Can you help with the help page on WikiData and Find-A-Grave suggestions? [closed]

Question

WikiTreers, especially Data Doctors and Project Leaders,

I started a draft of a help page about the different categories of WikiTree+ Suggestions: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Suggestion_Types

Some months ago Ales started separating suggestions into these different categories in order to help clarify the difference between "errors" -- clear problems in the internal consistency of WikiTree data -- and other types of suggestions, some of which are just ideas for things to investigate.

There have been controversies in our community about some of the suggestions, particularly those based on Find-A-Grave and WikiData data comparisons. These Find-A-Grave and WikiData suggestions can be really valuable, but they need to be used carefully. The information on those other sites is often incorrect. The information on WikiTree is often better. Moreover, the source of the information on those other sites can be hard to determine. How do you even know if it's reliable?

This new help page is meant to give guidance on how/why/when/whether to use these suggestions.

Honestly, I'm not the best person to be giving this guidance. Some of it is project-specific. And most of it is suggestion-specific. I don't even work with most of these suggestions myself, so I need help here.

There are already privately-managed help pages for each individual suggestion, created by Ales and Sheryl Moore and other Data Doctors, and often videos too, created by Karen Hoy. For example https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:DBE_576 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALmntw3itQg  It's really impressive that all this guidance has been given and what I have seen of these pages and videos is impressive. (I am ashamed to say I have not read or watched them all.) I don't want to presume to say that we can improve on those. I'm just hoping to fit them into their broader context, which is something we can only do on a more community-wide basis.

In some cases, the context of suggestions is currently only known to a few members. For example, Ales tells me that suggestions 542, 544, and 546 are meant to help establish whether a connection between WikiTree and WikiData is correct. Part of the reason to establish these links has nothing to do with improving WikiTree profiles. It's to help raise the ranking of our profile in search results, for roundabout reasons that will not be obvious to anyone. We need to explain things like this. In the process, my hope is that we can reach a better consensus in the community on the value of the various categories of suggestions.

Who can help? Can you offer specific suggestions for what to add or change on this page?

Thank you!

Chris

Comments

Thanks for this. I'm pleased to see efforts to further clarify and help data doctors and others.

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I will be temporarily closing this discussion.

Help:Suggestion_Types is being updated to distinguish between Errors, Warnings and Hints instead of Errors and Suggestions.

Also, we're working on a separate Help:Wikidata page. Connected to this, it's likely that we will have some separate G2G conversations about the various groups of Wikidata suggestions.

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The new drafts have been completed. Here is the new discussion: https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/1087888/these-pages-fairly-represent-policies-wikidata-find-grave

Answer 1

For https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Suggestion_Types#Find-A-Grave_source_citations there are clear instructions on how to create the basic citation at https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Links_to_FindAGrave#Usage_in_a_Source_Citation. 

I usually add a discursive note to the end of the citation surrounded by square brackets to identify any limitations for the citation. Things such as:

• [Photograph of gravestone requested on date.]
• [Gravestone inscription is not legible.]
• [Gravestone does not include a middle name and only includes the years of birth and death.]

Comments

I wonder if we could use the template to provide such notes.

{{FindAGrave|12345678|notes="Memorial only; no gravestone"}}

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That would work when the template is used in a See Also section.

If the template is used as part of an inline reference, though, it is supposed to be embedded in the full citation provided by FindAGrave. I definitely wouldn't want to see the discursive note embedded in the middle of the citation. I don't know enough about template formatting to know whether the note could be added to the end of the citation. If it could, that would be really cool.

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Thanks, Debi. I added this to the page.

Answer 2

Help:Suggestion_Types#WikiData_source_citations

For the profile of Charles Calvert (Calvert-613) (Wikidata item Q5076057)

Once on the Wikidata page, go to the statement, then click on References

Here is an example of the references for the statement in WikiData of his Birth Date:

See: How To - Wikipedia and Wikidata for how to navigate from a persons Wikipedia page to their Wikidata page

As stated above, the references in Wikidata need to be validated for accuracy and reliability. Then, the reference can be cited using the correct format found in Help:Sources

Comments

Thanks, Azure!

Answer 3

I am pleased that the new page acknowleges that wikidata uses data which may  not be accurate. I agree that it should not be used to change pre 1700 profiles. I  would also say that, at any date , it is imperative to first check the existing sources on the profile before considering any changes. Beyond that changes should not   be made without reliable sources. The sources used on the Peerage are variable. Some references on that site are simply to emails ; fantasy genealogy does not stop after 1700.

Beyond that, the most infuriating suggestions for me have been https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:DBE_543 and https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:DBE_541

Clues for father and mother.

All but one  on my suggestion list already had a sourced parent who was essentially the same as that on wikidata . The exception was when wiki data had  the clue to a father; unknown .We had a profile for the father, with evidence.

At the moment, the info on the suggestion help  page for these suggestions  tells us that there are 2 possible scenarios for this suggestion: 

1) a parent exists on wikitree but is not connected

2) The parent doesn't exist on wikitree (so create one)

These weren't pertinent to any of the profiles. After leaving them for months, I made them false errors with comments. 

This proposed general help page  will be useful but at the same time, the how to 'correct' suggestions will need to be updated Perhaps each  help page gor wikidata suggestions should also have a reference to the general  help page.

 

Comments

Helen, you must have mixed up the suggestions. 541 and 543 suggestions are created only on profiles that have no father/mother and offer a clue to a possible father defined on wikidata. It is true, that there are some "Unknowns" on wikidata, like we have them on wikitree.

Answer 4

Thanks Chris for starting this help page.

Can I suggest the heading 'Usage on pre-1700 and project-managed profiles' also include pre-1500.  Although I would hope that no one who is pre-1500 certified would make changes to a pre-1500 profile solely based on WikiData (or Find-A-Grave) it may stop an enthusiastic data doctor from posting the suggestion in the comments section for a profile?  

I don't think much needs to change in the actual paragraph itself, perhaps that last sentence could read "Information from these sources must not be used to edit pre-1500, pre-1700 and project-managed profiles."

Could then something similar be added to the Find-A-Grave section?

Perhaps - 

Heading: Usage on pre-1500, pre-1700 and project-managed profiles

Paragraph: Most of the information from Find-A-Grave memorial pages for pre-1500 people, and many for pre-1700, are not based on actual grave stones or other memorials, but are taken from family trees, usually un-sourced.  Just like any other family tree found on a website, these are not considered reliable sources 

Comments

Thanks, John.

I added the start of a pre-1700 section for Find-A-Grave.

Don't most people know that pre-1700 includes pre-1500? If not maybe we need to clarify that.

Regarding Data Doctors from posting comments related to WikiData on pre-1500 profiles, what types of comments do we want to recommend against?

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Thanks Chris

Although pre-1700 has to include pre-1500, in my mind, they are very separate.  For instance we have different badges, different tags, and different though related expectations about sourcing.  There are separate help pages for each, and the data doctor reports have pre-1500 and pre-1700 profiles in different columns.  From that viewpoint I thought it might be worthwhile mentioning both in the proposed help page?

Disregard my comment about data doctors posting comments on pre-1500 profiles, it wasn't very well thought through on my part.

Answer 5

The new Find a Grave that Ales did today has blue color, but maybe that is temporary, since that color is not mentioned.

The 'sections' on that page seem to run together too easily, making it difficult to know where one section starts and ends.  I would recommend using the breaker lines ---- to see if that could separate the sections a little more.

Wikidata - Usage on Pre-1700, where there is mention about reliable sources from projects, maybe the link for the Reliable Pre-1700 and Pre-1500 Sources pages should also be linked.

I agree with Debi that it would be good to recommend that the Find A Grave citations be appended with something to indicate that there is a 'Gravestone picture', as well as if it has 'full dates' which is more helpful than just a name or a death date.  I normally add that information, not in brackets, as Debi stated, but I do add it to profiles that have the gravestone.

Profile Completeness - when a person requests Profile Completeness, this suggestion is shown for all profiles that they manage, BUT, I think, these suggestions are also being shown in the suggestions lists for all users for their 'ancestors'.

Comments

I have found other suggestions that have a blue coloring, so that color and description should be added. Some suggestions that I found with that coloring are below.

Relation

• 105 / 106 - Duplicate sibling / Duplicates between global tree and unconnected
• 211 / 311 - Duplicate sibling by father / mother
• 408 / 409 - Multiple marriages on same day / Marriage to duplicate person

WikiData

• 541 / 543 - clue for Father / Mother
• 542 / 544 - possible Father / Mother on WikiData

Find a Grave

• 585 - Multiple profiles link to same Grave ID
• 591 / 592 - Possible Father / Mother  (new suggestions)

Answer 6

Re Wikidata, the help page says:

You cannot assume that information on WikiData is correct. WikiData information is collected from many unreliable sources and it can be difficult to identify the original source. As stated in a discussion on Wikipedia: "Wikidata's indiscriminate bot sourcing from Wikipedia, from other unreliable sources, and mass import-export with other databases gives false or unreliable information a false appearance of authority. It can become difficult or impossible to trace the origin of claims."

Information on WikiTree is frequently more accurate than information on WikiData.

Given all that, why are we comparing wikitree to wikidata? Seems like there should at least be a sentence for what value doing the comparison provides. "WikiData includes information on historically-significant and notable people " does not serve that purpose nor counterbalance all the negative caveats quoted above. 

Comments

I struggled with this for a long time myself until I fully wrapped my head around it - and which I believe is the driving factor behind this page - but I think the simple answer is already provided:

"These are not errors but they are usually worth investigating and may point to ways that you can improve a profile."

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Thanks Steve.

After looking at the first three suggestions of this nature, I found nothing valuable on WikiData. So I chose to stop spending more time on this suggestion.

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That is definitely understandable!

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What will always be valuable about the WikiData audits is a determination of whether the WikiTree ID that is placed in WikiData actually points to the correct person. If it doesn't,  it's not that difficult to set oneself up with a Wikipedia account and edit out the incorrect linkage.

Lastly, in some instances where the linkage IS correct, some sources may be on Wikipedia that are worthy of investigation, or adding the WikiData resonator code to the WikiTree profile to validate concordance between the two Wikis, and meet the overarching goal of improving interconnections and internet presence of WikiTree.

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Wikidata doesn't purely utilise wikipedia. It uses the Peerage, a project with very varied sources (email, the various Burkes etc). Its latest addition is linking to a site called Kindred Britain which is really a computer experiment in graphing kinship relationships. There are no sources or footnotes, the author makes a very questionable comment about why he doesn't. FAQs Why are there no sources, footnotes or references?

 http://kindred.stanford.edu/notes.html?section=faq

 

Answer 7

I've been working on Suggestions for PGM profiles and have been avoiding the WikiData section...so this is very helpful. (I'll save my suggestions specific questions for a separate thread).

I would add to the FindaGrave section something like:

Generally speaking, if there is a photo of the grave you can use the information on that gravestone with confidence (even then, remember that gravestones can be incorrect or that the memorial misidentifies the person buried there). 

I'm sure someone can come up with better wording...I think this is the kind of mistake that people might not be looking for, so its worth calling out. (Or maybe its because I just dealt with two such errors this week).

Comments

Thanks, M. I added something to try to communicate this.

Answer 8

Find-A-Grave

Suggestions in this category are based on comparisons between memorial pages on the Find-A-Grave website and WikiTree profiles. WikiTree+ compares the memorial data on Find-A-Grave with the data present on WikiTree profiles and draws your attention to the differences or possible missing data.

You cannot assume that information on Find-A-Grave is correct. It is entered by users, like on WikiTree, and it may not be based on reliable sources. Generally speaking, if there is a photo of the grave you can use the information on that gravestone with confidence (even then, remember that gravestones can be incorrect). If information does appear on a gravestone, it is still appropriate to investigate the original sources (e.g., Birth and/or Death certificates, Church and Parish registers).

These suggestions can be confusing if:

• the Find-A-Grave memorial that's linked to in the WikiTree profile isn't for the same person, or
• there are multiple Find-A-Grave memorials linked to from a single WikiTree profile.

In order to avoid this confusion in the suggestions, there is an advanced parameter in the FindAGrave template that may be used in order to identify links to a different (or multiple) Find-A-Grave memorials.

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Note:

I would remove "Find-A-Grave source citations", I am not sure that it (should / would) provide any additional information over that which is already found at Help:Links to FindAGrave, Usage in a Source Citation.

Comments

Possibly the difference is that many people include the family search citation for Find a Grave or the find a grave URL without including the full Find A Grave source citation From that site. which is the citation that should be included.

Answer 9

Could we have the option to opt out of these unsourced hints, please ?  

If we can opt out of "Profile Completeness" then could this please be extended to Wikidata and FindaGrave?

Then we can go back to using the suggestions lists ( many WikiTreeple have simply abandoned them due to the unsourced, robot harvested data now being constantly introduced.  Robots do not collaborate. Robots do not sign the Honour Code, or check the facts.)

if you want hints, then I don't think, out of all the information out there on the web, that WIkidata is valid.  Why even bother with it ?  It is NOT a genealogy site. WikiTree will get on just fine without it.

Thanks.

Comments

If we opt out of these suggestions, are we thereby opting out of having people using the suggestion list to mess with the profiles during Thons?

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That's one of the problems - just because we recognise them as unreliable and unsourced due to our research, it does not guarantee other people doing the same. Hence errors will be introduced.

Your published work on wikitree should probably not match identically with old, unreliable, poorly researched and not-recently-updated sources.

In fact, if it does match, then that should be flagged as a suggestion. ! 

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Joe, I love what you say about bots.  Bots don't read Research Notes.

I just spent the last week cleaning up profiles of my own family, writing Research Notes, and clearing up errors many of which were introduced from FindAGrave. This morning I find a dump of Suggestions, half of which are based on bot error. I don't want to spend even more time correcting these.

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Making Find a grave and wikidata suggestions that people can opt to have on the profiles they manage makes a lot of sense to me.  Any of the ones I have looked into have to date been wrong in those places and correct in Wikitree.  It is incredibly frustrating to see these included in the county stats and knowing that people in general will not bother with investigating them as it involves effort with very little reward.  If profile managers can opt to see them and turn that function on then I would expect that means that they will (a) have the knowledge on those profiles to spot the errors in those two sites and (b) have the impetus to go and set them to false suggestions when wikitree has the more accurate information.  Surely this approach would keep both those in favour and those against these suggestions happy?

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I support Joe's suggestion. More often than not, the Wikidata and FindAGrave suggestions are either unsourced or contain errors.

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I also would like to see Wikidata suggestions be visible only from the specific profile (if at all) in the same way that you can use Rootsearch from a profile for clues, and then disregard the dross.

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An opt in/out idea seems like a good work around for the FindAGrave and Wikidata "suggestions". Joe's comment about the bots really resonates with me! There is so much real work that needs to be done on Wiktree profiles without adding comparisons to dubious data harvested from elsewhere.

Answer 10

My specific suggestion is to eliminate suggestions from FindAGrave and similar unreliable sources.

But for some reason, there seems to be a strong attachment to this practice. No matter how many people state their opposition, it goes on.

Comments

The new Suggestions about Possible Father and Mother that are found on Find a Grave but not linked on Wikitree can connect many profiles that should be connected.  One of the purposes of wikitree is get the connections made and these new Suggestions have been found to be very helpful for many people.  Quite often the parents are mentioned in the child's profile or the child is mentioned in the parent's profile, but the search for the other profiles had not been done to connect them.  These suggestions are like anything else with Find a Grave.  

They should be considered 'hints' of possible connections or corrections that can be made to Wikitree or Find a Grave.  I have submitted plenty of changes to Find a Grave, as well as Merges of duplicate pages.  Most have been corrected, especially when the wikitree page is given as a reference and / or the source url is given.

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The problem, again, is bots.  I have a profile with a prominent research note that a certain person listed on FindAGrave as a child is in fact not this person's child.

Bots don't read research notes. So I have to waste my time shooting down, Once Again, this suggestion.  "Hide forever"

But false suggestions are like vampires, they rise again from the grave.

And of greater concern to me are the Thonistas who, I fear, will see these suggestions and attach the profiles in bot-like fashion, without reading the notes or observing that FindAGrave never has an actual evidence to support its claims.

If I could be assured that the false suggestions really would be Hidden Forever, I would be less insistent on this subject.

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Personally, I have not had any False Suggestions come back.  The only time when I have seen a False Suggestion appear again in other profiles is because someone made a change to the profile, that affected the Suggestion, or went in and updated the Suggestion, which is negating the False Suggestion.  We can fix a profile, ie. add the sameas=no to the template, which will stop the Suggestions from being checked on a specific grave entry, but someone goes in and removes it.

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I only just learned about the sameas=no when a Helpful Person yesterday fixed one of my profiles where the stooopid bot had equated a father and son, even tho the names were different.  Maybe if the bot were smarter, it wouldn't make these mistakes.

But this made me realize that a lot of this comes about when people cite FAG as a source in profiles. Which I have decided I will nevermore henceforth do.  I've been deleting some of the ones I used to have.

Still the situation is vexing, when people have to make such efforts to protect the integrity of the site from the site itself.

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The suggestions process is looking at the Find a Grave in a profile.  It isn't looking at names.  It does look at the birth and death dates / locations in each Find a Grave page to what is in the wikitree profile that it is included in.  

If you have a father and son in one profile with their own Find a Grave pages, that is why the suggestion process is looking at it.  If you add the |sameas=no to the Find a Grave template that the profile does not relate to, the suggestions process won't look at it. If the dates between wikitree and Find a Grave don't match and Find a Grave won't update them, you can also add the sameas=no so the suggestions won't be generated.

Removing a Find a Grave doesn't mean that it will stay removed because others can add them back in.  That is part of the collaboration.

Remember that there are so many variations of first and last name that they really can't look at names to determine which is correct.

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Thus my new practice of removing FAG citations from profiles.

Answer 11

To me, the help page is a great start, but just doesn't go far enough in distinguishing between "Errors": things that need fixing; and "Hints and tips": clues as to where there just might be a nugget of real information.

The raft of suggestions that come with wikidata and findagrave are fine on a purely personal basis. If I've got such a suggestion on one of my direct profiles then it is  worth me taking a look, in the same way as I would look at a FamilySearch link should one be on the profile, or look up a link to a tree at ancestry. All of these are links to someone else's opinion - no more, no less - and they need to be recognised as such and dealt with as such. Sometimes, they may just have a valuable piece of sourced information, but in my experience that is the exception rather than the rule, especially when dealing with wikidata.

On a global basis, errors impinge on the appearance (and credibility) of wikitree itself and I spend considerable time trying to resolve errors which are not in any way attached to my own direct lines. I don't think I'm alone in this, there are many other Data Doctors who simply think this is a good thing to do because we believe in the idea of wikitree.

What I would really like to see is a clear distinction drawn between the "red" Errors and "yellow" Suggestions in the way statistics are assembled and presented. Perhaps we could have two distinct tables?

Wikidata is easy - they're all yellow.

FindaGrave is more complex - 585 (multiple profiles to one grave) is an error; the two new ones (591 & 592) are hints and tips.

Profile Completeness is more complex - 455 (no birth date) is an error, but ones like 452 (status not set) is actually a very good idea in lots of cases, it would be really nice to be able to turn the radio buttons off rather than have to choose between several equally poor options.

Answer 12

For Wikidata suggestions, I would like clear guidance on how to officially and properly adjust Wikidata when the suggestions are really wrong.

I signed up to Wikidata in the hope of being able to talk to someone or get a tutorial about "removing the rubbish data" from a person's profile.
There was nothing.
I then removed some rubbish data. Really rubbish. Stating that a well known woman was a man. (This had come up in the Wikidata suggestion list for an England Project profile)
I didn't get told off. Maybe because I only deleted one thing.
But my worry is that when the Bot rescrapes that data set again, the wrong data will be reinstated and the "suggestion" that my woman is a man will reappear.
This not only will be irritating but a complete waste of my time trying to make Wikidata look better. I could set it as a false suggestion, but false suggestions tend to reappear after a time.

So my questions are 1) How often are the data sets on Wikidata refreshed and 2) what is the correct way of removing something on Wikidata that is wrong?

Also: it seems to be suggested that adding the Wikitree ID to a corresponding Wikidata profile somehow makes the suggestion go away because now Wikitree is a source... is that true?

Comments

Great questions. I'm happy to edit the WikiData while I'm there (i.e. I see a lot of dates that are Julian, but marked as Gregorian), but don't want to waste my time if the change is only temporary.

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Jo, it looks like you need to speak to https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/User:GZWDer

From the Wikidata chat archive (https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Project_chat/Archive/2019/11)

"The mass import from The Peerage is the sole, unilateral effort of @GZWDer:, who appears not to have solicited any review, nor requests for bot permission beforehand, and who is being very vague and reticent about their ultimate plans. As the discussion immediately above this one points out, a lot of issues are arising. I think the mass import will ultimately prove constructive, but the lack of prior community discussion (that could have identified and addressed the issues now present like blank descriptions, ambiguous persons, no birth/death years) is disconcerting. -Animalparty (talk) 20:41, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

Many sources of The Peerage are primary (this make The Peerage itself a secondary source). The Peerage does contain various error, so it will be meaningful to compare Wikidata and other genealogical databases. I also do find errors in Wikidata data (some are imported from Wikipedia infoboxes which confuses people with same or similar names) using The Peerage data.--GZWDer (talk) 20:47, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

The issue is not whether The Peerage or Wikidata contains errors. The issue is that you undertook a huge project with apparently absolutely no prior warning or discussion, potentially adding a lot of extra work to clean up. And now people are concerned. -Animalparty (talk) 20:54, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

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It is enlightening to read more of Wikidata's own attempts to try and control this bot problem (from https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/User_talk:GZWDer#Please_stop_adding_duplicates )

"

• +1 It's not our job to clear up your mess. Lots of tools and 3rd party uses rely critically on WD being well de-duplicated; and for our own use it is crucial, to make sure that relevant info drawn in from external projects all gets added to the one item, not splattered all over the project. It's a fundamental issue of good data hygiene, of crucial importance to the project's success and wellbeing. I am fed up with putting my own work on hold because there is mess that you have created that has to be cleared up as a priority. And even more fed up that you seem to take no responsibility over what you do. No effort to avoid creating it. No effort to clean up after yourself. Not even any effort apparently to help others fix the mess you create. Rule #1 around here: if you create mess, then you own it, and it's on you to do all you can to clear it up. Take some responsibility, rather than forcing everybody else to clear up after your excrement. Jheald (talk) 16:47, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
  • See also Wikidata:Project_chat/Archive/2019/01#Mass_creation_of_new_items,_no_properties,_no_deduplication - my only intention is not to let backlog of unconnected pages grows indefinitely. The only different is previously items are created once or twice each year, but now it is done regularly. Do you think 1. we should never create new items en messe (unless we can guarentee zero duplicates, which is usually not the case) or even 2. the best way to prevent duplicates is to stop editing Wikidata completely. There are many tool to find and merge them afterwards.--GZWDer (talk) 16:58, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

• GZWDer, it seems a lot of headaches are caused not just by your mass imports, but by your apparent aversion to pre-planning and community discussion. Even giving a courtesy notice like "Hey I'm going to be importing hundreds of thousands of names from a random database, lots of them probably already have Wikidata items, and may have unreliable data" would help, but even better would be to announce: "Here's what I plan to do: let's discuss how best to minimize duplication beforehand, reconcile duplicates and merges afterwards, and tackle this with concerted community effort." But no, you largely work alone, in silence, dumping truckloads of messy data, in hopes that someone, some day, will clean up your messes. Wikidata is a community of editors, not just a personal game for people who like operating bots. Please act accordingly. -Animalparty (talk) 18:22, 24 July 2020 (UTC)"

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It seems there is no overall governance system at Wikidata to supervise what is uploaded and how the bots are run. The other Wikidata people seem to have grave concerns about this user. It strikes me that if he was on Wikitree, he would have several MIRs filed and be under mentoring.

Perhaps someone with more in-depth knowledge of Wikidata could inform us about the governance structure there?

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Thanks, Joe.  Very interesting....I'm having a bit of a laugh over the upload "en messe."

Answer 13

I have just looked over the page, and then thought I would try out the "unique names" suggestion and advice to mark as "false suggestion (hide forever)" option, and noticed that there is a comment hint for the "France project-unique name is correct" option. My unique name suggestions are for German profiles. Can I get a comment hint for the "Germany project-unique name is correct" added there too please?

Also, I use the Find A Grave suggestions as cues to request changes on the find a grave website. Particularly if there is a headstone photograph and it has been mis-transcribed, and/or I have primary sources to support my request. I have had all my requests on find a grave requests for changes approved thus far.

Comments

Kylie, once you've typed a comment into the comment box a couple of times, it comes up as predictive text when you type in the first couple of letters.
If you type something enough, as the France project obviously has, it becomes a top pick for the error correction.

Answer 14

This is taken from the DD Project page as an intro to the suggestion sections:

Suggestions are organized by Group (for WikiTree pages) and Genre (for videos) with links to each Individual Suggestion Page.

Suggestions are issues that appear on profiles in WikiTree in the data fields and biography/sources sections.

They are:

• Errors - incorrect entries as the result of typos or imports of GEDCOM that need to be corrected;
• Hints - results of inconsistencies in linking to external databases, like Ancestry or others, caused by a typo, an incorrect link to the profile, or an issue that needs investigating; or
• Warnings - produced by uncommon data due to a typo or unique information on profiles and need to be reviewed.

I hope this helps for the introduction to suggestions.

All suggestions fall in one of the 3 types above. 

Red = error

Yellow = warning

Blue = hint

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Under the Suggestions heading, this should be deleted - I read it and thought people will think: "then why even work on it if they can't be solved?  It is a little confusing.

Moreover, many errors cannot be fixed with existing sources. Some data problems are unsolvable.

Or alternatively replace with something like:

Existing sources on WikiTree may not fix the issues and require careful research on other sites. Unfortunately, due to the timeframe or destroyed records, some data problems may not be resolved.

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Using "category" for suggestions may be confusing - categories are something different and very definite in WikiTree.  Substitute "type" or "These" [under the Title Unique Names for example].  Suggestions are divided into groups in the Data Doctors Project .

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 Profile Completeness

You may choose to add the category: Category: Suggestions - Include Profile Completeness to your own profile, and all your managed profiles will be checked. The resulting suggestions are ‘’warnings’’, and will appear on your Suggestions tab report the following Tuesday and updated weekly. 

These suggestions show your managed profiles where:

• parental relationship status indicators are not set,
• the birth/death dates or locations are not set, or where the status indicators are blank and those fields have sourced information,
• the birth/death country locations are not recognized or not official; and
• the profiles have short biographies (less than 500 characters).

Be prepared for a possible significant jump in your managed profiles’ suggestions.  You are welcome to remove yourself from that category at any time and those suggestions will no longer appear in your Suggestions list.

You can also create a report in WikiTree+ for any of the Profile Completeness suggestions: 

1. Choose one Profile Completeness Suggestion from the list under Suggestion (click the arrow)
2. Enter your WTID in the Managed By tab.
3. Click on User Suggestions and your list is generated for that suggestion.  

You can repeat this process for each of the Profile Completeness Suggestions listed.

Check the Data Doctors Project Page/Profile Completeness Suggestions for more information. [coming soon, I am working on it now.]

Comments

Thanks for the clarification of what the Blue colour code means Sheryl. As Wikidata mainly provides hints to things, perhaps the Wikidata suggestions should be blue rather than yellow.

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Thank you, Sheryl.

FYI, I am working on a completely new draft of Help:Suggestion_Types. It will integrate some of your suggestions here, and there will be separate pages for Wikidata and Find-A-Grave.

I'll close this G2G discussion for now and post again when I have put together the new draft.