Lowville Long Ago

On Hiatus - But Stay Tuned

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas MacEntee) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 22:54:00 +0000

In August 2009, I switched web hosting companies for Lowville Long Ago and since that time I have not reinstalled the MediaWiki software on the new server.

One of my genealogy New Year's resolutions for 2010 is to reactive the Lowville Long Ago wiki and actually make it a much more robust presence than it was previously.

Stay tuned.

© 2009, copyright Thomas MacEntee

Google Goes Semantic?

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas MacEntee) — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 17:29:00 +0000

If this is true and if it holds, this is hot stuff:

Google appears to be exposing semantic data in its searches. The concepts of semantic forms and semantic data is one that is close to the core of what Lowville Long Ago is all about. A wiki should be more than just looking up articles - it should be a highly advanced way of organizing and managing data and rendering results.

It appears that Google is taking its usual search results and then parsing out the semantic data. Example: enter What was Karl's Marx's Birthdate in the search field and this is what you get:

Sweet, no? According to a post on Read, Write, Web, it appears that Google may have been performing this function for quite while but there have been recent refinements to results when you use a "subject - predicate - object" format for your searches.

Many web and tech gurus are predicting that semantic data is a core component of Web 3.0 and I agree. I also believe that this is where genealogy database software and websites will need to go: allowing users more than just looking up data. These applications and sites will need to offer the ability to see relationships between data, between people.

One Place Study

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas MacEntee) — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 04:07:00 +0000

Hal Harold Miller made reference to Wikipedia's "One Place Study" article over at Facebook and after reading Hal's post and the Wikipedia article, I realized that Lowville Long Ago qualifies as an American version of a One Place Study.

In case you don't know, I've been assisting Hal and the great group of people he's put together with the Albany Hilltowns website. Plus Hal's already been managing The Berne Historical Project which actually shows up as an external link for the Wikipedia article. Both of these projects also meet the criteria of a One Place Study.

One topic that the Wikipedia article did not cover was that of "relationships" between the residents of a specific location. Wikipedia did list various motivations to have a One Place Study assembled but investigating the way in which the citizens of that location interacted was not one of them.

Getting Started With MediaWiki

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas MacEntee) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 16:14:00 +0000

Now that you've selected a hosting platform and you've requested installation of MediaWiki, the next step is to begin customizing your wiki and entering content.

Step One: A Plan

We've all heard before how it helps to have a plan. And despite this, did I have a plan when I first started customizing and adding content to Lowville Long Ago? No. Do I have regrets? Not necessarily. Is there an upside? Yes on two fronts: a) I have the freedom of experimenting with different options and b) you get to learn from my mistakes. Is there a downside? Yes - the process of setting up the wiki probably took 3 or 4 times as long as it should have.

What should be in the plan? Here's a partial list:

- make a list of all the customizations if possible. A good way to find out what might work is to seek out wikis that you like and note how they are different than your base installation. Some customization that I've added to Lowville Long Ago (and that I will discuss in future posts:

- logo

- navigation menu (or sidebar)

- account structure (ability to create accounts and make edits)

- upload file capability

- search and replace text capability

- templates and forms

- semantic capabilities (key knowledge/relationship management functions)

Step Two: Take Time To Learn

A very important part of setting up your wiki is to learn what can and cannot be accomplished. Also you'll need to learn how to enter certain codes to format text since the MediaWiki platform is not WYSIWYG. It took me quite a bit of time to remember what [[ ]] does versus [ ]. This is why setting up templates and forms for data entry (to be discussed in a future topic) will be important.

Step Three: Start With Simple Content

I selected simple news articles for my initial content at Lowville Long Ago. If I had selected items such as advertisements or election summaries, I may very well have been discouraged. Your plan should include what initial content will be added and strive to keep it simple. Once you get the hang of the formatting codes, linking and entering data, you can progress to more complex content.

Next: specific customizations for MediaWiki

How to Host Your Own Wiki

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas MacEntee) — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 10:00:00 +0000

Using MediaWiki again as an example, but not walking you through the process step-by-step, I want to offer some information and links on what is needed to host your own wiki.

The process involves:

- making sure you can run Windows Apache Server on your current system

- installing WAMP (which is also free) which serves as an all-in-one installation of PHP, MySQL and Apache

- downloading and installing MediaWiki

- hosting your new wiki

I think one of the best tutorials on this topic has been offered over at LifeHacker as part of its Geek to Live series. Check it out.

My Choice: A Hosted Media Wiki Platform

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas MacEntee) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 18:17:00 +0000

So, if you are still with me on this concept (and I promise that with the next post there will be more screen captures and how-to tips on setting up your own wiki), I finally made a choice.

I selected the MediaWiki platform - the same engine that runs Wikipedia - and decided to have it hosted by a third-party provider instead of running it off my own server. Here, in brief is my rationale behind the choice:

- many if not most of my readers of my other blogs and members of the genea-blogger community are familiar with Wikipedia in terms of the look and feel. There is much to be said about the ease of use in terms of looking up items and browsing from link to link.

- MediaWiki is free and open-source. This is important to me in terms of keeping costs down and having an environment that encourages developers to create extensions (MediaWiki's form of widgets since its back-end coding language is PHP). Many of the other platforms do not have the library of exntensions available for me to build the wiki of my dreams.

- while MediaWiki is not WYSIWIG and is not terribly user-friendly for someone who wants to add or edit content, by using the Semantic Forms extension, I can create templates and forms which will make the process much easier and standardize data entry tasks.

- I am currently using two different hosts - SiteGround and GoDaddy - for my various wikis. Lowville Long Ago uses SiteGround and at some point I will migrate it over to GoDaddy which hosts my thomas 2.0 and BigLaw 2.0 sites and blogs. When I first pursued this wiki concept, GoDaddy did not have the proper hosting tools in place for MediaWiki.

So once I placed my order and selected a domain name, the hosting site actually took care of installing MediaWiki for me. This is not only a big time saver but it takes much of the stress away from making sure all the back-end databases and tools are in place. Basically what I got was an "off the shelf" version of MediaWiki just waiting for me to customize it.

Next: getting started with MediaWiki

Why A Wiki?

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas MacEntee) — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 16:40:00 +0000

Before I begin discussing how to select a wiki platform and a wiki host, I need to answer the question: why a wiki? Why not some other method, like a blog?

For this post and many other posts, let's begin with a very simple article in the March 19, 1903 issue of The Journal Republican which was, and still is, the hometown newspaper for Lowville, New York:

"At the charter election Tuesday three tickets were in the field, republican, democratic and socialist. One hundred votes were polled. The following were elected: President, Frank H. Markham, rep.; trustee for two years, Robert E. Conant, dem.; trustee for one year, George Schwenk, dem.; treasurer, Evan F. Roberts, rep.; collector, William J. Taylor, socialist."^[1]

Assume that your project will be populated by similar bits of knowledge - and knowledge is a good descriptor for this article. When you think about it, you are basically constructing a knowledge management system. Why would you want to transcribe hundreds if not thousands of news articles which already exist out on the Web, if you didn't also want to create some taxonomy so that you could see the connections between bits of data?

I can't possibly store all these articles in my mind, especially at my advanced age of my mid-40s. If I can create a repository where names will link to other names, I can look up places or events, etc. - that is what I really need. And then, if I could only find a platform that would make it easy to enter knowledge and easy to run queries, that would be even better!

Using a Blog as Knowledge Management System

1. Cost: most if not all blogging platforms are free of charge to both the author and the reader. There are some platforms such as WordPress which allow self hosting and add quite a few bells and whistles - to the point of making the blog look and feel like a website. See this comparison chart for a list of blogging platforms and hosting sites.

2. Ease of use - adding knowledge: most blog authors find it fairly easy to create posts, edit posts, and manage the knowledge that gets added to their blog. The free blogging platforms make it simple for authors to accomplish adding and maintaining knowledge.

3. Ease of use - accessing knowledge: readers can use built in search functions, utilize special archives or links established by the author, and even use Google or other search engines to search blogs for knowledge. Authors can also link to other knowledge - both internal and external to the blog - to assist readers in analyzing the knowledge.

4. Collaboration: many blogs are limited in terms of the collaboration options available to them. The most obvious means is via use of comments but very often due to spam they must be moderated. WordPress does offer the use of its Askimet spam tool which weeds out 99% of spam comments. But in order to allow other users the ability to post knowledge, you often need to add them as blog authors or administrators. This requires the contributor to have at least a basic knowledge of blog authoring in order to collaborate with others. For many blog platforms there are also limits as to how many contributors, etc.

5. Analyzing knowledge: this is where most blogs fail as a knowledge management system. Despite all the tools which allow authors to connect bit s of knowledge and tools which allow readers to access and review bits of knowledge, the burden of analyzing knowledge - noting trends, processing queries (besides the basic search) - falls upon the reader. There are very few tools or add-ins out there which allow you to make a query such as, using the above article: How many times has Frank H. Markham run for the office of president in Constableville prior to March, 1903? Who was the current president of Constableville at the time of the March, 1903 election?

Using a Wiki as Knowledge Management System

1. Cost: there are many free wiki platforms available which allow you to set up a wiki in a quick minute. See this comparison chart for more information.

But very often you will need a hosting platform unless you have the technical knowledge and computer equipment to host your own wiki across the Web. Wiki hosting can be had for free (but peppered with advertisements) and for a basic fee of $5.95 or higher per month. Some of the hosted sites such as GoDaddy or SiteGround will install and set up the wiki for you as part of your monthly fee. See this comparison chart of wiki hosts for more information.

2. Ease of use - adding knowledge: Depending upon your choice of platform and host, adding bits of knowledge should be easy. You must determine whether to use a WYSIWYG-based method ("what you see is what you get") or a more vibrant and flexible platform that may require basic HTML or other skills. If you currently author a blog, you are already familiar with the complications involved in formatting your posts, your knowledge. The same set of complications exist, even more so, with wikis.

3. Ease of use - accessing knowledge: Most users of wikis, using Wikipedia as an example, find it easy - and addictive - to find items of interest. How many of us have spent hours on a wiki going from link to link when we said we were just going to quickly "look something up."

4. Collaboration: wikis were made for collaboration but depending upon the wiki, the ability of a contributor to actually succeed in seeing their contribution depends on the amount of control the wiki administrator is willing to give up. MediaWiki, the engine behind Wikipedia, allows you to control the ability to contribute by login account and even down to the page or section level of knowledge. Collaboration can be a two-edged sword in the wiki world: free and open means you are likely to have off-topic spam posting if not vulgarity and pornographic images added as "knowledge." Too restrictive, such as immediate review by a group of knowledge managers, will inhibit contributors. From my attempts to create a page entitled "Genea-Blogger" on Wikipedia, I know all to well the hoops that one has to jump through to make even a simple contribution. Read about my experience here.

5. Analyzing knowledge: this is where the hidden power of a wiki can be unleashed, depending upon the platform and hosting selected. Many of the free or basic wikis do not offer add-ins, or extensions as they are often called, allowing knowledge analysis. One little discussed area of MediaWiki is the Semantic Forms add-in which I will discuss at length throughout this blog.

My Choice?

I'll discuss which method I selected for Lowville Long Ago, the rationale behind such a choice, and how I made my concept become a reailty - in the next post!

Notes

[1] "Constableville," The Journal and Republican, Lowville, Thursday, March 19, 1903, Vol. 44, No. 17, p. 8.

What is Lowville Long Ago?

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas MacEntee) — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 11:15:00 +0000

Lowville Long Ago is a wiki that represents a new concept in genealogy and family history research - something I call Genealogy Relationship Management (GRM). It is similar to Customer Relationship Management which relies upon "relationship intelligence."

Here's an example of how this concept works: let's say that Catherine Sullivan was your 3 times great-grandmother. You not only want to find out who may have attended her funeral, but where they lived, worked, and how they all were related to each other and to Catherine Sullivan.

Currently, you would need to perform a great deal of research using various Lowville-related resources to find the facts, and then you would need to connect the dots of those relationships. It isn't easy to coalesce all these facts so that at an instance you can see who lived in Deer River or who was affected by the Flood of September 12, 1890.

Why are these factual relationships important? A family member may have moved due to that floor, or they may have been neighbors with another relative in Deer River.

GRM not only takes much of the work out of determining these relationships, just like a true wiki, it encourages you to explore areas, concepts and relationships that you may not have considered as relevant to your research.

In short, Lowville Long Ago is a journey back in time to a typical all-American town in upstate New York using the wiki format found at Wikipedia. Lowville Long Ago is a way of consolidating readily-available information into one easy to use website.