Having recently developed an interest in my family history, it has occurred to me, as I know it has many others, that a family history wiki would be an invaluable resource and probably at least as popular as wikipedia. I've given it a little thought; here are a few notes.
A short time ago, someone emailed me about this, but I didn't reply and can't find the mail... comment here!
The main namespace would be reserved for people, since articles on individuals would constitute the vast majority of entries. For example, you would find an article on Jane Ann Davison at <http://wikigen.org/wiki/Jane_Ann_Davison>.
There would be an Article: namespace with advice and information on geneology. for the Article: namespace. (The last example below, for example, would be found at <http://wikigen.org/wiki/Article:Genealogy_in_Ireland>.) We could have articles on:
These are just a few ideas.
There could be a Place: namespace, which would, naturally, have articles on places from a historical and genealogical point of view. For a parish in Britain, for example, a description of the area it covers, the parish records that exist and where they are held might be appropriate. In a Place: entry on a US city or state, notes about where the area's immigrant population came from might be useful. A lot of wikipedia content would be useful in this namespace, as well as in the Article: namespace.
An Index: name space would also be useful. It would consist of indexes of people by, for example, surname, occupation, place of birth, etc.
Another possible namespace would be a Source: namespaces, where details of and links to specific genealogical sources could be put. For example, Source:1901 British census would link to http://www.census.pro.gov.uk and perhaps other useful sites, and give some backround on the 1901 census, including links to Article: pages on British censuses, the British Isles, etc. However, there may be some overlap with the Article: namespace here.
I don't have many fixed ideas on how to format a genealogy wiki entry on a person yet, but have a look at this example for a start. It's based on this genealogy wiki experiment.
This would probably be tackled very differently than the way it is on wikipedia. Dates and places of birth are a lot more important in genealogy than they are for wikipedia articles: to disambiguate two Jane Ann Davisons, we might use their years or places of birth. For example:
This would all be done on a pretty much ad hoc basis; each case will be different.
Are there any other things worth considering? Comments? --Sam 20:13, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)
It's important to be careful about dealing with such deeply personal information as family history. For instance, one question is how much, if any, information should be put on a genwiki about a living person without that person's explicit consent. I'd suggest none — it might be all very well just putting someone's name, but they will inevitably be linked to their ancestors. It's a privacy and a security issue: people's dates and places of birth and their mother's maiden names are particularly important to keep secret, and many people would be unhappy about their personal details appearing online.
(Yes, security is a major problem! Perhaps http://CivicEvolution.ORG provides a security model?) --GeoFan49 18:31, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
A wiki of this type already exists, see Rodovid. This project has been proposed as a Wikimedia project. Your comments would be appreciated.--Bjwebb (talk) 12:47, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
The Whitney Research Group uses a wiki for their website. Included are over 2,500 documents and over 3,000 family outlines.