2010-09-09 Getting Started with StamboomNederland: Projects

StamboomNederland

performance

Verborgen Verleden Visitors

The television series Verborgen Verleden is going to cause a lot of traffic StamboomNederland. Many of these visitors will be new to genealogy, and the site has been created with that in mind. The home page link to a page where visitors can order the book for the series, which will help them get started, and the site allows visitors to start entering their genealogy as soon as they have registered an account.

internal failure

It seemed a good idea to have a look at on-line family tree building with StamboomNederland. I tried to do so, but experienced failures. I tried again, but did not have much better luck. I patiently waited a few hours before trying again. I tried whether switching to the Dutch pages would help.
For almost a day, I tried every few hours to get started with a genealogy, but I could not. I could not add an individual to the default project. I could not start a new project either. Even the help page, which worked upon introduction failed to display. The site responded to each action I tried in the very same: it would become unresponsive for two aggravating minutes and then display a page with the text interne fout (internal failure).

StamboomNederland: Interne Fout

small

The site lacks a statistics page that tells you how many users, trees and profiles there are. It would be nice if this were added soon, so everyone can follow the growth of this site. Still, the site is brand new, so it does not many users, trees or profiles yet. It is still a very small online genealogy site, yet even something as simple as a search through its database timed out to display interne fout.

These experiences made me wonder whether anyone bothered to test the site with a few million profiles in the database, whether even the small number of users trying the new site out is already too much for its less than robust design. If that's the case, this site is going to crash like clockwork every time an episode of Verborgen Verleden airs.
Then again, maybe the performance problems only occurred because the developers were working to finish the site, regularly replacing it with an updated version. Whatever was going on, around noon today the site's performance seemed normal again.

Getting Started

dashboard

StamboomNederland Dashboard First Time

The first time you visit your dashboard page, it invites you to Start your project by inserting your first person!, complete with exclamation mark to stress how exciting adding a name is. Once you have done so, that dialog box above the project list disappears.

StamboomNederland: Dashboard

three menus

There are three menus on the Dashboard page; the right-aligned main menu along the top of the page, the left-aligned links along the bottom of the page, and a five button menu below the top left logo. These five buttons lead to five different pages.
Each page provides a different view of your data. The dashboard is the only one that shows different projects. The other four pages only show the active project. The name of the currently active project is shown next to the binders icon in the upper left corner.

projects

Below the purple row of buttons is a list of projects. You can have more than one project. When you create an account, StamboomNederland creates a default project for you, with the horrible name Project van username@hostname. You cannot delete that project, but you can rename it.

StamboomNederland: Project Edit

A click on the pencil icon behind the project name brings up the project edit page, where you can choose to edit the name. A name like Default Project reminds you that this project is different from your other projects.

StamboomNederland: Project Edit Name

project list

The project list shows the project name, the project owner and several icons. You are the owner of the projects you create. The list will only show projects with other owners when you cooperate in project owned by others.

icons

Behind each project are three icons. You can have many projects, but work on only one project at once. The project you are working on is the active project. The active project is indicated with a green disc. All other projects have a grey disc with a triangle (the play symbol on media players). When you click on the grey disc of a project, that project becomes the active one, and its disc turns green.

The second icon, a right-handed pencil leads to the edit page. It may seem a superfluous icon, but StamboomNederland does not respond to clicking on the project name, you need to click the pencil.

For most projects, the third icon is a trash can. You can click that icon to delete the project. You will be prompted to confirm that you really want to delete the project. There is no undelete.
The confirmation dialog box does not ask you whether you are sure that you want to delete YourProjectName. It does not even ask whether you are sure that you want to delete your project. It ask Are you that u want to delete this element?.

StamboomNederland: Delete Element Dialog

The default project does not have a trash can. The star icon that's shown instead signals that default project is different: it cannot be deleted. The only way to delete the data in the default project is to delete everything in it, one thing at a time. You may want to use the default project for your main project, to prevent accidental deletion, or decide to avoid it to make sure it is remains easy to quickly delete everything. Either way, it is probably best to start exploring by creating a test project you can delete later and to make that the active project while you explore the site.

public projects

There is yet another icon. You can search the site for individuals in your own or public projects. When you click through to some individual in a public project, that project is added to your project list for easy reference later. These project are identified as public records with a world icon after their name.

It would be fairly logical to show your own projects first, and all public projects you've looked at after that, but StamboomNederland does not do so. All the projects you've created or looked at are shown in a single list. The list is in alphabetical order by project name.
StamboomNederland shows a trash can for public projects, but that does not mean you can delete the project. It only means you can delete the project from your list.

StamboomNederland: Projects (Modified Emails)

email addresses

I already remarked in Stamboom Nederland: First Impressions that using email addresses instead of names or handles is a security blunder. This screenshot of the StamboomNederland projects overview underscores that; it does not show the names or handles of the various project owners, it shows their email addresses instead. That ain't the right thing to do.

StamboomNederland should use handles and let users share their projects publicly without having to make their email address public.

Posting this screenshot is the right thing do. It literally illustrates the point. I feel no compunction about posting this screenshot. All these users decided to reveal their email address.
These users made the conscious decision to make their project public, even though they already knew that StamboomNederland identifies owners by their email address. They weighed their email privacy against sharing their genealogical research, and decided that sharing their data is more important than their email privacy. That is their choice.
However, but users should not have to choose between those two things at all.

I really have no reason to feel any compunction about posting this screenshot. It isn't a list of email addresses, it is just a screenshot of public data.
It is not the original screenshot. I've modified it a bit to protect the email privacy of those involved. Those are not the real email addresses that the site displays. How upset you were about this screenshot up until this revelation tells you how wrong the CBG is to automatically share email addresses, when they could be using names or handles instead.

StamboomNederland should use handles and let users share their projects publicly without having to make their email address public. I recommend using a separate, throw-away email address for StamboomNederland until the public email issue is fixed.

helpdesk

The day before yesterday, just after StamboomNederland went live, I used the contact page to send a message. I posed a short simple question. It was evening already, so I did not really expect a reply. Yesterday, the CBG officially announced the site, but I did not receive a reply yet.
I am guessing the StamboomNederland helpdesk went live this afternoon, as I received an answer to my question. The question I asked is Who reads this? and the answer I received is The helpdesk..