Spring is here! How about some pruning?

Question

After I was introduced to the Sourcer App (extension) a few months ago, I was inspired to do some spring cleaning. Back in 2016, when I joined WikiTree, I uploaded a few thousand profiles by gedcom. Which of course means a bunch of gedcom junk! I didn't know much about Family Search back then and we didn't have the Sourcer App, so none of my old Ancestry sources are linked. 

I'm now working my way through my watchlist and wiping all that junk away and replacing it with nicely crisp, linked sources. While I'm at it, I am finding new sources, fine tuning information and marking those certainty buttons I didn't know much about back in 2016. In the past 6 years, a lot of new sources have become available (Don't forget to add the new 1950 census!).

Another benefit of going through my watchlist is I am finding dozens of profiles that have nothing to do with me, but I'm on the trusted list. I have no idea how I ended up on them! Prune, prune, prune!

I want to recommend that everyone take a peek at their watchlists--especially at the older profiles and see how they look. If you haven't used the Sourcer Extension, check it out. It makes sourcing from Ancestry SO easy! Just a single click for a beautiful source (you can even chose it to create the citation as an inline citation)

And a final recommendation, is to leave any Ancestry links when you add the Family Search links. Yes, FS is free, but not everyone uses FS. It's better to have links to multiple locations for easy availability and because sometimes links end up broken (remember the recent loss of the 1900 census at FS with a change of links?) I always do a combines citation with all the links where I have accessed that source.

There's only a month left of spring. Happy cleaning!

Answer 1

A big thumbs-up  for the notion of including both Family Search and Ancestry links. No practical reason not to if you have an Ancestry subscription, and especially since we've had an image free-sharing template for about 18 months now.

The other comment I have is that the full bibliographic citation always should be priority number one. Any internet link is ephemeral and is, in truth, only a secondary convenience. Nice to have, but the detail of the citation is the most important thing. On some profiles I've added information to, I've had people actually delete the bibliographic citation and replace it with just a link. One reason I've been given for their doing that is a full citation creates too much word-clutter.

That's not good methodology for genealogy or history research. In fact, I'd suggest often adding a little additional data from the citation generated by Family Search. For example, the date a specific census entry was enumerated can make a big difference in interpreting what the information means to the individual or family. Here's an example of a citation I did recently:

"United States Census, 1850," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MXLG-LFB : 12 April 2016), household of Thomas McFarland, Newton County, Texas, United States; citing sheet 273, lines 1-10, family 209, enumerated 19 December 1850; NARA microfilm publication M432 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration). See also {{Ancestry Record|8054|1060568}}; {{Ancestry Sharing|28667175|6678f8}}.

The Ancestry extra links are in there, but also note the date on the census sheet: 19 December 1850. With less than two weeks remaining in the year, that census entry can't give us any definitive information about where the family was early in 1850. Instances of the same person appearing twice in a census year can sometimes be explained by the enumeration date differences.

As Elizabeth Shown Mills writes, a reference citation has a two-fold purpose:

to record the specific location of each piece of data; and

to record details that affect the use or evaluation of that data.

That latter purpose can be easy to overlook.

Comments

Great to see you Edison! I never include links without a citation. That just seems weird! It's like a source without any clothes on.

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Or the clothes only without a body. 

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Best answer ever! Thanks, Emma

Edison too!

Answer 2

I pruned my watchlist over the last year, after recovering from a brain haemmorhage and stroke. I went from over 5000 sourced profiles down to 1424, which I feel is much more manageable.

Now, all of my profiles have an edit date of 2022. This has given me time to work on other areas of the "one tree", such as unsourced profiles within my own county.

I also hope to get a bit of gardening done. My grandson goes to school later this year, but I bought him his own bag of little gardening tools so he can grow something with me, before my weekday babysitting duties are finished.

Answer 3

Since Jan 1, 2022 I have edited 496 of the 1616 profiles on my watch list, mostly adding to a basic source such as 1851 Census link with more detailed source information.

Adding the specific location, plus page number and line number so that when the link to the source stops working others with an interest in the profile will know where to look.

One thing I would like to be able to do is to create a list of profiles that I don't intend to research further. I could just create my own list or a spreadsheet and call it No Further Action.

As an example my 4XGGF Joseph Green had 16 children, all have a good baptism record source, I'm only really interested in one of his sons my 3XGGF Noah. Trying to find any further information about the other 15 kids is pointless, trying to find out who his other 15 children married would be almost impossible, mostly because working forward in time never works well and there are far too many possible records, there are over 1000 possible marriages, for one of Joseph's sons in an appropriate time frame and within about 50 miles of where he was born.

Comments

Hi M, I do something a bit opposite of what you mentioned. Instead of a list of profiles that I don't plan to research further, I have a list of profiles that need more work. You might consider using Personal Categories to help you track which profiles you want to do more research on. 

For example, I have categories for Needs Research (which is usually paired with a Research Note on the profile), Needs In-Line Citations, Needs More Records, Cleanup Gedcom Junk, etc. I only add the personal categories to profiles I manage, and remove them once the work has been done.

Hope that helps!

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Thanks Joyce, do your categories have the profiles with links to each that needs more work? The same way as most categories?

I could do the opposite, as the list would be much shorter for people that I don't want or need to research further.

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Yes they work just like regular categories. See my Needs Research category for example. When I complete research as far as I think I can take it, I update or delete the research notes and remove the category.

The thing to consider if you want to do the opposite, is that your "done"  list will continue to get bigger until eventually every profile you manage will be in the category. Then you'll be left with a category that seems to serve no real purpose. For me, it has been useful to track what is left to do, with a list that's easy to select from. But everybody has their own way of approaching things, so whatever works for you is the best solution!

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I see your point, if I only put in the profiles like the 15 other kids of Joseph Green, 3 x grt uncles and aunts, in my original post, that I have no interest in further researching.

Then I would know see the category on their profiles and not go down the rabbit hole of trying to find their spouses and children for the 3rd or more time.

Thanks I will play with this idea again when I have more time to think.