 Good morning afternoon and evening depending on who's here Hello Betsy is joining me for wiki-tree tours today We've had a little bit of a change of plans because two of our hosts are indisposed So Betsy volunteered it. Well, I asked her to join me and she agreed I'm happy to be here We appreciate it very much. It's it's hard to talk to yourself So I really appreciate having them here and helping out that's he's gonna watch her questions in the chat Well, we go along here and today. We're just gonna take a look. We're I Don't know how familiar some of you are with our wiki-tree tours plan. Our plan was to cover topics starting with B today Unfortunately since I'm on my own I was not prepared to cover the other two topics for B So I'm just gonna talk about biographies today and we'll just do an overview of biographies and Give you some ideas on where to find additional information for inspiration Maybe a challenge or so and I don't know. We'll see what else comes up on Betsy Sounds good. Okay So I see a few people have joined us here. We've got about ten and Lisa says that she's finding the sound quite choppy. I hope that's not everybody. I hope that's not us. I Don't know. We'll chat for a minute here and see what happens. Let us let us know Yeah All right. Well, let's let's go. I just want to give people a little bit to To trickle in here because I know that I'm always late to stuff So I will happily give people a courtesy of being a few minutes late So how have you been Betsy, I know Betsy and I don't live very far apart. So we're having the same weather today at that It's kind of nice out. It is I could not believe that our temperature when I woke up It was 28 but by the afternoon it was in the 40s 20 degree jump was able to add some so I had a really nice walk. Oh That's great. That's fantastic. It does feel like spring has sprung, but I know we're probably not done with winter yet. I Know that was Alrighty so I'm sorry. I said we could always hope Yes Well, let's go ahead and get started We're gonna talk about biographies today. So I'm gonna share my screen here This is our Beginning biography page and we wanted to cover a few things here I'm gonna pop over here and take a look. We're gonna talk about the first. What are the required sections? In a biography and you'll notice Every profile is going to have or should have a biography header a Sources header and underneath the sources header. You'll find our references tag and a lot of times We get new people in and of course, they're not going to be familiar with this because it's wiki markup And that can be a little confusing sometimes when you're not used to it The important thing to remember about these is to always leave them there and never delete the references tag Because it will come into play a little bit later We're gonna we're gonna talk a little bit about how to well, I don't want to get into sources that the Yes, the important thing is to remember is that the references tag is there so that you're what we're gonna call today footnotes will appear below that so if you're used to using inline references in your biographies You don't want to delete that or or those little inline references just won't show up So make sure you leave all three pieces in place the biography header The sources header and the references tag The important thing is that these headers have two equal signs around the title And that will make them a level two header so that you can indent other stuff underneath and we'll talk about that in just a few minutes So important thing is don't delete those Then we are able to have some optional sections within there The two main optional sections you might find are research notes And again, that's going to be a level two header two because that we don't want those indented. They're very important that's where you keep track of Maybe you've found some discrepancies in your sources for the person so you want to make sure that You make a note on the profile that says okay, we found this birthdate here and this birthdate there But we're not sure which one's right yet. So you'll have to go digging for more sources. Just make sure you document things like that If you need some also term, I'm sorry go ahead. It's gonna say it's also a great place to report your negative findings like well I checked, you know here in this repository in that repository and found nothing exactly yep and Then you can also kind of remind yourself if you're going to continue working on a profile kind of remind yourself Where you left off, you know where you've looked where you haven't looked what you still need to look at As far as locating sources and information So sometimes I will go in and put like even a little to-do list in that section for myself If I know I'm going to continue working on that profile and that way I'll remember, you know Where I've gone and where I still need to go So that's that's a handy handy section for everybody The next section is acknowledgments And you'll see that here is also a level two Again, we don't want that indebted. We want everything to line up pretty and That is a good section for Giving credit to anyone who's made meaningful contributions to the content of the profile So even if they're not a wiki tree member and you've used their research that you found elsewhere Or you've gotten their permission to use their research you can give them some credit here So make sure everybody knows Who's contributed to the contents? And then each each of those sections research notes and Acknowledgements have their own help page that you'll see linked on the biographies help page So you can click through those and get more information for those sessions Now there are some additional things that you can do within the biography and These would all go you could you could break up your biography into Additional sections using level three headers. So these would go underneath the biography and Typically, we don't include these unless there's like a very long Biography that is you know kind of think about like a wiki tree article or sorry a wiki page Or start over a wikipedia article where they break things up into sections because there's a lot of information there You can do the same thing on wiki tree using these headers If you have a historical figure that you want to write about You can talk about for example their early life You can talk about how their family, you know family members that may have been important to them What they did as an occupation and so on Some people even like to include a timeline which I've done on Some of my ancestors because it helps me to sort out For example, if I might have a child that I'm not sure whether it belongs to the family I Can put it in the timeline and see oh well, they weren't even you know, they're they're far too The the parents are far too young to have had this child or something So then it can kind of help you sort sort out problems like that when you get a timeline, but that's just like Disputed origins is something you would put inside research notes So that's typically you're gonna run across that when you come to some of the more I was gonna say ancient but maybe medieval profiles, what do you think Betsy? Yeah, I mean when I think of the term I've never actually never run across a disputed origin section But I mean I think that that would yeah get into very old Individuals where you know records aren't there and and there is some describe some some ambiguity Yeah, right. So a lot of times you'll see that on the profiles back in safety you know 11 hundreds or 1200s where it's impossible to find records and There might be different legends or oral histories that have been passed down that don't make it clear What a person's history is so? That's just a good section to add in the research notes area, oh Let's see. What do we want it? What else do we want to talk about? Well, oh Also wanted to cover things like categories No, I'm gonna pop over here real quick To categorization. We're not gonna go into detail here This is a very complicated topic and we'll talk about this another day But just know that wiki tree has Categories and you can think of them as kind of like buckets Where you want to collect profiles that have something in common a location? They might have all shown up in the same Um Cemetery together so we have cemetery categories And so that's something that you can keep at the top of a profile And you'll see here the proper order is that categories come first in a biography Other options for things that you can add our project boxes or boxes templates that will Indicate that there's something about the profile that you need to pay attention to for example There are there are some that are easily confused With another person So you can add something like that to make sure that people pay attention to the fact that there is another person And similar to this person, but we need to keep them separate Research note boxes are handy There's a variety of those and probably the most common one that you've seen is unsourced So you can keep those up at the top of the biography that will put a banner up. I'm trying to see Can I can I just hop in for a second? I mean, yes, please One thing that works for my brain The rules I tell myself is when I'm in edit mode and I see the biography with the two equal signs the stickers in the temple no the the categories go above that line and templates go Below and then the text of my biography that works for me for my brain. Well, they some of this Templates however go above the biography Yeah, like the This the research notes boxes go above the biography. I was gonna try and see if I can find an example for us here if we can Because we have a little extra time right now, so let's go look at categories here real quick I'm just gonna type one in because I know what I'm looking for. We're gonna look at unsourced Or not What's the heck did I spell that right there we go I forgot profiles Okay, just because I'm more familiar will go to North America and United States and I just want to find an example to show you what that looks like Let's see we live in Illinois. So let's go there We'll look at many and this is what a Research note box can look like you'll see it. They're all standard. They all have the same appearance a big yellow banner It's gonna tell you why it's there. So in other words, this this profile doesn't have any sources Actually, this one does so whoever added the source forgot to take the research notes box out. We'll worry about that later That's what you're looking for is when you add One of those research note boxes. Can you see what I'm looking at? It looks like it now. Here we go. Sorry That was my fault It popped me into a different screen. Can you see that now? Yeah Okay, good No, it makes sense. I'm talking about big yellow banners. There it is Yeah, yeah, we do have a question in the chat Someone who's just asked for some real basic why why why categories? What do they do? How are they helpful? Doesn't understand them the purpose. Okay Um, it makes it easier to find profiles that you're interested in working on I'm gonna close that and pop that over here You know the second I think I just Unshared my screen Oops, so for example when we have a cemetery category It will show you all the wiki tree profiles Where those people are buried in that cemetery and it can be a very helpful way to make connections and that you weren't aware of Right, you might you might go in here and find I'm clicking around again Again, we didn't want to go too far into categories here, but we can give you a little idea of what they're used for I'm gonna go into an Illinois cemetery Um, here's one that I had worked on a while back Where'd it go? I'm in the counties. Hold on Whitney So this is a this is a cemetery category and you'll see up at the top it tells you it categorizes based on location first and Then we have an info panel that shows you Again the location and some other information that will become helpful And as you go down You can find all the people that are categorized into that bucket So all of these people are buried in the same cemetery And if other people are out there working on the same cemetery or working on families that may be related You might actually stumble across somebody that you were looking for in here Mm-hmm. It's also interesting. I'm sorry. Go ahead. I was gonna say I also love the the connections feature When I'm in a category up at the top right, I think you can find your connections in the cemetery So I just clicked through and I can see my ancestors and cousins that are buried here And then people that I'm connected to through marriage Which is a really cool feature you can you know click the relationship Found and it will show you your You know Back in the eleven hundred twelve hundreds That's how we're related You're a shared thirteenth grandparent great-grandparent, right? Right exactly So that's at a high level. That's what categories are used for and if you go into the find tab You can go to find categories and it will bring you to this page And you can just look and see what's available and just kind of drill down into them if you're looking for something And just that's one of the options. I'm sorry go ahead We just had a question just on categories as well To add the category there is a box Maybe we can look at a profile and and see the little there's a little box where you click it And then you could start writing in the The name of the cemetery and it will more than likely just auto pop up The name in the category. Yeah, let me go just as a brief Side I think here we're gonna go look at my grandpa There he is And if I wanted to add I think I already have a number of categories for him right now sprinkle and township I don't think I have one of the places that he lived listed You can see on here that I've already added the categories here at the top above the biography header and so If I wanted to add another one, there's this tool here But I can click on and I can enter Another category name and I can see that there is a category here That I could add to his profile and I click it and it just adds another line at the top So that's a really super easy way To add a category now if you type something in and you can't find it Then you need to go out to g2g and ask for To have that created and I'm not going to go into that today because we're gonna stick We're gonna steer away from categories now, so we're gonna leave that Excuse me. Gosh, I'm not a frog in my throat. Okay, so The fact where I was categories are a super handy way of like I said collecting people Together you can use them for military awards occupations uh, what are some other ones that people have Have They're connected to a Very big historical event Like uh, like Magna Carta or something. Yeah, or yeah, what else occupations. You said occupations, right? Yeah So these are there are some other types of research We're skipping into research notes boxes and the like there is another list of those here on the biography page Click over here when we get done go and visit this help Biographies page and click through some of these things and you will find a wealth of information What are these used for? Easily confused research note boxes project boxes and succession boxes I don't want to get into the weeds here So just take the time to go over and learn about these things and your wiki tree skills will blossom The other option that we have available to add to profiles are stickers and these are more of a decoration But they might also point out like an important characteristic or an important or something that you want to highlight about One of your ancestors or whoever you're working on They can be used to honor somebody if they've received an award or some type We probably have a sticker for it, especially military awards You can use them to indicate that somebody was a twin with somebody else You can talk about maybe what if they have Like roots back to a certain country italian roots or polish roots or You know anywhere will usually have a sticker for things like that Oh, let's see. What's next basically What we want to we want to keep Biographies fairly simple. I mean if you've got a lot to say about somebody you're welcome to go in and start adding Everything but try to make it try to write it so that it's Written in a way that somebody else can come in and easily add information Or edit what you've added if they find a mistake or just want to insert something in a paragraph It's best to try and stay away from I mean, this is okay. I'm gonna Probably veer into a little controversy But I don't like to add tables to biographies because They make it very complicated for a beginner wiki tree or to come in and edit So my preference is to not include a table in the biography. Those are great for when you're putting together For example a a census Um A household for a census in a free space page that you can then link to the profiles that are involved That's just my preference Um But it is it does make it a lot easier to keep keep biographies simple Simple is better. Trust me We have we have a page. Um, let me click over this real quick Here is a help page called recommended tags And if you scroll through here, you can find all of the wiki markups That are allowed in a profile Huh Um, let's see I wasn't really intending on showing you this kind of show it anyway um These are the things that you can put into A biography if you don't know what they are don't use them Or you can click through and learn how to use them Things that you'll often see are line breaks if if you have a Notoriously a will that you're pasting into a biography Those are going to be written up, you know, if you've copied it from somewhere else They're going to notoriously come up with weird Line breaks and everything you can create your own line breaks here to make sure they come in the way they were intended to Um, and then some of these other things are just you're not going to see them very often You will always see these rough tags and the references that we already talked about those are for inline sourcing And the rest of it you can probably more because those are going to be more for Things that you might do if you're a more advanced user You can edit by creating italics and bold or both You can make nice bulleted lists, which is my preference over a table Because they're really easy to edit they make sense immediately when you look at them Um, and here is some table markup that you might see again. I prefer not to No, there's table markup. I prefer Stay away from those because they're not easy for beginners and just some other options in here again pop on over here and look at the recommended tags help page Um I'll go ahead and copy that into the Yeah, and don't forget that if you're playing around and trying to learn some new tricks Um, you can always use the preview button In in when you're in edit mode so you can see if it did what you thought it was going to do Right exactly. Yes. Very good point Lost my share again And then there's some important things If you're if you're wanting to edit text that somebody else wrote and it's clear that they've put in A lot of time and effort to what they're doing. Please contact them first because that's how we collaborate on wiki tree Um, if it's just like fixing a typo or something don't worry about it If you have a paragraph that you want to add It's probably okay to go ahead and add it as long as you've got your sources to back it up But it's really um, a nice courtesy to to contact the profile manager And let them know that you have some changes to me Um, sometimes if it's if I'm you'll confident about what I'm adding. I'll go ahead and add it and then I'll Contact them and say, you know, I put this paragraph in Please take a look and let me know if you'd like to make, you know, some changes to it But um, if you have something substantial to add to a biography Talk to the profile manager first communication before editing. That's how we all work together here Um, it's really important that we're polite to one another and work together to to make things look really nice Um, so if you let me go back here If biographies are your thing Or you want to start writing more biographies We have some ideas over here for inspiration. There's a help bio ideas page And I've linked all these pages in the youtube description so you can get to them quickly um, and just kind of these are like some good prompts for you to to take a look at and Um, get some ideas on what you could add to a profile I know I walked into a profile sometimes and like I don't even know where to start I'll start usually with Census records and talk about where they lived and maybe what their occupation was and who their family members were, but It makes it so much more interesting if you can find more information about them and tell their story Like were they named after somebody? um What what was their passion? What were they specifically interested in did they have any hobbies that they were involved in so on and so forth so and even like Yeah, on a on a draft registration card. I always like that, you know, I can say oh, they had brown hair and blue eyes They were 5 10 and yep I love that and another really great place to find information about somebody is their passport application Yeah That's right. Those are so awesome and they always have a picture Don't forget to always like go to the next page of the record because it's like might be two pages And the second one would have right right So, yes, so bio ideas will give you a little inspiration including some prompts and then to get some Really inspirational ideas pop over here to our health examples. This is our our gallery of profiles Where people have done a lot of work on these profiles we have for example, steven hawking And you can get you can see what other people have done You can see they've added his profile picture in a cool background that reflects his you know passion This is a project box the england project manages this profile We know that because this box is here and they're listed right here as a profile manager He's a notable so they added a sticker that indicated that he was a notable There he is a notable sorry And then they've just written up a really nice biography for him here included some quotes and photographs Is that this example gallery is just a great place to come in here and see What other people have done and it might inspire you to do the same for your ancestors Um, let's see what else are we going to cover today Oh Biography builders, that's he have you ever worked on biography builders. I know I haven't I mean, I'm familiar. I'm familiar um So this is a challenge that comes out every month you can click through I'll show you where their current challenge is here in just a minute But this is for people who love to write biographies um, they have some Uh Suggestions that are where you might look for information. There's monthly themes they talk about um Well, first of all how to join And just pop over here and take a look. I think I added this link in the youtube page also And similar similar similar to bio builders Is the new uh dash of love Uh challenge So that's every month. We're in our second month of that where we pick a A profile that needs some love and we do a before screenshot and then we you know Fill in the dash and uh, right? That's a good way to put it fill in the dash A dash of love for that profile So in february the bio builders are working on people who died in february. So these are probably You can go to your anniversaries list on your My wiki tree. There's an anniversaries Link there you can go and look at people on your list of profiles that you manage And see who died in february you could work on those you could find some notable people or historical figures who died in February and work on those but this is um something they do every month. They'll come up with a different theme You can see that a number of people have Listed out who they've worked on I'm not going to go too fast because that will make you dizzy um, but that's just a fun A fun thing to do and it can get you you can get help during that monthly challenge if you want to start working on on uh On building biographies. That's a great place to go and get advice from other people who have been doing this a lot Some people don't like writing biographies That's okay They they will come along and somebody eventually will add a biography to that profile And there are just people who love doing that more than more than other stuff. So So really I have Oh, oh go ahead. I was just going to do you ever use the section below the biography for special memories? There's uh, you know what i'm talking about Oh below on the profile you mean? Yep. Mm-hmm. Uh, let's let me exactly Oh memories Personal story. I actually did Yeah, yeah, let me let me go to my grandpa's profile again I think I have one there Grandpa, where are you? There he is So yeah, there's a button up here in the Right below the the main tabs on the profile if you click memories Is this what you were talking about? Yep Yep So you can go in and it's almost like a comment section except it's related To just you know recollections that you have from your ancestor And I my grandpa had a huge garden in the back of his tiny house And he always had jack in the pulpit flowers that grew in his in his garden and my sister and I were fascinated by those So that was just something that I wanted to to you know Add to his profile and make sure everybody knew it and then he would take us out back and he had this old model a Car crank planted in his garden. He said Planted in and we were supposed to turn it around and crank up the garden So every time we went to see grandpa Yeah, every time we went to see grandpa. We had to go out back and crank up the garden for him to make things That's funny That's just something I wanted to immortalize on his profiles. Yeah, that was a great idea to include that I'm what we do really have to cover at a high level. We have a few questions. Yes. Um, and I've starred them Now lisa's question about the I need to get context of that the discussion was about the Acknowledgements for jed com imports and okay Can we delete those? Lisa, correct me if I'm misinterpreting but We can but and and this is kind of you know, how sometimes you'll See off-label uses for medications The the acknowledgement section has kind of been become an off-label use for jed com information We have several efforts Primarily we have the jedi challenge effort that we're a lot of people. I'm sure a bunch of you who are listening are familiar to this I'm familiar with this like just all over the place today, but anyway you can Keep that jed com info In the acknowledgement section because if you use wiki tree plus You can then go searching for all the profiles that came in in that jed com and it can help you Reassemble families if they've been separated or you can get a list from That one person that brought in all the jed com Brought in the jed com file and you can find a series of profiles to work on to get those all cleaned up Now I would talk to K night about whether or not It's okay to delete that jed com info after you're done with that profile Um, I don't know what they're what their standard for that is so if anybody that's listening right now knows Put it in the chat and we'll we'll let everybody else know I think it's okay to remove it after you're done working on the profile But I don't know if they prefer to keep that in there. So um And then we have a question about when we want to to link wiki tree to a wiki tree I guess link a wikipedia article to wiki. Oh, okay Yeah And that's very easy to do It's similar to using an internal link to another profile on wiki tree So you would put your double square brackets The word wikipedia. I'm going to do an example in the chat here You put the word wikipedia A colon and then the name of the article and I'm just going to put in the name of A town I'm familiar with as an example. So If you look in the chat That's that's an example of how you would include a wikipedia article link in your biography So it works just like an internal link on wiki tree You would put in, you know, the double square brackets the profile id You can also I don't know if that'll let me edit that you can also put a pipe after the article name Don't do that again Because the way i'm using the hyperlinking is a a single square bracket the url A space and then the text that I want to appear and then close the square bracket You could that's an external link. So that also works. Um I think either one would be acceptable if you were linking to wikipedia But if you'll notice I have a pipe in between illinois and champagne in here And that again it works just like the profile links that you put in So That is handy. I do that quite a lot like if I I just I did that on on one the other day where I was working on a A guy that was in the navy Or no, he was in the army, but it I found his um The ship manifest and I wanted to make a note of the ship names And they actually had articles on wikipedia for the ships that he was um transported on So that was kind of cool. Yeah um And then I see gen's wanting to know about cemeteries Oh, no gen you can just add um If you use the category finder it will it will do the formatting for you You just need the name of the cemetery. You don't need to put the high level cemetery category in Does that make sense? Yeah, okay, so if you go to the high level page you can drill down and find Perhaps the cemetery that you're looking for if you just want to kind of see what's there I I have on the oh, sorry go ahead. No go no go ahead I was just gonna say I have that united states cemeteries category page bookmarked You know because that's where I do most of my work and then I just talk to the state and the county and boom Right and what I do when I'm trying to add a cemetery category a lot of times you're adding it from Like a find a grave memorial I just use whatever's in the find a grave memorial and I'll type part of that into the category finder on the profile To see if the category has been created yet um I That's the maybe you've done this. I haven't asked to have a category created for a really long time So I'm not sure how that is working right now. It's working fine. I know but I haven't done it myself. So um me neither So I yeah, so If you need help creating a category just post it in g2g and make sure that you tag it With the categories tag and then somebody who's familiar with working on that will help you out They'll come and answer your question um Lindsey wants to know or linda. I'm sorry I put your name together lindsay instead of linda coursey um The wiki are you interested in seeing what else we've done? We should have a playlist on our youtube channel for the retreat tours Do I made a lot for that if you want? Okay Sure, and I'll go to if you give me just one second here I will there's a tag in G2g that I'll show you here just a second Let me share that real quick Have to add it to the stage here so you can see it if you'll you'll notice on the screen, this is our list of um tours that we've already done We've been a little bit inconsistent because the timing just doesn't work out sometimes But there is a tag right here called wiki tree underscore tours on g2g and you can find all of our posts related To the tours so I hope that they're helpful for you. We have fun doing them um That was actually something I wanted to mention was there is a there is a tag in G2g and I did put a link to the tag in the description for um For the the video on youtube So I hope that helps all right one more question. Yeah When do you use project stickers? Um, for example, Missouri, um, when you use russian roots and does it go all the way down to the lowest person online? um I would check for the russian roots. I would check the project page and see what their guidelines are For using that sticker most projects are going to give you a guideline for who to use it on Um And if you're talking about the Missouri project sticker, I think if somebody had Like they were born in Missouri or they died in Missouri or they spent their whole life in Missouri Then you could put the Missouri project sticker or the Missouri sticker on Um, if it was an important aspect of their life where they lived residents I would I would include it if they were just you know there for a couple of years I probably wouldn't include it. But if it was a something You know A big part of their life Then I think it would be a good idea And most of our projects do have um Stickers if you want to embellish a profile And the fun thing about stickers is that you can put them anywhere in the biography You can you can insert them next to the paragraph that talks about the thing that you're trying to highlight So that's kind of cool. You don't have to put them directly under the biography header So that's always kind of a fun way to to decorate I haven't I haven't done that moving my stickers around but that's a great reminder, you know, it's Spread the color again Right and again if you are are working on a profile that's managed by somebody else They might have a different feeling about stickers. So check with them first before you add stickers Those are one of those things where you know, somebody's managing a profile. They might not want to have them on there And it's up to them. There's a profile manager. So they get to make that decision But just check with them see what see what they think Um, and that's that's really about what we have for biographies today. I I hope I covered the important Yeah, no, it's a great tour um Nobody has any other questions. We're super happy that you stopped by and I hope that this is helpful If you have more questions about biographies post them in g2g And include the biographies tag Um, and again check out the description on this youtube video There are some links there that'll be helpful that we talked about and please do a thumbs up on the video Because that helps us get more viewers So that's always helpful. So thanks for stopping by Um, I think that's it right got anything else Okay, well everybody have a great week and we'll see you next time. Bye