WeRelate

WeRelate.org is a wiki genealogy website, that provides genealogy tools and data. It bills itself as the world's largest freely licensed genealogy wiki, with almost 5 million wiki pages. Its information is free, and the site is non-commercial and nonsectarian.[3] WeRelate had over 2.5 million person pages, over 930,000 family pages and 44,000 images in January 2014.

WeRelate.org
Type of site
Family history
Available inEnglish
OwnerFoundation for On-Line Genealogy[1]
Created byDallan Quass
URLWeRelate.org
CommercialNo
RegistrationYes
Users110,770 (May 2020)[2]
LaunchedFebruary 13, 2004 (2004-02-13)
Current statusActive
Content license
Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

WeRelate is supported by the Foundation for On-Line Genealogy and the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The site runs on the MediaWiki software.

Background

The site and software were developed in 2005 by the Foundation for On-Line Genealogy, led by president Dallan Quass.[1] WeRelate is partnered with the Allen County Public Library, Genealogy Department[1] Indiana, which houses the nation's largest public genealogy collection.[4] WeRelate has been listed in the top 101 websites for genealogy by Family Tree Magazine[5] from 2008 through 2013.

In 2007, WeRelate and the University of South Florida's Africana Heritage Project[6] launched a research project on slave genealogy, supported by South Carolina's Magnolia Plantation Foundation, including the resulting data in the global genealogy collection.[7][8]

Organization

WeRelate allows users to upload GEDCOMs.[1] The system produces a comparison screen for likely candidates, allowing users to determine if subjects are the same person. Duplicate pages for common ancestors can be merged at upload. Information about living people is not accepted; it is automatically replaced by the software with the word "Living".[9]

Registered users are able to document their research, which can then be edited by anyone else.[1] WeRelate has over 926,000 Source pages which contain reference and access information along with relevant links. Source pages also provide space for review and research tips. Users may link Person and Family pages to any relevant source pages. Users may also create MySource pages for references relevant to only their research such as family bibles, birth, death and marriage certificates. Scans of documentation may be attached to any relevant page.

Place information is essential to genealogical research. WeRelate has over 900,000 referenced place pages.[10] Where applicable, Place pages are linked to Family History Library Catalog,[11] and Wikipedia. Where geographic coordinates are available, a Google map is provided. Many pages also include timelines, population history, contained places, history, research tips and images.

Compared to other projects that let people publish and share similar data, WeRelate focuses on sourcing files with links to primary genealogy records, and rather than letting users maintain separate personal family trees, aims to align data from different sources into a unified global record.[1]

Collaborative tools

WeRelate includes a family tree explorer, annotated images for sharing images of primary source documents or photos, and generates pedigree maps of up to five generations of data.

References
  1. Wolinsky, Howard. Just the Facts - Using a Wiki, Ancestry Magazine, Mar-Apr 2010, pp. 62-63.
  2. "User list". WeRelate. Retrieved May 2, 2020.
  3. "About WeRelate.org". WeRelate.org.
  4. "Fort Wayne's visitor's guide". VisitFortWayne.com. Archived from the original on January 29, 2011. Retrieved August 7, 2013.
  5. Fryxell, David A. (October 14, 2011). "101 Best Websites for 2011". Family Tree Magazine. Archived from the original on August 24, 2013. Retrieved August 7, 2013.
  6. "Africana Heritage Project". WeRelate. March 13, 2010. Archived from the original on October 12, 2011. Retrieved August 7, 2013.
  7. Africana Heritage Project Archived January 29, 2016, at the Wayback Machine announcement: the June 23, 2007 press release Archived December 12, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
  8. "User:Africana Heritage". WeRelate. March 13, 2010. Retrieved August 7, 2013.
  9. Diana Lynn Tibert, Roots to the Past Archived July 6, 2011, at the Wayback Machine, South Shore Now, December 1, 2009.
  10. "Source List". WeRelate. Retrieved January 2, 2019.
  11. "Population of States and Counties of the United States". WeRelate. September 3, 2010. Archived from the original on July 22, 2013. Retrieved August 7, 2013.

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