WeRelate - The New Genealogy Wiki

I am sure that you have all heard of the term, Wiki, floating around on the internet. For those of you who are not familiar with the term, a Wiki is a piece of software on the internet that allows you to create and edit web pages with ease. Dallan Quass, a software engineer and researcher has developed the website WeRelate. WeRelate is a genealogical based wiki that is a new way to look at family history encouraging collaboration between it's users.

I joined the site and easily uploaded a partial gedcom file for my family line. Once your file is uploaded, WeRelate creates a wikipage for each individual in the file. Pictures, biographies, and other documents can be uploaded to the individual's wikipage. Each of the pages created are by default set to contact you if there is a change on the page. The wiki format encourages collaboration between researchers/cousins regarding individuals in the family tree. WeRelate owner Dallan states that they are currently working on a merging feature that will make suggestions for possible merges, but the merging of the files is not automatic. Another nice feature of the wiki format is that it keeps a history of all of the changes made to a particular wiki page.

Dallan has also developed a nice pedi-map feature. This feature provides you with the standard pedigree chart with a map from Google maps located at the bottom of the pedigree. The map displays the significant times in a person's life, i.e., birth, marriage, and death signified by specific emblems on the map. The map also shows the migration pattern of the families on the pedigree. I love the map and pedigree feature being incorporated into one place.

WeRelate has many other nice features that can be explored at your leisure. WeRelate is provided to the internet genealogical community free of charge. You must register at the site to create your personal account which allows you to upload the information to the wiki site. Below is a short video of Dick Eastman interviewing Dallan Quass at the 2007 Federation of Genealogical Society's (FGS) meeting. The interview is insightful and may answer some of the questions that you have after reading this post. If you would like to register for or learn more about WeRelate click WeRelate Main Page. Have fun!