Marking "suggestions" as "false suggestion" because there's no source ...

Question

I've noticed some "suggestions" marked as "false suggestion" with the comment / clarification indicating sources are not available. This does not seem right to me. I know about this page and it does not give information about this. What is the expectation or common practice regarding this concept?

Answer 1

Check family and set according to their location, or even the continent would be helpful when comparing profiles and searching.

If it is some random profile that was dumped in along with 50 others and none have any location, then that might be harder.

But if you can find even one source on any family member and then add location based on that (even if incorrect in the end) that would be better than marking it false, since it is a true suggestion

Comments

Yes, thanks. I have been having some personal difficulty expressing myself the last little while ... I think what I am getting at is to suggest whomever coordinates the Data Doctors and/or whomever updates the help pages per error may want to include suggestions such as yours as the first draft of a FAQ for this particular DB error. I would do the "right" thing if this were a profile that I manage or if I were performing Data Doctor duties that moment. This was done by someone else and I noticed after the fact. I am side stepping the opportunity to contact the editor 1:1, at least until I hear some consensus on whether the DD group is in agreement about how to handle this or whether it is controversial.

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I think you expressed yourself well, I was simply adding my opinion on best practices. I do agree that adding something like this to the help page would be useful. Ales works really hard to have them all in place and helpful to those doing the corrections, so i think the clearer the better for everyone.

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Thanks, Jonathan! 

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If you didn't add the profile completeness category to your own profile, I would try to ignore those suggestions. I think that many people are marking them false because they are coming upon profiles that they are PM for, they didn't request the profile completeness suggestions, and they don't want to be bothered with those suggestions.

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I did request the profile completeness category for my profiles.

The activity I noticed was on a profile I do not manage. I do not recall if the user who incorrectly, in my mind anyway, marked the suggestion as false was the profile's manager or not.

If this were to be researched further, I fully expect to find a mix of profile managers and data doctors doing what may not be expected regarding the db error mentioned in my opening post.

It never occurred to me to go through suggestions for my profiles and mark as 'false suggestion' those I didn't want to handle. I bet you're right that that happens though.

Answer 2

I see this a lot with challenges....here is the rule that I follow for my personal profiles and those of the projects I work.

If the WikiTree profile has a source and the "suggestion" is unsourced, then I mark it as a false suggestion with a note that there is no source for the suggestion, and the profile is sourced.  (this may be just an evidence explained on the profile)

If the WikiTree profile nor the suggestion have sources, I write up a research note on the profile, but still mark the suggestion as false.

I have found that if I only comment on a suggestion, and do not "remove" the suggestion, someone will come along and just mark it as false if it is unsourced and I lose the potential suggestion.

Comments

Suggestions, in the suggestions list, like "Possible Father", where there are NO birth or death date sources, anywhere at all, even though the person exists, usually on The Peerage,..... you say ignore them?