Web based family history software

Question A different view of "stories"

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13 years 6 months ago - 13 years 6 months ago #1 by WGroleau
A different view of "stories" was created by WGroleau
Looks like a story is a note with formatting. As such, I don't understand the concept of "one per individual, none for any other kind of record."

I would suggest that a story (possibly with a different name) could be one more type of OBJE, and could contain a lot of different things: a full biography, a re-telling of how Harry met Sally, the anecdote of how difficult it was to get your hands on that source, a transcript of a lawsuit, who knows.

I would think that it would not need to be "admin-only" if a more limited editor were provided, and if all saved stories (for lack of another term) are scanned for HTML tags other than those specifically known to be safe. In fact, an editor like TinyMCE can be configured so that no constructs can be inserted except by the icons, and the admin (or the developers) control what icons are on the toolbar.

One thing I personally think it would need would be a way to easily link text to an INDI, FAM, SOUR, whatever. Highlight a word, name, or title, click an icon, find the item in a pop-up, click OK, and the text becomes the appropriate type of link to another webtrees URI.

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Last edit: 13 years 6 months ago by WGroleau.

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13 years 6 months ago #2 by norwegian_sardines
Replied by norwegian_sardines on topic Re:A different view of "stories"
Wes,

I'm going to put my User Hat on for a moment to describe what I need, which is not to be confused with (when I wear a developer hat) how I'd implement it.

Notes are Notes and Stories are Stories..

NOTEs: I define a note as a comment, a short terse set of words that may explain, question or otherwise augment the information with which the note is associated, but is not printed in formal or official genealogical documentation. For example: I'm interviewing someone and they say "Individual XYZ was born out of wedlock" I think I know that the two individuals that were parents to XYZ were married at that time, so I create a note associated with that quotation in my research DB (in this case WT) saying, "This may not be true, check other sources for validity." -or- "This does not jive with what Aunt Bessy said."

The information I gather goes into two output formats (Online and Printed Book), So when I'm ready to publish (either to casual online readers or the book) I would have either resolved the note or created other "fact" entries with more formal wording for the information that the note discusses, the note would not be displayed to these type of readers.


STORIES: I define a story as a telling of a happening, or a history as associated with an event, an individual, a group of individuals, place (city, farm, country ...) or other entity that someone could talk about. Stories in my mind are written for general consumption, they are annotated and sourced (if and were necessary) using generally excepted conventions for good writing. In my case they would be printed to both output formats (online and books). An entity would have one story, the story could contain alternate views and conflicting outcomes as many history and research books and article often do. I would not have a problem with this. It is possible that a story may have a versioning system associated with the story to retain changes and manage drafts. I also see these stories as needing to have notes (as described above) as well as footnotes and sourcing notations.

Therefore, from a user standpoint Notes and Stories are different in their use. I would display them differently and expect them to have different functionality. How they are stored in the DB is not my concern. However, I would want all systems inside and outside of WT to be able to easily find and retrieve only stories or only notes and format them correctly for the specific data type and that the retrieval of said information would not require the coder to have to go thru hoops to get me the data I require in a format that I need it to be in.

Ken

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13 years 6 months ago #3 by WGroleau
Replied by WGroleau on topic Re:A different view of "stories"

define a note as a comment, a short terse set of words

If you have ever received a GEDCOM file from someone else, I'd bet you can find notes in it that are most emphatically neither short nor terse. The worst example I can remember is a file that repeated an entire transcript of a will in the record of each person mentioned in that will.

What we define a "story" as is not really pertinent, as I was pointing out the value (in my mind) for something that "story" would only be a subset of. But even if we say it can only be a "story" (whatever that is) and never any of those other things, that still doesn't explain the limitation of "only on a person, not a family, and never more than one per person."

Now, I understand that there may be technical reasons for that limitation, but I'm hoping those can be overcome.

I don't want an ancestor's will to appear twenty times in an exported GEDCOM, but I'd like to be able to put it in there at least once if I so choose, and not have webtrees say it can't be exported because it is neither a NOTE nor an OBJE.

What we are allowing to be in a "story" is perfectly legal to be a GEDCOM NOTE. Whether it should be or not is another question. Wanting to allow formatting in it might make it more convenient (for display purposes) to consider it media.

Removing the "one per person" limitation is independent of that. In other words, I really put two requests in one post.

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13 years 6 months ago #4 by ToyGuy
Replied by ToyGuy on topic Re:A different view of "stories"
Wes
I agree.
1) Stories s/b like Shared Notes (and the transcription of a will therein), that write once, edit one place, show multiple times, and
2) Multiple stores should be possible per person and/or family.

How this is enabled and managed is an entirely separate question, IMHO. However, it should be possible. Please remember that Greg's 'Stories Module' was based on some previous thinking by Greg on the subject and a quick 'fix' for someone asking about Stories in general.

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13 years 6 months ago #5 by norwegian_sardines
Replied by norwegian_sardines on topic Re:A different view of "stories"
Wes,

I have received and GEDCOM with tons of stuff in it and for that matter I have received one with a full page from a Census. But does that say that the information correctly uses the Notes field. I say no. When I receive that kind of information I extract it from the GEDCOM note and put it my word processing software, format it, and export it as a PDF, this PDF then is saved to the GEDCOM as an OBJE and I've fixed the problem.

Sure a story could be a subset of a NOTE record but as a user (which is the hat I was wearing) I don't care as long as the Story is displayed whenever an individual, family or place is displayed and a note (as I have defined it) only when the user/viewer has edit authority to that indi/fam/place.

However, if you were to create a GEDCOM from a DB the reuses a NOTE will all kinds of editing, XML, HTML or other stuff embedded into it (rather than clean text) then the receiving program will have to do something with it, that would be crazy bad for them.

TonyGuy,

I disagree with both of your statements, completely. The will transcription should be turned into a PDF or HTML/XML or other file and be added as an OBJE. The people at LDS have a guideline that says "Do not record source information in your notes." I understand this to mean, notes are not to be used in place of source data, events, facts ... Because they also say "Use custom events, not notes, to record information such as emigration, naturalization, military service, occupations, and physical attributes."

Many software products do not follow these guidelines and from my prospective they are wrong, but then again was not the designer or programmer on those products.

A person, family or place has only one story historically speaking. Many stories may be written by different authors about an individual or family but if they are complete and accurate they pretty much should at the end of the day say the same thing, they may use different words but they would be mostly the same. I would hope that the editorial staff in charge of the story would - before sharing the story - merge and combine two slightly different stories to encompass each other.

As a programmer if you want all things that are text stored in a table called "text" and have some attribute that says this instance of the text record is a note associated with an event or as a story go for it. In an object database I would probably think about these as two different objects inheriting from a common "text" object one called note, one called story and for the case were you needed a "census" text record or a "will" text record that could be two more inherited object from "text", because they could and probably would have different functions associated with them.

Ken

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13 years 6 months ago - 13 years 6 months ago #6 by WGroleau
Replied by WGroleau on topic Re:A different view of "stories"

The people at LDS have a guideline that says "Do not record source information in your notes."

I understand this to mean, “Do as we say, not as we do” since they are the producers of a program that does exactly that—and only on level one! (That was PAF, and I last saw it more than ten years ago, so maybe they’ve gotten more sensible since then.)

The will was only an example. I agree it is text of a source. I do feel that they should be OBJEcts, not because they demand PDF, but because if they were notes, we'd have to add complexity to strip out the formatting on export. And complexity to display them.

As for wrong or right, (1) we are under no more obligation than any other software to adhere religiously to the GEDCOM spec. We can and should deviate from it where it makes sense. BUT, it also makes sense to not drive away a huge percentage of potential users be refusing to have any compatibility with other programs.

So far, I don't think our disagreements are on significant matters. However, when it comes to “one per person,” I definitely disagree strongly. Even if I were to insist on the word "story" and insist on it meaning "an individual's biography and nothing else, I would STILL want to allow episodes or chapters to be distinct objects. As wonderfully and gloriously fascinating as my life has been :-) few people are going to want to read the whole thing in a single sitting. Nor should I deprive my fan club of the ability to sing my praises simultaneously by having only one "story" that only one person can edit at a time. But I do not insist on that meaning of “story.” The comedy of errors committed by the Wellington, Kansas police when they arrested me for attempted murder is a story. The way my father taught me not to panic is another story. My thoughts about the passing of my beloved wife are a story, as is the tale of how we met. And the latter two illustrate my claim that a story should not be tied to a single person and never a family.

For now, technical reasons may warrant the current implementation. But I still say it would be nice if we someday have a way to be far more flexible with them. And if they NEED formatting (which I suspect most do not), then OBJE is probably better than NOTE.

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Wes Groleau
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Last edit: 13 years 6 months ago by WGroleau.

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13 years 6 months ago - 13 years 6 months ago #7 by ToyGuy
Replied by ToyGuy on topic Re:A different view of "stories"
Ken

A person, family or place has only one story historically speaking.

We will simply have to agree that we disagree. I listen kindly to your 'stories' and accept each as a separate discussion - multiple stories. Stories throughout history are not an all-inclusive biographical representation of the person, place or thing, but rather possibly quite different tales about certain events - a tale about participation in a military event, a recollection of a marriage, the participants and facts about the event, a story about the birth of my grandchildren, etc.

I did not propose to record a will in a NOTE, simply said that stories should be capable of multiplicity and attachment to multiple INDI's, Events, families, etc, similar to shared notes.

As far as your take on CENS, you must be aghast at Brian's efforts with the Census Assistant, as we record these transcriptions as Shared Notes, not SOUR material.

Finally, we have already established that we, the webtrees developers, have no expectation of trying to include STORIES (as currently designed) into the GEDCOM. It is a nice presentation feature which enhances the online display of the genealogical record. With this in mind, their ability to meet GEDCOM standards as currently written is irrelevant. There are and will be other features, probably developed as add-on modules, that will have the same general purpose and outcome.

UPDATE: Wes posted some of these same arguments on "tales", a good alternative noun for "stories", at the exact same time. I agree.

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13 years 6 months ago #8 by norwegian_sardines
Replied by norwegian_sardines on topic Re:A different view of "stories"
ToyGuy,

Here I agree completely with you.

These are stories based on the event, not the person. So the person will have one story but we could have multiple story snippets that related to a person via each event and probably (more thought on my part to fully think it through) multiple stories for each person associated to the event. i.e. If the event was a christening then each person that attended the christening would be associated with the singular event I'll call this the Event/Person each even person (if 5 people attended then 5 instances of Event/Person). Each Event/Person would have one story.

Therefore:
1 Person has one story (call it the main story)
1 Person has many Events
1 Event can have many People
1 Event/Person has one Story

I think that your proposal would place event stories off the event and not the person.


I think I may have been aghast at that when he proposed it some time ago ;-)

Under the restriction of GEDCOM it was probably an ok idea. But I see material like wills, census info, grave data as rather static. They probably are not going to change if they are historical so in reality they don't need a sophisticated editing system to support their entry into the system, when a mediocre word processor outputting to PDF can capture the information. The editor should be reserved for things like Stories, that will change over time or as people collaborate to build the story or story snippet.

I would not want stories to be in the GEDCOM. Stories are not part of documenting a person's lineage and being able to transfer that info to the LDS Church. They are not into stories and that is good for them.. I care big time about stories because that is why I'm a genealogist. I don't care all that much about blood lines, they are important but not everything that I want to capture. This is also why I want stories to be associated with places and maybe even sources or repositories because they may also play a part in the capturing of the human condition I am documenting. So we agree here, not stories in the GEDCOM.


Wes

PAF does say one thing and do another. I tried to follow what they did and it was not optimal!! No I changed my mind, I hated it, but I lived with it until I could figure out a better way. The better way was to write the stories in a WP and then copy out the GEDCOM stuff I needed into a table. But the book took for ever to build and by the time it was half done it was wrong.

I agree with your assertion that we could and should have chapters and other book like layout options. I would love to see that, but that would be (in my mind) down the road. The first part of Stories to to have a simple interface, then build it up (a good reason to not use NOTE). So yes they would be different objects called chapter within the object story. You could also include the ability to call out to the DB to pull in specific facts/events. For example you had an Event/Person story, When you build the person_story put in some kind of marker <<This.Birth.Story>> and the Event/Person story associated with this person gets pulled inline into the one story for the individual.

The above just came out of my head so I sure you can find some level of fault, just "ideating"!

Sorry to hear about your "dragnet" episode. Like I said above this would be an Event/Person story.

Ken

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13 years 6 months ago - 13 years 6 months ago #9 by WGroleau
Replied by WGroleau on topic Re:A different view of "stories"
Sounds like you are basically agreeing that we should be able to have lots of them instead of only one per person. Also sounds like you are erasing any practical difference between them and NOTEs or OBJEcts, both of which can attach one OR MORE times to any person, family, source, event, or fact. I understand¹ your idea of conceptually combining a bunch of them into "one story" but in order to do that, you must have more than one to combine--which is exactly what I suggested.

The GEDCOM spec imposes no prohibitions on the content of a NOTE nor of an OBJE. I, too, would prefer not to put actual source material in a NOTE, but it's not prohibited and it DOES happen.

Like you, I "care big time about the stories." That's why I DO want them in the GEDCOM, though for most of them, fancy formatting is unnecessary (the words are what counts). On the other hand, no offense to our Mormon friends, I have absolutely ZERO interest in transferring data into the LDS church. If they want to take advantage of data I've compiled, let them. But that's not why I compiled it, and I won't change how I compile it to make it convenient for them. Just like they share their data with me, but make no effort to reformat it to my taste.

If formatting must be there, an OBJE is a better place. If not, a NOTE is more portable. And a NOTE can be any kind of text. You can ask that it not be this kind or that kind, but you can't enforce it. If you want to be legalistic about the spec, it says only the rather vague "comments or opinions"

¹Understand, but don’t necessarily agree. What order should they be combined in? Chronologically? Many of them won’t have dates. By subject matter? Would my "dragnet" episode go with my other police incident, or with my other hitchiking stories? (By the way, no need to be sorry about my "dragnet" episode. When I said "comedy of errors," I really meant comedy. Those clowns have given me a story that has entertained many over the years.)

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Wes Groleau
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Last edit: 13 years 6 months ago by WGroleau.

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13 years 6 months ago #10 by norwegian_sardines
Replied by norwegian_sardines on topic Re:A different view of "stories"
Wes,

You missed my point.

One Story per person is still what I'm advocating. So when I display the person, one tab is created for the story for that person.

When I drill down into a fact/event another tab (or field, icon ...) for a story about the event as it related to the person is generated but not AT the person, at the event/fact.

This is much better implemented when the database is normalized, because as the database is now, events are not instantiated and therefore have no place to put a story hence your need to have more than one story at the person level.

In a normalized DB we have:
    When I instantiate a Person they have 1 story
    When I instantiate an Event/Fact it has 1 story (not 100% sure I like this one yet)
    When I connect a person to that event we have an Event/Person and that Event/Person has 1 story.

4 tables/record types (Person, Event, Event/Person, Story)

A Story could be a collector of a 5th table called Chapter

So:
    Person (instance "Wes") has a life story (would include the snippet from Dragnet).
    Event/Person (instance "Dragnet/Wes") has a story
    Event/Person (instance "Dragnet/Accomplice") has a story
    Event (instance "Dragnet") has a story (maybe this is an OBJE to a copy of the police report)

Each instance has no need for more than one story.

You are correct that the GEDCOM does not restrict the content of a NOTE, but like so many things designed in the past, they never design with display in mind, just transfer of data. And while you and I don't care about the transfer of data to the Church others do.

I can and do enforce the content of NOTE records, just like I do PLAC records, source citations... If it looks like a note it stays, if it looks like a fact or a source I gets removed and entered correctly. Lots of work but I think others have argued that they do this for many other pieces of data that gets entered.

I don't know enough about creating an OBJE from a MS-Word or OpenOfffice Document so I'll not comment on using that for formatted data. But based on the little I do know you are probably correct.

STORY: Wes was a great kid as he grew up, but one instance went totally wrong. <<This.event:dragnet.Story>>. Wes still uses that story whenever he wants to make a good impression on people he meets. END_STORY

<<This.Event:dragnet.Story>> is an actual field reference to the "Dragnet Story". We could also have <<This.Birth.Date>> in the story too to get and imbed the birth date for "this" person Wes. or <This.Event:dragnet.Place>>

Ken

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13 years 6 months ago #11 by atl
Replied by atl on topic Re:A different view of "stories"
Norwegian_sardines,

Am I right in thinking that you're interested in the "one-per" constraint for the sake of unambiguous linearisation into a book? That's cool. I appreciate somebody is thinking along those lines. I'm thinking about that long-term, as well.

However, I think it's dangerous to specify a constraint—something that other users coming along later would see as an arbitrary one—in the system for the purpose of your own use-case. Especially when I look at the same goals, I would want to include a multiplicity of stories from different authors. I would solve the ordering problem by going with GEDCOM ordering supplemented with a reordering tool akin to the one for siblings.

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13 years 6 months ago #12 by WGroleau
Replied by WGroleau on topic Re:A different view of
norwegian_sardines wrote:

One Story per person is still what I'm advocating

But it’s still not what I’m advocating. One stories Tab per person/family/source/place, yes. How they are displayed there is another question. Perhaps in a fashion similar to the notes and sources, with the expand to full/collapse to title tools.

atl wrote:

However, I think it's dangerous to specify a constraint—something that other users coming along later would see as an arbitrary one—in the system for the purpose of your own use-case. Especially when I look at the same goals, I would want to include a multiplicity of stories from different authors. I would solve the ordering problem by going with GEDCOM ordering supplemented with a reordering tool akin to the one for siblings.

This would be an excellent approach to ordering.

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13 years 6 months ago #13 by norwegian_sardines
Replied by norwegian_sardines on topic Re:A different view of
Wes,

I don't want to confuse display with storage. If you like displaying a story for a event on a tab for the person then that is great, I would rather display it as just more information associated with the event that the story is for ( I would not want the story displayed out of context.)

This is up to you, I would not care as long as I have on my screen a way to keep the story in context with the event that it augments. Probably two different themes. Don't know how to make that happen but hopefully someone sees the data relationships the same way I do. If no-one does then I'll just live with what I get.

And if you like multiple stories for a person then so be it. It really does not effect me because I would never have multiple stories. I just don't see it, but then maybe I'm not smart enough to see through your eyes.

ATL

You are right, constraining a user to only writing one life story for a person would only make someone want more, "just in case."

I'm not smart enough to know exactly what you you mean by

unambiguous linearisation

but I'm looking for the story to be "the truth, based on the facts we have at this time, considering all input" Kind of like wikipedia. They have only one informative text for a topic. As far as I know, I could not write an second story without destroying the other.

At some given time, all stories currently entered into the system for people, places, families, unconnected events and facts would be extracted from the system and a book generated.

Ken

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13 years 6 months ago #14 by WGroleau
Replied by WGroleau on topic Re:A different view of
norwegian_sardines wrote:

I don't want to confuse display with storage.

Well, I originally proposed that we not limit the entity to there only being one per person. By repeatedly opposing that, you give the impression that you want there to be only one entity—which implies only one storage location.

At some given time, all stories currently entered into the system for people, places, families, unconnected events and facts would be extracted from the system and a book generated.

That sounds more like a use for the reports module than for a Tab.

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13 years 6 months ago #15 by norwegian_sardines
Replied by norwegian_sardines on topic Re:A different view of

That sounds more like a use for the reports module than for a Tab.


Not sure how these relate.

Tabs are collectors used to display or gather data. A tab can be used to display/gather 1 to x pieces of data to/from any number of record instances. I opposed (or at least did until I gave up) more than one story stored per person. However, if you want you could put that one story on a hundred tabs.

The report module only outputs to PDF and HTML, if it output to XML (much like an EDI interchange) I might be able to use it. But chances are the XML generated would be rather complex. Then I would have to write a translator to put it into a format a word processor could read...

I'd rather write a few simple SQL statements called out of a dirty VB, C++ or PC scripting language directly to the WordProcessor.

Ken

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13 years 6 months ago #16 by atl
Replied by atl on topic Re:A different view of
norwegian_sardines wrote:

ATL

You are right, constraining a user to only writing one life story for a person would only make someone want more, "just in case."

I'm not smart enough to know exactly what you you mean by

unambiguous linearisation

but I'm looking for the story to be "the truth, based on the facts we have at this time, considering all input" Kind of like wikipedia. They have only one informative text for a topic. As far as I know, I could not write an second story without destroying the other.

At some given time, all stories currently entered into the system for people, places, families, unconnected events and facts would be extracted from the system and a book generated.


NS, as you know, a major problem with printing out a hypertextual resource, like a cluster of wikipedia articles or a subset of a GEDCOM, is that it's non-trivial to come up with an order that makes sense. That's all I meant by "unambiguous linearisation."

I saw your one-per-person constraint as being one, highly-structured way to attack the problem. As you say, the user story becomes the definitive article for the person, and (continuing the wikipedia parallels) the rest of the genealogical information plays the same role as a wikipedia Infobox.

All I'm trying to add to the conversation is: 1) cool idea: I'm glad someone else is thinking of long-form, narrative reports, and 2) another person would approach the same resource as being like a collection of testimonials from people who remember the person. Bob writes, "I remember the time Wes got arrested..." while Sue writes, "He's always quick to help people out online. In fact, one time..."

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13 years 6 months ago #17 by norwegian_sardines
Replied by norwegian_sardines on topic Re:A different view of
ATL,

The story would be written with the aid of information held in the DB for the individual, but not completely. I forget the report type that everyone tries to use. "He/she was born at <place> on <date>. He married <wifename> at <place>, on <date>." This report is not a story, mine would be more like a bio where I write more than 75% and augment the story with data (for accuracy sake) draw out of the DB.


And I agree with your assertion about multiple testimonials on an event, but not at the person.

It is very hard to describe with words how this works

I tried with my 4 tables concept, but I failed.

1 person multiple events
1 event multiple people

This is a Many to Many relationship

Therefore each instance of the relationship has an instance of a connecting record/row that could be associated with one story.

Bob's relationship to the event would have a story: "I remember the time Wes got arrested..."
Sue's relationship to the event would have a story:
"He's always quick to help people out online. In fact, one time even though he has been arrested he still used his blackberry to answer..."

Ken

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13 years 6 months ago - 13 years 6 months ago #18 by potain
Replied by potain on topic Re:A different view of
From a user's point of view:

I think that you have to distinguish between the uses that one would put this facility to.

I see the Stories module (looking at Kiwi's examples) as applying more to formal, factual information pertaining to a certain individual and one story per individual makes sense and perhaps the title should be changed to Biographical Details / Biography / BIO Data or even Facts & Figures so that people know what to expect - if this is the case then tying it into the GEDCOM also makes sense to me as it's for general, public viewing and be would of interest to many people.
Admins would have the role of initialising the page with upon a request from a user. Depending upon the web skills of the user he would then decide whether to give the user editing rights to it because he has ensure that the presentation of the information conforms to the standards that he has established for the site or else compose the page himself under the direction of the user. With kiwi's tabs example for instance, one would not be limited by space, as opposed to if you only had just the one page for your composition. You need as implemented a powerful inline editor.

The other separate use that I see and have suggested is a private area for the exclusive use of a particular user where the user can record anything of his liking. Since this has nothing to do with the GEDCOM, it would be specific to the webtrees program thereby adding another dimension to the program and a definite selling point. Another reason for users to continuously revisit the site and use it.

I supposed what I am advocating here is some sort of a private blog with basic formatting tools and date driven where the user can invite other users if he wishes to view and/or participate in his whole blog or in a particular "story or tale". Obviously some users would only want this to be completely private, some would want to invite only family members while others would want not hesitate at broadcasting it all users [strike]of webtrees[/strike] in that community.

No idea if this latter proposition is possible or how it could be implemented but would be really cool if it could be.

Jean
Last edit: 13 years 6 months ago by potain.

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  • ToyGuy
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13 years 6 months ago #19 by ToyGuy
Replied by ToyGuy on topic Re:A different view of "stories"
Ken
You have confused the heck out of me. I do not believe anyone ever proposed more than one 'Stories" tab. And, as one of the developers, I can unequivocally state that a great deal of thought went into naming the tab - 'stories', not story.

As a matter of interpretation (point of view), I do not view most Wikipedia articles as one story. Many articles I read have multiple tales, written by different people with different levels of experiences and different approaches, all collected under the person, place or event. How is this different from multiple "tales", supplied by multiple contributors and written from their own aspect and/or experiences and contributed as webtrees stories.

Much like the mechanics of the NOTES tab, or the SOUR tabs, if attaching these stories/tales to Events or Facts or Places makes sense, then there is no reason they can not or should not be associated with those base tags and collected under the STORIES tab.

Wes is right, IMHO, that there should be ready access by users having authorization, to create and edit stories, although I would like to see a restriction that users are able to edit only their own creations (with admin supervision access to everything). Nigel, with his terrific css, html and layout skills has created terrific "stories" about some of his relations, but every user might not have these talents. An admin could access the contributed materials and augment it with additional formatting and layout, as well as supplement the stories with media or source material.

The method of formatted stories for display on webtrees, or possibly elsewhere, seems entirely irrelevant to the concept, particularly since these stories are not designed to be included in a GEDCOM-compliant output. To accommodate them within the database, I leave the structure to those better equipped, but believe they should be shareable within the webtrees display output (write once, display many), like shared notes.

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13 years 6 months ago #20 by norwegian_sardines
Replied by norwegian_sardines on topic Re:A different view of "stories"
ToyGuy,

I am so sorry that I gave you the impression that I wanted multiple Stories tab or that we should have multiple story tabs, I did not. I was only trying to explain to Wes that I was confused about his discussion of:

That sounds more like a use for the reports module than for a Tab.


I agree that Stories are not part of the GEDCOM, always have, always will.

Everyone:

I am also sorry to everyone on the blog for having wasted their time with my input. It seams to me that no-one has yet understood what I am talking about so I humbly withdraw everything I have said.

I can't write PHP and I don't want to learn. I don't have the ability to develop a theme or write CSS and I don't want to learn. So I'm at your mercy for a design and implementation that I can use. I once thought I was a good system designer and DB architect I built close to a hundred in my day. But obviously my day is over. I am still a darn good genealogist and researcher so I'll stick to that.

So again, I'm sorry that my ideas did not add to the discussion.

When the Database is Normalized, Wes' multiple stories design get implemented and the reporting function outputs in a format that helps me, I'll cheer. For now I'll just remain in the background and keep an eye on the proceedings.

Good luck.

Ken

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