Suggestions list changed?

Question

Recently I have seen what I think (?) are a new category of suggestions.  "Possible Father" and "Possible Mother" as found in FAG.  If I do not care to expand on a particular profile, is there a polite/recommended way to suppress the suggestion?

Comments

Did you, or a co-manager, recently opt in for "profile completeness"?  If so, I think these new suggestions may be a result.

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Melanie, I opted in (added the category to my profile) to "profile completeness" but my suggestion list was so overwhelmed with suggestions, I opted out (removed the category from my profile) right away. I had some of these same suggestions this week (just discovered them as a result of James' post) so I think this is just something new to the suggestions for everyone.

When I worked on my suggestions (this morning) I found these "possible mother/possible father" suggestions useful. What they do is alert one of a profile which may already be on WikiTree which could be the parent/child of one of the profiles you manage. I rejected (marked false, as Ros suggested in her answer) two of these suggestions, but all the others (about 8) were valid suggestions. If they are valid, all that is required is simply the linking of the two profiles--no new profile creation required. These suggestions will be great for improving our WikiTree connections and may cut down on our creation of duplicates.

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  Thank you, James and others -- reading all this I then looked at Suggestions page (mine) and ... lo, I have SEVEN of those critters whereat the child, possible and possible parent(s) are "suggested" per whatever info is provided on the FaG memorial site ... 

For the most part I usually list the children, spouses, parents or whatever info is on the memorial and then proceed to find civil authority sources (birth, death, marriage etc) for the person profiled - sometimes if I'm feeling okay I will proceed at that time to profile those listed 

 I think this new item on the Suggestions is likely to serve as a prompt for me to proceed to profile the rest of the family rather than just list them ... 

On the whole I think this new item is a beneficial bonus for any profile manager

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Susan, actually you don't have to create the profiles of the parent or child in the suggestion--the suggestion is letting you know the suggested parent/child already has a profile on WikiTree--you just need to connect them. If, as you say, you've already listed the parent or child in the profile you manage, it takes barely a minute to make the connection and mark the status correct.

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I will opt in soon and take a look at the suggestions, thanks for creating another useful tool! Might have to opt back out after connections, my list might be scary.  I have been slowly making it through every profile I manage to add more sources, format and bios . Up to created in October 2017 so far....work in progress as usual.

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I do not understand this suggestion. I just looked at mine for this code and the parents are already attached. The check does not appear to be working. Unless it's trying to tell me something else.

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Jillaine, I just played with this feature a bit.  My interpretation of what it's doing is looking at your profiles where you have cited a Find A Grave memorial as a source, and then looking at that memorial and taking note of any other Find A Grave memorials that are linked to it as parents.  Then if another WikiTree member has cited one or both of the linked parents' memorials as a source on a profile, your suggestion will identify that profile as a possible parent to the subject of your profile.  If you have already shown the parents on your profile, there would be nothing to suggest.  Presumably the concept to be expanded to include spouses, children, siblings as well.

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I like the feature.  Wish it had been there for the Connect-A-thon.  I just did the one I had which also forced me to find his mother/father/s wife.

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Sorry Dennis I should have been clearer. It was a Wikidata suggestion for possible parents but the parents were already attached.

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@Jillaine it's possible that the parents's WikiTree IDs have not been entered into WikiData. In that case the algorithm does not "know" that the parents suggested in WikiData have profile (or something like that). It's one of those suggestions that do not signal anything that needs to be done on the WikiTree side of things.

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If it's a suggest that does not signal anything that needs to be done on the WT side of things, why do we have it as a suggestion at all? Sorry, I'm just not getting it.

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Basically, if a child and parent is linked on Findagrave, but not on WT, a suggestion is generated. This works fine for open profiles, but errors start to creep in when the privacy is orange or greater. I have some for orange where a male was suggested as a "possible mother".

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 I think we can look at it like it's "Just For Fun ... " Jillaine.  Some people do like it, as I do.  I think it is a fun thing and I think it is useful and I'll use it. 

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Aaron, I don't get what the privacy level would have to do with it??  Can you explain a little further?  It would seem if there's private data that the algorithm can't see, it wouldn't be able to generate a suggestion at all.  And if it got the gender wrong, that would have to be because a contributor at one site or the other got a memorial number mixed up, most likely between a husband and wife.

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Um, Jillaine, yes, I agree. Looking at the help page for DBE 542 for instance, it seems it's mostly about adding links to WikiTree profiles in Wikidata, which only a few WikiTree members are coincidentally interested in doing.

However - if the suggestion is completely incorrect (the parent suggested on WikiData is not the parent), the suggestion must be marked false, and the potential problem must be documented on the profile, since it signals an incorrect genealogy "out there".

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I'm with Jillaine on this one.  Some might find it helpful or useful, but to me it's just noise.  Of course we can always look to FindAGrave for hints about connections.  Do we need the Suggestions Report to tell us that?  Especially since it tells us in a way that we have to take time to deal with, right now?  If you want to keep your Suggestions clean, you have to either investigate the links (which you might not be interested in at present), or mark them False just to make them go away.

Please, Data Doctors, stop creating these make-work suggestions.  Maybe you have found all the real problems to point out to us, and you can take a break.  Well done!

If you absolutely must continue to seek out new 'issues,' can you give us a reliable way only to see the important ones?  Maybe you can attach a severity rating to them, like Level 1 for Fix This or Else, down to Level 5 for Just for Fun.  Then perhaps allow us to choose which levels we want to see.  Or maybe give us a button for Clear All Level 5 Suggestions.  Please.

Another option occurs to me as well.  Orphan everyone.  No Watchlist, no Suggestions.  Problem solved.

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Thanks, Isabelle. There are a whole lot of incorrect genealogies "out there"-- does this mean we're going to start having suggestion reports that compare WikiTree profiles to ancestry/rootsweb trees and FS trees? and ... ?

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 Well, this particular Suggestion item is just for fun, not a requirement, no one has to embrace it, and it can be ignored.  

The few of us who do like it will continue to do so, and will take the usual precautions for practicing safe genealogy. 

I've dealt with two of the initial seven and have had no problem sourcing what I found, it has been a fruitful experience.  It will be interesting to see how many more of these will turn up in my Suggestions. 

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Susan, my point is you can't just ignore it, or it will clutter up your suggestions forever.

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Herb, why do you say that?  I don't have any hangup about ignoring most of those Find A Grave suggestions and just letting them clutter up the report.  I have about 50 or so that have been there since the beginning of the error reports with no ill effects.  I will attempt to address the occurrences of this new type of suggestion, but not in a big hurry.

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 Isabelle,

As I understand it, suggestions 591 - FindAGrave - Possible father and 592 - FindAGrave - Possible mother, are comparing people in profiles in WikiTree with memorials in Find-A-Grave. 

If WikiTree has a spouse couple A & B with a Find-A-Grave Template and  person C who is not connected to the big tree, Aleš finds a find-a-grave couple A & B with a child C.  A, B and C in WikiTree are theoretically A, B and C on Find-A-Grave are the same people. That is why the suggestion.

I have only had one, but it was right on.  I just had to find a source besides Find-A-Grave to support the fact.  Thank you Aleš.

These suggestions are not make work.  They are to help us do one thing in our objects.  Connect people to the Big tree.  Hopefully it will keep the duplicates down that have to be merged.

Answer 1

Possible Mother and Father are 'brand new' Suggestions that Ales created this week using Find a Grave.  He sent a message to the Data Doctor group for people to review and then he created them.

1. If Find a Grave page / template is on the Parent and Child wikitree profiles
2. AND the wikitree page 'for the Child'  does not have one or both parents, 
3. AND the Find a Grave page 'for the Child' has parents
4. Suggestion is being shown as possible parents to be connected.  

As normal, sources should be checked before connecting the parents to the wikitree profile. 

As Cindy said, if sources show one or both parents on incorrect on Find A Grave, mark the suggestion as False with a comment that parents are wrong, but I would also send an update to Find A Grave, as I did yesterday, to remove or change parents. I always send along the sources or links to wikitree that has sources.

Comments

Unfortunately, this wasn't tagged with Data Doctors or you probably would have gotten an answer earlier.  Questions about Suggestions should be tagged with Data Doctors so others can help.

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And if the parents aren't correct on FAG I would make the suggestion as False.

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I also mark as false if they are already linked.

Answer 2

Mark it as 'False Suggestion'.  Then it will go away.

Comments

Yes, marking it a "False Suggestion" will get rid of it, but if it is not a "False Suggestion" should it be marked as such? I had about ten of these suggestions. All but two were valid suggestions. All that is required to "work" these suggestions is to link a profile you manage to another profile already on WikiTree by simply pasting the Wiki ID of one in the child/parent box of the other and clicking on "go." Then, marking the status of the suggestion as corrected. No profile creation or major work is required. My ten suggestions took me about ten minutes to complete.

Answer 3

I just worked the ones that appeared on my suggestion list. The profile ID for the potential father/mother is listed. It's fairly easy to connect them if you want to blindly accept FindAGrave. I was very quickly able to find alternative sources (and add those to the profile if not already there) then connect to parents.

I did mark one as a false suggestion, since her obituary cleared identified her adoptive mother.