New suggestion on the horizon

Question

New suggestion on the horizon

2.4k views

I decided it is finally time to flag profiles with no Birth or Death location entered as a suggestion. It was split into 3 suggestions all with ID in 140 range.

It is done only for Open and Public profiles, since private profiles don't show locations. Profiles without Birth and Death date are excluded, since they are already listed in 130 Suggestions and are mostly also without locations.

Warning 141: No location are profiles with no location also in relatives and marriage location.
Warning 142: No location, has Marriage location are profiles with known Marriage location.
Warning 143: No location, has Relatives location are profiles with Birth/Death location on relatives.

The number of new suggestions is 3,7 million, which is a lot, but the main benefit will be that the suggestion will show in edit mode of the profile and remind a user to enter at least approximate location.

After reviewing some profiles it seems that 95% of the profiles here are actually unsourced, so this could be a joint action to source the profile and add the locations.

Location	Total	0000-0000	0001-1499	1500-1699	1700-1799	1800-1899	1900-1999	2000-9999	Private
141: No location	748003	38134	10380	41460	98591	328768	210911	281	19478
142: No location, has Marriage location	644645	16730	561	41336	138439	349745	89482		8352
143: No location, has Relatives location	2437214	81153	14423	112386	412574	1344896	421400	25	50357

Edited: Base for this suggestion is clearly described here: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Uncertain_Locations#Almost_Any_Location_is_Better_than_No_Location

asked Jan 26 in The Tree House by Aleš Trtnik G2G6 Pilot (808k points)
edited Jan 26 by Aleš Trtnik

20 Answers

Answer 1 · 2024-01-26T10:07:02+0000

An argument could be made that something of this size is policy, not a technicality, and should be addressed under the procedure for Developing New Rules.

I don't think a week 4 days is enough time for us to discuss how to handle this.

For example, can we mark such suggestions false? In a logical sense they cannot be false: it will be undeniable if both birth and death location fields are blank. On the other hand, people may be tempted to mark them false to make them go away.

You say an approximate location. "Earth" is pretty much bound to be accurate :-) What about continents?

Those are off the top of my head. I'm sure other people will have questions which will benefit from broad and unhurried discussion.

Edit: I remembered it's Friday.

commented Jan 26 by Jim Richardson G2G Astronaut (1.0m points)
edited Jan 26 by Jim Richardson

Developing New Rules applies for changing the wikitree site. Suggestions are part of the project and are not part of that policy.

I do however always ask for objections and comments and implement them if reasonable and possible.

I don't see much room for discussion, since location is either entered or not. But if there will be a lot of complaints, I can always delay the publish or even retract it.

Earth will trigger a different suggestion, since no one was born in space until now, but continents are allowed, although not preferred. Europe is used 4000 times
https://plus.wikitree.com/default.htm?report=srch1&Query=location%3Deurope

BCA does not create any suggestion, as you can see in the Countries table

https://plus.wikitree.com/function/WTShowTable/Table.htm?table=Countries&filter=United%20States

There are also other wariations to use like
British America, British Colonial America, British North America, Colonial America, Confederate States of America, Confederate States, CSA and are all recognized as US. Having Colonial America as most commonly used in such cases is better than nothing. At least you know it is not in Europe.

commented Jan 26 by Aleš Trtnik G2G6 Pilot (808k points)

I am supportive of Jim's comments and argument.

I joined in 2017, guidance for new members appeared to be minimal, and the message was get started and don't be afraid to make mistakes, I haven't yet adapted the search code above but already have a long list of profiles needing revision, and can't do that much faster than I already am.
However even with profiles I've worked on recently, some either only have one record such as a marriage or even one or several child(ren)s baptism or birth registration, and sometimes only the mother's first name.
Despite research no birth or death location can be identified, I can only ever make a guess, and that is contrary to policy.

Some of these suggestions are going to be unsolvable, will there be a way to mark them so people know they've been checked?

commented Jan 31 by Gary Burgess G2G6 Mach 7 (76.0k points)

Answer 2 · 2024-01-26T12:08:45+0000

Thanks for heads up, Aleš. I am afraid I share some of Jim Richardson's hesitations, though, like Jim, I can see that this development may well be worthwhile in the longer term. When there is likely to be huge increase in the number of new suggestions, there would be advantages in giving more rather than less notice and allowing a longer opportunity for discussion in G2G. I realise, Aleš, that this has been on your own agenda for a long time: but there is no clear need to fast-track it.

I deal with, and see, quite a lot of medieval and pre-1700 profiles for which nobody knows - or is ever likely to know - which country they were born or died in, and it could be one of two or more countries. I remove locations from early profiles where there is no evidence which country is right.

I would not want anyone to be encouraged to enter a location for these, unless it is as vague as a continent: I am not sure it is very helpful to put "Europe", "North America" etc in a location field, or whether you would regard that as allowable. For some medieval and pre-1700 profiles, we do not even know which continent is right.

I am not sure how you would see the suggestions being marked in these circumstances. As Jim has said, marking the suggestions as false is illogical. On the other hand the guidance on https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:DBE_Status says that "Not corrected" is meant to be used only to reverse an incorrect marking of a suggestion as false.

However we handle these, I believe we need to have a way of indicating that the suggestion has been investigated, of reducing the risk of people duplicating each other's work, and discouraging people from adding a country as a location where someone could have been born or died in more than one country and we have no evidence to enable us to choose between them.

answered Jan 26 by Michael Cayley G2G6 Pilot (229k points)

Thanks, Aleš. I was responding partly with my experience as a Leader of the Medieval Project, not just as someone who spends a lot of time working on medieval and pre-1700 profiles :-) England and Ireland are already used where there is certainty, or a reasonable likelihood, that it is correct to do so.

General "regions" are by no means always known. Thanks for indicating that Europe would be acceptable where the continent is reasonably certain, though I personally doubt how often it will be of that much value to anyone.

I would not want the Medieval Project to spend any time debating what might be sensible broader regional divisions where no country is known - and it would not make sense to do so, given what was happening with political boundaries over the pre-1500 centuries. Nor will tackling blank location fields be a sensible priority for the Project. Those of us who work on pre-1500 profiles are likely to continue doing what we have long been doing - adding something in location fields of profiles we overhaul where there is enough evidence. There are more important things for the Project to do.

commented Jan 26 by Michael Cayley G2G6 Pilot (229k points)

Answer 3 · 2024-01-26T12:33:53+0000

I agree with Jim this is policy and should be discussed widely.

I have several profiles with no birth location, no marriage location and no death location.

For one person I have only the following information. I know where she lived between 1770 and 1778, because of where her children were born, I know where she was briefly in 1780, I know where she was on one specific date in 1783. Plus one specific date in 1795.

I assume she died before 29 Sept 1812, as she is not mentioned in her husband's will of that date. She may or may not have died in the area where her husband and children were living at the time the will was written.

I could assume that she was from an English speaking background because her first name was Jane or her name may have been Anglicized. There is no information that could suggest a LNAB.

I don't like to make assumptions and add very possibly inaccurate information just to make a suggestion go away.

I have been researching this family for over 10 years, as have many other people. There is no information or sources other than as described above.

I am also aware that there are many profiles that could possibly be sourced if we had a multitude of WT members who are willing to take on more responsibility. They would have to be additional people beyond those already involved in sourcing currently inadequately sourced or unsourced profiles.

Do I mark this False Suggestion as there are no records that provide the missing information? Though she was born, married and died somewhere.

I clear my suggestions, those that can be cleared every week.

This conversation should be moved to Policy and Style.

answered Jan 26 by M Ross G2G6 Pilot (734k points)
edited Jan 26 by M Ross

Well it can be discussed widely for a few years and when everyone will agree on it, I can publish the suggestion.

Adding the location if there is nothing known is really a problem. For instance we have 8K profiles Unknown Unknown (1234-) as seen here.
https://plus.wikitree.com/default.htm?report=srch1&Query=FirstName%3Dunknown+LastnameAtBirth%3Dunknown+Currentlastname%3Dunknown
All of them are also unsourced and there is a question if such profiles should even be on WikiTree. But they are.

This suggestion goes into millions and I think no one will go and correct it by the list. It will however show in edit mode of the profiles and remind the wikitreeer editing it to add at least a general location. There are also some users, that are trying to keep their suggestion list low and they will add locations. I know I will. I have 50 profiles without location
https://plus.wikitree.com/default.htm?report=srch1&Query=Trtnik-2+BirthLocation%3DMissingLocation+DeathLocation%3DMissingLocation+not+b0+d0
that I didn't enter since I wasn't sure of the town, but adding the country will help others.

commented Jan 26 by Aleš Trtnik G2G6 Pilot (808k points)

Answer 4 · 2024-01-26T15:15:09+0000

Aleš, in my opinion this is maybe still within the DataDoctor's Project rules that does not require a general discussion. BUT it might lead to a change of WikiTree-rules in the future. The rule that is or will be affected is the rule that we don't need a location when we create a profile. And I really strongly object this possible rule-change.
There are many people where a location simply cannot be found. Children who were born and died between censuses, people who moved from somewhere to anywhere and there is simply nowhere to find where they were born or died. (For my oldest ancestor I can only say he died NOT in my ancestor's town. But I cannot put it into the location field, because the word NOT is not allowed there.) Children of Notables who lived a normal life with a not notable spouse are also often only noted with their vital years but a location is not findable.
I am really against this suggestion. No, these suggestions are not good. I really fear that WikiTree is going in a wrong direction here, because the Mission of Chris is to have a COMPLETE Tree and when we cannot create a profile because we cannot find a birth location for the life of us, the profile cannot be created. This means the Tree cannot be as complete as it could be. This suggestion is a bad one.
The difference to the 131-134 suggestions (undated profiles) is that a(n estimated date) is needed for the creation of a profile, and as far as I remember the suggestions were also first invented and then came the obligation for a date. So that also shows that a location needed could be the next step. Which is (see above) not good.
To the people who say "you can put any location there": Well, what worth has a profile which has the location "Earth"? I think we all agree that there are no extraterrestrians living here. So such a "location" has no worth at all. And even a country or a continent can be simply wrong and mislead generations of researchers. The simplest way to say: "I don't have a clue where a person was born or died" is to leave the field blank.

answered Jan 26 by Jelena Eckstädt G2G Astronaut (1.5m points)

Show 7 previous comments

Thanks, Aleš. One other suggestion. It might also be helpful if the suggestions guidance indicated explicitly that it is OK just to give a country or continent if there is insufficient evidence for anything more precise. My experience as a Mediator and occasional Mentor tells me that these things need to be spelt out for the benefit of some well-meaning and enthusiastic but less experienced WikiTree members.

When the guidance on these suggestions is more developed, would it be possible for you to consult in G2G again so that it can be reviewed by the wider WikiTree community before the suggestions are put into effect? Project Leaders and Co-ordinators, Mediators, Mentors and others may be able to offer valuable input. These suggestions affect a large number of profiles, and it is important for us to collaborate to get the guidance as useful and clear as we can.

I am sorry if all this is making things slower than you had hoped: but the introduction of these suggestions is a major step, and speed is less important than getting things right. As I have said, there seems no reason to fast-track this.

commented Jan 26 by Michael Cayley G2G6 Pilot (229k points)

No, Heiliges Römisches Reich can be nothing more than an assumption without any source. Most European countries where German is nowadays an official language were (at one point) members of the Holy Roman Empire, that's true. But there are other countries where German is an official language.

BUT we want the things that are in the data fields to be sourced. I do not have ANY source for whatever location. The only location I have are the birth place of his son (but he was obviously living then) and the baptism place of the boy he was sponsor for. But he was obviously living then. IF we had a location field as "lived at one point during his life in" THEN I would be able to give Dietrich a location. I simply don't know and don't have any source where he was born or died.

commented Jan 26 by Jelena Eckstädt G2G Astronaut (1.5m points)

Answer 5 · 2024-01-26T15:37:39+0000

Just for the avoidance of doubt, under current WikiTree policy there is no absolute requirement to enter any location. It is perfectly OK to leave the location blank if it would be little more than a guess with no reasonable basis. Indeed the instructions on uncertain locations steer us towards doing this: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Uncertain_Locations#Almost_Any_Location_is_Better_than_No_Location

Aleš has helpfully indicated that the guidance on these proposed new suggestions will be amended to reflect this.

The guidance on uncertain locations also steers us towards including an explanation of the basis for the uncertain location being included, though that is probably less important where the location is a country or continent and there is no evidence of the person living outside the country/continent. For pre-1700 profiles, there needs to be some basis in reliable sourcing which points to it being reasonable to include the uncertain location. See https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Uncertain.

commented Jan 26 by Michael Cayley G2G6 Pilot (229k points)
edited Jan 26 by Michael Cayley

I am afraid I am too unintelligent to follow Aleš's hesitation about having just "Unknown". We allow people to use Unknown in name fields. I am struggling to understand why the word would cause difficulty in a location field. It is simple, accurate, and what people would almost certainly expect if we are going to make this minor policy change. If we go for something more elaborate, like "unknown location", I suspect many of us would forget to include the word "location". But I am doubtless missing something obvious to others, so please forgive my stupidity.

If Jim decides to make this proposal in a separate thread, we can discuss further there. My main concern, which is relevant to this G2G thread, is to have a way of clearly indicating that a blank location field has been looked at and that there is no, or insufficient, evidence to include any place - not even a continent - in the location field. How that is done is secondary for me. If that means marking the suggestion false, with a comment, I would go along with that, even though it is strictly illogical. I believe we need to include advice on this in the guidance on these suggestions.

[edited for clarity and typos]

commented Jan 27 by Michael Cayley G2G6 Pilot (229k points)
edited Jan 27 by Michael Cayley

Note that a proposal for a specific marker in the location field when research has been done but no location field has been found would also be useful if the strategy of a check at profile creation time suggested by Ros Haywood and Derrick Watson was adopted.

A sticking point for me at the moment is what wording to use for the marker. Here are some ideas:

Location not known
Location researched but not found
Location researched but unknown
Location researched without result
Location undiscoverable
Location unknown
No location known
Unknown (NB Aleš said above this one wouldn't work)
Unknown location

At the moment I'm leaning towards "Location researched but not found". This is deliberately long and precise, to make sure that people entering it have done the background work and thinking that Michael has emphasised.

commented Jan 27 by Jim Richardson G2G Astronaut (1.0m points)

Answer 6 · 2024-01-26T18:09:50+0000

Ales,

Thanks. I think that this will help the overall health of the tree. Yes, there will be some difficult cases as folks have noted above. Just as we have FindAGrave date and other discrepancies.

I took the search that you noted above BirthLocation=MissingLocation DeathLocation=MissingLocation not b0 d0 and ran this through Bio Check for the first 5000 profiles. For those 5000, there were 371 profiles with style issues, 110 profiles marked Unsourced, and 435 profiles that were likely unsourced but not marked.

Then I changed the search to BirthLocation=MissingLocation DeathLocation=MissingLocation orphan not b0 d0 and increased to search 10000 profiles and the results Found 2100 profiles with 1663 style issues; 250 marked unsourced; 309 possibly unsourced not marked

answered Jan 26 by Kay Knight G2G6 Pilot (601k points)

Interesting. Maybe because I took the first 5000 and if those are in profile id order they are the oldest and have been around longer to have had a source added. I found the usual source suspects like "ancestry" and "ancestry DNA" and the name of the person who created the profile. Let me try another this one looking at 5000 starting at 25000. Found 902 profiles with 313 style issues; 113 marked unsourced; 536 possibly unsourced not marked and if I change that to just orphan it is Found 1020 profiles with 846 style issues; 87 marked unsourced; 152 possibly unsourced not marked. Which is surprising, I would expect the orphaned profiles to have a larger count. Finding ones like https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Cook-45705

But when I don't have the orphan qualifier it is showing about 10% of those found don't have sources.

I didn't want to try to sample more than 30,000.

commented Jan 26 by Kay Knight G2G6 Pilot (601k points)

Answer 7 · 2024-01-26T18:24:34+0000

Reviewing some of these comments I can see that i will be significantly less impacted given my focus on rural communities in Yorkshire (I mostly worry about whether they might have strayed across the pennines). However, i can see how it's a far more significant issue for those who focus on countries and even cities (eg London) where immigration is significantly higher and ancestors can originate in a much wider range of geographies.

I'm wondering whether a straightforward fix might be a newly created geography, something like "research has been unable to determine a likely location" to be used where a profile manager has attempted to identify the location without success. That way they can be seperated out from those which really should have a location included in challenges etc. "Earth" might do I suppose, but it doesn't really tell you that someone has thought about the location.

From a checking for matches, I would find this more helpful too, as I'd know it was worth reviewing more than for example if someone had guessed "Australia" (which I then might discount) only to find they actually emigrated when they were ten years old.

answered Jan 26 by Natasha Houseman G2G6 Mach 2 (21.7k points)

Aleš, it's not "just flag". Suggestions which are false impose a burden. I dread late Tuesday nights (my time) each week, when I feel obliged go through and double-check a dozen or more new Find a Grave suggestions where there are burial dates not death dates, to make sure before marking them false, so as to avoid some well-meaning Data Doctor making an incorrect change. This is stressful and takes time from more productive work. Another recently discussed example is here.

There should be a general way of preempting suggestions that one knows will occur and will be wrong, instead of having to mark them false retrospectively. A template, invisible on the displayed profile but listing suggestion numbers in a parameter, could be considered to allow this.

commented Jan 26 by Jim Richardson G2G Astronaut (1.0m points)

I didn't really want to come back on my initial comment as I can see there is a 121 conversation that would be really beneficial between the two of you. But for the record, I think the compromise is birth place category which is long winded and makes people think (so not just earth or unknown) but something like "Researched, see notes, but still not clear."

I have, just this evening, come across a profile, sourced only by a findagrave image. The findagrave link gives birth and death places - it would have been a simple step to add them as uncertain and saved me time in following through the link. It would be shown up in Ales's report and some wonderful person would have added to the profile (and yes I know the profile manager should do so, I have left a comment on the page).

But, some kind of way of flagging those genuinely difficult or never able to know cases will be useful for both current conscientious wikitreers and for future users.

commented Jan 27 by Natasha Houseman G2G6 Mach 2 (21.7k points)

Answer 8 · 2024-01-26T20:19:32+0000

Aleš, just a question.

How many profile managers or what % pay attention to their suggestions lists and actually do something about their suggestions?

On occasion while looking at profiles that connect with profiles I manage, I think quietly to myself " this is all wrong"

His mother is also his sister and they were born less than a year apart. or similar errors. Then I look at the PMs suggestion list there can be hundreds or more. And that is without profile completeness suggestions.

I have infrequently contacted the PM and asked why such glaring errors have been ignored for months or years.

If there is an answer it is almost always is something like this:

It's too hard or I'm not interested or I'm right and I'm not changing anything.

I can and have sourced, edited these erroneous profiles.

What ideas do you have to encourage such PMs to address their own suggestion lists?

Before we add more suggestions that will probably be ignored by a large % of PMs.

answered Jan 26 by M Ross G2G6 Pilot (734k points)

I think what I am trying to say is that if some higher contributing WT members (note I am not referring to any one person or any particular people) who do not work on their suggestions list, why would we add another set of suggestions. Particularly suggestions that may never be able to be resolved.

Yes, in a perfect world all PMs would pay attention to their suggestion list but as is obvious from the overall number of unaddressed suggestions, (based on my viewing of suggestions for profiles managed by established and still active members) why should we add more suggestions that are very unlikely to be acted on by the profile manager.

A better idea is to put more emphasis on educating new or newish members(and unfortunately some more seasoned members) about the importance of providing as complete as possible accurate information for the profiles they create.

There will always be profiles that cannot be further improved as the sources necessary are not currently available or do not exist at all.

commented Jan 27 by M Ross G2G6 Pilot (734k points)

There are more people that do not look at suggestions than those of use that do look at our own suggestions or suggestions for a project or group that we are working with.

As an example, Ales query from last July Connect a Thon indicates that 92,639 profiles were created. Of those, there are still 21,453 Suggestions outstanding!!

Many of them are not difficult but many people do not check on suggestions. There are plenty of people that do not know that there is 1 suggestion list, much less a 2nd one that is different than the 1st.

If the same query is run to see how many profiles and suggestions exist that have a PM, there are 61,336 profiles created last July that have a PM and they have 17,891 suggestions. Therefore, the majority of the suggestions are on profiles that were created and have a PM. It may not be the PM that created it, but they have a PM, therefore, the suggestions are available to be worked on.

For the last Thon, we have 50,279 profiles with a PM that were created and they have 17,733 suggestions. Of the 6,551 orphaned profiles, there are only 943 suggestions.

commented Jan 28 by Linda Peterson G2G6 Pilot (780k points)

Answer 9 · 2024-01-27T02:27:07+0000

I am in favor. This will help me improve the profiles I manage. It's overdue. Thanks. Dan

Answer 10 · 2024-01-27T17:26:21+0000

What happens as described in my answer above?

For one person I have only the following information. I know where she lived between 1770 and 1778, because of where her children were born, I know where she was briefly in 1780, I know where she was on one specific date in 1783. Plus one specific date in 1795.

I assume she died before 29 Sept 1812, as she is not mentioned in her husband's will of that date. She may or may not have died in the area where her husband and children were living at the time the will was written.

I know she existed, there are records for dates and places, she is an important part of the family's history, not being to create a profile for her (or for someone similar because I don't have a birth or death location) would leave out a part of the family history.

I do have locations for the places where she was on the dates listed. But they aren't where she was born or died.

commented Jan 27 by M Ross G2G6 Pilot (734k points)

But surely she is likely to be born in [Country] and can be marked as unceratin?

commented by Gill Whitehouse

If the known dates are - for example - in one of the Australian Colonies, the person could have been born anywhere. If the family was like mine, there is also the possibility that that person, or several members of the family, returned to the "home" country for any number of reasons, which would mean they possibly died there or on the way there. (And my mob came from all over the place - including at least one born during the voyage.)

If a location is not known, an empty field is better than a wild guess.
Better would be "Unkown" being an allowed word for location data fields (or Not Known).

commented Jan 27 by Melanie Paul G2G6 Pilot (423k points)

No, Unfortunately no such guess can be made. Her husband William was an immigrant from Ireland to the American colonies in 1768.

They married at some time after that date and before the birth of their first child on 4 Dec 1770.

She could have been a recently arrived immigrant from any part of the British Isles or other places. She could have been the daughter of or descendant of people who had arrived in the colonies from any number of places in the previous 100+ years.

She could have been anyone that William met in the 2 years after his arrival and before their marriage assumed to be in 1770 or perhaps earlier.

Marriage records which could have given a LNAB were destroyed along with all other documents when the church in the place where they lived in 1778 was burnt to the ground. That is if they married in that place. William bought land in that location in 1773. which is after the birth of 2 children.

William is found on a ship's list as arriving in 1768 and that information is also found on other records.

After 10+ years of researching this family, along with many others who are their descendants, there just is no more information available.

commented Jan 27 by M Ross G2G6 Pilot (734k points)

Answer 11 · 2024-01-27T18:44:25+0000

I'd like to split Ros's suggestion above into two parts.

The first (can't save without location) does I think require separate debate. I'm not against it as long as it allows for something such as "Unknown" to be a valid location in the same way that "Unknown" is a perfectly valid name entry. With that caveat I think it works and anything that prevents further suggestions being added via new profiles to a very long list is good as far as the Data Doctor team is concerned.

The second (make it into a new Category rather than a Suggestion) is absolutely spot on. I'd suggest that profiles with no locations are far better managed in the same way that profiles with Unknown names are - they require a class of their own designed to attract people who are interested in fixing that type of issue.

You could advance the same argument for profiles with no connections - should they also appear on the Suggestions list? Much better in my view to have them as a separate issue as they are now, again attracting attention from people who like helping in that way.

If you add these location issues as a new Suggestion they will distort every Data Doctors table everywhere. People (especially Data Doctors) do look at these and they are more likely to respond positively and help more if they can see their efforts making a difference rather than being lost in the noise created by such a vast increase in overall numbers. Doubling the number of suggestions on the list may well hack a few dedicated people off, and we need more helpers not less.

Answer 12 · 2024-01-27T20:31:39+0000

I've been estimating profile birth and death country for a few months lately when working on "no birth" or "no death" dates. Usually those profiles are (1) orphans (2) GEDCOM imports (3) unsourced (4) without a biography.

I guess at only Year and Country based upon some information on the profile or the profiles of relatives in the belief that even a vague estimate is better than nothing. I also clearly indicate that the estimates are a guess.

I keep this note available on my desktop screen and copy/paste it into such profiles after making appropriate deletions and edits whenever making these guesses. The first line goes above the ==Biography== heading. The last line goes into the "Change Description" box. Header lines are there for convenience.

{{Estimated Date|Birth and Death}}

== Research Notes ==

* '''Birth date is a guess''' based upon birth of spouse in 1856, assuming about 20 years per generation.

* '''Death date is a guess''' based upon birth of spouse, assuming a lifetime of about 70 years.

* '''Birth location is a guess''' based upon spouse's birth place, assuming they lived in the same country.

* '''Death location is a guess''' based upon spouse's birth place, assuming they continued to live in the same country.

== Sources ==

<references />

== Acknowledgements ==

Cleanup GEDCOM. Auto bio. Insert birth and death dates and countries. Research notes.

Answer 13 · 2024-01-28T00:47:37+0000

I'm very glad for these suggestions. One can't know who the profile represent if it has no locations. It will help me as a Data Doctor if the profiles have locations, I'll know directly if I'm going to work on the profile if it says Europe or North America instead of being blank, countries are even better, but blanks are the worst.

If you are uncertain about the location, click the uncertain-button, that is what I do on the death location after finding a person who migrated from Sweden to another place. I don't do much research outside Sweden, and if I leave the field blank, it would be much harder for people who do research outside Sweden to find the profile.

It will also help me in finding connections if the profiles have a location, as I wrote before, without locations it's hard to impossible to know who the profile represents.

In the long run this will help to reduce the number of profiles without locations, not only by profile managers and Data Doctors correcting the suggestions, but mainly by getting a warning before creating the profile. It will also help against creating of duplicates and also lower false potential matches in GEDCOM-reports.

It wouldn't be over 3 million suggestions if these had existed years ago, and the number of profiles that we don't know who they represent will only increase faster without the suggestions. These are suggestions and not rules. The guidelines can be seen here: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Location_Fields and, as said before and are in the guidelines (in bold):

As a general rule, entering almost any location is better than no location.

Answer 14 · 2024-01-28T12:41:33+0000

According to the number, these suggestions will be with us for over 10 years.

A manager (experienced one) will have the suggestion on cca 10% of the profiles, while the ones that just imported a gedcom and didn't do much work on wikitree would have much more work, but they don't look at suggestions.

Locational project will get very little of these suggestions, since there are no locations entered except for 142. Other projects that are not location based (Notables) could get much more depending on the work they did in the past.

I checked for you and you will not get any 140 suggestion on your managed profiles.

https://plus.wikitree.com/default.htm?report=srch1&Query=Robertson-6617+BirthLocation%3DMissingLocation+DeathLocation%3DMissingLocation+not+b0+d0

commented Jan 28 by Aleš Trtnik G2G6 Pilot (808k points)

W's idea, or Paul's below, offer ways of trying out the new suggestions at less than full scale before they are introduced universally. It will take years to deal with so many in any case. It's better to proceed slowly now and see what the effects are than to rush in with all 3.7 million at once.

Before the new suggestions are introduced for non-orphaned profiles, there needs to be a viable course of action for people like Jelena who manage profiles where it is impossible to enter a birth or death location without guessing. WikiTree policy is that a guess must not be made.

The solution could be according to the proposal I posted; in the form of clear guidance on the space pages for the suggestions, saying that under such circumstances they should be marked false, and giving conditions such as a requirement for research notes; or through some other suitable method that is thought up—ideally, by you, Aleš, in conjunction with Michael as he has offered, as part of a holistic approach for the new suggestions. But it would be quite unfair to leave such profile managers with no way out.

commented Jan 28 by Jim Richardson G2G Astronaut (1.0m points)

Answer 15 · 2024-01-28T15:02:25+0000

Reading the suggestion by W Robertson about possibly rolling this suggestion out by dates made me think of another possible compromise.

Would it perhaps be an idea to start off by just producing the suggestion for orphaned profiles? That would be consistent with other location suggestions such as 615: Birth Location Country not recognised. It would still give over 1 million profiles for people to work on improving (based on https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/1695136/new-suggestion-on-the-horizon?show=1695172#c1695172).

For members who want to see if any of the profiles they manage are missing both birth and death locations, perhaps they could opt-in through the profile completeness hints with an equivalent to 459: Profile completeness - Birth location Country not recognised?

Answer 16 · 2024-01-28T17:09:45+0000

I would rather have a blank field in the location field when there is no documentation to support an actual location.

I’ve done data stewardship, governance, mapping, modeling, integrations and ETL rules etc. much of my professional life. Nulls are annoying, but bad data is worse. We need these fields to be searchable - a freeform textual explanation is not reliably searchable.

I really would prefer that we work on better drop down lists and error checking to remind folks to use the correct name and spelling. Accurate locations, standardized names and spellings are what we really need. And, while frowned upon, maybe we ought to consider “unknown” as a viable option because that may be the fact.

Answer 17 · 2024-01-29T05:11:33+0000

As Project Coordinator for the Scotland Project, I work on their Suggestions weekly. The majority of Scotland suggestions are for profiles that have a Scotland location that are managed by PMs, not Project Managed profiles. The statement has been made that most location oriented projects will not be affected, but I don't agree. Most profiles are probably also covered by at least one project that is location based.

Based on my review, the count for Scotland total suggestions for the 'main' group, that includes Locations, will double in size, with an additional 20 to 30,000 new suggestions!!! If that is what some people will also see happen, I expect a lot of people will mark them as False Suggestions because they don't want to be bothered with them. I have seen it on other suggestions that were added recently.

Creating suggestions to try to enforce that a location should be entered does not seem to agree with Wikitree requirements for a location. The suggestions will continue to increase because profiles will continue to be added with no location, either because no source has been found or the person adding the profiles doesn't want to look for one. There are no birth / baptism sources for many people because they were not required at the time or they may have been lost. Death sources can be just as difficult to find in earlier days.

Searching for profiles with no entered locations may be a problem, but if a 'phrase' is added, or Earth, Europe, Asia, as examples, those will be 'estimated' generic locations. Searching for United States is worse because there are so many variations of what is in use, IF USA has even been added to profile locations. Possibly there should be an Estimated Location template, similar to the Estimated Date template, which would be more obvious on a profile. If location is included to check for duplicates when a profile is being created, as many have complained about, entering a 'phrase' or Continent will not find the duplicates if the actual country was entered.

I have been running a Scotland Challenge for January that we did not post publicly on G2G because we are concerned about people just entering a birth or death location in a profile that has none, without properly sourcing it. This challenge is similar to the new suggestion 142.

For Scotland, using wikitree + Queries, we have:

At least 10,300 Open profiles with a 19th Century date with a marriage location of Scotland, but no birth or death location. We have added locations to about 350 similar profiles this month.
- If I exclude those with no birth or death dates, it would only exclude 315 profiles
At least 24,300 Open Profiles (all dates) with only a marriage location. This will be Scotland 142 Suggestion, if all dates are used.
- Excluding those with no birth date would only exclude 800 profiles
Reviewing the 142 Suggestions for 19cen in the table above and searching for Scotland, it could be 15,000 suggestions, which is more than the query above.

If these suggestions were to be added to the weekly suggestion report, it will increase our suggestions substantially, so I would suggest that it be done initially for 19th century profiles only, or a portion of those, because there is a better chance of finding records for the more recent profiles. Sources have not been found for many of the earlier profiles, as Michael said earlier. A substantial increase in Suggestions to a member or a Project can be very depressing and be counter-productive.

Answer 18 · 2024-02-04T18:45:55+0000

When I first heard about 3.7 million more suggestions, I thought it would be overwhelming. Then I thought my project wouldn't have any. But in my ongoing Acadian work, I have found some with neither location entered. This raised my awareness of the condition and heightened my interest in finding accurate locations. I do hope you will settle on some kind of button to mark that research has been done and no location found.

Categories

New suggestion on the horizon

Please log in or register to add a comment.

Please log in or register to answer this question.

20 Answers

Please log in or register to add a comment.

Please log in or register to add a comment.

Please log in or register to add a comment.

Please log in or register to add a comment.

Please log in or register to add a comment.

Please log in or register to add a comment.

Please log in or register to add a comment.

Please log in or register to add a comment.

Please log in or register to add a comment.

Please log in or register to add a comment.

Please log in or register to add a comment.

Please log in or register to add a comment.

Please log in or register to add a comment.

Please log in or register to add a comment.

Please log in or register to add a comment.

Please log in or register to add a comment.

Please log in or register to add a comment.

Please log in or register to add a comment.

Please log in or register to add a comment.

Please log in or register to add a comment.

Related questions