I want to un-link Melchior from his parents

Question

Melchior Ruch's profile is important to our family because he is our earliest known male ancestor.

The person who originally created his profile has linked him to profiles that cannot possibly be his parents.  After I pointed out the error, she changed the links so that they point to other people, but I do not believe those people are his ancestors either.

I am quite familiar with the research on this line, and I have never found the names of Melchior's parents, nor have I ever found a connection between the Ruchs of Alsace and the Ruchs of Switzerland.   And the profile manager has offered no sources to support her links.

So my question is, can I just detach Melchior's "parents"?  Leaving them connected is propagating bad data.  I've tried to reach out to the profile manager but so far she hasn't gotten back to me.

Comments

Does Melchior’s baptismal record exist?

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You say you are familiar with the research on this family. That's great, because the profile mentions the existence of records, but I cannot find information about those records. Could you please edit the profile to properly cite the reliable sources for this family and clearly indicate what those sources say?

I see a note in the profile that says that Ulrich and Elisabeth were not his parents, and that Elisabeth was only 10 years old when this man was born, but the parents connected to the profile are Melchoir and Elisabeth, who were fully old enough to be this man's parents. Which set of parents do you want to disconnect?

There are no footnoted source citations in the profile. You linked to a source image at https://archives.bas-rhin.fr/detail-document/ETAT-CIVIL-C558-P2-R312740#visio/page:ETAT-CIVIL-C558-P2-R312740-4034232 which is the baptism record for son Johannes Adam, but I was not sure what it was until I looked it up (it needs to be more clearly cited and described in the profile text).  In the profile text and sources list, there is mention of some other online church records, but unfortunately when I follow the links to the entry page at http://archives.bas-rhin.fr/registres-paroissiaux-et-documents-d-etat-civil I am unable to actually access content, apparently due to technical issues on the website. The other cited sources include an unsourced findagrave memorial, a private family tree on Ancestry, and a personal website -- not the kinds of sources we hope to find on pre-1700 profiles.

If you can revise the profile so that it better documents the life of this man, it should become much easier to get support for the editing changes you want to make.

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I do agree much work needs to be done on his profile. Sources need to be footnotes, and I'm not.very good at that yet so it's going to take me a while to get around to it.

Still, that's a separate issue from my.original question which was "is it ok to disconnect parent profiles if there are no sources provided that would indicate they are his parents?"

I suppose the worst that could happen is someone would have to go to the trouble of manually re-connecting them. Hopefully the second time around they would provide sources.

But I've decided that would be rude, so I'm not going to do that. The yellow UnverifiedParents tag seems appropriate for this situation.

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There is almost no sourced information about any of these people. What basis do we have to throw out some of the unsourced information that another WikiTreer contributed a long time ago, when you also have not been able to supply sources?

You provided a discussion of why Ulrich and Elisabeth cannot be his parents, but the parents you want to disconnect are Melchior and Elisabeth.  And the main reason I see for discarding the parents is that Elisabeth was too young to be the father of this man, but her profile indicates that she was 41 when he was born.

Who are Ulrich and Elisabeth, anyway?

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Hopefully to clear up a point of confusion, Ulrich and Elisabeth were the first "parents" linked by the profile manager.  When I contacted the profile manager and explained why Ulrich and Elisabeth could not be his parents, she responded by changing the parents to two completely different people: Melchior Ruch and Elisbeth Frauchiger.  But those people are not sourced either, and they are all in a completely different country.  

The profile manager created this through a gedcom import (don't get me started) with no sources.  I am not the profile manager. I'm not sure why I am expected to provide sources for information someone else put in a profile they created.

I only know that whether the parents are linked to Ulrich and Elisabeth, or to Melchior and Elisbeth, it's wrong. To be more precise, the person who made that link has not proved it is right.

I was only asking whether people feel comfortable disconnecting parent links that have no sources.  I got a range of answers, but I tend to agree that the yellow text box is the best way to deal with it.  I can see how deleting links unilaterally would be considered rude.

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Also, most of the text in the bio section is copied from a researcher (Phil Knox) who is no longer active.  I realize that is not a source. I put it there for future research.  I'll get to it when I have time.  But I don't feel that NOT having sources should disqualify me from noting that other mistakes have been made.  They're really two completely separate issues.

Answer 1

hi James!

did you get a chance to check the Help Pages advice here? The topic is Disagreement about Content.

i think you have been very patient with this.  It might have gotten to the point where you can disconnect those parents and just mention in the bio that at one time a family researcher thought the parents might be [hyperlinked profile] and [hyperlinked profile] but the difficulties with this are lack of sources and incongruent years or something--you might be able to find just the right wording in the examples given in that link above.

Of course something that could be very interesting is a little Y-DNA comparison -- looks like there could be a variety of potential testers in the other lines!  (Thanks for doing yours!)

cheers

shirlea

edited to add the Help Pages topic

Answer 2

Disconnecting could lead to contention with the profile manager

If you can not prove the parents are wrong, best to leave it as is.

Answer 3

Check out the big yellow box near the top of the bio in this profile: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Trombly-456

Maybe you just need something like that?

If so, just paste in this: {{UnverifiedParents}}