Help PLEEEZ!!! - I Think I Broke WikiTree

Question

I was on top of the world when I saw how nicely the output of the GEDCOM tool I'm building was imported.  Then I started to relate the profiles that were imported to their relatives that I already had entered here.

I don't know how I managed to do it, but there are now 3 profiles named "Unnamed Father Udell" (Udell-240, Udell-241, and Udell-242).  These do not say that they resulted from my GEDCOM import, but I know it's my fault somehow because I'm the profile manager of all of them.  One of them has 2 children who are a brother and sister that were in my GEDCOM import, but the others are completely empty.

I would greatly appreciate it if someone could make these 3 profiles go away, since I have no information on any more members of the Udell family that I could convert them to.  I would also love to have an explanation of exactly how I managed to make such a big mess.

I'm so sorry for all the bother and promise to try even harder to become a better WikiTree netizen in the future.

Comments

Hi Gaile,

Don't worry, you didn't break WikiTree!   When you add a sibling to someone an "Unnamed Father" is created for them if one doesn't exist. I think that's what happened here.

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Oh boy - that certainly explains it, but this is NOT a good thing!!!!  Here is what I did that probably caused it:

My GEDCOM file included Margaret Udell, whose profile I changed to make her the sister of Michael Udell, who I had previously entered.

In addition, Michael's 3 children - Florence Udell, Matthew Udell, and Estelle Udell were also in my GEDCOM file and I changed their profiles to make them siblings.  I also changed their profiles to add their mother, Helen (Deitel) Udell because I had entered her here previously.  Of course, I also added their father and the marriage between their parents.  I'm not sure what order I did all that in, but from your explanation, if I made them siblings before giving them parents, that's probably what happened.

Does this point to a need for any instructions to people about the order in which they should edit relationships?  ... and can you possibly make all those superfluous Unknown Father profiles go away????

THANX a million!

Answer 1

Unnamed Father profiles are automatically created when sibling profiles are connected before parent profiles are created.  There are currently 9110 of these profiles on WikiTree, most of them privacy blocked and their "creators" unaware of their existence.  Using the search function, type unnamed father in the first name slot and an asterisk in the last name slot to see the list.

Comments

WOW!  That's a lot!!!

Eowyn had previously explained this to me above and she graciously merged 2 of my 3 into the real father's profile, but she couldn't get rid of the last one because I don't know who the father is.

It sounds like WikiTree needs to inform people before they create parent-less sibling relationships, and perhaps someone (I'll volunteer if askeed) should tackle the job of contacting all the "profile managers" of these non-people and help get them cleaned up.

THANX for the info on this.

Answer 2

Don't worry, Gaile, The profiles you listed can be dealt with. I notice you said

"the GEDCOM tool I'm building"

and that you have a technical background in engineeering, and in coding and building websites. There are others at WikiTree who also have technical backgrounds and some of them contribute technical offerings, but they are first in touch with the tech team here, and run it all by them. I understand it was an import tool, and commend you for bringing attention to the error.

I'm not in tech, just want to reassure it will be ok. In fact, it will probably help our tech team identify and plug some security holes, since the profiles should definitely say they are from your GEDCOM.

Since the privacy level on the profile you linked is RED, I can't do much in the way of step by step fixing, but will bring this to the attention of TECH and of someone who will be able to help you fix it.

Welcome to WikiTree, and thank you for taking responsibility. It makes you a valued member.

 

Comments

Thank you, April, for helping with this.  You are right about my background and, in fact, I am a member of wt_apps and working very closely with the tech team here.  The tool I am almost done building allows someone to upload data they have in a spreadsheet, after which they can review/edit it in a very efficient and user friendly interface, and when they're happy with it they can have the tool produce a GEDCOM file that is specifically tagged for clean import to WikiTree.  After the tool passes rigorous testing by the wt_apps project members, I am hoping that WikiTree will want to incorporate it here.

I am pretty sure that those profiles were not from my GEDCOM, though, because I have carefully examined every line of the GEDCOM and don't see anything that I can imagine would have created them.  They also were not listed in my import report.  I think that I somehow managed to create them while I was entering relationships between the new profiles resulting from my GEDCOM and other profiles I previously had in WikiTree.

There is no "step-by-step" fixing needed here - all 3 profiles need to just go away completely!  I would love to know how I managed to do this, though.  It is possible that it might point to something that needs to be fixed here, but at the very least I need to learn how to not do it in the future.

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Thanks Gaile! I can see you are way ahead of me on this, and very happy to know you're developing such a user friendly GEDCOM for Wikitree!

I really look forward to when it is available - that has been a huge need.

Sorry I mis-interpreted the level of help you wanted, didn't mean to set off a false "fire-alarm".

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Gaile, there should probably be a special badge for all of us who have done that and wondered if the sky was about to fall!  A couple of points I don't think have been mentioned:  When this came up once before, someone explained that the WT data base does not store sibling relationships.  So if such a relationship is entered, and no parent has been named, the system needs to create that Unnamed Father profile in order to know about the siblings.  You can't really get rid of it.  I'm not sure how you ended up with three of them, but if they all result from the same siblings, I think you should be able to merge away two of them.  If you later find a name for Unnamed, you can simply update his profile.  If he turns out to be someone who is already in the data base, you can merge the remaining Unnamed with him.