A Good Idea Gone Wrong :: But, I've Done It Before...

If you don't publish a Blog and you don't use Blogger you may want to skip this post... I'm venting...

I did what I've done for the past couple of years. But this time a change made to Blogger (probably when "New Blogger" came on the scene) has caused extra work as well as a little frustration on my part.

A group of posts was created a few years ago that I call "Index Posts" and they list the blog posts that have been published for a given surname. As new stories are posted for a surname, the Index Post gets updated with links to the new post and periodically the date of the post will be changed. The date is changed so that when someone does a search on the blog for a specific surname or clicks on a surname label at the bottom of a post the Index Post will be displayed near the top of the search results.

Maybe I should have known better, but, in the past, doing what I've done did not cause any problems. But what I learned today means I won't be doing the same thing again!

You know that thing called a permalink, aka the url for a post? Well, contrary to it's name, it isn't a permanent link. At least, not if you click on the button that says "Revert to Draft" while you are editing a blog post AND you change the publication date of the post. If you've done that and you then re-publish the post or page, the permalink (url) could change. That's not good. Especially if you have linked to that post within other posts. It's now a broken link.

So, I had updated all of the surname Index Posts (19 of them!) before I discovered the error of my ways. And then it was too late. I tried to change the url by using  the "custom url" but that didn't work. It only allowed me to enter the last portion of the url (the part after "kinexxions.blogspot.com/2012/12"). If a post had previously been published, say in July 2011, the beginning portion of the url would have been "kinexxions.blogspot.com/2011/07". When I changed the date, Blogger changed the date portion of the url to "2012/12". And therein lies the problem.

After a few choice words, and thinking about it for a while, I edited the "Master" Index Post to update it with the new links. And then edited the two "Pages" for my Maternal Ancestors and Paternal Ancestors, as well as the links along the sidebar that list the surnames that I am researching.  Those are the obvious links.

The "problem" now is that I know there have been times when I've linked to an Index Post from a another blog post. I don't think I've done it very often but, in my opinion, one broken link is one too many. For one thing, it leaves a bad impression. And for another, it's irritating to the reader.

If I had thought about it, and if I had kept track of the date the posts were last published, I could have edited all of the posts a second time and then reverted back to that publication date. I think that would have worked and I wouldn't have the broken link problem. Each of the Index Posts does have the date it was last updated, but that isn't necessarily the date of last publication. In other words, I may not have changed the date when the post was updated.

I've spent all afternoon and evening working on this. I'm irritated. I'm frustrated. Mostly at myself but also with Blogger. So, I'm going to "sit" on this for a few days and think about it some more, then decide if it is important enough to go looking for broken links to the various Index Posts. In the meantime, if anyone has any great ideas regarding this, please let me know. Oh, and if you come across a broken link, please notify me. I won't yell at you. I promise.

Database Cleanup :: It's bad, but not as bad as expected

Before I began working on "cleaning up" my database in December, I took an "inventory" of the data, partially so I'd have some idea of what the project would entail, partly because I'd never looked at the database in this way before, and to some extent so I'd have some tangible evidence that something had actually been accomplished.

I've got two databases - one for Mom's ancestral lines and the other for Dad's families. For this project I'm working with the 'Phend-Brubaker' database, which is Mom's lines.

• 7179 individuals are in the database
• 1123 individuals were added in 2012 (between January 1st and December 10th) [15.6%]
• 162 do not have a surname [2.3%] - I was actually surprised that this number wasn't higher. These are primarily women whose first names are from census records and for whom marriage records have not yet been obtained. And, of course, some are the very early ancestors whose maiden name seems to have never been recorded anywhere.
• 77 do not have a birth date [1%] - Most of these do have a christening or baptism date
• 1498 have an estimated birth date [23.7%] - Most are people for whom I have only census records and enter their dates as "about xxxx"
• 1316 do not have a birth place [18.3%] - I could "guess" where they were born based on where the family lived but should I? Some of these were simply missed when I entered the census records.
• 1434 are Living [20%] - Except in certain cases, if I receive information on people born after 1940, their information is entered into notes rather than creating a profile for them. The profiles of some of these people will likely "disappear" as they are moved into notes for their parents. They are "left over" from when I made an adjustment regarding who would have a profile added to the database.
• 5744 are Dead [80%] - anyone over 105 years of age is automatically marked as deceased

Of the 5744 who are dead (Whoa! Lots of work to do in this area!):

• 3738 have a death date [about 65.1%]
• 2006 do not have a death date [about 34.9%]
• 2582 have a death place [45%]
• 3162 do not have a death place [55%] 

Of the 3738 who have a death date

• 2577 have a death place [68.9%]
• 1161 do not have a death place. [31.1%] Many of these death dates come from the SSDI and cemetery records, which are clues but not definitive as far as place of death.)

Missing Sources - This does not mean that I don't have a source, just that it has not been entered as such. A lot of source information was entered in notes "way back" when software didn't have sourcing capabilities. And I just never got around to doing anything about it.  the numbers aren't as bad as I thought they would be though.

• 1621 - Births with no source
•  579 - Marriages with no source
•  230 - Deaths with no source
•  317 - Burials with no source
•  314 - Individuals with events missing sources (the individuals may have multiple events that don't have sources.)

General Notes

• 4649 Individuals have "general" notes. This could be a brief sentence or "everything" I've found on someone but most likely something in-between. It could also be information on living people born since 1940 that have been entered into notes for their parents. Regardless, I hope to see this number fall substantially as the information is moved into events and put into sources.

The Plan, in order of priority, is to review the individuals with:

• missing sources - which should also eliminate some of the General Notes
• no birth date - if necessary, determine a best estimate
• no surname - depending on where they lived, marriage records may be online
• general notes - in some cases the general notes won't be eliminated so I'll come up with some way of identifying those that have been reviewed

Some headway has been made since the first week of December but there is still a lot to be done. Overwhelming almost. The tagging feature in Legacy (the software that I use) has been indispensable in this process and allows me to work on little bits at a time. It's a nice feeling when I get the "There are no Tagged Individuals" message. It means one small part is completed and I can move on to the next task.


Published under a Creative Commons License.
Becky Wiseman, "Database Cleanup :: It's bad, but not as bad as expected," Kinexxions, posted January 9, 2013 (http://kinexxions.blogspot.com/2013/01/database-cleanup-its-bad-but-not-as-bad.html : accessed [access date])

There simply aren't enough hours in the day

For some time, I've been contemplating creating a Public Member Tree on ancestry.com. Yesterday I uploaded a small gedcom file to use as a little test. It was created from Legacy using the default options, which essentially means everything would be included, except what was marked as private. Basically, I was trying to determine, and understand, how the data gets parsed and how it displays on a person's profile page.

The file consisted of just a few generations of Mom's ancestors and contained 58 people. Within seconds of uploading the gedcom there appeared 57 ancestry hints! A few minutes later 21 of those people had a total of 194 hints. What is that figure going to be if I upload a database of 5000 dead people? More than a little overwhelming, I think.

I perused about half of those hints and didn't discover any new information. In fact, the stories and photos that I viewed were from my blog or stuff I've shared over the years with other people. The record hints were mostly census records.

As far as how the data displayed - at first it didn't make a lot of sense.  I may not like it, but I think I now understand why it is done the way it is. 

I was somewhat concerned about the General Notes and Research Notes that I've got in my Legacy file. There's stuff in those Notes that I don't particularly want to share just yet. In the past that was where I put "temporary" information. When I had access to the internet for research and I'd find something it would go there until I got around to reviewing it and entering it into the events or facts for the individual. I've just never gotten back to it. Notes are also where I put the stuff that has not been "proven" to my satisfaction along with thoughts and analysis. Rather like a "holding bin" of sorts. Where other people might have piles of paper on their desk, I've got bunches of notes. The result is the same, it all just sits there waiting for that wonderful time called "round-toit" to show up.

Thankfully, the General Notes and Research Notes in Legacy went into a "Notes" area on the ancestry online tree that appears to be hidden. There is a notation on that screen that "Notes can only be viewed by the owner and by those invited to the tree as an "Editor."

Handling of events was a little strange, I thought.

Events were added to the online tree using the Event Name, Description, Date, and Place as they were in Legacy, which is good. But the "Notes" that I've added for each Legacy event went into an area that is available only by clicking on the "Unsourced Citations" link.

After clicking on the name of the Source Citation another screen displays and you have to click on "(view source details)" to see the entire citation. 

This is where the detail information for the source is displayed. If any "Comments" have been added in Legacy regarding the source, they are included in the "Notes" area of the "Source Information" screen. 

This is the screen that displays when you click on the "Unsourced Citations" link of an event. The text in the  "Other Information" area is the notes that were entered in Legacy for that particular event.

That's a lot of clicking... will anyone click through all those screens to see the details or additional information? Doubtful.

After 2 hours of viewing various people and screens, the test tree was deleted. It had been a long time since I had created a gedcom from Legacy so I spent a little time looking at the options. In the test gedcom, I left the options at the default, which basically means everything would be included, except that marked as private.  But there is a little button in the lower right corner that says "customize." Clicking on that button brings up a screen that looks rather intimidating at first.

What's cool is that it allows you to exclude "groups" of items such as Events, Medical Notes, Regular Notes, Research Notes, To-Do Items, and (gasp) even Sources.

The "Customize" screen for exporting a gedcom from Legacy.

I have so many events for some individuals that their profile screen in the online tree was extremely cluttered. I also have a lot of "special" or custom events created for my own use. In addition, I already have a lot of "Census" events so if I were to add the hints for census records as an event in the online tree, there would be a lot of duplication.

What I am now considering is uploading a rather "bare bones" file without events and notes but including sources. Such as they are. Then, I will selectively add "stories" from blog posts (as suggested by Apple) as well as adding "stories" as explanations for some of my conclusions regarding certain relationships.

My database is not perfect. It's not done. It never will be. There are some relationships entered that are purely speculation on my part, and some that are probably outright wrong. But if I wait until everything is "right" it won't ever get put online. On the one hand, I may be adding more misinformation to the multitude of misinformation already out there. Will that come back to haunt me some day? On the other hand, I know I have information that could resolve some of the misinformation on certain families.

So I'm still in a state of flux in deciding whether to put my database online, and if so, how much of it to share. Do I include events and sources?  I don't particularly like how the events get imported but I also don't want to spend a lot of time adding things to the online tree. Do I put up a tree with just the ancestors? Or do I include all 5000 deceased persons in the database? Decisions. Decisions.

Published under a Creative Commons License.
Becky Wiseman, "There simply aren't enough hours in the day," Kinexxions, posted November 27, 2012 (http://kinexxions.blogspot.com/2012/11/there-simply-arent-enough-hours-in-day.html : accessed [access date])

So, Now what do I do?

There has been a lot written recently regarding copyright, plagiarism, and outright stealing of content from websites and blogs including Michael J. Leclerc on Copyright and Copy Wrong and Judy G. Russell, The Legal Genealogist, at Copyright and the website.

I thought I'd share what's been happening with my own content... it's gonna be a long post... it's taken me a while to put it together coherently...

About two weeks ago I found an ancestry member tree that had copied quite a few of my blog posts and added them as stories to her tree. Without attribution. No indication in the story that the owner of the tree had not written the story.

In the past I've found blog posts in online trees, also used without attribution, and have contacted the owners of the trees. Usually they comply with my wishes to either remove the content or add a proper citation to the story. But this time, the person had taken over 20 of my blog posts, many of them in their entirety and others using large portions, and added them to her tree as her own stories. Without attribution.

Needless to say, I was extremely upset. I waited a few days before contacting the tree owner mulling over what I was going to say and how best to say it.

Some of the posts here at kinexxions have taken me days to put together. To say nothing of the research time and resources that got me to the point of being able to finally write those posts.

I'm not talking about a list of names and dates, I'm talking about lengthy articles (blog posts) that take hours or even days to write. The other issue I have, especially with the ancestry.com stories, is that the posts are used out of context, particularly if they were part of a series of articles. In addition, if there are links to other posts within a specific blog post those links are lost when they are copied into an ancestry story (at least that is the case with these particular stories).

My reasons for writing about my family history and posting about it on the blog are many. Among them are the desire to share information that I have found, especially on family lines where not much previous research has been done. To show my research process in finding that information and the thought process involved. And, by putting the information "out there" to make contact with relatives or others who have an interest in the same families I am researching.

With those reasons in mind, several years ago I chose to use a Creative Commons License. That does not mean I have given up my rights to the material I have written and posted here at kinexxions. I specifically chose the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) license. The guidelines for that license state that if you desire to use content protected under that license:

• You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). 
• You may not use this work for commercial purposes.
• If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.

Under those guidelines, I added the Creative Commons logo to the sidebar and added text to the effect that if my work here was used that I should be given credit for that work by having my name included as well as a link back to the specific blog post being used. In other words, simple common courtesy and use of a standard source citation for blog posts.

Two days after finding 20 some blog posts added to an ancestry tree, and after calming down, writing out what I was going to say and re-writing it several times, I finally used the ancestry member connect feature to send the user in question the following message (name of ancestor and link to the ancestor profile have been removed):

"I noticed that you have a lot of nice "stories" on [name of ancestor] and his children, starting at [link to the ancestor]. It appears that you have written them, but I know otherwise... those "stories" were written by me and posted on my blog at http://kinexxions.blogspot.com/

"They required a considerable amount of time and research. These "stories" are licensed through a Creative Commons License which requires that attribution (credit to the author, with name and a link back to the article) be made when used elsewhere. 

"It is simply common courtesy to acknowledge the work of others - particularly when you use the story in its entirety, along with photos. It is also called plagiarism (content theft) when an entire article is used without attribution and without permission.

"It would also be nice to know HOW YOU ARE CONNECTED TO THE FAMILY! Perhaps we could collaborate and solve some of the questions associated with this family.

"I look forward to hearing from you and I hope you will add attribution to the stories of mine that you have used. It's like a never-ending cycle - "your" stories, which are actually mine, have now been attached to other trees. That will continue to happen, I'm sure, but it would certainly be nice if they were identified as to who they were actually written by (including a link back to the original blog post)."

Later that same day, I had a response from the owner of the tree. She said she would add a link to the blog in each of the stories, which isn't really what I wanted. I went ahead and gathered the URL for each post that was used and crafted a citation to be included with each story and sent those to her. By the next day, she had updated the stories with the desired citation.

Even though the person that created the stories added the citations, those changes don't get filtered down to the same stories that were attached to other trees. I have contacted the other tree-owners and explained what was going on and even included the desired citation to be added to the stories they had attached.

I gave them the option of adding the citation or deleting the stories and then, if desired, re-attaching the stories to their trees. As of today, I have had a response from only 2 of the other 9 tree owners. One of those two has made the changes, the other one hasn't. No word at all from the other seven.

So, do I send another message as a follow-up? The other option I have, I think, is to go to each of the stories in the trees and add a comment to them that includes the citation to the blog post.

Several days after finding the blog posts used in the ancestry trees, I checked Find A Grave to see if a Memorial had been created for another ancestor. There was a rather recent memorial for him as well as one for his wife. Included in the memorials were portions of one of my blog posts as the "biography" of the ancestors. This time, I didn't wait a few days since I had already crafted a message for the ancestry trees. I never heard back from the creator of those memorials but I checked a few days later and the biographies had been removed.

I have a feeling that more blog posts have likely been used by others, whether in ancestry trees or elsewhere. I don't have the time or the energy to go looking for them. However, if I happen to come across my content being used without attribution, I will not hesitate to contact the person who has used (stolen/plagiarized) it!

In addition to having the Creative Commons License on the sidebar of the blog, I have also created a "Use of Content" page that displays as one of the tabs along the top of the blog, beneath the header. This allows me to send a specific link describing the terms for the use of the content to people who use my content without attribution.

I have also started including the text at the bottom of this post in each new blog post (modified accordingly, of course). Hopefully, that will make it easier for people to use proper attribution and encourage them to do so. These actions won't stop people who believe that all content on the internet is theirs for the taking but at least I've covered the bases and if content is used without proper attribution, actions can be taken.

Should I go back and add a citation to previous posts? Probably, but realistically, there just aren't enough hours in the day to do that for nearly 1500 blog posts!

Published under a Creative Commons License.
Becky Wiseman, "So, Now what do I do?," Kinexxions, posted November 15, 2012 (http://kinexxions.blogspot.com/2012/11/so-now-what-do-i-do.html : accessed [access date])