Help:Special Cox Genealogy Editing Issues

Organization

This bulk of site is organized under Individual pages, Family pages, and Source pages.

Individual Pages

Individual pages are named with the name of the person the page is for. For example, the page for Sean Marvin Cox is named Sean Marvin Cox. The entire name is used, or as much of it as is known. In the event that pages are needed for multiple people with the same name, other distinguishing data can be appended to the page name to distinguish the individuals.

Individual pages generally contain the name of the individual, vital data such as birth and death dates, names of any spouses with basic marriage data, parent links, and any relevant source information. A good example page for an Individual is the page for Helen A. Cason.

The IndividualAndParents template is usually used on pages for individuals and living individuals should have the Living template inserted in the page.

If an individual does not merit a page, then a page is not created, and one does not create a link to the individual, thus suggesting that a page ought to be created. Information regarding the individual, if still relevant to the wiki, should then be placed on an existing page, probably in a "Notes" section, where it can be easily found by those looking to make progress on getting an individual to merit a page.

Meriting a Page

Not every name merits a page. Pages are named after the people they are about and since people may share names (especially if we don't have a full name), it is of some concern that the default namespace may become polluted and that, in renaming pages, we may accidentally neglect to update a link that referred to the page we are renaming.

In order to maintain order, some guidelines are set forth below to help determine if an individual merits a page.

Guidelines

First and foremost, Sean Marvin Cox merits a page, being the author of the wiki and defining a starting point for the expansion of the genealogical data.
Also of fundamental importance, to merit a page, an individual must be connected to the existing family tree, which consists of all individuals who both have and merit pages. (Perhaps through a distinct, but unknown, lineage. In such cases, the undefined lineage itself may merit a page which would link to the individual and would also connect the individual back to another individual or individuals who both have and merit a page.)
To merit a page, an individual's name must be known, or the names of the individual's parents must be known, though this is not sufficient to merit a page.
If the names of the individual's parents are known and the individual has a child that both has and merits a page, then this is sufficient to determine that the individual merits a page.
If the individual has a surname and a given name, as well as some source record and or vital information (other than the name), sufficient to give confidence that the individual is not a duplicate, and meets guideline number 2, then this is sufficient to say that the individual merits a page. (If a source is personal knowledge then this should be indicated, but this is only sufficient for pages of near relation, and relation should be indicated, and preferably linked in to the family tree.)

Family Pages

Each individual is usually connected to two or more families, their own family, with their spouse, and their parents' family.

Family pages are named beginning with "Family:" and then followed by the given name of the husband, an "and", the given name of the wife, and then the family name. (This format is generally appropriate for all the families in my known genealogy, but may one day require some modification.) Hence the Ronald J Cox and Susan Valetta Lowe have a family page named Family:Ronald J and Susan Valetta Cox.

Family pages generally identify the husband and the wife, and list the children as well. Source material can also be included. This is generally where source material for the marriage would be provided, though if only one of the spouses has an individual page, it can be appropriate to put the marriage source material on that spouse's individual page. (It would not be necessary to create a family page merely as a repository for source citations.)

A family page will often use the IndividualShort and IndividualShortTable templates.

Source Pages

Source pages are named with a "Source:" prefix. There is currently no guideline for the information that should follow the prefix.

Source pages are repositories for source data, or long bits of information regarding source material. A source page is not simply a citation, though a source page should cite its origin.

Special Templates

In order to maintain a uniform and organized look and feel for the website, as well as to visually organize data as a genealogist would wish to see it, a few templates have been designed. There are three templates of particular interest, IndividualAndParents, IndividualShort, IndividualShortTable, and Living.

When editing wiki text, a template is inserted using double curly braces. For example, {{SomeTemplate}} refers to a template called SomeTemplate. The templates below use this syntax, but also use parameters.

IndividualAndParents

The IndividualAndParents template uses 4 parameters, Individual, Mother, Father, and Family. This template creates a little 2 generation pedigree chart linking a child to parents. The only parameter that is required is the Individual parameter. The format of the template is as follows:

{{IndividualAndParents|Individual=Individual's Name|Father=Father's Name|Mother=Mother's Name|Family=Family's Name}}

For example, I might have a table defined this way:

{{IndividualAndParents|Individual=Sean Marvin Cox|Father=Ronald J Cox|Mother=Susan Valetta Lowe|Family=Ronald J and Susan Valetta Cox}}

This template would appear like this:

Sean Marvin Cox	Ronald J Cox	(family)

	Susan Valetta Lowe

You will notice that the template automatically creates a link to the parents' family page. The family parameter's value should be the same as the name of the family page, except without the "Family:" prefix. The individuals aren't automatically linked to their pages though. These individuals can be linked in by simply surrounding their names with double square brackets like so:

{{IndividualAndParents|Individual=[[Sean Marvin Cox]]|Father=[[Ronald J Cox]]|Mother=[[Susan Valetta Lowe]]|Family=Ronald J and Susan Valetta Cox}}

This template would appear like this:

Sean Marvin Cox	Ronald J Cox	(family)

	Susan Valetta Lowe

Normally you will want to link the names of individuals. However, there are occasions when you might not want to, such as when the name of the parent is unknown and there is no page for the unknown individual. You might then just enter something like "Unknown, b. Bef. 1800, Arkansas" for the parent and include source material in the child's individual page.

IndividualShort

The IndividualShort template is used to provide a standard formatted short summary of an individual. It is simpler than the IndividualAndParents template. There are, once again, four parameters, but they are not named. (No Parameter=Value) They must be entered in in order, but only the first parameter is required. the format is as follows:

{{IndividualShort|Individual's Name|Birth Date|Death Date|Notes}}

The following code:

appears as follows:

Sean Marvin Cox - b. 10 Jun 1980

IndividualShortTable

The IndividualShortTable template is much like the IndividualShort template, except it is used to provide a tabular list of individuals. No parameters are required and the format is as follows:

{{IndividualShortTable
|Individual 1|Birthdate|Notes
|Individual 2|Birthdate|Notes
|Individual 3|Birthdate|Notes
}}

For example, I could have:

{{IndividualShortTable
|[[Sean Marvin Cox]]|Living|
|[[David Gawain Cox]]|Living|
|[[Nicholas Kendull Cox]]|Living|
|[[Nathan Alden Cox]]|Living|
|[[Ronni Cox]]|Living|
}}

This would come out as:

Name	Birthdate
Sean Marvin Cox	Living
David Gawain Cox	Living
Nicholas Kendull Cox	Living
Nathan Alden Cox	Living
Ronni Cox	Living

Living

The Living template simply leaves a message indicating that the individual is living and warns against adding detailed information. It is used in individual pages and takes no parameters. You just enter {{Living}} and it will appear as follows:

Individual Living or, at least, not known to have been dead for at least a year. Detailed information should not be provided until the individual is known to have been dead for at least 1 year.