Time to remove all profiles with no vitals?

Question

If unconnected profiles have no vitals shouldn't they be removed altogther!? There has been time enough for their originators to do something about them.

Answer 1

I would think removal would not be the course of action but rather motivation to look for some kind of information to complete the profile in order to connect it to the world wide tree. I would find it as a challenge rather than just give up and "delete" them. If you know of such a profile, can you provide a link so that way someone may be able to work on it?

Comments

I'm surprised you've never come across any as there are heaps of them!

---

None really like what he was describing. I found some with missing parents, siblings, spouse, kids, or death date.... tons with gedcom clutter but nothing like that.

---

Here are 4 to start with: Unknown-146, Fleischman-2, Jonas-4, Bruno-3

---

Thanks for the examples. I looked at Fleischman-2 - and there are five copies of Veltin Fleischman in Wikitree.

Merge is under way for four of them since middle of August - including Fleischman-2. The others have more info, which will surely be kept in the merge.

The fifth is entered as the wife of one of the others. A different problem.

---

That's great Eva. Well done indeed

---

I cannot take credit for the merge proposals :-) - I just noticed them.

But I agree with you that there must be many of those profiles without any kin and no facts but a name. Well, Unknown-146 and the like don't even have that. Unknown-148 seems to be the dumping ground for other similar cases, merged away.

Merging away, not deleting is the wiki way of doing away with people.

---

"I'm Veltin and so is my wife"?
I'll get my coat....

Answer 2

What do you mean by unconnected?  Lots of times a profile is the father or mother of another profile and still isolated from the worldwide tree.  And of course there are profiles which are created automatically to connect siblings.  If a provile has no connections whatsoever, I'd be ok with that ,but not if there are local connections.

Comments

Newbie here, Jack Henderson-9982, agrees. After a period of time with no activity,

---

I wouldn't agree. I'm doing a one name study and I often start by adding a person from a cemetery audit.It can be some time before the rest of the profile gets fleshed out and connections made. If only people would obsess as much about finding primary sources as they do about deleting other peoples' stuff!

Answer 3

The Data Base Error project defines and suggests the following:

902: Unconnected empty open profiles

http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:DBE_902#Action

Answer 4

Only this week I came across such a profile, scant info and completely disconnected, when I was working on a particular surname for the connectors project. I sourced him then decided to add the father. His profile came up as a suggested match when I tried to create him, another disconnected profile from the same PM. I then thought well if there's two, there might be others and added the siblings in the same way. It didn't take long and it reunited a whole family who were disconnected upon import of the GEDCOM.

Comments

Gillian: How fantastic is that?! Well done.

Answer 5

Absolutely not.  Sometimes people (like me) do research on their direct ancestors and add the siblings for others.  I have plainly noted on my profile that Ancestry is my main Genealogy records and don't necessarily add everything 4 or 5 times for each website.

Comments

Kelly, I agree 1000%. When I work on a family, it's not just my direct line ancestors, it's the whole family. I'm not going to omit siblings just because they aren't my direct ancestors, they're probably somebody's ancestors, and if I've made it easier for someone else to connect with family, all the better. I may only have one person's information as a source, but it's a place to start, and I trust that they'll all connect to the Big Tree eventually. If not me, then someone will find the link.

Answer 6

Whatever you do, don't go wiping out what data is already there. It might not mean much to you, but it might be just what somebody else needs to make a connection. Just today, I was working through a family from a GEDCOM upload which had gotten all disconnected as part of the Lost and Found Project, and I came across a profile which had had all the original data (except for the name) deleted, and then replaced with the data for a different person, born in a different year, in a different country. Fortunately, I was able to go back into the changes page, grab the original data, and create a new profile for the original person.

But I would really prefer that people not do that. The only way I knew that the current data wasn't for the original person was because the profile number was in sequence with the rest of the family (as happens with GEDCOM uploads). I understand the desire to make things neat and tidy, but those stray bits of seemingly meaningless information might be just the clues that somebody else needs. So please don't sweep them under the rug.

Greg

Answer 7

If you remove a profile then the descendants connected to that profile no longer have that connection