The Wizards of Aus Source-a-Thon 2020 chat

Question

Do you like profiles with credible sources for their information? Are you, or is someone you know, Australian? Would you like to meet an Australian? If you answered yes to any of these questions, please consider joining the Wizards of Aus for the 2020 Source-a-thon! [Registrations have now closed.]

Start: Friday, 2 October

11pm on the east coast (QLD, NSW, VIC, and TAS)  
10.30pm in the centre (SA and NT)
9pm in the west (WA)

Finish: same time on Monday, 5 October, except Queensland:10pm.

See the Wizards of Aus freespace page for more info about Australian sources.

Comments

I put up as much as I could find for each person, but just from Victoria BDM. Occasionally the bio actually said that they were in NSW or SA or Tas, and I quickly jumped across to find it, but other wise, if it was going to become a hunt, I let it go. Having said that, everyone probably knows how difficult the Victoria BDM is, in regard to how they have soooooooooooo many name spelling mistakes, so often, I had to hunt through name options. I do manage to get most of them, by changing the search to parents names etc.

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Just one of those that I "hunted down" -  https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Fereday-85

(His wife was one whose bio I skipped doing. ) 

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You certainly were putting a lot into it. It looks great.

Here's one of the last ones I did. I was doing about the same for all of them. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Cartledge-176

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I keep saying I just can't do it half-bleeped.  The few I did minimal on (just dropped the sources and hit save), I still feel guilty about the no bio. (Doesn't help that I'm on Project Australia's PIP Team. )

I spent some time today doing a profile for one of my own family lines on my paternal side — a 3-greats-grandmother, the data for whom was confirmed over the weekend by a pdf of her death certificate being emailed by another of her descendants, living in England.

That's one of my more difficult lines, as they are LNAB Smith, in England, and 3-greats-grandma was LANB Brown, married a Purves (also frequently written as Purvis).  3-greats-grandma didn't remain consistent between census takings, so I still don't know if she was born in Scotland, or over the border in Northumberland, where she married, had her kids, lived, and died.  (Left it blank in data field, explained in biography.)

My next 'Thon will be the Clean-a-Thon, unless the Scan-a-Thon changes to something else.  (There was talk of alternating it, but not with what.)  I just don't have that much stuff to scan. 

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We all have different skills. Australia sourcing is a stronger one for me. I don't think I would find a great deal in a Connect a thon, and would have almost nothing to add in a Scan a thon.

I would like it if team Australia could organise a Source a thon, just for Australia, focusing on finding sources on the National Australian Archive site, or a weekend trying to get Trove articles connected to as many profiles as possible.

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Connect-a-Thon is simply adding new profiles -  or connecting existing profiles to other existing profiles (but mostly adding).  There were a few times this weekend I acted as though it was the CoAT, not the SAT, because I added new profiles just because of the information I had for them.

I tell ya, it is dangeroose to let me out alone!   

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That's not so bad then. That is what I usually do anyway. That's why I have a list on my profile that I am working through. I started with my parents, and am branching out to as many connections as I can.

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This has absolutely nothing to do with the Source-a-Thon -- other than that I was collecting sources for the profile as I searched for other names -- but I just have to say somewhere that today (well, now yesterday) I added a Twigg to the Tree. 

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Thanks Melanie, i have to admit i'm enjoying this. I'm on a bit of a roll atthe moment, and I find it difficult to keep up with the convos on the thread.. SO I will try and find this comment later. but anyway, question being, I'm doing the 'category" business of add profiles. when i can I add the birth, death and marriage. but i'm not fluffing out the profiles/bios much. Not sure if this is all that is required after reading the posts:D

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That's funny Melanie. Doesn't need to be to fluffed out Larina. Just describe the sources you have. Just pulling a random from my tree. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/McMillan-3188. Just put down their BDM in written form, typed the source in, so others can read it without looking it up, but left an appropriate reference if they wanted to. Added the people they are connected to. I put sources for the children on their own profiles, but provide sources to demonstrate marriage and parents. Type in any newspaper articles I can find, and any archives I can find. Then just add tags and categories. Fluffing it up would be looking for events that happened in their life time, or near them, and putting maps and other pictures in, other than the gravesite pictures I took or looked up, and any family photos I've found. I'm not sure if what I do fits with a standard presentation or not, but it is the standard I am trying to maintain.

Answer 1

Looking forward to it :)

And I love my hat :)

Answer 2

Hello, I would like to be part of the team.

Comments

Nan, if you didn't already - you need to post an answer to this thread and say you want to be with the Wizards of Aus  : Have you registered for the 2020 Source-a-Thon yet?

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I have already done so but when I looked at the team my name was not listed.

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I cannot see an answer from you on that thread.  Maybe you hit comment by accident (those links are awfully small, and very close together).

Go post an answer there now, because time is running out to register -- and it's better to have too many answers, than none at all.

(I haven't checked to see how up to date the team list is.).

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That was quick -- I found your post, and it WAS a comment, not an answer.

Yes, I'll be with the Wizards of Oz. My first source-a-thon so not quite sure what the numbers mean.

commented Sep 13 by Nan Hewitt

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Thanks Melanie. Yep, newbie. I'm happy to work on Victorian unsourced profiles. There are plenty and I've been chipping away at them. I can work on H if that's ok. Otherwise point me in an appropriate direction.

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Well, there are now 4 names that need to go on the Team page -- you and three before you.  But I am pretty sure you've signed up in time, 'cause nobody posted the "registrations closed" note!

(For me - you are more than welcome to Victoria!  I always seem to have problems getting the BDM to load before the 5th or so try.  Much prefer Queensland!  )

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Good job Nan. It was a challenge keeping up with you.

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Thanks Ben. I don't think I want to see Victorian BDM for good long while now - I could see it even when I closed my eyes last night.

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My little finger was starting to get sore from everytime I hit the 'a' key on the keyboard. And after the first night, my right eye started hurting. But I still enjoyed it. Especially the update video's and all of this G2G banter. Not to mention trying to catch up with the three people who got ahead of me.

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Yes, I could see you and Clare catching up. I was going to try to do a sprint to the finish line but it was a busy weekend in other respects too and I couldn't even muster a brisk trot for the last hour. Good fun though and rewarding to see the H list reduced from a full page.

Answer 3

Put me down for Victoria. Thank you.

Comments

Great, there’s plenty to go around with those! https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Victoria%2C_Unsourced_Profiles

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Have a great time sourcing, Ben. Thanks for working with us. I'm working on NSW and Tasmania.

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Going to try and get up early and go for it. Won't be able to do as much Sunday, but come back Monday too. Thank you Gillian.

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I was going well for the first couple of hours. Now the Challenge tracker has stopped working. I think there must be too many people trying at once.

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Thanks Ben. I've taken your comment on board. There is also the problem with members help page - . https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Problems_with_Members

Best to avoid mentioning specific people on the G2G :)

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I believe that particular issue has been raised on g2g before.

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Regards the tracker being down - keep a note of which profiles you have edited, and go back later and make a minor edit (add / remove punctuation, add a category, mark something certain/confident), then use the tracker.  (This was given the ok by Julie R on the any questions thread.)

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Good. Thank you. Just waiting for the next video to come up on YouTube in 10 minutes.

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Ben, they just gave you a plug on the hangout. You must be the top of our team. I haven't had a chance to check today. Congratulations!

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Yep -- he's showing as #1 on Wizards with 28.

(I am a dismal 5 because rabbits.  -- admittedly, a couple of  rabbits did need chasing (on fs), to remove conflation.)

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I started very early this morning. Trying to make up for not being available Sunday.

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Ha ha!! I'm having a few rabbits problems too ... sorting out rabbits is great, Melanie! Thanks.

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If it wasn't for all the profiles put in, our job would have been much harder.

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@Gillian -- well, if I hadn't chased those particular rabbits, I could not have sourced the profile on WT!

(But I did not need to create a spouse for another profile, just because I found all the info  while chasing rabbits.  This is NOT the connect-a-thon!)

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Nice. Love it. I manage to find a profile, where after the guys wife died, he married her sister. Please don't ever let that happen to me.

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I have created. or sourced existing, profiles for that situation.  I remember reading for one of them that a special dispensation had to be obtained.  I think it was way more common than we might think.  Wife dies, leaving husband with a slew of kids.  Unmarried sister is there to look after the kids.  Marrying her is cheaper than hiring a nanny/nanny equivalent.

The reverse is also true.  A widow would sometime marry a brother of her husband.   (Meant no extra name changes!). It's only "icky" to us in the modern era, because we know so much more about inbreeding and the like.

You also get situations where step-siblings marry.

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I found one a while ago, where ..... hmmm got to remember. I'll look it up. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Buttrey-42, married his niece, and they had about 5 children. Their children would have been 75%+ genetically similar.

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It has to have been confusing even for them, when you half-sibling is also your cousin. (etc)

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One to look at https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Uren-736. I just kept on finding marriages, and they are all his!!! It isn't actually that many, I've seen more. But still. Seven Sources needed for the one profile though because of it!!!!

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My cousins had one grandfather (or, maybe great grand) married 3 times and had like 22 kids.  (I think it was 3 wives .. and I think it was 22 kids.)  I'll have to check the family papers again. (I have not done much with that side of the family.  Maybe I should think about that branch for the next connect-a-thon.  )

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I tell you what. A great job was done preparing a lot of these profiles. Thank you for speeding it up!! That goes for Clare, Kaye, and anyone else I may have missed.

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What a great fun weekend. Thank you to everyone who contributed. Can we get some sort of indication of how many unsourced profiles were removed from each state this weekend?

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Hi Ben, it was a fantastic weekend. I'll see what we can do about stats by state.

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Melanie, that is a huge family. 22 kids to 3 wives. I wonder how they all got along.

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Just checked --it was 20 (recorded aka living) kids to three wives, 16 of them to the first wife.

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That is a lot of kids! One set of my great grandparents had 16 kids. I did a search for records on NSW BDM with a date range and came up with almost 2 pages of records, all the same family.

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I was doing a search a couple of years back, back when I started my genealogy journey, through the cemetery records at Bright (country Victoria), and found a family that lost 6 children in a fortnight. 5 of them in two days. I should try and find them again and put them on Wikitree. But, as bad as it has been, finding so many children who never made it to adulthood, how awful losing so many at once.

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I have family on the Murray river just west of Albury. There was a diptheria outbreak in the early 1900s. Two of my grandfather's siblings died within a couple of weeks of each other. I wonder if it was the same outbreak at Bright. That sort of tragedy would impact on the family for the rest of their lives.

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Typhoid and cholera were also prevalent. There was an outbreak at Walhalla at some point which impacted on one branch of my family. A lot of children and grandchildren died within a short time period. I read a very sad story when in Tasmania a couple of years ago. The father of the family wanted to set up a manufacturing business of some kind (can't remember what it was). He had to sail to Hobart to collect the equipment and decided to take his family, including all 6 children along for a holiday. On the return journey they hit bad weather. Each of the children was being held by an adult to stop them from being washed overboard but despite this, all six died, possibly from hypothermia. He was absolutely devastated and never did set up the business.

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Had to go double check. It was diptheria, but it was in 1871. I've decided that I will do up their profiles for them. The parents have been entered, but no sources yet.

Answer 4

Newbie to Source-a-thon here. What do I do with this bib number thingy?

Comments

You don’t have to do anything with it - some keen people add the image to their profiles, but I think the main thing it’s used for is the lucky door prizes. Every few hours there’s a video meet up and they draw a number out of a “hat”. If you’re online and see the draw before the next one, you can choose  a prize from the remaining prize pool.

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Someone posted the code to add your bib to the participation sticker.  All you have to do is save the image, then reupload it.  (In the format as posted to our answers, it cannot be linked as an image, or in a sticker. You can, however, post the url to your profile and it will link you back to your answer. This is mine from this year : [https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/1097927/have-you-registered-for-the-2020-source-a-thon-yet?show=1098024#a1098024 https://www.wikitree.com/images/source-a-thon/bibs/005.png])

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Thanks Kathleen and Melanie.

Do I need to specify what I'll be working on? I figured I'd work on Victorian unsourced profiles, starting with i - that may be all I have time to do, as I have other engagements on the weekend, but if I do finish i, I'll go on to j. But I figure, any points I can earn for the team helps

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You don't have to specify --just don't get too upset if someone who didn't read this thread starts working on your dibs.  (I gave up specifying, or even planning, because of that.  It was an enormous waste of my time and energy to have sources and bio ready for x-number of profiles, only to find someone had beaten me to it with a single source.)

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Have fun sourcing this weekend, Wendy :) Thanks for joining us.

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I forgot to ask where to ask questions if we have them during the thon - I don't know if anyone will see them here. Anyway, my question is, is there any way to track an entry once you've navigated away from the page with the challenge tracker on it? Once I forgot. Another time, it just timed out and gave an error - the edits were all good, but I just missed the tracking. It doesn't really matter, I'm not gonna win any prizes anyway, but just wondered.

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It’s OK to go back in and make a really minor edit and then click the tracker, when you forget or it glitches out. (It’s been having issues this morning.)

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There are always issues when Aleš is offline/sleeping.

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Place to ask questions you don't ask in this thread would be the pinned one -- Do you have 2020 Source-a-Thon questions?

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Tracker is back on again

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I see what you meant by not getting upset if someone else starts working on what you were going to work on - I ended up doing that myself! I started on the first profile in i, discovered it had an incorrect LNAB, fixed it, then continued working on the family around her, so all the rest of the profiles I did were M. I did check back on i at one point, and discovered they had all been cleaned up - wonderful!

I ended up not doing very many at all. I knew I had limited time on Saturday, but then Ancestry slapped a free search weekend on (who decides these things?) and there were a few records I really wanted to look up and add to my tree, so spent most of Sunday on that. Monday, my husband wanted to visit his aging parents with laptop in hand, and actually write down some of the stories from their growing up. What to prioritise - sourcing profiles not at all related to me, or taking notes on my in-law's memories before dementia or worse makes them unavailable? I think everyone would agree with my choice.

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Oh, most definitely the right choice!  Get those stories while you can!  (I regret not writing down things my Grandma used to talk about, because they are all lost now.)

Answer 5

We at Nor'Easters wish you the best of luck in the 2020 Source-a-thon. Just over 8 hours to go before we kick it into high gear. And remember, HAVE FUN!!!!!

Answer 6

I think I am ready for  this, I have washed the towels and  my hair,  the floors are done as well as the bed. Now for a little rest and then source  till kingdom comes or Monday!  There are  64 profiles in my unsourced list, most  of which  I will be  able to complete and then I will look at others from NSW and QLD.

Comments

Have a great source-a-thon Rionne :)

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Thank you I will.  Last -athon I had a bad back and couldn't do  very much, so like in Independence Day, all I can say is" I'm back"

Answer 7

Hello,

I do not share any enthusiasm with this -a-thon. However I admire the number of Wikitree users that enjoy this sport.

Best wishes, Steve.

Comments

Thanks Steve!

Answer 8

Congratulations Wizards! What a brilliant effort. We sourced a grand total of 2,349 profiles and came tenth overall. We had 28 members on our team who contributed. Top contributers were 1. Clare Spring, 2. Sharryn Nankervis and 3. Ben Molesworth.

Thanks so much everyone.

Ben has asked for a breakdown by State. I'll see if I can work that out.

Comments

A great outcome. :) I had to go offline for a while because we were doing local glamping for half of the weekend, and then when I got home I was literally forced to research and make a profile for the person whose homestead used to be at the campsite. (I suffer from "ooh, shiny!" distractions a lot on these things!)

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Glad it is not just me