Question

If adding ancestors and finding a match that has very little data, what should I do?

Comments

Update the profile of that ancestor with sources and add the information from those sources.

Answer 1

It's hard to establish a match with some person with little to identify the person with dates of birth or death or locations. Many people so described are the result of the import of data from a gedcom, and there might be little. This is especially troublesome with people for whom there could be many possible matches.

. Sometimes you might have a trace through a sibling. All in all if one has little involving someone with common given and  family names it is easy to have a duplicate.

Do not be afraid to create a new profile and then merge. Sometimes your discovery gets missed as the result of a typo or because of multiple spouses. I have created profiles only to merge them soon afterward. The typo that allowed you to create the duplicate that got away may be corrected, and if that is a match for someone who already exists, then initiate the merge if you cannot do it yourself. Errors happen, and those that create a duplicate can typically be merged,

   .

Answer 2

You could create a new profile giving all your sources and then add a research note, including a link to the other profile, giving the reasons that might be the same person or why you aren’t certain that they are a match.

Answer 3

Lorne, please - whatever you do - do NOT create a duplicate profile deliberately.  Doing so is in violation of the WikiTree Honor Code, despite answers from others telling you to do this.

If the matching profile that was found has a profile manager, you can write to them and ask if they have any more information.  If it is an "orphan" profile (our term for one with no manager) then you can "adopt" it (our term for becoming manager of it).  If you have more information then you can add it to the profile.

If you are not certain that the profile is a match then you can post the information here and some members will carefully investigate to determine for sure whether or not it is the same person.

Comments

I really don't like to disagree with Gaile, but I don't see language in the Honor Code that indicates duplicates are a violation.  But a help page definitely discourages duplicates; see: 

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Duplicates

I like and support the rest of Gaile's answer. ;-)