Rodovid

Rodovid is an attempt to create a free familly tree site, using MediaWiki software, which has been customised to make working with genealogical data more convenient (see features below).

This is a proposal for a new Wikimedia sister project.

Rodovid
Status of the proposal
Status	rejected
Reason	no interest in years. Pecopteris (talk) 06:42, 19 August 2023 (UTC)
Details of the proposal
Project description	see #Goals
Is it a multilingual wiki?	Yes
Potential number of languages	22
Technical requirements
New features to require	jes

logo

Rodovid

History

Rodovid was originally set up as a project independent of the Wikimedia Foundation, but its main contributors realised that becoming a Wikimedia project would be a great thing for the Rodovid community itself and, we believe, also for the general Wikimedia community.

Goals

The aim of Rodovid is to provide a place in the genealogical community where data can be shared freely.

Why do we need a family tree wiki?

There have been several different attempts at creating genealogical wikis, which shows that the demand is definitely out there. Family trees are a thing that anyone can get involved in, you don't need specialised knowledge like you might to write certain articles for Wikipedia or Wikibooks. It will appeal to a wide range of people, from occasional hobbyists, to professional genealogists.

Unfortunately, most previous genealogy wikis have failed or simply become more or less static. Hopefully, if Rodovid was to get the backing of the Wikimedia foundation, it would be able to reach out to more people and become a widely recognised genealogy site, in the same way that Wikipedia has become a globally recognised encyclopedia.

Naming

The word Rodovid is the English version of the Ukranian word родовід which means Ancestry/Pedigree. If a more English name, possibly with the wiki prefix was wanted, it can possibly be changed.

For discussion of and suggestions for the naming of such a project see Rodovid.org/name.

License

Currently, Rodovid is under the Creative Commons Attribution License, rather than the GFDL as genealogical data is mainly facts, so most can not be copyrighted anyway. If there is any great reason to change to the GFDL, then this could happen in future.

Internationality

At the current time, Rodovid.org supports 20 languages:

Deutsch, English, Français, 日本語, Nederlands, Português, Русский, Українська, Italiano, Norsk,

Indonesia, Suomi, Español, עברית, O'zbek, Српски (Srpski), Slovenščina, Română, Polski, and Česky .

See for all languages Number of families and persons on Rodovid
All these languages use the same database, so records added to one will appear in the other (see features below). This is made possible because of the fact that family trees are mostly facts: dates, names etc. This means that all that must be translated is the headings (name, age, place of birth etc.), which can be done by computer.

It is also possible to add a page which contains biographical information about a person. These pages are separate, from the tree pages, so must be translated by hand (as pages on normal wikis such as Wikipedia are).

Testing

There is also a special stand-alone database designed for testing - Rodovid engine. This is also the area used for comments, reporting bugs and requesting new features.

Features

Easy to use

To add a person all you need to is click Add Person to the left and fill in the fields (see records, description for what to put in each). To add relations you just type in their name and search for them. If they're already in the database they will be shown and you need only click on them. Otherwise you can create new records for them.

Automatic Tree Generation

A graphical tree is automatically generated showing two generations of ancestors and two generations of descendants, with their siblings and spouses as well. You can also view a version of this tree showing all generations. It is possible to create a version optimised for printing. Finally, you can just click on sex (♂, ♀) mark near any person - you will see ALL their ancestors and descendants.

GEDCOM Import

Rodovid originally allowed you to import people into the database using GEDCOM files, the internationally recognised standard. Nearly all family tree programs allow saving in this format, which opens up Rodovid to a wide group of people. However since June 2007 GEDCOM import has been disabled.

Gedcom upload

At this time Rodovid does not allow the upload of gedcom files. In the future this feature may be made available on a limited basis. Gedcom imports are dangerous because of the risk of data corruption due to duplicate individuals and families. Other genealogy-sites who have been crippled by this effect found their services abandoned by dissatisfied users who found it difficult to navigate their sites. There is not a single genealogy system anywhere in the world that allows automatic Gedcom uploads without experiencing duplication problems. We are currently researching better methods to make it possible in the future, but it may take a while. In the meantime at Rodovid.org quality will prevails over quantity. We feel we have a site that offers an unparalleled product. With our team of various linquistic, historic, anthropological, and genealogical experts editing performing quality checks on a daily basis we can offer our patrons a more accurate content that is free of confusing duplicates and other errors!

Interlinked Databases

Most genealogical data are simply names, numbers and places, so if you add a person in one language, they will appear in all the other languages (with the words 'name', 'birth' etc. translated). So [1] which was created in Ukranian is also viewable in English [2].

Special Pages

There are several special pages, created for usefulness in Genealogy:

• Youngest persons
• Last Changed persons
• Grouping by surnames
• Grouping by birth year

Examples

There are several different examples of the way family trees can be created:

• Ancestors: en, uk, William Windsor (68 generations)
• Descendants Ryurik (43 generations), Pippin III the Short

Proposed by

• Baya

Alternative names

• Rodovid
• Wikifamily (already a wikimedia domain)
• Wikinealogy
• Wikigenea
• Wikipeople
• Wikiroots
• Wikitree

Related projects/proposals

There are/have been several other family tree wikis/proposals.

Proposals for Wikimedia Family tree wikis

There have been several other Wikimedia proposals for family tree wikis. Unfortunately, none of these have gone any further than the proposal stage and most of the working demos have been abandoned.

Wikitree

One of the formerly highest-traffic genealogy wikis is Wikitree. Unfortunately, the site started off with a non commercial license, so discussions with the Wikimedia foundation didn't come to fruition. Also, the site has few of the features of Rodovid.

To prevent there being two competing projects discussions are currently underway between the two projects about a possible merger.

Since this initial proposal Wikitree editor activity has dwindled to almost nothing and its traffic has declined commensurately.

On Wikia

There is a genealogy wiki on Wikia, and there is also a Norweigian genealogy Wikia. A comment has been added to the community portals of both Wikia. These two wikis will almost definitely not be in direct competition with Rodovid, as neither are specialised for work with genealogical data and were originally designed for sufi chains.

WeRelate.org

There are also discussions with another genealogy site, WeRelate, about the possibility of merging the two projects.

Wikidata

Wikidata can handle kinship relations, and GeneaWiki helps viewing these data in graphic form.

Domain names

• wikifamily.org

Mailing list links

• March 2006

Demos

• http://www.rodovid.org

Support

1. Baya
2. [Ulli Heist[3]] - the RdLanguageDe.php needs a fully translation, I will do it
3. User:master_flosse
4. Bjwebb
5. APPER
6. Morais69br
7. Dallan
8. Trevor macinnis
9. Balû
10. Lhademmor
11. Dunc|☺
12. Roberth
13. Wikiacc (talk) en.w en.w
14. Almoustine
15. Red Baron
16. Backscheider
17. Holden
18. Pcu123456789
19. Andre Engels
20. mayhew18
21. Richard Melo da Silva
22. Chaerani
23. Ek7
24. Yann
25. Yakudza
26. PSMax8956
27. Chamberlian
28. Rakuten06
29. Dunning
30. CrnaGora (en)
31. VPliousnine
32. Manfroze
33. TDN169
34. Argento
35. Thanatosimii
36. Elcairo
37. Wknight94
38. Dovi
39. Bmunden
40. Maxipuchi
41. Johan R (sweden)
42. Greeves
43. NDCompuGeek
44. thesublime514
45. SPQRobin
46. AlexEagar
47. R0MAN0
48. putnik
49. Ionas68224
50. Andre Mesquita
51. TFMgames
52. Dvorsky
53. Arman Aziz
54. ElbonianFL
55. Felipe Aira As long as we'll have a Tagalog edition.
56. Karpeth
57. Ahonc
58. User:Abyssal_leviathin
59. alexscho
60. Arctic Gnome
61. Art-top (ru)
62. Dionys
63. Deevrod
64. Desalvionjr
65. Kurt Weber (Go Colts!)
66. GranD
67. ZoolooS [4]
68. Irbisgreif
69. AndrewRT
70. MTC
71. Adrian Comollo 1)
72. Daniel de Souza Telles
73. John Vandenberg
74. Butko
75. Tpt 14
76. Yair rand assuming privacy laws don't make the entire thing impossible
77. Christophe Tesson Rodovid.fr admin.
78. OldLion
79. User:THLA
80. Jean-Sébastien Chorin
81. Markus3
82. astur
83. --41.230.100.230 21:07, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
84. Alexandre Rozanov
85. stobs
86. Brzak
87. Eloy
88. Ronan Le Bras
89. Sander van der Molen
90. Fred Bergman (Bergsmit)
91. Serge Rode
92. Akrabbim
93. CharlesF
94. Sapcal22
95. Leo Bijl
96. AerobicFox
97. –SJ · talk | translate
98. Л.П. Джепко (aka Leonid Dzhepko)
99. Ajraddatz (Talk) 00:19, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
100. Vibhijain
101. --Ceradon 18:46, 30 June 2011 (UTC)
102. --Pabos95 01:36, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
103. Skippy le Grand Gourou (talk)
104. Ypnypn
105. Ricordisamoa
106. --Kip (talk) 13:33, 27 March 2013 (UTC)
107. --Kaiyr (talk) 10:01, 5 August 2015 (UTC)
108. --Evachan39 (talk) 12:42, 5 November 2016 (UTC)
109.  Klaas `Z4␟` V:  14:12, 7 February 2017 (UTC) best wikigenea, 2nd choice wikitree
110. Kdkeller (talk) 21:33, 13 April 2017 (UTC)
111. Zerabat (discusión) 20:25, 18 March 2018 (UTC) Wiki projects names shouldn't always be in English, so it should keep its original name if merged under Wikimedia umbrella. A wikimedia sister project with a name in a language other than English would say something good about WM movement and against English imperialism.