Which choice is better after a merge? Leaving Ancestry and GEDCOM notes, or deleting them and calling it Unsourced?

+31 votes
693 views
Some profiles "appear" to have sources, when in fact they contain old artifacts of old GEDCOM uploads and/or no facts, but references to Ancestry trees. Personally, I hate to leave all of the gobbledygook in. Would it be better just to clearly say the profile is Unsourced?
in Policy and Style by Sandi Wiggins G2G6 Mach 6 (69.2k points)
I have several thousand people in various Gedcoms.  Tried one very small import.  For me I found it easier to just add one at a time.  I'm still trying to find them all to add the sources and ensure they look okay.
I totaly agree whenever i touch a profile i try
to clean it up and remove all meaningless junk, and
 replace it with real sources.  
I lrefer to use sources from from free web sites so anyone can see them.
Thank you T. Cassidy and Linda Sibley for your  tips.  OIt sure would be nice if this site would have a "Tips from Other Genealogists" section here, if they don't already have one. It sure would make moving the files a lot easier. From now on I am going to move them one at a time.As much as I like this site and it's GEDCOM rules, it sure made a mess out of the several hundred people that I added. Still think a lot of the way they do things here. Just needs some tweaking.
neither/both ... if Ancestry/GEDCOM info is all there is, they aren't a good source so the profile can be tagged Unsourced, but don't delete the info, since that IS the source of it!

2 Answers

+28 votes
 
Best answer
I'ld leave it in until such time as good sources are added. You could always add them to the Unsourced Category; the GEDCOM and Ancestry Reference may prove useful to whoever comes after.
by Rosemary Jones G2G6 Pilot (259k points)
selected by Gwen Fleming
Thanks Rosemary. I'll keep that in mind as I forge ahead.
My personal preference is to move such info to the bottom of the bio/sources/etc. editing section, placing them under the "Notes" header.
Rosemary how is the name of a GEDCOM file useful? Also that name should be in the Changes tab.
It's not the name of the GEDCOM that is useful but the content. I'm assuming that there is content and it's not just the reference that says it was uploaded by xxxx on this date.
I've yet to see reference to a GEDCOM that is more than a filename, unless it's a link to a family tree on ancestry.com (usually) or some other site. But typically, when I see "GEDCOM" on a profile, it's simply a name.
I was thinking of all the statements in a bio that show up when a GEDCOM has been loaded and the bio not cleaned up.
There may be useful stuff in the Gedcom blah-blah. For instance I'm trying to reconnect a tree where some links between family members have been lost. Some of the profiles have family lists in them and it helps you see that there are existing profiles for parents (though you can't find them), or some of the children have been linked to the family and some have not. But it's only helpful when you're working on it. I personnally find Gedcom bios so ugly that I'm sorely tempted to erase them completely each time. (But don't listen to me. I'm a newbie).
Isabelle -- I tend to delete most of it, too. So many times, one opens a profile, only to find several screens of nothing. For example, there'll be a list of a dozen or more jpg images that exist, somewhere, but were not uploaded with the profile. Gone!!

I am not one of those who thinks the more you have, the better. I like to keep it short, with links in case someone wants to look more deeply. It should not be a 10-minute treasure hunt to try and locate if there's (say) marriage information buried in there somewhere. Plus there's all that GEDCOM-specific information that is 100% irrelevant like User # or most recent changes. There can be privacy issues, too, with email or home addresses included. There's often very little worth keeping, but you have to look in case it mentions a Census record or book or something.
Agree, Rosemary, in fact when I see that a profile has been sourced by Ancestry.com that is the first place I go to see what they used or what was available on other trees.   I usually get a hint.   The actual links are usually broken, but, just knowing that there was a tree on Ancestry.com that was used to create the profile is a great place to start.
I got helped yesterday by the name of a Gedcom.  I remove the 'sources' that say 'Ancestry trees' but leave the piece that says who uploaded it and the GEDCOM name.
+7 votes
Yes, if a merged (or any) profile has a lot of duplication and clutter, by all means winnow it out to make a readable bio. I delete a lot of it, but the stuff I am unsure of I hide with <!-- in front of what I want to hide, and --> at the end of it. The profile then looks neater, but all that stuff that could mean something to somebody is still on the edits page. If nothing better than a family tree is cited, a I add {{Unsourced}}, and keep the tree under '''See Also:''' between the <references /> and the === Acknowledgements ===. Often there are Ancestry census records cited-- which to me are a notch above useless--  I turn those into inline citations. If it's a profile that means something to me, I go to FamilySearch and find better citations for those, with accessible images.
by Stephanie Ward G2G6 Pilot (116k points)

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