User:Zephyrinus/Original requestedit this page

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[edit] Main details

Username: zephyrinus (talk • contribs)
Wiki name: Zephyrinus/Original request
Wiki title (eg: Car Wiki): Cemetery Wiki
Content language: en [Category:English]

[edit] Description

What will this wiki be about? What sort of articles will be included?

Cemetery Transcription Project - a transcription of tombstones from cemeteries; searchable/linked by date, name, epitaph
Cemetery Photographs - include a photo (where available) of each cemetery (a general view of the cemetery) as well as a photograph of the tombstone itself from which the transcription was taken
Additional Information - like the meaning of symbols, the difference between a graveyard and cemetery, etc.

[edit] Community

Who will edit this wiki? Is there already a community around this topic? How will you promote the wiki to ensure at least 20 people join? Give links to forums on this topic if you know of any.

There is already a Tombstone Transcription Project and a corresponding photographic project. I, myself, created a Cemetery Photograph page (dealing mainly with McCormick County, South Carolina) before the wiki software existed. One problem I am facing now is that it is terribly difficult for me to remember how to code in html, let alone for others to add to the site. Take, for example, the Badwell Cemetery; I can now obtain the GPS coordinates for this cemetery, but cannot easily add them to this site because of the html obstacles.

There are other cemetery sites in addition to Rootsweb (where the Tombstone Transcription Project is located). These include the Political Graveyard, which is cited as a reference for many articles on Wikipedia. The Cemetery Wiki I propose would link to those articles, but most of the people mentioned in the Cemetery Wiki are only notable to the deceased's friends and family.

[edit] Additional Information

Add any information that supports why this wiki should exist. Include links to Wikipedia articles on this topic or to other websites that show this is a popular topic.

My approach to this topic is of a historical nature. I wish to preserve the information on the stones before they become even more illegible. As I write this, a note on the Rootsweb page reminds us how much historical information was simply lost due to Hurricane Katrina in the United States.

This proposed wiki, therefore, (in my view) has a different focus than genealogy wikis, but links can certainly be formed with those wikis. I have reviewed the genealogical wiki and it seems to be far more structured than this cemetery would need to be in order for this cemetery wiki to include items like "rest in peace" and the occasional "placed here by her heirs" - which is important to a virtual cemetery and for statistical purposes (when was the RIP inscription most popular, etc.).

This proposed wiki would hopefully gather information from a variety of sites into one common place with an easy interface. It would also allow other people to answer queries on talk pages referencing specific cemeteries and gravestones; the questions I am e-mailed just from my own Cemetery Photograph page I am unable to answer in a timely manner.

Finally, I provide a copy of this e-mail I received some time ago:

-------- Original Message --------

Subject: Ross Center Cem.-Kalamazoo Co., MI

Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 06:44:44 EST

From: Lorrie < -- >

To: <Zephyrinus>

Dear <Zephyrinus>,

Kindly add me to the list of those who've shed tears upon their keyboard after finding a photo of an ancestor's stone at your <Rootsweb> site.

< -- >

I am thrilled that I found your site!

Kindest Regards,

Lorrie < -- >

Muskegon Co., MI

As can be read, this proposed Cemetery Wiki would more easily allow people from far distances to view graves not otherwise accessible to them.

[edit] Categories

Which categories should this wiki be in? For example, sports, or arts, or hobbies? Look through the Wikia categories for ideas. Your wiki can be in more than one category. Put them in Category:Uncategorized, removing the colon ":" and replacing "Uncategorized" with the actual category name.

Categories:

Art (The symbols on the headstones can be considered art.)

History

People

Places

[Category:Art] [Category:History] [Category:People] [Category:Places]

[edit] Other Considerations

With all due respect to the community, I believe I should be candid about the possible downsides of approving this proposed Cemetery Wiki.

This proposed Cemetery Wiki is not intended to be a place for people to mourn loved-ones. However, I (for one) will not stop people from doing so as long as they do so on the Talk Page. It is only text. I believe there is enough hard-drive space to accommodate it. Nevertheless, even if the community rules that this activity should be deleted, I believe that it will inevitably occur, even if it is against the rules.

On the other hand, I do want to have people add short, factual, biographical information to these non-notable people. I think that would make it a richer place. That is why I would envision a link from the name to a separate page - that is to say, the separate page would indicate more information about the deceased that isn't listed on the tombstone, like place of birth, circumstances of death, whatever.

This proposed Cemetery Wiki will take up a considerable amount of disk space if the community decides that this is also to be a Cemetery Photograph Project. I envision this Cemetery Wiki to be precisely that. But all digital cameras or scanned photos will be taken at different resolutions and in different formats. Not all users (including me) know how to make thumbnails. I don't know how to convert - and with thousands of photos, I won't take the time. I will simply upload. And, again, if there is a rule established about size, it should be expected to be broken.

That being said, photographs are very important because transcriptions are taken from the photographs and an 1865 to one person could actually be an 1885 which would make the difference between a US Civil War death and a possible early automobile accident.

Structure. I do not know how this proposed Cemetery Wiki will be structured relative to the photographs. Will the photographs of each tombstone be on the page corresponding to the cemetery, on a subpage of that cemetery, on a page for the deceased or through some hybrid depending on size - I don't know. And until playing around with it, I cannot give this community an answer. However, I felt I could not simply create a "scratchpad" wiki for a project that might involve testing with hundreds of photographs being uploaded; I decided to seek permission first (thus, this request).

Administration. I am not a Sysop or Administrator or whatever you call people in charge around here - nor do I want to be. My failing health would make it irresponsible of me to accept that position even if I would qualify. So, even though I am asking for this proposed Cemetery Wiki to be approved, I seek only to be user/contributor to the site. I will help in whatever way I am able, but I my health may have be unable to participate for months at a time.

Thank you for your time and attention.

Respectfully,

Zephyrinus 18:21, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Bill 16:42, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm going to assume that you originally suggested the creation of a Cemetery Transcription Wiki through the usual channel, and that their response was that it would make more sense to include such an effort within th Genealogy Wiki.

That would be a conclusion I'd agree with, which is not to say a separate wiki wouldn't be in order either. An explanation of your objectives on the Genealogy Wiki would help us understand how we can best support your effort. I might also add that a certral location where cemetery transcriptions could be found would be an excellent tool for genealogists. Hence setting up such a project on this wiki, if done properly, is something I could easily support. There are, however, some things that need to be considered in more detail, and I'd like to know more about what you are proposing.

Setting up a special project area for cemetery transcriptions would be relatively straight forward. We have several "special projects" underway, and more would make sense. We've played with various "Data Port" ideas for recording county level records, etc., and this may be carried forward more systematically in the future. However, such efforts can be very consumptive of time. There's a lot of such data out there, and getting it transcribed, organzied and incorporated into the the wiki would be a major undertaking if it were done systematically. The same could be said for a "Cemetery Transcription" Project. There are an awful lot of cemeteries records that could be incorporated.

Would the records presented be original transciptions, or abstracts from existing transcriptions? One suspects you are not planning on going into the field and transcribing bunches of cemeteries. If you were, you'd probably not get very far, as the task would be huge, and very localized.

Rather, I suspect your intent is to use existing transcriptions, either published in book form, and transcribed by you into electronic format, or extracted from existing transcription projects on the net. If that's the case then you need to think about things like copyright. That's a complex subject, and one about which I would offer no guidance, other to say---you have to be careful about doing things like this. It can be done under some circumstances, but its something that can create problems if not done careful and with due consideration to existing "copy rights".

If the material you expect to transcribe/abstract/extract is "out of copyright", then its not a problem to make use of it. However, if your plan is to extract existing transcriptions from the net, even if its "out of copyright" material, you may still have a problem of one sort or another. People do not take kindly to having their material usurpted by others, particularly when its done whole sale (as in copying entire pages verbatim from someone elses' site. Before you launch a project of this type, you need to take things like that into consideration.

(just for the record, the above was feedback to my original request for a wikia - i did not see this feedback until the genealogy pages containing my cemetery information were well under way - i didn't reply to this comment by bill as i believed, due to my late receipt, that it was moot)

For the record, I didn't see where I could post a "retraction" of the request for a wikia, so today I sent an message to the community team doing so. One more loose end tied up. Zephyrinus 01:01, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Zephyrinus 1,940 edits since March 8, 2007