[Note: Dec 25 2004 - WDC GenWeb has been online RootsWeb since Oct 1996. With 1,383 linked descendant charts from hundreds of contributors, the Project has out-grown the manual process of creating charts, updating them, maintaining the People Index and the ad-free search engine. WDC will remain on RootsWeb for researchers]
WDC GenWeb FAQ&A Table of Contents: What is the WDC GenWeb Project? Can I get my family online here? What happens after I contribute? Email when a new chart is added Email when a chart is revised How do I use WDC GenWeb? Why do your charts look that way? When is the People Index updated? How accurate is the data in the charts? I didn't find my people here, now what? I'd like to learn more about genealogy! Does WDC GenWeb need any more volunteers? Acceptable Use Policy, Terms & Conditions What is The World Descendant Charts Genealogy Web Project? Contributors email us gedcom files of their family. Those files are used to create descendant charts. We link the charts together, usually where members of different families get married. The Two Sections of WDC GenWeb: We have developed a large number of family charts where at least one person in each chart is linked to someone in another chart, to form one big family. These charts are known as our Interrelated Section. If your ancestor or you are in one of these charts, you are related to everyone in the Interrelated Section, though sometimes rather distantly. Our Non-Interrelated Section has other family charts where some, but not all charts, are linked together. We will move families and charts from Non-Interrelated to Interrelated when we have the links that enable us to do this. Back to FAQ&A Table of Contents Can I get my family online here? We post charts of Virginia and West Virginia families, their ancestors where ever they came from, and their descendants where ever they moved to. So, we have many charts online of families who lived in other states and countries. There are two ways you can get your people online here: If you have at least 25 Virginia or West Virginia people we will put your charts online; or, if you do not have VA or WV people, but you can link to one of the other charts we already have online. There are two reasons for the restrictions: We don't have enough volunteers to handle a large influx of contributors; and we're trying to see how large of a global family we can create with our Interrelated Section. If you qualify: Email us your gedcom file in the standard paf format. You should be able to create and export geds with your genealogy program and its various menu choices. We have directions for creating/exporting geds for a few of the more popular genealogy programs. Don't worry about what's in your ged, all notes except for some historical events are edited out of your ged. Back to FAQ&A Table of Contents What happens after I contribute? Your file is placed in queue to be worked on. WDC is a very personal service and we don't just put your data online, we work with it. Your gedcom is gone through line-by-line to ensure the quality of the charts created. Locations in your ged will be standardized (i.e., Olso, West Virginia or Olso, WVA is standardized to Olso WV), as well as names (we use lower case surnames) and dates (we use American style). Next, your charts are created and linked. During this process we try to find links to our existing charts and if we do we merge data and create the link. As each of your charts with VA/WV people in them is put online, we announce it on our WDC GenWeb list. Your name and email address is at the ends of the charts you contributed, so other researchers can contact you. When we are finished with a batch of charts which may include more that just your own, they are indexed and the people in the charts are added to our People Index. Finally, quite often we hear from other researchers who have data to add to your chart, or a family that links to your chart. We will merge their data with yours and/or create the links from chart to chart. Many or our charts have been contributed to by more than one person, this has not only helped the charts grow but also helps with the quality of the data in our charts. It can take several days to several weeks to get all of your people online. Back to FAQ&A Table of Contents Email me every time a new chart is added: The WDC GenWeb mail list is a read-only list with nearly 2,000 subscribers. As new charts are put online we send messages to the list, about 4-10 each week. In the Subject of the message will be the name of the first person in the chart, when they were born, where, and where descendants moved to. This is an example: Subject: Francis King b. abt 1639 Eng. > VA/MD/WV In the body of the message we will tell if the chart is in our Interrelated or Non-Interrelated Section, the URL of the chart, usually a few lines of text about the family, and a list of the surnames found in that chart. To subscribe send a message to: [email protected] Put the word subscribe or your name in the Subject field In the body of the message put: subscribe Note: Use lower case where indicated Do Not put anything else in the message...no signature file...nothing! Subscribe to WDC-GenWeb-L list now There is a digest mode you can subscribe: [email protected] But since we have such a low volume of messages not many use digest mode. For places to post queries see: Genealogy Resources on the Internet Back to FAQ&A Table of Contents - Or use your browser Back button Email me each time a chart is modified: We use the NetMind-it service for this. You will receive email every time a chart you are interested in is revised. You can keep track of as many charts as you want, with many options for how to do it. Mind-it will give you your own web page to do this with. This a nice service to join up with, they do not sell your email address and you won't all the sudden start getting junk email. This service is on our WDC GenWeb Tools page. To narrow things down more, every time we update our People Index we send a message to our WDC GenWeb list to let everyone know this has been done. Back to FAQ&A Table of Contents How do I use WDC GenWeb? Use our Descendant Charts Indexes or our People Index to find families or people you are interested in. Most charts are linked by marriages. For example: In a Smith chart there is a Jenny Smith who marries John Jones, with John Jones being a link...click on John Jones and you will be taken to the chart he is in, with Jenny Smith being the first link you will see, which takes you back to her chart. If Jenny and John have children, the link in Jenny's chart to John's would then say, "Descendants of Jenny Smith and John Jones" with the return link from John's chart to Jenny's being the same as above. With some families we have so much data that you will find links to charts of more male descendants. For example: In a Taylor chart there is a Martin Taylor who marries a Jenny Smith, and they have many pages of descendants. You would find a link called "Descendants of Martin Taylor and Jenny Smith" which would take you to Martin's chart, the first link in that chart would note that Martin is "[s/o Job Martin and Lucy Clair]" and takes you back to the chart of Martin's ancestors you first found him in. If you find some of our long charts are difficult to follow, put your cursor on the * in front of a name, then use your arrow keys to scroll up and down the chart. Or save the chart on your system, then open it with NotePad or WordPad and do the same thing with your cursor and arrow keys. Back to FA&Q Table of Contents Why do the charts look that way? Our pages display best with your Windows Desktop area settings at 640 by 480 pixels if you use a graphics browser. All pages display properly with non-graphics browsers. Our charts and index pages are specially designed to display as fast as possible on any browser using your browser default settings...we use no special fonts, colors, graphics or images on those pages. We use a line length of 76 characters, so you should experience no word- wrap problems with the display. Data about a person that doesn't fit into one line is continued on the next, indented so as to distinguish it from data belonging to another person. A marriage is considered as a single record...if Martin Taylor was born in Alton PA, died in Alton PA, married Jenny Smith in Alton PA, and Jenny was born in Alton PA and died in Alton PA, we'll only tell you Alton is in PA the first time it occurs in the listing for Martin and Jenny. We also use very little punctuation. Our goal is to present very clean and easy to read data, as fast as possible. Back to FAQ&A Table of Contents When is the People Index updated? Only when we finish with a batch of charts. That is so we don't have to go back and make modifications to our Index pages when we find further data as we work on batches of charts. Not only do we add new people, we constantly hear from folks who have additional data on existing people in our charts which usually means modifying their entry in our Index also. Indexing the charts and maintaining our Index is quite a job! Each time our People Index is updated, we let you know by sending a message to the WDC GenWeb List. Since you have probably already searched our Index for your people, you might not want to search the whole thing again just to see if we have added any people you are interested in. For this, we have a WDC GenWeb - New People Added special index that lists the new people added linked to the charts their names appear in. Message sent to our list telling of People Index updates include the URL to our New People Added page. Back to FAQ&A Table of Contents How accurate is the data in the charts? Only as good and accurate as the contibutors sources. WDC GenWeb does have a distinct advantage though, we merge data. You may have an ancestors name and birth date, someone else may contribute a death date and location, and we'll merge the data. We also merge more accurate data when we receive it. Many of our charts have been contributed to by more than one person. Results of this means we are able to present highly accurate and more complete data than can usually be found anywhere else, including the original contributors own database. If you have a chart online WDC GenWeb check it often to see if any new data or links to other charts have been added. Though much of the data we receive is backed up with sources, and even if we did list contributor sources, you should still use what we present online as a guide for your own research. Back to FAQ&A Table of Contents I didn't find my people here, now what? I'd like to learn more about genealogy! We constantly receive new contributions and new data to add to our existing charts. Subscribe to our WDC GenWeb list to find out when we add new charts and update our People Index. The best place we know for you to do more research, and find out just about everything related to genealogy, is RootsWeb.com, the Internets oldest and largest free genealogy website. On RootsWeb you'll be able to find: thousands of genealogy lists for ethnic groups, surnames, states and counties, countries, geographical areas, most genealogy software programs, and many other types of lists; vast collection of data bases to search including the US GenWeb Archives, the lists RootsWeb hosts, the SSDI and many more; thousands of links to other genealogy sites, links to genealogy tutorials for the beginner or experts, and much more! Back to FAQ&A Table of Contents Does WDC GenWeb need any more volunteers? Yes! The more volunteers we have the faster we can get more data online and add other features. We could use help with indexing the new charts, a fancy text editor is good for this, EditPad is used a lot here. And help with our People Index is needed, this requires being familiar with Excell. A nice selection of 'noteables' has developed in our Interrelated Section. We've got several charts with U.S. Presidents in them, and our master ged containes data on the others, someone is needed to expand what we have and help get more Presidents online. We have Jesse James, Wyatt Earp and other notables such as Fidel Castro, someone could help round up more. In the works is a special database that will take the Interrelated Section back to around the year 500. We need help adding more people to this one, which includes a royality and nobility database. Someone interested in the antiquities of genealogy could help with our 200 BC - 200 AD database also for the Interrelated Section. And, we need to get those databases linked! We also need people who understand the format of our charts, to help create them. We have been very lucky with the author of Brother's Keeper helping us by adding features for us to create our charts, but there is still some lite manuel editing that needs to be done. We could also use a programmer to come up with tools that would help automate the creation and indexing of charts. Back to FAQ&A Table of Contents Acceptable Use Policy, Terms & Conditions: The WDC GenWeb charts may not be used in any commercial, or non-commercial project or application including copying charts or the information therein and placing them on WWW, Internet, or other media without our consent. As a collection of information in a custom format, WDC GenWeb retains the sole rights to the charts with the intent of preserving the data within and presenting it to the Internet genealogy community for free access. As a contributor, we reserve the rights to add new data and information to your charts as we find it or receive it from other contributors and to link to other charts we have online as new links are found. Back to FAQ&A Table of Contents
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