Cobweb Catchers Chat & Prize -2018 Spring Clean-a-Thon

Question

Team Cobweb Catchers come here to chat about the 2018 Spring Clean-a-Thon.

This will be where you can communicate with each other throughout the 2018 Clean-a-Thon.  Cheer each other one, post any questions you have, etc. 

It would be great if everyone would post an answer and maybe introduce yourselves a bit and share what you're intending to work on. 

This post is where we can introduce ourselves, post questions, come up with suggestions, and keep track of what we are doing.

OUR TEAM PRIZE:

Since our focus requires a bit of reserach and I do not expect our team to post the most updates compared to other teams, I am going to make a little competition internally just for us. For the person who has the highest number of Find A Grave corrections score on our team, I am going to send a SFFD T-Shirt. 

Note: Aleš has developed a way to perform automatic tracking for the Clean-a-Thon changes so we don't need to report or add links of profiles here or at the Team page, to show what we have corrected or where we added posts or sources this time. 

 

Comments

Your team is very brave working on FAG errors. Way to go!

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I am suggesting we address only the obviously simple suggestions. We all make mistakes of course, but hopefully having a crack crew working on multiple suggestions will limit any complaints.

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https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/595737/do-you-have-clean-a-thon-questions-

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Where is the team page? I'm assuming we should still update the status field on the error list.

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Lance, on your tracking report it says "skipped suggestion" on several items, how do you do that?

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Did something break the Xtree gadget for adding the tamplate from FindAGrave? Suddenly it's not working.

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Never mind, it's working again

Answer 1

Hello fellow Cobweb Catchers.  My name is Robin and this is my first time to participate in one of these activities.  I'm sure it will be fun.  Though I can only participate on Sunday and Monday, I'm looking forward to "meeting" and working with all of you.  Thank you!

Comments

Thanks for being part of our Team Robin. If you need any help Theresa and I are co-captains for the team and will do our best to assist. Good luck.

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Thank you, Lance, for your support -- I may need it.  I find FAG a helpful resource, but since I've found errors in my own near family I know it can be tricky.  I enjoy "playing detective" and I'll do my best.

Answer 2

I am Lance. I am the team CoCaptain. I love genealogy. I love to collaborate. My focus is on brainstorming which is unfocused. My genealogy is like this. I question everything. I record every thing I question. I like people who are focused. I may drive them insane. I think together we move forward.

 

I am a firefighter in San Francisco. I have been doing family research for a while, but I always have something more to learn. Though I recognize there are teams I could join where I would get more points, I believe in Wikitrees collaborative bent to make every genealogy service out there better.

Answer 3

Second tour of duty on Cobweb Catchers team. Interest in genealogy since youth, active collector/researcher of family data since 1971; 11,500+ records in personal active database and closing in on 2,000 profiles on Wikitree. Primary focus on American ancestors and secondary focus on Scotland and Wales ancestors. All under constant research, refinement and repair/replacement.

Think FAG is a good (not great) source of data but at least it is a heads up for additional research. Don't know of any perfect source but would like to improve quality of data used by Wikitree. Not overly concerned with the completion itself, just the improved quality/accuracy achieved through our efforts!

Comments

Welcome Ron.  You and I agree on the FAG suggestions. Glad you are willing to help.

The person on our team who addresses the most FAG suggestions gets a free SFFD tshirt!!

Good Luck and Thanks.

Answer 4

Hello. My name is Debbie. This will be the second time around for Clean-A-Thon, both times with Cobweb Catcher. I think that Find-A-Grave can provide some good leads for your family research, but know that information there, without sources, might not be accurate. I want to try and help both WikiTree and Find-A-Grave improve the information they share with genealogists.

Comments

Welcome Debbie. I like your attitude and happy to see you again. This year I am sending a T-Shirt from the San Francisco Fire Department to the member on our team who addresses the most Find A Grave suggestions.

Answer 5

Hello everybody. I am Phil or DrPhil. The real one. I had it longer than he has and I am a MD, retired from medicine(ex-pediatrician). Have been doing genealogy research on my family since Feb 2016. Have been using ancestry until just recently. Got real disillusioned with the incorrect information and keep having to revisit the same people for to remove hints for wrong information or stuff I already had. This is refreshing to work this way. Just getting into the swing of the ends and out of wikitree. I am a computer geek so I thought this group would be a good one to work with. Still have bunches of work on my own tree. Working three GEDCOM imports and correcting the new additions. Looking for to helping others this weekend. Thanks for the opportunity.

Comments

Welcome Dr. Phil..... happy to have you here!!!

Answer 6

::waves Hello to everyone::  Lynda here.

Been working on family genealogy for a while - even before computers and online companies. Absolutely dedicated to having source citations for entries of information. Using Evidence Explained, Third Revised Edition to guide me through the process. Midwesterner (IL-IN-MI) living in the suburbs of Northern Virginia for too long. Oh, and this is my 2nd year signing up for this team.

Comments

waves back!

 

Lynda, welcome back to the team.  Hope we can all address a few of the FAG suggestions.

Answer 7

I'm Theresa Myers, acting as Co-captain - I'm not sure I have any special credentials for this post, but I'm happy to try to help so feel free to reach out. And I'm a San Francisco resident also, coincidentally. I love the idea of the One Tree at Wikitree, and I'm mostly stalled on my own direct ancestors with a lot of Irish brick walls.

Comments

Thanks for pointing out the problem with the error list. Already you have earned your title.

I checked with our team member Ales and hopefully he will be able to get our suggestions report up and running.

If not, see my other comment on this thread about how we can find suggetions to work on and organize our work.

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Thanks for getting that to Ales!

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confirmed.. the links on the space page are working fine.

Answer 8

OK TEAM!!! Get ready to go.

Ales is working on getting us an error list for our space page.

We can take this hickup as a blessing however, and use a little ingenuity to organize our work.

Lets all choose an area (state, city, or something) to work on from this list:

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:DBE_Errors_By

For me it might be California:

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/DBE_ErrorList_CA

When that list pops up.. scroll down to find the Find A Grave Errors (57x-58x).

If you need help with this let me know.

Good luck

Comments

Edit: - Completed review of 58 records (by my count).

EDIT: Make that only Indiana for this go-round - more errors than I anticipated.

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I'll take working on Find A Grave errors from Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan.

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Good morning! I'll take Colorado and Montana. And, Lance, if you want help with California, I live just down the road from you in the Monterey Bay area and would love to help with it.

Looking forward to getting started...

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Thanks that makes three of us I know are in the Bay Area. I am going to be busy participating in a Citywide emergency drill tomorrow so any help is appreciated.

 

Also, I think Ales was able to set up our page. I have not had a chance to look at it. Hopefully I can verify by this evening.

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I will work first on Georgia, then Tennessee, then North Carolina. I have family in all those areas.

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Great, the links are working now on the errors page. I'll be in a class all day tomorrow (PST) but I'll check in on breaks.

Answer 9

Off to a good start. Not sure why, but many of my edits aren't getting counted. I have sent a message to Ales. If your edits do not show let me know and I will alert him.

Comments

My bad. It appears they are being tracked.

In the report where it says skipped suggestions, it doesnt mean they were not counted, just not displayed.

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I am not showing up on team and contributions are not being scored. Not sure why!

Ron Floyd

Wikitree profile Floyd-1923

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I am at a training today. Are you marking “corrected” on the error status feedback?

Answer 10

Thanks for all the participation. Yesterday I was out of the loop as I had a big disaster drill for work, and today is my only day with my family.. but tomorrow I am going to try and play catch up for a few hours.   I don't think I will be able to catch Ales... but I hope to at least increase my contributions by 50%. Current standings for the team are, and though I havent checked, I bet the rankings for our own private contest (most FindAGrave suggestions cleared) for the T-Shirt are similar. 

		Aleš Trtnik - Trtnik-2 History Tracker	1	661
		Jerry G. Baraboo - Baraboo-1 History Tracker	2	376
		Lance H. Martin - Martin-15906 History Tracker Captain	3	150
		Phil T. Phillips III - Phillips-23373 History Tracker	4	127
		Debbie K. Javete (Froese) - Froese-99 History Tracker	5	35
		Theresa M. Myers (Ferracci) aka Myers - Ferracci-4 History Tracker Captain	6	34
		Robin A. Shaules (Dodge) aka Casey - Dodge-4214 History Tracker	7	12
		Lynda C. McCann (Vollmer) M.Ed. aka Ovington, Gillman, Holland - Vollmer-279 HistoryTracker	8	8
		Dean E. Anderson - Anderson-27686 History Tracker

 

 

Answer 11

Sorry, I'm just getting around to introducing myself. This weekend work ended up being a little on the wild side. Currently, I'm a contractor for the government working on a construction project in Sri Lanka. We have been working 12 hour days and we had to work a 15 hour day on Saturday. I wish I could have contribute more, but I needed to get a little sleep before I had to role back into work. I really enjoy working on projects or activities like this. Thank you for allowing me to be part of your team.

Answer 12

Congrats All. Don't forget to add your badge to your profiles.

{{Clean-a-Thon|team=Cobweb Catchers|year=2018}}

Answer 13

Thanks everyone!!!! We did a great job, thank you, everyone, for each and every fix. Sorry I am so late in posting anything. A special thankyou to the winner of the tshirt according to this

 

http://wikitree.sdms.si/Challenges/CleanAThon/TeamUserAndSuggestion.htm

Phillip Phillips who addressed over 680 Find A Grave suggestions.

Thanks Phillip!!!

Phillip also was the third highest contributor on our time, with Ales and Jerry both addressing over 1000 suggestions (Find A Grave and other).

Comments

Congratulations Phillip!  This was my first time doing something of this sort and I enjoyed it.  I was amazed at how many corrections you four fellows made -- great work!  Looking forward to the next one...

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Congratultions, Phillip! That's an extraordinary accomplishment!