed on family name pages. There is a wiki syntax to do this that is being developed. 
>  
>
>>What I had in mind was a living genealogy reference, not so much
>>memorializing the past, but serving as a reference guide to those curious about their ancestors. This goal wouldn't require a ban on content for the living, either (I'd be interested in looking up my uncle and seeing "So-and-so is a consultant for Whatchamathingy Inc.).
>>    
>>
>I fear that having pages on the living would cause the creation of vanity pages and the use of Wikimedia resources for personal webpages. At least at first, I would like to ban any articles about any person still living.
>
I can see why misuse of this project to host personal vanity webpages 
would be a concern, but I think there may be better ways to discourage 
that. I don't see a good reason to ban articles about the living, 
especially since it's probably easier to get information about a person 
while they're still alive.

Instead, if the project is oriented toward genealogy rather than 
encyclopedic biography, it could be designed to focus on certain 
categories of information. "Family trees" all have something in common 
in terms of format, and most genealogical data is directed towards 
things like dates and places for major life events. A genealogy project 
might have more in common with Wiktionary than Wikipedia, in the sense 
that entries are more restricted in the types of information that are 
presented. An article might allow for dates and places of birth, death, 
marriage, etc., cause of death, names of parents and siblings, and other 
appropriate information, the same way that a Wiktionary article would 
consist primarily of spelling, pronunciation, part of speech, 
definition, etymology, usage, etc. If the purpose of the project is 
clear, we can set boundaries that prevent people from using it as a 
vehicle for a blog, or whatever else it is we don't want them doing with it.

--Michael Snow
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