Profiles with no location - way to search in Wikitree+?

Question

Could someone advise whether it is possible in Wikitree+ to run a search for profiles where there is no location information in the birth, death and marriage fields?  I know there is a category that can be added to profiles when they are found but being able to get a list as a starting point.  If this can be done in Wikitree+ could you please state exactly what needs to be entered into the search to get this?

Is there a case for adding this as a Suggestion on the Errors List?  Whilst it could not be included in any country breakdown, being able to see this on a weekly basis would be useful and may encourage people to work on cleaning these up

Thanks

Sarah

Comments

I think that would create a huge list, DD's would be inundated with them.  Some members have been entering dates with no location, those still active who have been identified as doing this have been advised to enter locations.  Meanwhile, I know I enter locations, if even only a country, when I run into such.

Answer 1

Sarah,

This has been discussed by the Data Doctors group, and to some extent here https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/1118466/suggestions-report-suggestion-locations

There are too many profiles that lack any date to include these in the suggestions. I did suggest to Ales that he add a way to search via WikiTree+ to be able to search profiles that lack a birth/marriage/death date.

Comments

Thanks Kay

I appreciate it would be a long list, but there should be some way to automatically identify them and flag them at least with the unlocated profile category.

I have seen a number of profiles that have dates but no locations, hence the question was on whether there is a way to search for profiles where all locations are missing.

Regards

Sarah

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Yes, it would be great to be able to search for them.

Since this tends to be a pattern, you could try searching by GEDCOM and/or creator_id when you see this info on unplaced families.

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Yes that would get a group of related individuals if you had a starting point profile.  However, I do a lot of work on larger data sets than that (for example at the moment i am working through all the profiles with Oxfordshire in any location field to categorize them with what sources are needed and cleaning up fields such as married name, locations etc) so was hoping that the DD could help with a way of identifying these.  I think an automated update to add the existing category "unlocated profiles"

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I took a quick look at the first 500 orphaned profiles matching Oxfordshire and one generation of relatives of which 85 were marked unsourced and a total of 284 possibly unsourced. Here are a few that have at least one relative with no location and might give you some leads:

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Dandridge-158

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Moss-288

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Hayes-8682

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Smyth-88

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The comment about Oxfordshire was an example of the data sets I am working on. I know how to identify those and have a plan on how to work through them.  My question is about getting a dataset where all the locations are empty.

Answer 2

I usually check the family tree (black ancestors button if there is one) to get some idea of where the person may be from.

but if there is no tree, then I cannot do anything...

Answer 3

Isn't this/something similar going to be part of the new map functions, in time?  At least, I thought that's what was discussed on the help page (though I'm kinda new to the details, so I may be interpreting something wrong.)  

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:WikiTree_Plus#Map_navigator_on_WikiTree.2B

Comments

The map function will not display profiles that do not have birth or death locations recorded in the profile data.

Answer 4

Robynne's comment about the family tree reminded me that the Family List feature (available at https://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Special:FamilyList for your own list, or available for any profile that has a public family tree on the tab that is labeled with the WikiTree ID#) is easy to scan visually to find profiles that lack dates and locations. It is particularly easy to see people who do not have any locations.

I just tried it out by checking my own 10-generation-direct-ancestors family list. I added locations to a few profiles that had neither a birth or death location, but there is clearly more to do, as I only made it through the letter E. (The unlocated profiles included some ancestors I had never noticed before -- apparently someone had added them to my ancestry when I wasn't looking. )

Answer 5

Suggestions 604, 634, and 664 sort of address that, since "too short" also seems to include "empty".

There is also the Unlocated Profiles category.

Comments

I do not think that db suggestion group picks up empty location fields. I checked several instances of that suggestion group, and I found that they all had some sort of content in the location field.

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Yes the Unlocated Profiles is what I am suggesting could be automatically populated onto profiles where the three location fields are empty. Doing that manually would be an incredibly lengthy and time-consuming exercise.  The DB suggestions would not pick these up and anyway they wouldnt help identify the population where all three are empty.

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I went to the October 11th Data Doctors Report, clicked on the 306 in the first column for suggestion 604, and then tried the first entry, which is Cobham-6. In this particular case, the place of birth isn't actually empty, because the year of birth was incorrectly placed into the place of birth field. But it does turn out that this profile is unlocated. I couldn't fix the date, because I don't have a pre-1500 badge, but I did add the Unlocated Profiles category.

The next profile on that page was Bomersbach-2. This time, the place of birth field was empty, so, yes, Ellen, those reports do catch empty location fields. Although Sarah is correct that just because one of birth, marriage, and death location fields are empty doesn't make a profile unlocated. In this case, there are two located marriages and a located death. So finding unlocated profiles through these reports would still be a manual process of checking through all the hits. But even so, it would be a much shorter process than going through all of the profiles on WikiTree. 604 has 2,771 hits, 634 has 2,686 hits, and 664 only has 226 hits. (Although of course not everybody gets married, and not even those who do necessarily have that noted on their profile.)

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That Bomersbach profile had an empty location field because another member had edited it on October 13 (two days after the date of the Suggestions Report) to move the misplaced date out of the location field. The suggestion appeared because of a short location entry, not an empty location field.

Answer 6

There are 2 suggestions, that list these profiles for your managed profiles. See profile completeness.

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Data_Doctors_Report_2020-10-11#Profile_Completeness

We were looking into making this suggestion for all Orphaned profiles, but it would create several million suggestions. Maybe I will add a keyword for that. We will see.

Comments

Hi Ales

Thanks for responding.  Is there a way to automatically identify orphan profiles where birth location, death location and marriage location are ALL empty on a given profile, and add the "unlocated profiles" category to them?  The profile completeness suggestions only work if the profile manager has turned them on so dont cover the full dataset

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That would mean editing several millions of profiles, so NO.

As I wrote I am thinking of adding a keyword (Magic Word) for that. If I add it I will make that public.