Why doesn't the Wikitree system disallow future dates in date fields?

Question

This profile was brought to my attention via a message on Charlemagne's profile.  I'm wondering why the system doesn't automatically disallow or come up with an error message when someone enters a future date (in this case 6,000 years in the future) for the date of birth and/or death.  It is an obvious typographical error.

(And yes, the name is wrong.)

Comments

Good idea.  I'd like to suggest that this question should be recategorized to WikiTree Tech, and perhaps have a tag added such as "Improvements."  You're proposing a software check on dates entered, and that would give it a better chance of being seen by someone who could make that happen.

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Thanks, Dennis.  Good idea.  I've done what you've suggested.

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In this case I think that the PM did this on purpose, so the profile doesn't fall in the pré-1500 profiles.

According Wikipedia: Pepin Carloman, Pepinno, lived from April 773 – 8 July 810

Answer 1

I think the answer is easy lack of development resources and money

There are a lot of things that could be improved in Wikitree if you had development resources.....

Check the database error project for errors that exist in the database most could have been avoided if you had more validation when adding or importing profiles....

I yesterday found that a lot of Gedcom imported profiles are more or less not readable and have CONT in it. CONT is used in GEDCOM to tell it will be a new line please also read that....If you search using google site:www.wikitree.com/wiki CONT  you get About 87 600 profiles has this garbage characters.... why don't we just clean it away with a program (as you always can restore a profile a program will not harm Wikitree)...

As Chris is the father of Wikitree and the one sponsoring and leading the development he is the only one that can tell us what will happen in the future.... and how much it will cost to do the changes and how we could contribute....My guess is that the Wikitree project has been growing faster than Chris thought in the beginning..... 

A world wide tree the last 500 years is a crazy big project. Yesterday we had the eurovision song contest in Stockholm it has since start have had songs in 61 languages then you start to understand how complex the world is.....

Doing a genealogy world wide and agree on what is added is a challenge and I hope Wikitree will find a development model and a way how to sponsor a project like this.... and add more functions to Wikitree

• History of Wikitree
• Wikitree on the wayback machine
• [Statistics link removed]

Comments

Hi Magnus,

I'm going to remove the stats link here. When someone clicks that it really puts a heavy load on our servers. (We should probably disable it.)

WikiTree needs to keep costs low, to be free forever.

Chris

Answer 2

Darlene, That is a great question.  I have found lots of typos with dates in the future.  It would be nice if it couldn't happen.

Answer 3

Hi Darlene,

We've been working on a "data validation" system that will be ready very soon.

Chris

Comments

Sweet!  That'll be terrific and SO helpful!  You're a busy bee and doing fabulous things!  Thank you!!!