Guidelines for Editors of our Webtrees Family Tree

July 21, 2022

Registered Members who are designated Editors can enter or change data directly on the Family Tree website pages but those changes will only take effect after they are approved by a Moderator. Members may propose changes by messaging a Moderator internally or via email.

1. Documenting the Source and quality of your information is key to our present and future efforts. Please quote an official record, a database, a book or a letter, another tree or website, a family note, an email or a conversation with an informed person. Check to see if the source is already registered. If you are guessing a time period based on other events please use ¨circa¨ or ¨ca¨ before the year. If using an indirect year estimate (For example a birth year estimated based on a self-declared age to a census taker) precede the year by ¨est¨. If you do not have the exact source reference at hand or you have some questions, you can write a temporary Note describing the source, so you can enter it later formally as a Source.

2. For women, our database uses both paternal and maternal last names, not the married names which are common practice in USA. Example: we use Frances Nesbit Chadima for a person that as a married adult always used her married name of Frances Hamm. After entering the birth name you can go to her Individual profile and click the Edit icon (3 horizontal bars) and enter, in addition, her married name or/and her nickname. For more, see #7 below.

3. Create a Family before attaching children to either parent. Please enter the corresponding type of union between parents (marriage, common-law union, etc). Please enter one husband or wife (or partner if a union) then go to the List of Families and click the person in that table. Then, in that Individual’s profile you can add a ¨marriage event¨. If you do not know the actual date you can click the top box ¨This event happened¨. By clicking the Families tab of the Individual’s profile page and scrolling down you find options for adding spouses or defining a single parent family. Click and start writing the name.

4. Add a Death event for all deceased ancestors even if you do not know the year. In the personal profile page click Death and check the box ¨This event happened¨.

5. Enter Places data consistently. The country name (Austria, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Czech Republic, España, France, Germany, Italia, México, Perú, United States, etc.) in the country’s language, or else in English, and this ordered hierarchy: Country/ Region, State, Province/County/City/Masía, Farm or Hacienda. See as example Antonio Molinos Giner. For special stories or people, only when warranted, enter geographic decimal coordinates to at least four decimal places.

6. Warning to Editors, Moderators, Administrators about GEDCOM*: Please do not try to edit our existing GEDCOM. Best left alone by any of us unless we absolutely need to and are willing to study it very well.

Experienced genealogists please note: Webtrees is NOT designed to import or add data to an existing Webtrees tree via GEDCOM. Adding new individuals to an existing tree must be done one at the time.!

*GEDCOM: The LDS Church created GEDCOM and updates this specialized genealogical universal file transfer software language. Genealogists use it as lingua franca to transfer thousands of names between different programs and databases. As of 2022 Webtrees supports its use only for the initial bulk transfer to seed a new family tree. A 105 page manual for its latest version is here: https://gedcom.io/specifications/FamilySearchGEDCOMv7.pdf

7. Tips for Entering Names.

Following is official Webtrees Help information. Obtained by clicking the question mark near name editing in a Webtrees individual page in July 2022.

The name field contains the individual’s full name, as they would have spelled it or as it was recorded. This is how it will be displayed on screen. It uses standard genealogy annotations to identify different parts of the name.

• The surname is enclosed by slashes: John Paul /Smith/
• If the surname is unknown, use empty slashes: Mary //
• If an individual has two separate surnames, both should be enclosed by slashes: José Antonio /Gómez/ /Iglesias/
• If an individual does not have a surname, no slashes are needed: Jón Einarsson
• If an individual was not known by their first given name, the preferred name should be indicated with an asterisk: John Paul* /Smith/

If an individual was known by a nickname which is not part of their formal name, it should be enclosed by quotation marks. For example, John "Nobby" /Clark/.