WikiTree Tech Talk (July 2026)

[music] Welcome everyone to our July edition of the Tech Talk Zoom session. I'm glad you could all make it. Um this is a bumper crop. 24 people. That's fantastic. Um and we've got an exciting evening planned for you. Um, well, it's supposed to be at an hour, so uh I'm not planning on holding you hostage for an entire, you know, three-hour meeting. Um, though there's some certainly exciting stuff, so um, uh, this is great. Uh, so I'd like to to welcome all my, uh, regular fellow co-hosts, uh, Murray and K and Rob, and greetings from Ian, um, via via Murray. Um but we also have two uh special guests, two new developers who are joining us and showing off um some of the work that they've been working on. Julia is going to show us the mcelium tree uh along with her co-conspirator and um uh Ben is going to show us the extension he's been working on the Wiki Tree record annotator and uh Allesh I believe has been sort of his co-conspirator in uh putting that together. So uh and it's great that you're here and also to join us as well. Welcome to all the regulars who come and join us as well. So uh in the chat pod we've got we've got uh lots of things that we're going to show and we're going to talk about updates and whatnot. Uh but uh we do want to answer any questions that you have cuz that's one of the primary purposes of doing this on a monthly basis is if you have issues or problems with the the technology uh connected with Wiki Tree um the apps or the extensions or things that aren't working the way you think they should or how do I do this those sorts of questions then uh this is supposed to be the place where you can get some of those answers. So if you have questions uh put them in the chat, put a big Q in front uh so that they stand out for us and we will get to those. Um uh if if it's about something that's one of us is presenting or talking about then um we will try and answer those right away. And if I can't get to if if I don't notice that then hopefully some of one of my co-hosts will and uh will pipe in and interrupt and whatnot. Um, and if it's something that's not directly related to what we're talking about, um, then we'll answer those, uh, when it's convenient or at the end. Okay. Um, so, uh, let us begin. Um, so I'm going to turn it over first to Jamie to give us some updates from the tech team, the official tech team, and, uh, um, other things. So, take it away, Jamie. >> We'll be we'll be pretty quick, I guess. [laughter] So, a lot of what we've been working on the past couple months is just trying to keep bots from taking down the site. [laughter] >> Um, so, uh, we've been trying several things. Um, I know a lot of people have run into issues where their IP addresses may be blocked. Um, tomorrow we're going to be making it easier for anyone on the team to unblock someone. Um, which should help a little bit because I know like right now it's like we get a list of IPs and then we have to send it off to Brian and then wait until he has time to unblock people. So that should make it a little bit less annoying for uh regular users. Um, yeah, we're still trying to to figure out a good balance between not blocking real people or their apps and actually blocking bots. It It's been tricky. Um, so we're still working on that. We know that there was a I think it was last week that there was the site was down for a while. Um, so yeah, we're working on that. Uh the other thing that we're we we've been working on lately is uh the location stuff in search. I know that it kind of broke a little bit last week. Um so we have a fix that's in testing right now. That should also go forward tomorrow. Um so hopefully that will fix most of the issues people have been having. Um, and yeah, so that that's the only stuff I can think of right now about like actual tech team stuff, >> at least [clears throat] that I can talk about. [laughter] >> Ah, right. >> Um, there's something we're working on with Family Search that is pretty close to to being done. Um, but I don't know if I can say any more than that. Um, and then for API stuff, um, Ian let me know that I had not updated the documentation, uh, about >> well, actually, I hadn't updated the API documentmentation for like four months. >> So, I did a couple updates today. Uh, one is that I added information about research status because that is in the API, which apparently people did not know. No, >> I think uh but uh yeah, so that that's in the API documentation now. And then also someone had asked about um how to get the no more marriages status and so I updated the documentation to make that a bit clearer as well because I know people have had trouble with that. So yeah, that's all I have to say today. [laughter] >> Excellent. Great. Um, I noticed that you put through a number of different PR requests, uh, and updated tree apps. Um, so I >> were all mostly bug fixes. >> Were they? Okay. >> I think maybe you did you do any new features? >> I did. I did. I'm going to [laughter] talk about those later, but so I didn't notice or I there was three or four things there and I wasn't sure if any of those were updates to other programmers tree apps that but if they were just bug fixes then then that's probably fine. [laughter] >> Yeah, I think a lot of it or like I know K updated biochem >> and then I think Ian's was a bug fix I believe. >> Okay, good. Well, then I think what uh I'd like to do is I'd like to turn it over to our two guests. So, we'll start with Julia. Ladies first. >> Basically, I wanted to start out by saying um [clears throat] thank you Wiki Tree. I love Wiki Tree. [laughter] >> Oh, that's >> my love of Wiki Tree knows no bounds. It really doesn't. I spend an awful lot of time here and um I talk it up to everybody and yeah, I just totally love it. How long have you been involved with Wiki Tree, Julia? >> Uh, well, I think I go back to at least 2011. >> Oh, super. >> Yeah, I I was I think an early adopter. I've just become more and more involved as time has gone on and become increasingly interested in um growing the tree. And part of what drove the desire to build this app was wanting to be able to see how the work I had done connects into the much larger network of Wiki Tree and um I've always wanted to see that and it I could never find a way to see it. So vibe coding came along and suddenly I could take this idea that had been in my head for a long time and with Brad's help at least make it happen. So um so you're looking right now at a a a mcelium tree of my dad's chart showing five generations and you can see in the upper right hand corner it's saying 556 people are on this network. there. Each each one of those dots is a node to a profile on Wiki Tree. And you can see that between all of those 556, there's 2,127 connections from the year 1600 birth years from 1600 to 1982. So, if I grow I can using this slider, I can grow the generations. Uh, now we're up to six. you can start to see. I'm just going to show you this aspect and then I'll explain some of the other parts of it. There's eight. >> Julia, explain the color of the nodes and the color of the >> Yeah, I was going to get to that, but first I'm just giving them a um the tour of of the exponential sort of quality of it. But those th as you can see in the bottom right, those nodes are colorcoded by how close they are to the root node. The root node in this case is my father at the center of the graph and he has, if you see my cursor, he has a little photo in there. Um, and so you can see mostly clustered around him are these oranges of his closest relatives. So what's making this different is from ordinary lineage trees is we're seeing not just all the grandparents going back all the different generations but we're seeing all their siblings and so the aunts and uncles at every level. I'm just going to take >> I'm going to take it up to uh its max. It currently maxes out at 10,000 nodes or people. And you can see it starts to slow down a little bit. It's it's getting it's collecting a lot of information, but it's all still in there. And once I got >> mine's quite a bit faster than hers, by the way. So, [laughter] >> he tends to have a lot. >> She's got a newer computer than I do. I have an older computer. Um but anyway uh then I wanted to parse the information within that tree. So that network. So we have along the sidebar on the right there's various things. Um I can look for a specific node by name. >> So uh I'll just look for somebody here. I'm going to look for my mother who I know is in this tree. So, this is so far I'm in the 2D version. There's a 3D version that we've built. Not all of the features are currently available in 3D. It won't be hard to get them available. It's just I've been off on another project of late. So, I haven't been able to um completely get this thing up to where I want it. But, >> yeah, it's a good good idea to switch to 3D when you're down at three level three. >> Yeah, I'll I'll drop this down. Not sure what happens when you do it in between. >> I'm gonna go back to 2D for now. So you can search biography. So there I clicked on I found my mother and up she came and it's basically the wikip the wiki tree page, right? >> Um it has her birth, her death information. It tells me how many connections she has directly from her. Those are the edges. So it has nine edges. Uh, it tells me who the manager of the profile is. In this case, that's me. >> And it gives me the wiki tree um page. If I click on Juwel 3286 over there in the popup on the left, >> that will take me to her Wiki Tree page in another tab. So, it it's really easy way to navigate between wikiree and here. >> It also gives me all the information as I scroll down. that's whatever information is in her biography, which actually is very little for her. I haven't put in much for my recent um I I have a lot more for older generations. Um, probably one of the more interesting features so far that's in here, back to the right side sidebar, is filter by manager because I wanted to know, okay, here's 10,000 nodes that all connect to my father. >> Um, which ones did I build >> and who [clears throat] built all the other ones? And so I can use this pull down menu. I I happen to know that I'm user 24240 or whatever. >> I can see that I've built 1,232 profiles according to this right >> out of 10,000 or I'm only up at 1650 right now on uh generation 7. But if I click on that now, I should be able to see these 1,200 against a faded out background. >> Any of these filters can kind of uh foreground and background the results. So for instance, you can if once you if what what we expect here is the 190 that that person would be brighter and everything else would be faded away. >> Yeah. And so you you'll be able to see like literally how these networks connect to each other. And then you obviously can follow names if you want to. >> Um yeah, I I was just surfing around in here >> this morning and I I found a name that I didn't recognize. It's not a name I ever put in. And I found a fascinating biography and I was like, how does this person connect to me? And there I was able to see it. So that was Very cool. Um, you can also view the network by surname. >> When I click on a node, it's just showing you the direct connections of that node. So, uh, it allows you to kind of focus in on uh on a single single uh entity. And the the um the edge colors are the are spouse, parent, child or sibling. this manager who has 190 nodes that interconnect with my network. That's their network. And then I can say, "Oh, well, how do they who are they?" And >> what I really wanted to do is get a sense of how we can all fit into the big part of Wiki Tree beyond our own lineage. you know, this is obviously my greater line lineage, but it's not the one I built. So, that's part of what I'm after. Um, can you scroll down on the sidebar? >> Uh, those other things. Okay. So, let's go to 3D and just show 3D is way gy. It's you can move it around. Um, you can fly into it and fly out of it. Um, >> this was this was the feature I was challenging you to do and then you said, "Yeah, sure." [laughter] >> I know. Well, it it was a really brilliant idea and um yeah, it's super fun. It and it's it it gives you way more of the the impression of, >> wow, I'm in a universe of ancestors here, you know? >> It's amazing. And one interesting thing about it, a lot of times graphs like this just look like a hairball, but because of but because there's this kind of genealogical relationship, you really can get a sense of how it's proceeding from the center out. >> Yeah. >> Um and and just kind of exploding in terms of um >> you know the number of relationships >> and those colors of the nodes that give you a sense always. Um >> yeah. Do you know do you have with a tree this large? I imagine that at some point in this tree you probably have a scenario where you know three brothers married three sisters or something similar to that. Have you investigated that type of pattern and what it looks like? >> I haven't but that's an interesting I I mean I know within my own tree I have uh interesting things like that that but I haven't sought them out in the mcelium tree. >> That would be interesting to know. I mean I am curious >> although this is my father's tree. Um basically it has almost all the information of my mother's tree which is a separate tree. >> One of the things that we've done just today was to be able to switch between multiple uh different >> trees. So, so um and this is more this is oriented towards being able to handle the data for any input anyput input person. Um so you were talking about how your mother and your father overlap. >> Yeah, they h it's surprising in this network. um even though they're not identical, there's so much overlap between a married couple who are close to the root or are the root of their own networks. So, um that's interesting. And so a question I haven't yet figured out yet, but I'm going to ask is how are there any connections shared in these two trees between Witty and Jewel? You know, um did they ever marry into the same families? Now, it's highly unlikely in my parents' case because they came from different countries, but >> uh it's possible. Anything's possible if you go far enough back. one one point to answer your question. Uh was it Greg? So each of these um Juul 13 whatever 3286 witty 237 those are those are the starting nodes of the data. The data is actually captured once through API calls and then uh all this this HTML file just reads that that data and so it could be could it could be data starting from any any node in wiki tree universe. Um, right now it only goes it goes uh to to um you know parents and grandparents, siblings thereof, spouses thereof. Uh, and I honestly don't know how exhaustive it is in terms of going continuing to get the grandparents of the spouses of the siblings of the spouses, right? Um, >> it's pretty good. >> And it's getting that. >> Yeah, it is getting >> Is it using the the CC7? Is it using get people to to grab the information? Do you know what API call? >> Uh what is it? CC7. Brad's not a genealogologist and he's not really familiar with Wiki Tree, but he is a developer, software developer. So [laughter] >> I don't know what CC >> CC7 is your count, you know, like I told you, I was up to how many connections away. Yeah. So, >> uh I guess it depends on the Now you said this is all vibe coded. >> Yeah. Yeah. So to make changes to it, you don't go into the guts and change the programming. You just you make a query or a prompt to your >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean >> Yeah. Exactly. You just talk to it in English. Um >> Yeah. >> And you know, if I get into a thorny problem, Brad comes and untangles it for me. which is >> mirror and >> but it doesn't I mean I've been doing this you know day after day after day and >> it's amazing what you can do with plain English. So, >> right. >> So, Marie has a question about that, I think, or >> Well, I I just have a question about about the whole thing and um whether you've given any thought and I'm not sure what shape the answer takes, but whether you've given any thought to how this interacts with the landmarks project. >> I was thinking that too. I was going to ask Patty for his his comment on that. [laughter] >> Tell us about the landmark. >> Okay. I I know the landmarks. So I'll while she's getting that I'll just make a couple of observations. One is the um the the data that each of these um each of these trees the witty 237 etc. >> Um that's Python code running in um in a Jupyter notebook. Um, it's easily uh hosted by Wiki Tree so that anybody could essentially make the equivalent of this of their own version of of this data and then this um this HTML file allows you to load here any uh any file in that form. So uh it it people have asked like when can I play with this or whatever. So it's definitely uh not far off from being able to be you know uh usable by others. >> What is the size limit of this network? >> Uh we >> all these 10,000 nodes is all we've taken it to so far. Uh because it does slow down and it gets um it just gets a little more pretty unwieldy. But I said to Brad this morning, I want to push it and see how far can I go. Um, you know, just to see. And I I'm totally willing to try that. The other thing I want to say which um you know I've I'm working on another network for a different project and there's some similarities between them and uh one of the things that I have in this other network is where there's a node there every node has an identifiable photograph attached to it and so it's conceivable I probably couldn't go up to 10,000 nodes But on the lower generational settings at maybe five generations, not 10 or 11 generations, um I I could pull up whatever the name the the main photograph is, the thumbnail, and then you'd be inside this 3D network, and there'd be all these >> all the visuals, >> pictures of your ancestors floating around. So, >> you know, that would be super cool. >> That would be very cool indeed. you will be doing that uh you there's a possibility to download all the uh pre images uh for all profiles that exist uh in uh already prepacked in a weekly dump. So that might be easier than uh retrieving it one by one over the internet. >> Yeah. Yeah. A lot of this is really all about caching the data so that it doesn't have to be going after it every time. Oh, you were sorry to tell us about the landmark project. >> Yeah. Can I turn that over to Patty to explain that? >> Sure. >> The idea of the landmarks project is to pick a subset of profiles so that no two are closer than 8 degrees apart. >> And to try and have as many as much of Wiki Tree as possible within seven degrees of one landmark. It's centered on the on the year 1900 >> and every landmark has to have been alive throughout the year 1900. >> Oh, interesting. >> Say that again. So >> the entire network of Wiki Tree. >> The entire network of Wiki Tree. So so far we've managed to cover only something like a million profiles with the first 300 landmarks. >> Wow. >> So there's two landmarks there. No closer than seven degrees. Is that correct? They're no further. >> No, they're no closer. >> No closer. >> Yeah. >> Oh, no. As close as two landmarks can be as eight degrees apart, >> right? >> So, you're bas you're kind of spanning the wiki trees without like bumping it up with a lot of shared data >> more or less. Yeah, >> that's the idea. >> Wow. >> Is to figure out how small a subset could we find so that every profile is within seven degrees of one member of that subset. >> Oh, that's interesting. >> That's a fascinating uh >> it is neat. Yeah. Marie >> experiment. Yeah. >> Yeah. Did you want to add to that? Well, >> what I've been thinking look looking at the picture is if we have two landmarks that are 12 degrees apart and we want to see what's the overlap between them, could we put these two constellations on the one screen and highlight the overlap? >> Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, two constellations. Yeah. Oh, well, that would be very curious. That would that would be a really interesting way to look at how interconnected you know, the bigger Wiki Tree is. All of this is possible. It's totally possible. >> How are you currently doing the landmark work? >> Written a daily script that checks that they're all still eight degrees apart. >> There's three or four sections. It lists the profiles which are furthest from any landmark. So farther the idea is to pick profiles on the outer rim of the tree to try and pull those very distant profiles closer to a landmark. Um >> and and uh are how are you visualizing or or are you visualizing is it more like a text space or >> in our heads? >> Yeah, that's right. There is no visual tool at this point, but this, you know, if we have that something that this could take those two visuals and and mer and find the intersection of that set, that would be very cool. >> As I said in the chat, Bernard Fat, who refuses to come on any of these YouTube or Zoom things >> and is the brains behind this, I think he will love this. >> I think so. Yeah, Murray. So, [snorts] so that brings me to my next question, which I I've discussed with Greg before about the idea about using vision OS. >> Oh. >> And so, so now I look at what you're doing here and I see you have the 3D capability and and I think about vision OS and and I'm sure you know what I'm talking about, right? You could so you can >> you could just walk walk around in your orchard [laughter] >> or your stand of trees. Do you know? Have you thought about that? Vision OS. >> I don't know. Vision OS. Vision OS is the headset thing that Apple did, >> right? >> Okay. Oh, I see. Yeah. >> Absolutely. We've we've talked about um the augmented reality of of applications here for sure. >> Yeah. This this stuff would be perfect, especially with the photos loaded. Um >> Oh, it'd be wonderful. >> It would be incredible. It would be it would be really powerful. It would have a powerful sort of emotional impact to be >> surrounded by all these faces and records and whatever the profile pictures are. >> It'd be like the Minority Report on steroids without the creepy factors. [laughter] >> Something for the next next root stick. >> Yes. Oh, yeah. We could set up a a 3D room in our next to our Wiki Tree booth. >> Yeah. Oh [laughter] >> well the other one other thing that I a couple things we've talked about one would be to just see the chain from this person from one person back to the root node for instance like how what is the what is the the link of linkage of connections from mod back to back to mark or from any two any any two nodes >> and also to reenter the the camera on whichever one you click on so that when you when you're rotating around it's rotating around that one, >> right? >> Well, and you could also build your vertex >> your DNA >> confirmation app around that too, right? You could pick >> you could pick the vertex of the of the triangle and then the three >> people down below who are the the DNA testers >> and you can see how they're all interconnected. And and what you just said that about the room at at root techch, it reminds me of Expo 67, the World's Fair in Montreal in [laughter] 1967, >> Bell had a room that was a theater and it was a 360 you you got to see a 360 degree movie. >> Ah, really? >> Yeah. >> Wow. back in >> some friends who are doing the lumosphere which I'll put a link to it and um Julie and I were talking about that because it's three domes and one of the domes is essentially a spherical projection. >> Yeah, we've talked about we we know the woman who runs that and we've talked about u possibly getting see if we could get her interested in displaying these networks. Well, that's that's really >> talking about the tree as if it's two or threedimensional, but it's a lot more dimensions than that. And I think Bernard would say it doesn't have a dimension. It's far more complex than something with a finite number of dimensions. >> Right. >> Right. Yeah. >> Yeah. Very interesting. Well, thank you for sharing that, uh, Julia and Brad. Um, >> thank you for listening. Yeah. Thank you for >> your interest. So for those who are are interested in following up with this, so you've made a GDG post already about this, correct? >> Yes. >> Okay. So um if you don't mind sharing that with me, then we'll make sure that we get that that added to the the notes uh so that other people can find that if they haven't already checked that out. And um so currently now I haven't check checked it out recently but the last time I did check out uh um check it out there were a limited number of subsets of trees that you could do but you're saying that at some shortly you'll be able to like I could generate my own network to upload to the HTML file. >> Yes. >> Correct. >> Yes. So the um there could there's an it's easy to make a service that just says give me a node >> and then it takes a couple minutes to walk through all the through the API calls >> and then that creates ajs file. It's just basically your snapshot of the data >> and then and then there's a different HTML file that says read read a file in that format and it'll display that. So >> I'm not sure we want to host that publicly but we can do >> certainly could I think to me I think the next step is if if that process can be formalized and described somewhere um either in a GDG post or in a free space page. Um, so then then more of us can play around with that and then uh you're saying that it's a Python script and that could be added to to Wiki Tree or um that's that's another thing that it's a potential uh project for Htoberfest in October. So >> yeah, >> sounds sounds great. We have a a couple we'll work on on uh yeah that the the small leap to making it something anybody can go can do >> and then u yeah that would be fun that'd be fun to do >> and fine-tuning a couple of the ideas that have come out of here. Yeah. >> And we could do a separate conversation with anyone who's interested in using claude because I mean there's all you guys have already come up with a bunch of ideas that we probably won't have time to do but but [laughter] could easily be done just building on this. So either uh you know reusing capability we already have and then letting somebody else do their own prompting for instance. Um that's that would be that's not too that that would be a decent way to uh spread the innovation around. >> I love that idea. Okay. So we're gonna hold Yeah, I I think we we that's something we should definitely follow up on at some point. So thank you for offering that. One of us is definitely going to take you up on that. >> [laughter] >> Okay, Murray, >> you you mentioned you mentioned saving uh the database in in a in a JS file by by by which I think you mean a JavaScript file. >> Yeah. >> So you're you're using JSON presumably. >> Yes. >> And and and so for your 10,000 uh node tree, how big is that? >> If you added the photos, it would start getting bigger faster. Oh yeah, that would get >> it >> 18. And would it make sense that everybody just hosts their own on their own computer? >> Yeah, I mean the current way we just did where you can load load anyone is you would you would go to a place and say please give me the data for this this from this node. That would be like a 20 megabyte file that you would load have locally and then another page would say please display this data and it would read it off your your local file and and just display it like we were just showing it. >> Okay. >> So would by you you mean wiki tree would be >> no wik tree would I mean wiki tree wouldn't have to be in there at all. Okay. >> I think for now the first step would be just to to make it so that other individuals can can do it and then we explore from there. So anyways, thank you again very much Julie and Brad. Um >> uh that was great. That very exciting. I'd like to introduce Ben Griffith who has been working away as well creating something pretty exciting. Ben, why don't you describe the uh extension you've created and uh give us a demo, please. >> So I uh developed an extension that I call the Wiki Tree annotator or the Wiki Tree record annotator. Um, I was doing some research in some Swedish records a while back and I kind of found myself going around in circles and um, just sort of getting lost, you know, not realizing, oh, I've already been on this page. I've already made a profile for this person or whatever. U,, so I thought it would be really convenient to be able to just mark on a page when uh, have a have a basically have a frame on a page that uh, links to a Wiki Tree profile. So you can click on a record page and it'll bring you right to the profile. >> Is this a Chrome extension? >> It is. Yes. And for the moment it is only a Chrome extension. So Allesh has um baptismal record I think or maybe it's a marriage record up and uh oh we'll get to demonstrate how to change the angle on it too because that needs to be done there. So here on wiki tree part you we have links to I think two sites matricula and uh Swedish one >> yeah rick aruette >> rick aruette yeah uh and um if the d if the frame is already done for that page you get this uh icon next to a link and then then if you click a link you get to that page with the record and the record is uh all drawn in green and flash. You get a flashing border around it, >> right? That's handy if you have lots of records on the same page. >> Figure out which >> is this the extension is running all the time or or or it's only you you invoke it when you you're going to do this kind of work. >> Um it's running all the time. >> I mean, you could go into your Chrome extensions and disable it if you wanted, but >> Got it. M but it only actually does anything if it's on if it detects it's on M metricula or the archavet site right >> or on wiki tree itself >> or on wiki tree itself right I guess that's the third site >> and do you start do you start by doing a selection is that is that how you initiate the process >> uh I can show example how >> I I see the >> so you can actually rotate it as needed so that one is corrected it now. >> That is very cool. >> Yeah, that was my my latest change but took some doing but >> Okay. So now before you leave that page is that like that's an image of the the registry the register right the birth register. Um >> and is that indexed on that site or no? >> No. >> No. So there's no other way to specify this is now we have a way of specifying a specific record on a page that hasn't been indexed somewhere else. That's very cool. >> Right. Yeah. And if you click on it uh well you hover over it like he's doing now um well it it briefly showed a name and then when you click on it it brings you right to the >> right to the profile. Perfect. >> Yeah. The one that starts Swedish household Sweden household examination book. this one. >> Yeah. >> Okay. So, when I click on it, I can come to the page and now >> it's the fourth one down is her. So, you can see Anastina and her birth year is 18 is 1800. >> Now, we see that she's already got one. So, yeah, the the one that ends with 23 that has a has a little icon next to it. >> So, if I click on it, it should come to the page and it should flash. >> There she's flashing orange. So then if you So she's already got a um an annotation on the page, but none of the rest of her family does. So I was going to uh just draw one for her father, who's the guy on the top. >> So >> okay. So then just draw >> and then notice that there's a list on the left and a list on the right. So the left is all the profiles that link to this page and the right is all the profiles that already have an annotation on the page. So her father is um let's see here's a here's a change I should probably make. Her father is Lars Erson that the one that's highlighted now but in here he's Lars Wangstrom and u I should probably have like birth name versus present you know versus current or latest name. I didn't I don't have that in there you know like Lars parenthesis >> so that's him. Now, if he wasn't on the list, then you could just type his ID into the Here I am pointing with my finger at the screen as if you can all see it. But [laughter] >> I'm pointing for you if that helps. >> Yeah, you can just type his name in in there if it wasn't there. So, uh, go ahead and select Lars and then go and then it gives you a crosshair and then you just draw a little little box um around >> the very top. the very top one. >> Yeah. >> So, like this. Let's go closer. >> Okay. >> And then you can adjust the corners and >> and [clears throat] rotate it a bit like this. >> Oh, look at that. >> So, >> and then when you hit >> and then so notice it's orange, which indicates you're editing this annotation. And the d the dash lines mean that uh there's unsaved data. Meaning in this case, the whole entire thing is unsaved data. hasn't been saved off to the server yet. Um, >> so then in the toolbar, which seems to have vanished again, uh, you would just hit done. >> Where is I zoomed in on the page? >> Oh, [snorts] so it's kind of off the screen. >> Was that just the regular Oh, there it is. >> Okay. If you're at this >> Oh, and and also the toolbar changed to say you're editing, >> right? annotation and his birth date and >> death information too. >> If you wanted to add more, you could hit >> and then Yeah, now it's green. >> Oh, that's great. >> Mhm. [clears throat] >> Yeah, it's really cool. I already used it on my family. I did 150 frames. >> Oh my goodness. >> Still another 200 to go. But it's really cool. I found a few cases where I had the wrong link. So to I mean on I I s noticed that on the page when it showed me that this and this profiles is on the page but they were born 80 years apart and so on. So it's really cool to uh examine the data and make sure it's correct. >> Right. So now the first record you showed us that birth record you highlighted the entire row or most of the row. Now, why wouldn't you highlight across here? Or is that information that's different? Like what's in that first column? >> In this case, it's well, so the first column is the birth date. That's what the fluid means. And then which I'm probably pronouncing wrong, but and then uh moving in and out. So it's it's not as relevant as a birth record. Um, >> and yeah, so I guess it's kind of on a case by case and user by user preference how you would do it. >> Yeah. >> Right. >> And so, um, Ben, what this is a case where we have columns and rows. >> What What about the case where, for example, with with in Quebec we have well, I mean, I guess everywhere they have >> you have a whole paragraph. Yeah. Whole paragraph. >> Yeah. You have a whole paragraph and you're going to mention various names. What do you do? Do you do you highlight the whole image and then mention, you know, several individuals? >> Um, so Swedish obituary records from mid700s or so are they look similar to those um well actually they're more wordy than those those French Canadian records. And >> that's hard to believe. >> I haven't. >> Yeah, I know. [laughter] I know. Um, so what I've what I've been doing is just highlighting the name, figuring it's kind of bring it brings your attention to the document itself. And I might even a lot of times I'll highlight other names as well. Like if if it says, you know, this person passed away, you'd highlight their name. Uh, their husband was this person, you'd highlight that name as and link it to the other person. Um, maybe it would say the names of their kids or something. So that's how I've been doing it. And I know Allesh was leaning more towards highlighting the one record and saying this is the record and just linking it to the person to whom it applies. >> Uh I found it this way much more useful because okay this is for marriage record. Left one is for the uh >> the >> is for the groom with the his birthplace, the age and everything. This is for the bride and then here on the right are parents names. So those could be linked, but I don't really uh >> do those links because it's just the name. Usually they need their own birth records and marriage record and so on. >> Yeah. The primary Yeah. The primary in this case are the bride and the groom, right? >> Yeah. >> So yeah, interesting. Yeah. See, I would be tempted, uh, Murray, in for the Quebec ones, if it was a birth record, I'd probably I would highlight the whole thing and tag it all to the person being who was born. >> Um, especially especially some of the older ones, >> it's hard to you get a whole page of Chicken Scratch and it's you can't even distinguish one entry from another. At least that way you'd see, okay, it's this these three lines of Chicken Scratch are Jean-Piers [laughter] and I can then zoom in on that. Um, but that's how I would I would but I guess again people can choose different ways of doing it, but this is gives you so much flexibility. I do like that. >> Sorry, I just sent another another link that goes to a Swedish baptism record where I did highlight all the names and I can kind of explain >> why I did that. >> Super. >> It's in it's in the chat there. >> Okay. Right. While he's getting that going >> and there's a few other questions in there, too. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Can you have overlapping highlighted re Oh, that's Patty Patty's question. Can you have overlapping highlighted regions on the same page linked to different Wiki Tree profiles? >> Um, yes, they can overlap. Although, I think if you overlap entirely, like exactly. I'm not sure which one it would go to. It would probably just go to one of them. Uh, Ben, I'm wondering about the the the case where you've got a um, you know, a scripted marriage or or a baptism, whatever. Um, and would you be able to link uh the whole thing to a space page >> rather than a profile? >> Um, that let's I think so because they that would look the same as a wiki tree ID, wouldn't it? it. Yeah, it is it is a wiki tree ID. So, yeah, >> then yeah, it should it should work the way it is now. >> It is space semi space colon and uh some whatever name of the space page. So, >> oh right still a URL. Yes, it is within the wiki slash. >> It is a wiki slash >> space page looks like this. Um, >> my my think my thinking is, you know, if if I've got if I've got something that's scripted in, >> you know, I I might want to just transcribe it if it's in my language. >> I might want to transcribe it and translate it >> if it's in another language. >> And so to be able to just see an image and say, "Okay, there's a there's a translation of this. There's a there's somewhere where I can go and see what the heck this says." >> Is that something that that might is conceivable in the future? Um, yeah, because I I think just the way that Alles showed how the the space link works right now, I don't know for sure that it would just work directly. >> Up to here, the same URL and then it's space colon and the name, >> right? So, we might be able to I guess you could try it even >> as long as it doesn't colon >> like it doesn't it obviously doesn't strip out the dashes or underscores, right? I'm hoping I'm thinking >> right right >> because you use dashes and underscores in wiki tree ids >> the problem would be only in the API part where you uh retrieved the name and dates and so on so it would be need to be adjust the coding would need to be adjusted but >> a little bit yeah but I think I think it sort of work the way it is now >> okay cool >> okay so here is your page that you based on. So here we have >> this is my great greatgrandfather and uh so if you hover so all the people in the in the rightmost column >> um are like witnesses to the baptism and it took me a little while to figure out who those people are because they're just names and they're all like if you hover over it so I put uh mother >> because it's a note that you can optionally add in And then if you look at the very top one. Yeah. So then clicking on it goes to her >> the very So Andreers Anderson is split across two lines. So you can have you know multiple boxes. >> So So you've shown us how how you select um a piece of a piece of the image and connect it to a wiki tree ID >> on the wiki tree uh on the on the on the profile page. How do how do we get the the URI and the uh icon to appear? >> So, so okay, there there's if it's already on the page, um then it'll have the little pen mark next to it. But actually, this page is a perfect example because it has the look, if you notice next to the word sources and the little pencil that's part of the Wiki Tree uh UI anyways, there's a little tree. So that says one citation suggestion is available and it says he's annotated in the following source which is not cited in his profile. So then you can um you can copy and paste directly from that like if you if you go into the edit window that little window will still be up and available. >> Okay. >> Um so if it isn't already in the profile it'll um it'll offer that little tip so that you can put it there if you if you want to. And that's what while you're in edit mode. >> Uh while you're >> No, no, that's always there. >> When you when you go Oh, sorry. When you're in profile edit mode, it'll still be there. It won't come. You you bring it up when you're in just the regular viewing mode. But I I put it in an a separate window like that like that so that you could then go into edit mode and the window would still be there for you to copy and paste from. Where are the um where are these connections stored? >> Those are stored on wiki wik3 plus. Yep. >> Stored in wik3 plus. >> Yeah. So that brings us to Ann's question. Uh can this be added to other sites? >> Um I think you mean other archive sites. >> Other archive sites. >> And yes. So I when I wrote it, I intentionally made it so that each site that it supports would be like a module. If somebody wants to add more sites, whether that's me or somebody else, um it just involves um adding a module for that site. >> Um ideally wicket part is also done the way that it's fairly easy for me to add another site. >> Right? [clears throat] So right now you don't have you don't have you don't have family search on there. >> But for me that's the that's the natural place because all of the Quebec records on Family Search almost none of them are actually indexed. You know you get to you have to browse through the whole million plus pages. >> Um luckily they're relatively chronological if you know this you know the parish you're going for. Um but it still takes time. So this is something I would I would love to add to those. And if you can and if you use family search then it's not just the Quebec records any records that are not indexed on family. >> So >> Mhm. >> Um so I can see great great value in this. Um now is this like so right now this is a standalone uh extension. Um, it's not bundled in Sorcerer or Wik Tree browser extension. Um, >> right. >> Uh, what are your plans right now? Or do you not have any plan? You you just want to get all the bugs ironed out before you think about migrating it. And what's >> uh Well, that's kind I I think I'm almost there. Or maybe maybe I am there. I mean, I pretty close. I just you didn't find any bugs today. [laughter] Okay. I think the first the first or second release I put out or the first when I first started supporting metricula I I sent out an email to everybody on the on the Google list there and said uh I've got a new version that supports Metricula now. And I went to bed and I woke up in the morning and I had an email from Alles and it said uh I found this bug. It doesn't work so well when you change pages. I was like whoops. [laughter] >> So the fact that he hasn't found a bug yet is good. [laughter] Would it be safe to say that in 60 days you would be in a position where you'd want to be having a big discussion about this and and making some making some moves? And the reason I ask is because of course Oktoberfest begins in in just over 60 days, right? >> Is it that close? >> Well, August and September. >> Oh my gosh. >> Wow. [laughter] >> So, I think I'm probably I think I'm probably closer than 60 days. >> [laughter] >> U because right now I as as far as Alles and I can tell the two of us are the only ones using it. Uh and that's probably because you have to in order to install it, you have to download it from from the GitHub page they pulled up there and do like a manual um unpacked installation which there's directions a little further down that tell you how to do it. It's not terribly complicated, but I think a lot of people see like, you know, download zip file and they're just like, what? And they kind of zone out. >> As soon as they read the word GitHub, they run away, [laughter] >> right? Exactly. So, >> if you're if you're not developer, you don't do this. [laughter] >> Right. >> Developers, we are familiar with this, so it's easy to install. But, >> Right. >> Right. So, um I'm at the point now where I I'm about ready to have a discussion with I guess the whoever the >> powers that be are >> and Rob and to figure out which um >> because it seems like it probably makes more sense to add it to one of the existing um one of the existing extensions. That way it can get to other it can get to possibly Safari quicker. Um and And it just uh it's not just another extension that people have to worry about and try to figure out. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. I would probably fit best into sorcerer as that is more about extern linking with external sites. >> Mhm. >> Yeah. [clears throat] That was my either be or sorcerer. >> Yeah. That >> would be the target for this. >> Sounds good. >> Yeah. >> This is this is great. Uh thank you very much Ben for sharing this. Um well developing in the first place and then sharing it with all of us. Um very cool. Julius says uh very helpful for one place studies. Sean said um answer that. Uh Denise had a question. If you have a will or probate record with multiple names could you could annotate each name or the entire paragraph? Yep. I think >> y >> uh thanks Denise for that. Um yeah, Sean says, "My family is named the enumerators. Couldn't get quite right." [snorts] Uh I think all of us have some members of our family where not a single census in the has the same name spelling. [laughter] [snorts] >> Um okay. Well, the main main benefit of this extension is that when I come back to a page with a source, then I first spent two or three minutes to actually find the correct row where the source is, >> right? Especially if it looks like that first one where I had you add the record where it's just all faded looking and difficult to read. >> Sure. I mean, I I thought to to to develop it because I was trying to figure out the parents of uh of a woman who was born in in Sweden in the 1670s and there were three or four people with the exact same name in her village and I didn't know which one and I still haven't figured it out, but I thought it would be useful >> for that. Just saying, okay, I've already looked at this person. I've already got this person, >> yes, >> is somebody on Wiki Tree. I figured out who that is. Um that sort of thing. Yesterday I saw another cool things cool thing about it. I was trying to annotate one of my sources and then two others appeared that someone else that actually put them on wiki tree. I did had no idea about them but they were obviously neighbors. [laughter] >> Excellent. So >> that's very cool. >> Actually, that happened on >> the the metricula site that I was using that had one of your ancestors on it. >> Mhm. >> Once I added the feature where it tells you, you know, all the people that link to this page. >> There were two people on there that I don't think were profiles that you had done. They were they were somebody else. >> Yeah. >> Very cool. Yeah, there are a few cases because we are both uh doing the same village and uh so they really uh inter they connect one to another or at least were born on the [clears throat] same month. >> Excellent. >> That's great. >> Okay. Well, thank you very much. Now I'm looking at the time. Uh Ben, uh it is 7:19 and generally we talk about this is that we call this the tech talk zoom hour. Um but anyone who watches me and my co-hosts on Saturday know that >> we extend the definition of hour a little bit longer, don't we, Denise? [laughter] Denise is there. However, >> I think you had a nickname on that one that I noticed when I watched on Saturday. Was it sir talks a lot or >> talks a lot? Yes. >> [laughter] >> Yes, I I thought that was kind of appropriate. Um, but I do want to respect your time for joining us. So, uh, I would like to say that we're going to have a hard cap at 7:30. Um, so, uh, but I I do want before everyone takes off, I do want to give a special thanks to, um, for Julia and Brad and Ben and Allesh for sharing these two new tools. Uh it is it's actually been I'm sure for all of our regular listeners, it's been nice to have someone else talk for a change. It's not us. But I do want to turn it back over to our regular co-host so we can get updates um from them. And uh so Murray, what do we what do we have from Ian and Wik Tree browser extension that you want to talk about? >> Ian has added Grock uh to the list of AI models that you can use with improve with AI for anyone that wants to do that. So far one person asked for it and there it is. um what what was discussed earlier uh about the RS the um research status. So on on Saturday I think it was somebody asked about that in watch list. how how you know how do I find people using using the RS and the watch list and I went and checked the watch list app to see whether I could use the watch list app to find that and it turns out that I couldn't at that time and so I mentioned it to Ian and Ian responded to say oh that's not in the API and then minutes later he said oh it is in the API the API just hasn't the documentation hasn't been updated yet [laughter] and so and so now to now now today I believe the watch list app has been updated Um, I haven't double checked that, but I believe it's true that the watch list app has been updated and now supports uh RS. Um, I can also say that the C custom style has been uh an option for selected text highlight. Uh, there's been some improvements to distance and relationship. Um, on phones, uh, there's an the he's improved the active members um feature on usability tweaks. There's some small changes to um family lists. Uh fixing the spouse display. Uh the the pop-up scroll bar in Safari has been fixed. Uh the add person redesign has been uh fixed. Uh the explanation box has come back and um the add a match button and uh there's some the notes has been added to the extra watch list. Uh category filters has been improved. The app submen has add duplicate finder and watch list app to it. Autobio has been improved with Australian handling of uh New South Wales. Um and link preview scissors. The space drafts and show edits features are gone because we don't need that anymore. And that's it. Kay has done some work on biocheck. She's improved source checking. She's added support for profiles >> uh with biographies in multiple languages. She's also added uh support for um to report when a citation is found in the notability template because that's been happening and and I think it's not supposed to. And uh she's also stopped checking profiles that have disproven existence and unproven existence in um in them and because I mean why bother checking them, right? >> Um >> a big shout out thank you to the left for incorporating bioche into the wikietree plus reports. >> Yes. led to some of that uh feedback that's led to some of the corrections in bioche and there'll be more coming. Uh >> I'm sure >> that's right. Yeah. Uh included in that is that there are two special magic words now in Wikree Plus that you can use specifically. Right. >> There will be more next week. >> And there'll be more next week. Excellent. [laughter] >> We have been busy. >> Wow. Biotech is just taking over everything. [laughter] That's excellent. >> Well, you got to have that to know that your connection between those people is valid, backed by a valid source. >> Of course. No. >> Forces drive >> everything we're doing. >> It is. It's very true. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, okay. Thank you very much. Uh, Rob, over to you. >> [snorts] >> Um, I don't have too much and we're running short of time. Um, there's been three releases of sources since the last uh tech talk, but mostly they've been bug fixes, small improvements and like updates for sites which are continually changing and breaking Saucer. Um there was one new site added which was Western Australia BDM and a few improvements to the icons on Family Search but uh I won't go into all the details. >> Okay, [clears throat] thank you very much Rob. Okay, super. So uh then I'm going to end off with um sharing a few things that uh tweaks that I've added to to my tree apps. So, one of them is the uh someone had let me know that the uh when you do the when you click on the PDF icon to uh to uh get a um a picture or a PDF of your fan chart, what was happening is you get the text, but the pictures did not appear. So, there was a a little bug there um that I fixed. So now uh you do get the picture of the uh with the PDF generates properly with the pictures included and not just blank space there. So that's that's a fairly um big improvement there. Now the one thing I you notice that uh I have shown here um because the fan chart was what was the first tree app that dealt with um uh either your adoptive family, your bioological family or a combo. And if you have the combo, it has the adoptive label here or the biological label. You can change that to different comb different words. Um, primary family, biological family, whatever. Um, but I did notice uh that those labels are not missing in the PDF. So, I have to fix that. So, that's a little tweak. There's some other issues that I need to tweak as well. So, you might want to um So, just be aware of that. There are some there are still some PDF issues that I that have cropped in that I need to to work on the CC7 views. Um if you go to the circle view um there was uh some issues with that because if it didn't load all of the CC7 and this happens specifically for people who have some private people in within your CC7. you'll get this message that the true CC7 size is larger or whatever and we've not retrieved all the you get this little message here which is all well and good because that's informative tells you what's happening but when you went to make the um the PDF you would get something that looks like this you would get that text and that's not what I wanted so I had to do I had to do some uh magic to get rid of that and so now when you generate the PDF you don't get that annoying message the super tree now gives you the ability ility to show your primary uh let me just uh zoom back your primary family. There's my mom and dad or your biological family. There's my mother and father or the combo. And so there I have uh father, dad, mom and mother. Uh there we go. And then you can add go nuts, add siblings and aunts and uncles and go go whatever. And of course, you can also get uh a PDF of them with the picture showing. And if you want something really wild, if you add the siblings and what you get this uh what this is, this is actually two long piece strips of paper, you know, for your for your hallway. [snorts] And uh so that's something you can do. Now, >> do you have pedigree collapse between the adoptive parents? Well, funny you should funny you should ask that because the other app that I've just updated and add the ability to is the ancestor webs. And now it will show you. So here is my adoptive family with mom and dad. And there is my biological family with mother and father. And there's the combo. So you can see all four parents radiating from me. uh guys on the the left, women on the right. And if you increase the generations, it loads more and more. And one of the options in it is when you've got uh at so at six degrees, I have no repeat p ancestors. If I bump it up to 13 generations, I have 289 repeat ancestors. So there's pedigree collapse up there. And the cool thing is uh here is one example be and now for some reason so I'm at the bottom of here and I don't know why my name is disappeared but that's another bug I'll have to fix but uh I'm related to Etien through my biological mother Pauline and my adoptive father Patrick which is kind of wild. So that means I am my own cousin. [snorts] >> [laughter] >> Uh and in fact if I go to Banam Nicholas Banam same sort of thing but through my my mom through uh her uh great great greatgrandfather who was a voyager uh I'm related to Nicholas Bonam but also through my birth mother through the kitier side as well. Um and the other thing I wanted to Yeah. So there um I added I also updated something on the AP um the [clears throat] documentation for the get connections API which has been out for a few months now. I've created a visual tester. Um so you can put any two uh IDs in here and hit get connections and it will show you what the results are, but it'll also show it to you visually. So you can uh I'll zoom in on that. So here's the connection between Elizabeth II and Pope Leo I 14th. So you can follow through Elizabeth's uncles, wives, greatgrands, uh husbands, halfsisters, uh what is it the last one there? Husband's fourth cousin half fourth cousin. Anyways, so there you can. So you could put any two in there. So if I put my own self-connected, you can test this out. Um, I have that link will also be if you go down to the examples, you see the link is right there. Get the connection tester. It'll open it right up and I can put that link in the chat. And that is all that's new with me. And that is all that's new with me. Thank you everyone for joining us. This was a jam-packed session. A special thanks again to our uh our guest hosts, our guest presenters, and for sharing. It's always wonderful to see new developers uh and programmers adding to Wiki Tree. That's part of the power of it all. And um so have a great night. We will see you again here on the last Monday of August. And at that point, we will probably be definitely talking about possibilities getting ready, getting ramped up for Htoberfest in October. So, um think about that. Think about projects you might want to work on. I think we've had a couple that were presented tonight that, you know, it'd be kind of neat to tie into those um and whatnot. So, have a great night everyone. Thanks again for joining. [music]