Australia Project, Profile Improvement, and Maintenance Categories

Question

The Australia Project has been discussing profile improvement and usage of maintenance categories, aiming for an intergrated approach, including sources, biography, and categories.

The finalised page outlines that aim and includes:

• 7 guidelines for profile improvement for Australian profiles
• Where to find Australian profiles needing improvement
• Adding and using various Australian maintenance categories

Please note: The maintenance categories "Australia (or State), Needs Birth/Death/Marriage Record" are being changed to maintenance "research" categories, in the format "Australia (or State), Needs Birth/Death/Marriage Source Researched". The Project would like these categories to only be added to a profile where the member has searched for the source and is unable to find it, so needs assistance from someone with more expertise or access to subscriptions records. We also request it is not added to a profile that also has an "Unsourced" tag applied. 

Thank you for reading and for helping to improve Australian profiles.  

Comments

Thanks, Margaret, for all the work you have done to finalise this page. It will give us all a great focus to our profile improvement activities.

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Many thanks for all the work gone into this. Excellent.

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Hi Margaret

I have just seen this.

When someone is editing a biography but is not in the right browser/sites are down*/does not feel like looking for birth/death/marriage records right now, what is the appropriate category to use, to mark that a birth/death/marriage record is needed, to allow that person to come back down the track?

I am against personal categories for this purpose, I think there should be a mechanism for shared "to do lists" of this kind. I am currently using "Needs Birth Record", "Needs Death Notice" and "Needs Marriage Record", but would prefer lower-level location categories.

*For example, New South Wales BDM is down right now.

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Hi Clare, sounds like you need a personal category, if you particularly want to come back to those profiles later. The Australia Project doesn't have a project maintenance category to cater for that, if everyone was adding profiles in that circumstance, the category would tend to get flooded with profiles, so it would be hard to find the ones you were after. Maybe it would be easier at the moment to switch from NSW Unsourced to Victoria Unsourced, there's plenty to choose from in there. 

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Hey Margaret,

I am finding it a bit frustrating that I have to use personal categories so often when there are standard maintenance categories for non-Australian profiles.

As you know, just a week or two ago I had to switch "Australia, Needs Biography" into a personal category.

I don't understand the resistance to having standard shared Australian maintenance categories? It's not so much that I want to come back to that profile later, more that I want a biography or birth/death/marriage record added to a profile that doesn't currently have that (I don't mind if it is me or someone else).

I also understand that a profile that has one source is not "unsourced" so I think that without the standard needs birth/death/marriage categories there is nothing shared to mark these available except personal categories, and higher level (non-location-specific) categories.

I appreciate the goodwill, but at the moment I am a heavy user of these categories for profile improvement, and I am struggling to see how this is a better system.

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I'm pretty much with Clare regards the "need" to have personal categories for so many things.  If that's how it is to be, I won't be using categories for this kind of thing at all.

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That's a bit how I am feeling Melanie, if the system is going to make it more difficult for me to improve Australian categories, maybe it's time for me to give up and focus on other things.

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There's always the generic "Category:Needs_xxx" category, if Australia isn't going to have those anymore.

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Essentially, maintenance categories are viewed by the Categorization Project as a particular Project's "personal categories", and as such, the project can determine which ones they use, and how they would like them used on profiles. This is what the Australia Project has done, and we've attempted to outline our approach to profile improvement in the above mentioned page, while keeping in mind, that the minimum sourcing requirement on WikiTree is one source added.

Being a small in numbers Project, the AP wants to avoid the situation where we have maintenance categories with hundreds even thousands of profiles, (Victoria needs Birth has nearly 4,000 profiles, many of which are already in the Unsourced category), and members feeling they need to work on them, when there are other areas to focus their time and attention.

The Unsourced categories will always be the Project's primary maintenance categories, and members will continue to find what sources they are able for those profiles. As the minimum required is one source, we don't want to ask members to spend time chasing records on hundreds and hundreds of already sourced profiles, so many other project related areas to focus on.

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Margaret, sorry, I didn't realise the maintenance categories were seen this way, I thought they were location-based categories, rather than "project" categories.

If these are the "personal categories of the project", does that mean people outside the project shouldn't use them at all?

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No, definitely not, that's just a loose equivalent, meaning the project can determine what they are and how they are used. Anyone can use them on any Australian profiles. We try to name them as specific as possible, to reflect their intended use. The reason for posting the page here on G2G was so that anyone working on Australian profiles would know what categories were available and how they could add them to profiles. Generally, to raise awareness of them for those working on Aussie profiles.

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I have deleted my bookmarks for the state-needs-x-record categories, as I will no longer be looking for, or working on, those.

I am, for now, retaining the unsourced category bookmarks.  That, too, may change.

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Wow. I'm trying to look through the whole catagories thing, and it seems to me to be quite a mess. So many listings, and not very well organised, confusing and hard to use. Got to work out how to get my head around them. I can see how useful it is though, if you are trying to improve selected areas.

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Ben, there is a definite category structure, have a look at these pages, category help and Category Guidelines for Australia Project, as a start, if you have any questions on specific Australian category areas, ask in the AP google group, probably others will have been wondering about the same thing. 

Answer 1

Thank you. I made this list up for myself, to help me remember each point I am trying to get into the profile.

I'll have a closer look, but I am certainly interested in using the catagories more. It would be nice to have a single page to go to for catagories that can be copied and pasted nto profiles.

Comments

Ben, I can't see your list, just a big space, could be something with my computer..  There are so many categories, it would be impossible to have a page for them all, any particular areas you are looking for? You can find them on a profile page by going to that category picker icon  and type in the words you are looking for.

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The image is not showing, so it's not your computer.  It's probably set to private.

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Sorry. Because I put it on my profile, it was set to private. I've moved it to a free space, and hopefully you can see it now.

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Thank you Margaret. I'll give that a go.

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I managed to work that out Margaret. Thank you. Did the picture work, or I'll type it out manually.

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Those Icons really make it much easier. I hadn't used any of them before, but thank you for highlighting them. That is so much easier.