Problems to Solve
1. Current family history software focuses on the cumulative knowledge about the people in a family tree and doesn't help organize the sources of the information.
2. Given a specific piece of information it is hard to find exactly where that information came from (like a birth date). Even if researchers keep detailed paper records or extensive notes with each person, it is difficult to re-verify the date from original sources.
3. Family trees are private islands and are not being shared as much as they could be on the Internet to facilitate co-operation amongst family history buffs and professional researchers and historians.
Ideas to Solve the Problem with Web Application Software
- use the information source as the starting point and allow people to organize their sources of information
- from the source text, pull out data and organize it into database records
- database records from different sources for the same person can be combined (layered) into a single person in the family tree
-- every piece of information has at least one source(s) connected to it
- allow people to publicize their family trees
-- do the SEO work for them to attract other curious researchers
-- allow people from the Internet at large to contact people using the site to co-ordinate efforts
- an offline backup solution is critical
- since we are dealing with personal information security is a concern
Research Goals
- Rails 2.0.x
- SEO, especially user-generated content
Features of the Deployed Implementation
- can add sources of information
- can break down sources into person records and marriage records
- can layer person records into a single Person in the family tree and choose the best value for each Person attribute if there's more than one possibility in the person records
- People in the family tree are publicized by default and search engines are already driving traffic to the site
Ideas Left to Implement
- Location records derived from sources and linked to Person or Marriage records
- hide people from your public family tree to protect their privacy (like people that are still alive)
- better organization of sources, for people that have thousands
- exporting and importing common genealogy file types, like GEDCOM
- SEO optimizations
Possible Extensions
- let two family members work on separate areas of the same family tree and combine or share their efforts with each other so that each of them has access to the full tree
- allow people to work offline and synchronize the data when they get back online