unwanted orphaned profiles

Question

I have a question for you. If a profile is orphaned, the LNAB is "Unknown", and the profile has no ancestors or descendants, can it be used for a completely different person entirely, thus eliminating that unlinked profile from the tree, and the profile could put to a useful purpose, instead of just sitting there unlinked to the tree.

What are your thoughts, mine are mentioned above. If it is conn ected to one other person, we don't use it. We cut down on unknown profiles, it is just a suggestion, but maybe we could do the same to singular profiles of a similar Nature in the orphaned section i.e. ones with a name but no ancestors or descendants.

An example is below

regards

Answer 1

I think this is OK in cases where a profile never had enough information to uniquely identify a person who actually existed.

In the case of Unknown-1082, we have a first name, birth date, and death date. Is that specific enough so that it would only fit one person named Joane? I'm not sure. I think this profile is on the line and it's not a big deal either way.

If a profile has unique identification information for one person and you replace it with unique identification information for a completely different person, it may cause confusion. The history of changes will be corrupted. Instead of being the history of changes to one person's profile, it will be the history of changes for two people. Eventually another profile for the original person will need to be created. It would be better to have kept the first profile.

I don't want to overstate this point. If it's a very trivial amount of information and there were no real edits to the profile it probably doesn't matter much. I just wouldn't recommend that members do this sort of thing systematically.

Comments

The profile in the example was created over four years ago via a gedcom import. More than likely, the gedcom prior to import had her connected to someone as a spouse, and the gedcom owner later determined that to be incorrect. But when the gedcom was imported, this unknown person got created. There are a lot of these sitting around due to Wikitree previously not being strict enough on gedcom imports.

Another example are all of the Unknown Unknown profiles...

Answer 2

I agree with you, since there are no relationships attached to this profile and if you need a profile with Unknown for a Last Name at Birth I see it a useful step for that profile.

Answer 3

Yes, this is fine to do and I personally recommend it. I do this myself. Just be sure to take everything out of the body of the biography.

Darlene - Co-Leader, European Aristocrats Project

Comments

Hi Darlene,

There may be other factors to consider. I'll write a separate answer with more detail.

Thanks,

Chris