[Foundation-l] Project Proposal: GlobalFamilyTree

Mon May 24 18:02:36 UTC 2004

--- Joel Konkle-Parker <jjk3 at msstate.edu> wrote:
> Quoting Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com>:
> > I've already proposed that at http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimorial .
> >
> > The idea is to simply expand the focus of the the Sep11wiki (which is a
> > rather
> > lonely place).
> >
> > The only major stumbling block was the name - some people didn't like
> > 'Wikimorial'. Other ideas were:
> > *Wikimedia Memorial (generic and boring, IMO),
> > *Wikipeople (I liked this one so I bought the domain names),
> > *Wikifamily (another one I liked - although in the U.S. right-wing
> Christian
> > fundamentalists have co-opted the word "family").
> 
> Well, I guess I missed that one. It sounds like our end goal is the same, but
> for different reasons. Your description and name (Wikimorial) implies a
> memorial/obituary/mourning project, more than a living global genealogy. But
> perhaps this is not the case?

It would be both. There would be individual pages on individual people and
there also would be memorial pages that list people who died in some
disaster/military assault/terrorist act/industrial accident/whatever. The
"memorial"-type names were just an emphasis on that aspect. 

I would also like to see actual family trees constructed on family name pages.
There is a wiki syntax to do this that is being developed. 

> What I had in mind was a living genealogy reference, not so much
> memorializing
> the past, but serving as a reference guide to those curious about their
> ancestors. This goal wouldn't require a ban on content for the living, either
> (I'd be interested in looking up my uncle and seeing "So-and-so is a
> consultant
> for Whatchamathingy Inc.).

I fear that having pages on the living would cause the creation of vanity pages
and the use of Wikimedia resources for personal webpages. At least at first, I
would like to ban any articles about any person still living. That still leaves
billions of articles to write. If and when this project reaches critical mass
and has a 24/7 user community watching the place, then we can talk about
expanding the focus to include the living. 

> But I agree that these projects can be merged without too much lost. As for
> the
> name, I like "Wikipeople", "GlobalFamilyTree", "Wikialogy"(?),
> "Ancestors"(?).

Of those, I like Wikipeople the best. 

--mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Domains – Claim yours for only $14.70/year
http://smallbusiness.promotions.yahoo.com/offer 