Talk:Rodovid

Uniting Rodovid with WikiTree

For more discussion of this topic, see the following:

• WikiTree - Treehouse ~ Debate: Merger with Rodovid.org (beginning of WikiTree's discussion)
• WikiTree - WikiTree:Merger debate (continuation of WikiTree's discussion)

For related talk about WeRelate, see WeRelate - User talk:Dallan.

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What about WikiTree? This was first proposed as a new project, and then the web site was created after some frustration at trying to get a new project started. WikiTree made the mistake of starting out with a CC-by-NC-SA license (and the legal status of early contributions done under the non-commercial clause still hasn't been dealt with), but is currently a competing project to this one. I'd also like to add that many Wikimedia users have joined in the efforts of WikiTree, and there is an often stated goal of eventually becoming a Wikimedia project.

GEDCOM support is clearly a superior feature of Rodovid. I have about 30,000 names in GEDCOM format that I may end up adding to your site if I can clean up my stuff a little bit first. This is stuff that I personally have copyright ownership over, so this is a legitimate contribution, and represents over 70 years of genealogical research. I have some privacy issues that I perhaps need to deal with (information about people currently alive that might object to personal data being published openly on the internet...notably my wife).

I'm just suggesting that for this proposal you need to decide how you are going to work with WikiTree or compete against it. Also, there is a perceived notion that once a project is started independently of the Wikimedia Foundation, it won't ever become a part of the Wikimedia family of projects. I don't know how to overcome this objection, and it is something you will have to deal with eventually.

Still, I support in general some sort of genealogical collaboration within the Wikimedia community. There are some who feel it is inappropriate as mainly personal vanity, and even some strong opinions over what sorts of content ought to be allowed. All of these objections need to be dealt with regarding this proposal.

To make matters worse, Nazi Germany required submission of four generations of ancestry by all German citizens to prove or not prove that you had Jewish ancestry. The social stigma of that is still felt by many Germans and Jews, especially when having an unwelcome ancestor proved to be fatal. Older Germans are especially sensitive to this issue, and the political implications of documenting your ancestral heritage are unfortunately among us. The same could be said somewhat about Jim Crow laws in the Southern USA, where you had to prove or deny that you were "colored" or black based on how many of your ancestors were also black, with political implications to your ancestry as well, even if your skin color was otherwise fair-skinned. That is not the case currently, but the stigma is still there. --Roberth 14:39, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

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I already knew about WikiTree and, in fact, before you had even posted, I'd added a post to the creator of the site's talk page discussing the future of the two projects. At the moment the one thing Rodovid really lacks, as you touch on, is an editor base, so I am hopeful the projects won't be competing.

I'm not really sure about privacy. I don't know where the current servers are located, but we need to find out, because that is the privacy law that we MUST follow. Of course, that doesn't mean we shouldn't have stricter privacy. Personally I'm not sure how much data about living people we should have. --Bjwebb 15:14, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

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This is fine and all, but how is it related to any Wikimedia projects other than using the same software. This comes across like a promotion to me. - Taxman 17:07, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

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At the moment it is not really related, but the reason a proposal has been added is because we are interested in becoming a Wikimedia project.--Bjwebb 19:31, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

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Bjwebb requested my input, so here I am. I'm a user of WikiTree and Wikipedia but not Rodovid or Wikimedia. From what I've noticed, WikiTree offers something that Rodovid doesn't, and vice versa. I'm torn about this issue because

• Rodovid seems like a project to which I want to contribute;
• I already contribute to WikiTree, and don't want to abandon it; and
• I don't want to contribute to any more competing projects. (I also contribute to GenCircles.)

If Rodovid and WikiTree merge; I'll definitely contribute to the resultant project. If they don't merge, I doubt that I'll contribute to Rodovid because I've already committed to WikiTree and my time for such contributions is already limited. I'm guessing that many WikiTree users have or will have this same stance. Therefore, it seems to me that Rodovid and WikiTree should make every effort to merge in order to provide a unified and more robust project that will thereby have an even greater chance of acceptance into the Wikimedia project family. --JohnAlbertRigali@WikiTree 16:13, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

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Glad you are interested, and support a merge. Why not join in at http://wikitree.org/index.php?title=WikiTree:Treehouse#Debate:_Merger_with_Rodovid.org.--Bjwebb 20:09, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

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What I propose (maybe some of these have been started):

• Create a dialogue – discuss pros and cons for merging and to identify the key issues

Choosing the name of the wikigenealogy site wikitree or Rodovid.

• Discuss and vote – both parties need to come together and have a moderated IRC meeting with the core site developers.
• Incorporate as an 501(c)3 nonprofit organization:
  • Write the bylaws and articles for the organization and file etc..
• Develop phase one budget
• Develop marketing/fundraising plan

--124.96.184.101

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Just to go on the record, I strongly support this discussion, and the concept of creating a Genealogy Wiki under the banner of Wikimedia. I've looked at Wikitree and Rodovid.org, and I'm really impressed. There is also the Genealogy wiki on Wikia, and a few others. We really need a single project that everyone can jump onto and help build. While I doubt that all of the various Wiki's will agree to a merger, I think starting a discussion to try and do this is important. Looking forward to the evolution of this project. Chadlupkes 23:43, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

How genealogical information can be useful to other Wikimedia projects

There are some aspects of this that can be useful in terms of support to existing Wikimedia projects. Most notably Wikipedia does have to deal with some genealogical information for ancient kings or notable people like the Barrymore's of Hollywood. Wikipedia also has an outstanding policy of removing people who are otherwise not notable, and a Wikigene (or Wikitree... if it can be worked out) project can be useful as a place to deal with these less than notable people, including the 9/11 victims in a more permanent and maintained website. This would be an ideal place to put data of this nature.

As just a thought out loud, genealogical databases and structures might be useful for things besides just people as well. Notably some of the more prestigious horses or dogs used in competition often keep a detailed history of their ancestry (and decendants). Corporate ancestries are also an interesting topic (what company was bought out by whom and then in turn purchased by what other company... most interestingly BellSouth being a spin-off from AT&T, later becoming SBC Communications, which then aquired AT&T... renaming the newly merged company: AT&T. All older companies have very interesting histories like this, that include aquisitions, divestitures, and mergers. Most of this information is very poorly kept and using an ancestor/parent model for defining these relationships might just help out quite a bit to understand just what is where and how it is related. Or interlocking corporate boards (technically illegal in some circumstances) and to try and decyper just who exactly owns what company. You might be surprised after running this sort of information through a genealogical tree.

Another example that is almost classic is the relationship between each of the various Unix operating systems. Almost every modern computer operating system has some major tie to the original AT&T Unix, and documenting this relationship is quite an interesting task, with most of these relationships well documented as well. The problem is that the relationships are multi-dimensional and it is very difficult to display the full interplay with all of the relationships to each other, but there is a clear parent-child relationship in almost every case... or at least sibling projects.

The history of countries is another area that might be useful to document with a tool like this. While not as clearly defined, countries are born, live, and die, with usually some notable dates for major events in the life of the country.

In none of this am I advocating that this project proposal must take in non-human data, but I am suggesting that its scope could be larger and serve as an excellent tool to help out documenting knowledge that is otherwise quite difficult to understand when presented in another format and context. If you (anybody reading this) can't see the value of being able to manipulate data in this context, you have missed the potential to expand human knowledge in general. A truly free and open database for information of this nature has potential that can hardly be understood in current terms or genealogical research, mainly due to the highly private and propritary copyrights on most genealogical data. --Roberth 02:06, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

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You have an interesting point. If we were to have information like this we would have to decide whether to allow it in the main database or have a separate database for it.--Bjwebb 11:05, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

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Roberth describe a system with very comlicated relationships. Some years ago I take part in developing of system for checking relationships, but how it can be used over html..... This is not a simple question. Kins relationships are very similar compare to relationships between companies etc --Baya 01:25, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

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I wouldn't necessarily suggest that kinship relationships are necessarily simple either. Take parents for instance. You may think that you have only two parents, and for many people that is true, but I can think of many more. Particularly with modern technology, you can have birth parents, adopted parents, legal parents (not necessarily the same thing), foster parents, biological parents (based purely on DNA), god parents (aka godfather and godmother for traditional Christian baptism ceremonies), and more. With DNA splicing that may happen in the future, you might have as many as 40 people all claiming to have some sort of parent relationship with a single person, and have a legitimate legal claim. California is already dealing with this issue, especially with one girl that had six legal parents (surrogate, adopted, and birth parents) and had to sort out who had custody (including a couple of divorces in that situation to make things really ugly). This is not King Solomon's disputed baby issue of two mothers claiming the same child but several mothers legitimately claiming a child as their own, and they are both correct from different viewpoints. King Solomon would have given up trying to decide this issue. Add into that various sibling relationships, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and more, you end up with a huge morass of relationships that takes a skilled genealogist to sort out, and ends up with people calling each other simply "kin" because they can't realistically figure out the relationship. Genealogical databases need to deal with all of these relationships, including disputed relationships as well, where parentage may be uncertain due to different documents claiming different relationships. 19th Century genealogy, however, tends to avoid most of these issues and is usually straight forward with simple parent/child relationships. --Roberth 04:13, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

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It is simple - children can't be self-ancestors!!!! Circles occure never. It's not important home many parents. I recode db. And any person will have so many parents that its want :) At this time Rodovid support harems in contrary to gedcom for example. But with companies can be situation when child company over some time buy stock or stay a founder/constitutor of parent... I don't think sireously about it but only during superficial observations I see many circles...--Baya 11:57, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

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I can name a circular relationship that is bizzare, but it has happened and is imortalized in the song I am my own grandpa: A father and a son marry in turn a mother and a daughter. Mind you, they are all unrelated except for them men being related to each other and the women being related to each other. The son marries the mother, and the father marries the daughter. Now try to sort out the relationships of everybody involved, where the son becomes the step-father of his own father, or his own grandpa. And this is a perfectly legal situation is most western countries. The song is about the father in this situation who proposes to a woman, only to discover that his future mother-in-law is his son's wife. --Roberth 18:26, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

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Wow, that is confusing. But it doesn't really matter for a familly tree, as the son is not a blood ancestor of his father, if that makes sense. Still, its an amusing story.--Bjwebb 20:05, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Project status

So what's the current status of this project? I've been following the "wiki genealogy theme" for some time now, and despite a number of initiatives, it doesn't seem to get really of the ground. Does anyone know what the status is of this proposal within the Foundation's proposal acceptance process? --Aardbij 05:45, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

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Baya has answered about the status of the website, but I don't think that's what you're getting at. The project has originally independant from Wikimedia and I have only recently added it here (as we would like to become a Wikimedia project) and have not recieved any information as to whether it is likely to become one or not.--Bjwebb 17:36, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

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I did some searching for an official "project proposal status" page. I couldn't find any. Does anyone have an idea where the foundation provides information on their current approval processes? Also, i think some serious lobbying is needed. Just adding this project to the 'proposed projects' section surely isn't enough.--Aardbij 07:02, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

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How do we bring this to a vote? I think as so as we establish that a genealogy Wikipedia project will be accepted, any merger work between Rodovid and WikiTree will speed up considerably. --Stlouisuguy 19 June 2006

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Since weeks the serach function is broken on Rodovid.

Database error

A database query syntax error has occurred. This may indicate a bug in the software. The last attempted database query was: (SQL query hidden) from within function "". MySQL returned error "145: Table './rd_a/wiki_searchindex' is marked as crashed and should be repaired (db.p-net)".

Also the Link to Bugzilla for Bug-Tickets is invalid. -- 18 October 2012

Specifications

There should be an open discussion on the features of this genealogical data wiki. I wasn't able to locate a page that stated the project requirements, nor, a list of features. The support of the Gedcom data format as an imput for this wiki already implies a certain structure. But that leaves many questions unresolved. --Aardbij 05:45, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

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Edit this: Technical Specifications Bob 02:43, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

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Some features described on Rodovid.org meta page. Project is fully functional and running. Anybody can observe and test it on special db for testing or real work in 6 languages (other languages can be added on requests). Exterior view is more critical, so see and add your comments here or directly on page Rodovid.org. (note, I'm not native english speaker so any my comments may be understandable) --Baya 09:18, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

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Yes, the pages you mentioned provide a start. But if i were a foundation board member, i'd say something along the following: 'okay nice demonstration, but before i enter the project into the approval process, i need the following issues documented.'

• Where does the project stand within the genealogy applications landscape. Compare it to other application: strengts and weaknesses.

• How does it compare to other wiki projects. For example the wikipedia project provides information that is generally accepted. Genealogical information is often based on very rudementary data.

• Formalize the data model: how does it compare to the gedcom standard, what are shortcommmings of the gedcom standard. What could be improved? Etc.

• etc etc etc.

Honestly, there are so many issues to be resolved, i'd recommend setting up a dialog with the foundation and start resolving all those issues on paper.--Aardbij 07:27, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

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What do you mean by "set up a dialog with the foundation"? I am not very familiar with the approval process.--Bjwebb 19:34, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

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I have no experience with the approval process either. I just seems the best way to approach it. --Aardbij 06:53, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

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By the way, I had a reply from Robert Horning on foundation-l, which I will post here incase it is of use to anyone, I hope he doesn't mind.--Bjwebb 15:34, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

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What really needs to happen now is to refine the proposal page and get it into a position that spells out in clear langauge what all of the objectives of the project are, and perhaps even what some initial policies might be.

I would suggest comparing it to the following pages for a similar level of completeness before you get much further:

• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiversity/Modified_project_proposal
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikinews&oldid=87446 (to

compare to how Wikinews did its proposal back elsewhen)

After this, the proposal pages need to be translated into at least four other major Wikimedia languages like Russian, Spanish, French, Chinese, etc. The full list of suggested langauges is at: New project policy

Afterward a voting page needs to be set up and some advertisements for voting on the project need to be put on Goings-on for Meta and several Village Pumps on various projects. For the Wikiversity vote, I set up a series of ads to be translated on Wikiversity/Vote.

This really made it easy to go to the various Wikimedia websites and drop a note informing people that the vote was taking place. The idea here is that you need to involve as many Wikimedia users in the decision making process as possible, and to remember that not everybody speaks English. Indeed the non-English speaking group of Wikimedia users is so substantial that it really makes no sense to start a new major project without a major effort to get input from these other language groups.

After that, you should have a legitimate answer or some solid input from Wikimedia users in general over if the idea is a good one or not. Due to the nature of this project, widespread input is especially recommended. Mind you, all of the above steps are outlined in the official New Project Policy, as approved by the Wikimedia Foundation board. The examples I cite are from successful projects that at least have the attention of the board and very substantial community support.

If you want some assitance on this, feel free to e-mail me privately or hit my user talk page on Wikibooks (the best way to get ahold of me). Most members of the special projects committee (of which I'm not a part) would also be willing to help you out as well in terms of general assistance or to answer questions about this process.

(Note, I cleaned this up to look nicer using Mediawiki markup.) --Roberth 17:32, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Page Redesign

I am going to change the Rodovid proposal slightly, following comments on foundation-l. While I am in the process of doing this it will be at the subpage Rodovid.org/new. Another thing mentioned on foundation-l is translating the proposal into other languages. Obviously there is no point doing this whilst I am modifying the page, but if anyone could do translation (for example into Russian, Spanish, French, Chinese etc.) please say on this talk page, thanks.--Bjwebb 15:31, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

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BTW, if you want some help with translations, there is a Translation requests page that is used for coordination of translation efforts for Wikimedia projects, and helped me out a bunch when I was working with the Wikiversity vote. If you speak two or more languages, it would be appreciated if you could on occasion help out with these requests as a general pitch for helping Wikimedia projects in general. There are a few more pages to dig around in if you want some specific help for a targeted langauge, but it is at least a place to start. --Roberth 17:44, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

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Thanks, but I need to get the English page done properly first. Do you think anything needs to be added / changed?--Bjwebb 20:52, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Great idea

I have been looking for a project like this for a long time. I am interested in helping out with this project!

Same here. I whole-heartedly support this project and strongly recommend that Wikipedia foundation immediately take up this project. No doubt it will have a shaky start. But once and if this project gets popularity and becomes successful like Wikipedia, imagine the benefits. You may even be able to tress your relatives whom you didn't know from this project. If that's not an addition to "Human Knowledge", what is!

However, this project should avoid receiving personal information that could raise privacy issues like: contact info and education / work info. These type of information should be restricted for upload into "user identified names" only. But, I don't think anyone can claim their family identity as a "private" information.

Hope Wikipedia foundation realize the potential of this project soon enough! Armanaziz 09:07, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Improvements

Having tried both wikitree and rodovid, I'd like to say that I like Rodovid's user interface better. However, rodovid needs a lot to improve too, such as:

1. The rodovid server is sooooo slow. It's realllllyyyy slow.
2. Inputting a person data needs 3-4 steps, this needs to be reduced to 1-2 steps, perhaps with the help of AJAX
3. Should have option to merge two persons, rather than having to delete one person and create a new one and re-attach the person to the spot of the deleted person.
4. Should have a Special Page to track relationship between two persons
5. A person's data should have a link to his/her wikipedia page

I'm not a programmer, but i'd like to see what i can do to translate rodovid to Indonesian. Regards, Chaerani 04:26, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

1. It is a problem for this time now, and we must upgrade our server....
2. Some steps (additional events, sources) can be passed with javascript (must be coded)
3. under construction
4. under construction
5. Every record about person/family has special field "wiki-page", that must be field as standard interwiki link

--Baya 14:57, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

After upgrading rodovid engine at 19 May 2007

1. average page service time 0.6 second
2. resolved

--Baya 12:42, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Original comments

• User JBJ from Wikipedia. What's to think about? This is a stupendous idea!
• What an excellent suggestion! However, I think that if this project became part of Wikimedia, the name would need a bit of change.
• I don't like the idea - firstly the information is very difficult to get accurately (what about people who's mothers had an affair they didn't know about? What if they don't even know their parents?). Next, graphically it's almost impossible to represent the complexity in 'tree' form, especially when things get complicated (breakups etc), and thirdly there is the issue of privacy - everyone in the world doesn't want their family tree put on the internet, not to mention the personal details such information would convey. Taking this into account, I don't think this would make a reasonable suggestion for a WikiMedia foundation project. I still think it could be a useful project, but its scope seems too large, and accuracy is going to be a huge problem. -Richard
• At least thet'll say we tried -mayhew18

1. User:APPER - i find this very interesting because I thought about such a project more than once and on sunday someone asked me for a free wiki-like project of this kind, and I didn't knew one...
2. Trevor macinnis - I love this idea!
3. Holden Now there is at least four different partly overlapping Wiki-projects. We need ONE that is supported by the WikiMedia Foundation.
4. Pcu123456789, hopefully they can be combined easily. (Note, there are discussions between all four of the sites about merges, so hopefully, soon this proposal will be an amalgomation of more than one site.--Bjwebb 10:05, 19 November 2006 (UTC))

Arguments

Having tried both wikitree and rodovid, I'd like to say that I like Rodovid's user interface better. However, rodovid needs a lot to improve too, such as:

• • The rodovid server is sooooo slow. It's realllllyyyy slow.
  • Inputting a person data needs 3-4 steps, this needs to be reduced to 1-2 steps, perhaps with the help of AJAX
  • Should have option to merge two persons, rather than having to delete one person and create a new one and re-attach the person to the spot of the deleted person.
  • Should have a Special Page to track relationship between two persons
  • A person's data should have a link to his/her wikipedia page. This is where integration with other Wikimedia projects come into play, and is very important to be able to visualise family relationship of important people, such as Bush Family, British Royal Family, etc.
  • For me, the name "rodovid" does not click. It has to be something with wiki in it. Perhaps wikifamily.org or wikealogy.org
  • I'm not a programmer, but i'd like to see what i can do to translate rodovid to Indonesian.User:Chaerani Chaerani 04:35, 11 July 2006 (UTC):
    • Hi, indonesian?!!! but, family is not indonesian, généalogy is not indonesian, please.... User:stephvvv
    • Add your localisation of Rodovid --Baya 09:49, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Why do we need this project?

Can someone please tell me why they think the project is a good idea? My oppinion is that it will never really catch on. Even if it becomes a project it will not last long. --Sir James Paul 22:09, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

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The project is necessary and important. It is exactly the same kind of ambitious and public-minded resource provided by Wikipedia. It would also support, relate, and cross reference the material in Wikipedia.

For me the real question is whether the Wikimedia Foundation is the correct place for this project. This secondary question becomes a study of the alternatives and scope/feasibility. Currently, and from my perspective, there are limited alternatives:

• The LDS resources, which are controlled and biased by a religious organization.
• Various commercial websites, which are not available to the general public by definition.
• Various struggling free sites (rodovid, wikitree, ...).

The smaller free sites seem to have indicated an interest in consolidating on one central facility - and that makes the most sense anyway. Genealogy is already a massive research project without scattering information all over the Internet. The Wikimedia Foundation has the reputation and the resources to put this capability in place with a few caveats:

• The Wikimedia Foundation should not be asked to replace or displace existing web-based resources but rather to organize and reference those resources.
• The Wikimedia Foundation should not be a resource for the storage of personal memorabilia or photos that belong more properly on personal and/or family websites.

As I wrote on this subpage, what is needed is a single place to organize what is known in a database of links that reference all known ancestry information. There should not be ethnic or religious biases, but facts of major ethnic or religious significance should be leveraged as part of the audit trail tracking the existence of each individual. The usual Wikipedia guidelines of NPOV and Verifiability should apply, meaning that all recorded data will reference source data that exists somewhere outside the Wikimedia universe.

If the best features of all the free genealogy web sites were combined under the disciplines of a Wikimedia Genealogy web resource - that resource would rapidly become the central repository of very many genealogy amateurs and professionals around the world, a community that is already large and already struggling with how to organize the disparate repositories that are available to it. There should not, however, be a problem finding people to work on this facility. There are a lot of people working on genealogy out there.

Please look at the Wikispecies project for a similar type of approach.

Initial steps would be combining and focusing the code bases of Rodovid, Wikitree, and similar projects to serve for the purposes of this project. Having done a little data entry in both Wikitree and Rodovid (Robert Cushman), I have a few ideas of what I would like to see done along those lines. Bob 00:47, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

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You know, I set about trying to start up a project on genealogy, and I poke around and discover that not only has the proposal been hanging around for a long time, there are several people who (like you) believe that it is a bad idea. Please allow me to explain why I disagree and strongly recommend that this project go forward in some way, shape, or form:

• The primary source of on-line family tree information is a set of paid access sites largely controlled by people or entities who are affiliated in some way or another with the Mormons (Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints). I don't mind that they make money for the original materials they make available for research. But I do object to their charging for the results of research which are contributed to their organizations for free.
• There are, in fact, a number of free sites, like RootsWeb, but if you did deep enough, you find that they, too, are under the control of the paid sites (above), which have every incentive to appropriate the good things originating therein and/or leave up a pile of junk which promotes their paid sites so as to get serious researchers "hooked in" and signed up as paid customers.
• As the Wikipedia concept becomes more well-known, I would say it is a natural for the Wikimedia Foundation to serve as a central repository for free genealogical information. I get so frustrated with the mountains of garbage that people publish out there, and I'm unable to correct obvious errors on RootsWeb or other sites because there is no attempt to validate, filter, edit, or correct content by any of those other sites. The one unique thing that the Wikimedia Foundation has to offer to the genealogy community is the idea of a collaboration to achieve the best possible view of the truth, with the ability of the site team to correct errors even if the original contributor has long since lost interest and disappeared.
• Finally, and I believe this point has already been mentioned (above), the genealogy information serves as a resource for encyclopedia articles about people, which certainly accounts for a lot of the Wikipedia articles I've personally worked on. (But then, again, I'm interested in genealogy, so perhaps I just gravitated to articles about people). I've thought about creating plain text Wikipedia articles on people within my family tree, but I decided to explore my options with a Wikipedia-like genealogy project first. I personally believe that if this project is disapproved by the Wikimedia Foundation it will still go forward, to some extent or another, in the form of plain text Wikipedia articles. But there are a number of disadvantages to plain text articles of that sort, including the inability to easily input existing data using GEDCOM and the inability to easily view all the facts about a particular family on a single page. Finally, there is the entire issue of whether biographical articles about distant ancestors would be deleted by the Wikipedia folks as not interesting enough to a general community. I certainly don't want to spend the next decade of my life typing in articles about more than 10,000 relatives of mine only to have my life's work deleted by a press of a button.

I would hope that people would consider points like these before voting to reject this project proposal. ElbonianFL 18:38, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Data privacy

I think there are enough genealogy projects which focus on building up such a database out there, e. g. http://gedbas.genealogy.net. What about data privacy (Informational self-determination)? Publishing data such as birth dates and a living person’s relationship should be a critical approach (in a legal way) in the European Union. --Polarlys 10:31, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I don't think this is a feasible idea based on the kind of information must be exposed or discovered to contribute to something like this. Alton 04:23, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I think that we would have to say that living people would not be included in the project without thier consent. --Arctic.gnome 16:55, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Comment

I think that this is a pretty neat idea for a wiki. I think that it will do pretty well but it really is not a wikimedia kind of project. I am almost 100% sure it will not become a wikimedia project but I encorage you to keep the wiki running. Peace :) --La gloria è a dio 19:37, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Voicing my Support, Concerns and Proposals

First off, I would just like to say that I really like this idea. Next on the agenda...

Concerns

• How can we ensure reliability when most people will be making additions based on the hear-say of their parents and friends and such? Especially considering that much of this data will be difficult to source even if users wanted to (like having to resort to birth and death certificates).
• Isn't there a privacy concern about posting data about when and who average people married and the names of their kids and that kind of thing?

Proposals

• Alternate suggested name of Wikiroots or WikiRoots. Roots being a pun on the idea of a family tree, but the word "roots" can also refer to something's origins, like a family tree.
• It would be nice to include genealogies from fiction, mythology and religion. Like from the Lord of the Rings, or Greek mythological theogonies, or the genealogies of the Bible.

Abyssal leviathin 16:56, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

I think those concerns are solvable.

• For reliability, we should try to use as much varafiable data as posible, but since there is going to be a lot of data coming from interviews, we could just design a way of tagging pages with a note saying "Some of this date came from interviews, and cannot be proven through published sources. If you can provide sources or disprove the information, please do so."
• There is a huge privacy concern. I think this would have to focus on people from 100 years ago, for whom census data has been reliced to the public. However, we might be able to find a way to let people easily give consent to have some basic information posted (maybe just their name and date of birth while they are still alive).
• I like the same Wikiroots. The "Wiki" name has good brand recognition.
• I agree that having mythological families would be a nice little side project.
• Another concern that I have would be how to control disagreements about speculation. I may strongly suspect that the John Smith from my family tree is the same person in your family tree, but it might be impossible to know for sure. Should we link the two or not?

--Arctic.gnome 20:08, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

How we can request a this Rodovid in other languages?

Hi I want request rodovid in Georgian, How I can do it?--თეკა 17:29, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

• http://engine.rodovid.org/wk/Add_your_language --195.137.203.26 06:49, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

• • I like this idea, and have brought it up in the context of this year's strategic planning process. What would be involved in making Rodovid a Wikimedia project? Are there any special tools you use other than the Rodovid engine? As to the discussions about what to do when there is a disagreement -- this is the sort of canonical genealogy problem that is left unresolved by all other systems; only a collaborative community system can identify these disagreements, tag them appropriately, and track dicsussions about how to resolve sticking points. -- sj | translate | + 19:46, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Legal stuff

Has the necessary legal research been done for this project? How much of this is problematic because of privacy concerns? Do contributors have to get permission from every living person they add? Does it have to be legal permission? Can minors be added at all? Can people be added without permission if all that's being said is that they're related to you in x way? How much information about a person can be posted about a person without permission, if any? This seems like it could be a successful project, especially as it's "easy to add something to", which makes for a healthy community. It seems like this project would have very high "ease of contributing", at least as much as the successful Wikipedia and Wiktionary projects, but first, some research has to be done to check this stuff out. --Yair rand 18:04, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Comments from Proposals for new projects

• what about the WeRelate suggestion above? NDCompuGeek
• Just noting the existence of a genealogy wikia --Izno

  wikia ne permet pas la réalisation d'arbre! Stephanv (talk) 20:41, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

• The link to Wikifamily redirects to a proposed project called Wikimorial related to the September 11th attack on the world trade center. Also, there is a wiki about family trees at http://www.wikitree.org/ it is in the same software as Wikimedia but wether it aspires to be part of Wikimedia it doesn't say. For me it is a great idea but, of course, a long and slow growing project. ~ R.T.G 17:28, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

  Suggestion: as a timeline style wiki, what about merging in some of the notable timeline style wiki ideas below (especially related to historical development) such as, Wikitimeline, Wikidate, Wikihistory (maybe has its own support), Wikonstitution, Wikibibliography, Wikidata and (also I guess a historical/evolution project) Wikicode. As Wikifamily is bound to include some historical reference to place persons listed (such as what they book they wrote, what position they held, what invention they created etc.), it could also pool that stuff together as a sort of Wikiprogress or Chronopedia of stuff relating to human develpoment. I would imagine that Wikifamily would be dominated by influential and historical figures for signifigant time before average persons found their ancestry. As the tree of humanity would associated development be suitable? Possibly would generate additional weight to the wiki in the earlier stage. ~ R.T.G 19:20, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

  Further to my suggestion would be a chronology of words although no current new proposals are for one. ~ R.T.G 20:43, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

• It might also be beneficial to create two namespaces: one for the genealogies themselves, and one for information regarding going about genealogical work. Kurt Weber (Go Colts!) 03:04, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

New proposal

I do not think we can just restart the proposal from 2006-2008. It should be a new proposal, and the position of the Rodovid community,. as of 2012-2013, should be clearly indicated.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:38, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

• rodovid a besoin d'une réelle reconnaissance de la communauté wikimedia afin de trouver sa juste place par exemple dans wikipedia qui, après avoir écarté un peu trop vite la genéalogie, y revient timidement avec des essais comme celui ci!!! http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson Stephanv (talk) 20:25, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

  C'est bon, mais rodovid existe deja depuis longtemps, et il faut savoir tout dábord si le projet existant veut en effet se joindre a WMF, afin de commencer la discussion.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:34, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Is Rodovid still active? It's hard to tell from their website. If not, we could try to launch from WeRelate instead. -- YPNYPN 03:49, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Wikidata?

Now Wikidata can handle kinship relations (mother, father, and many others) and there is already a tool to draw a family tree with all these data. Do we really need Rodovid? --Ricordisamoa 13:36, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

I am not a supporter of Rodovid adoption, but Wikidata only handles persons potentially notable for at least one Wikipedia, whereas Rodovid in my understanding potentially handles all persons.--Ymblanter (talk) 03:21, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Maybe you're right! I haven't thought of that yet. --Ricordisamoa 12:14, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Actually, notability rules on Wikidata are currently being discussed. It is quite likely they will be loosened considerably Ypnypn (talk) 16:04, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

I know they are being discussed, and you probably saw me participating in the discussion, but I just can not see they could be relaxed to the extent that every person becomes notable.--Ymblanter (talk) 02:51, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Not every person, sure! But how can we verify family trees of unknown people? Moreover, are family trees of unknown people interesting or useful for anyone? And also, would anyone publish his private family tree? If not, would Rodovid put restrictions on viewing a family tree? --Ricordisamoa 21:58, 26 February 2013 (UTC)