i can't enter a profile without dates, how can i enter?

Question

Hi,

I keep getting the message to enter the date format but I don't know the date and it will not allow me to input unknown

Answer 1

Can you provide an estimated date?  Something that would give another WikiTree member a clue when they're searching for someone with the same name?  You have three choices:

1.  About / uncertain
2.  Before this date
3.  After this date

For example, if you only know the year, or the year within a couple of years, list that year and select the circle for "About / uncertain" and explain in the profile how you estimated the date.  Maybe only the year of birth was listed on a tombstone, or you only know that a person died during World War I so you picked the year in the middle of that war.

If you're entering the child of a man with a known date of death, you can list the year after his death and select the circle for "Before this date."  If you only have the date of birth for the mother, you could enter that date + 15 years and select the circle for "After this date," and write in the profile that you assumed that the mother was at least age 15 at the time the child was born.

Comments

Beat me to it :-)

Answer 2

This is as intended.  A profile without at least some idea of a birth or death date is really no profile at all.  There are already too many profiles without dates here causing trouble.  We don't need any more.

Answer 3

Linda, at WikiTree, you MUST put in dates for at least, one field, per profile.

If you look at some sources for your profile, maybe there will be some dates in your records.

Answer 4

Since we're building one-world-tree rather than a multitude of individual trees, it's imperitive that we try to avoid duplicates. In order to accomplish this goal, and considering how many Joseph Smiths there have been through the years, it was found to be absolutely critical that there be at least some idea of a date (and preferably a geographic area) attached to every new profile. Even if you don't know the exact date, you can plug in a ball park guesstimate based on some even in that persons life...like if they were married in 1805 they were likely born within 10 years of 1785... then notate it as such in the biography so that future cousins will be able to see that this is actually their ancestor and add the information they know about them rather than creating a new duplicate profile. So you see in the long run, this requirement is actually in your favor, since it drives the collaborative nature of the WikiTree-experience.

Keep up the good work! We'll get this tree straightened out together!