Empty profiles from Gedcom import

Question

I propose Empty and Unsourced profiles which have not been updated in the previous 2 years can and should be quarantined for disposal. We have all heard the excuses of why they shouldn't be. These profiles are useless and are cluttering up our Tree. Obviously the person that imported them are not interested in these profiles. If they are in fact useful, someone will more likely than not create a new profile with sources making these dead files even more useless. IMHO I prefer not to wade through hundreds of thousands dead files; instead I prefer a clean, sleek tree that is sourced and pure. Isn't that why we take out the trash in our home.

These profiles can be quarantine, the profile managers notified to either update and source the profile or it will be packaged up and sent to the trash. Do we really want a tree that looks like every other genealogy site on the web???  Don't we want a premier site that is garnered as the best on the web??? Profiles that only have a Name and maybe a Date are of no use to anyone and put a strain on our limited resources.

I am not asking for opinions nor am I complaining, just stating the facts and would like to put it up for a yes or no vote, so we can all work more effectively.

A word about new gedcom imports, we should have stricter rules about imports, no sources, no import. These profiles can be marked as New Imported Profile subject to deletion if profile manager does not source them within a specified time. We have got to slow down the import of dead files or we are going to wind up being an unsourced pile of garbage.

Comments

;-) step number one is if other people agree or not?!?!

I think there is a big part of the community that think it is good as it is today....

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I see. :)

BTW, the two books you mentioned earlier are excellent. I was just getting ready to order them both.

https://www.amazon.com/Evidence-Explained-History-Artifacts-Cyberspace/dp/0806320176/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1482961139&sr=1-1&keywords=Evidence+Explained  
Third Edition $32.95 Kindle Version

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$9.99 Kindle Version

 

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I imported my GEDCOM when I joined in November. I have no idea where it is or how to access it. So, I am putting up my tree name by name, source by source. It is very tedious but at least I know it is the right information. Maybe I don't understand what kind of profiles you are talking about or what info there should be. Would someone please let me know. Thank you.

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Cary,

Give me a minute and I will check on it for you.

Loretta

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Check you email, hope that information helps! You are doing a good job.

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Thank you.

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I agree and also add the ones with "Unknown" as a first or last name with other information. I have run across a few of these in db_errors list. You can't do anything with these either.

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Thank you, I have noticed that too.

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@Ellen
Found another trace that there is a new policy see change on error page Space:DBE_902

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Thank you Magnus.

Answer 1

Hi Loretta,

Could you give us a list of examples, i.e. list at least a dozen WikiTree IDs? Preferably they'd be a random sample, not a connected family, or from the same contributor, etc.

If a profile is completely empty, with no photos, no text, no sources, and no relationships, it serves little value and could probably be deleted if the Profile Manager has abandoned it.

Thanks,

Chris

Comments

There are two Database Errors that deal with a lot of these profiles. (901 and 902). There are ~35,000 public profiles and ~18,000 open profiles that have no relationships or data in the data section. A lot of them have text in the bio but most of it is useless.

Here are this week's lists:

http://www.softdata.si/osebe_staro/ales/wikitree/Err_20161225/901_0000-0000_0.htm

http://www.softdata.si/osebe_staro/ales/wikitree/Err_20161225/902_0000-0000_0.htm

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Thank you for posting these errors. I can add some specific managers too this list as well.

These alone are enough to bog things down.

Thank you to everyone who participated, I always want to see every side.

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The first one of those profiles I looked at has green privacy and yet no visible info as all the relatives were private and the dates not filled in. It had four managers, none of which has been active in 18 months -2 1/2 years. These things ought to be orphaned and opened up.

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Before I knew any better I never put in any sources. Then I learned that I needed to!  It is very important for accuracy and duly started to look up the sources. However I found that after a few years things had changed and I could no longer find the sources that I had entered before. I wonder if that with the buying of information by big genealogy sites eg. Ancestry is not the cause of the loss of sources. My penny's worth, although I am no genealogy fundi or computer fundi.

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Marj, That's why when sourcing it is important to add full citations, so that sources don't get "lost." Instead of just posting a URL that may not work tomorrow, post at a minimum Author, Title, Publication information, (or whatever equivalent is available)

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@Marj
>> things had changed and I could no longer find the sources that I had entered before.

>> I wonder if that with the buying of information by big genealogy sites....

No the problem is that is not easy to do good sourcing and your lesson learned is that you didn't do it correct.

I miss a good discussion about sourcing on Wikitree. Its difficult doing it in your own family tree and even more difficult in a common world wide family tree so that everyone reading the source understands it...

So how do you source correct? That is the rub...

A good start is to do some genealogy training and read books like

1. Evidence Explained
2. GPS Mastering Genealogy Proof

 

 

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Taking care of the Grahams on the second list (open) and would do the (locked) list if they were opened by someone.  They seem to be real people, just lost in the system.

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Thank you all for your comments and suggestions. I think I have got the idea now! I am learning fast since joining and your comments are most helpful. I have spent all afternoon learning and about wikitree.  Happy New Year to you all.

Marj

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Another 2011 profile

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Cares-2

This is so sad...

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That one's weird because it was actually imported that way.

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I went ahead and deleted it.

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Thank you!

Answer 2

If any of them are mine, which they may be since I did originally upload in 2011, please send them to me and I will work on them. I have been working on ones managed by others, might as well also work on mine.

Comments

When I find one (unconnected, unsourced, no profile manager), I re-use the profile preferably using the original sir-name. That takes care of that.

Answer 3

Loretta showed me an example: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/''-8

This looks like a contributor who created a bunch of profiles one day and never came back. The profiles I've looked at have no meaningful content at the moment, but presumably they could have meaningful content if the profile manager came back to edit them.

If Loretta was interested in adopting these Public profiles, she would submit a Trusted List request, potentially to be followed by an Unresponsive Profile Manager request. But I don't believe she's interested in adopting these anonymous profiles.  In situations like these, is there a protocol for the WikiTree Team to contact the inactive member to see if they want to continue here, or if they would like the profiles to be recycled?

Comments

Afraid I am not interested in adopting 53,000 profiles. I am still sourcing my Blood Relatives. :)

But I will be more than happy to dedicate the time necessary to clean out these dead files. I'm not afraid of hard work but I do have a problem with busy work and these profiles are creating a lot of busy work and wasted time and resources.  :)

If I can get some direction as to how to properly handle these pesky little profiles I will volunteer to work towards cleaning them out.

Answer 4

I recently stumbled on a GEDCOM upload of a large family with just the names and connections. No dates, no places, nothing. The classic case for the "trash to be taken out." I did, however, manage to find one marriage record for one couple with all the connected empty profiles attached and so could start putting dates, places, and sources on those profiles. It's a slow process because it is not my top priority, I have plenty to do with my own relations. But eventually I expect that all those profiles from this GEDCOM will be sourced. In the mean-time I would hate for somebody to come along and delete the remaining unsourced profiles just because they didn't "want to wade through ... dead files."

Comments

Helmut my lesson learned is that unsourced GEDCOM files created over at Ancestry has often so bad quality that its a waste of time do research on them. It takes 10 minutes to upload 500 profiles and 10 hours just to get one family ok

I did a test trying to understand what could be trusted in one ANcestry generated tree and its a tragedy

See Space:Lindgreen_Iowa_1880_merges

Genealogy 2016 has new challenges and it takes time to be a ´skilled genealogy person. Time and effort that not everyone would like to invest....

Why should WikiTree be a place to dump unsourced GEDCOM files

 

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@Helmut - click on this link https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/A-709 This is what I am talking about.

I do not see how anyone can source this profile.

Anonymous Anonymous formerly a
Born [date unknown] [location unknown]
Son of [father unknown] and [mother unknown]
[sibling(s) unknown]
[spouse(s) unknown]
[children unknown]
Died [date unknown] [location unknown]

I do not know why anyone would want this in our tree...

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That Anonymous Anonymous profile has a history -- see https://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Beltran-140&diff=38287980&oldid=38287890 for some details. For some reason, the member who created it (who is still the manager) went to some trouble to eliminate the content and convert Juan Jose Silverio, born 1794, into Anonymous Anonymous. It appears to me that he felt that he had made a mistake and he didn't know how to fix the error, so he tried to blank the profile.

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made a mistake? maybe.

Also some people become disillusioned with WikiTree and want to delete "their tree", then upon realizing they can't, do the next best thing and delete all data in each of their managed profiles.

That may not be what happened in this specific case, but in my short time here, I've seen it a few times already.

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Ellen,

Look at this one and see if I missed something?

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Cares-2

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When you posted that profile link, I saw the page, but I was using my phone and its 30-day log-in had expired, so it didn't go beyond that. Now I don't see anything on that page (looks like it was renamed without a redirect).

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It got deleted. It was really strange.

Answer 5

I agree with most of the comments and suggestions made here regarding GEDCOM imports. A quarantine area sounds like a good idea as long as non-guests can either retrieve a profile or request one of the quarantine managers to do it for them. Perhaps this can be extended to include other profiles which, although not empty, are not overly useful. The main culprit here is profiles for those with an Unknown surname. IMHO there should be no reason to allow profiles with an Unknown surname. Where people have information about a person but do not know their birth surname then that information should be entered in the form of a note under the profile of their spouse(s) or their child(ren). Once the surname is established (and sourced!) then that person's profile can be created and linked to the spouse (or spouses!) and children. A search on the surname 'Unknown' indicates "About 231469 UNKNOWNs" and this is increasing daily.

I have joined the Database Errors Project and have spent some time correcting errors - some more serious than others.

My day job involves databases (custom made booking systems etc using MySQL and PHP) so having a database with so many errors (and increasing daily) is disturbing to my psyche, hence my involvement in the Database Errors Group.

Some errors are critical (201 Father is self, 207 Father is also a child, 208 Father is also a spouse, etc) and others are relatively "cosmetic" but should be corrected (610 Birth location in uppercase, 641 Death location in lower case, etc)

Another problem introduced by GEDCOM imports is the creation of profiles that generate 801 Big profile errors. I have looked at one (an orphan) and its excessive length was due to the import including the entire contents of a pdf source as well as a link to that source. Interested people would follow the link so there was no need to include the whole file. This brings me onto a stylistic suggestion but that can wait for another session.

Comments

Yes, I was looking at the 801 errors today. Shameful to say the least.

Maybe they have had all the changes they can digest, IDK.

Maybe a Merge-a-thon should be tackled first, surely that will eliminate some of the empty profiles and take care of duplicates.

Tomorrow is another day.  :)

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Maybe they have had all the changes they can digest. 

The ones I have looked at have a lot of useless information e.g. dozens and dozens of lines showing links to files on the person's hard drive which we, of course, cannot see. They can be deleted as they do not add one iota to the usefulness of the profile.

I have tidied up one orphaned profile just to get a feel for the nature of the problem and how long it would take to fix - it was an easy one as it included the entire contents of a pdf PLUS a link to the online version of that file. Links to files on a personal computer are not helpful.  I plan to try my hand on other orphaned profiles before contacting other profile managers to see if they would like my help. 

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Thank you! So nice to have help, especially from someone with your talents.

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Daryl, I appreciate your comments and your effort, but I have to disagree with you regarding Unknown surnames. Many of those Unknowns are women whose maiden names are lost to posterity. Oftentimes we have a goodly amount of information about these women (for example, the last names she had during her successive marriages to four husbands, the occupations she held as a widow raising her eleven children, lawsuits she was involved in, the date and cause of her death and the location of her grave) -- great content for a biography, lacking only a maiden name. As a woman, I resent your suggestion that these women don't deserve profiles of their own.

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Sorry Ellen I did not mean to raise your ire. You raise some good points and of course women deserve their own profiles as much as any man, perhaps more-so. Although women do account for the majority of those with a surname Unknown there is also a sprinkling of men. What I cannot see the point in is having profiles like Unknown Unknown, husband of (name given), father of Unknown Unknown. These are probably also covered by the Empty and Almost empty profile errors so should be caught in the sort of clean-up procedure suggested above.

Sadly a lot of women do lose their birth names which prevents discovery of their ancestry, which is the real tragedy here. To me my maternal ancestry is every bit as important to me as my paternal ancestry. I am a big fan of the Scottish way whereby women keep their birth names when they marry. Alas even then the very earliest records of Dundee (for example) list only the father with the mother omitted altogether. I also like the Spanish way of naming but do not have any Spanish ancestry.

My great-grandfather was known to be illegitimate but I will not be giving him an Unknown Unknown father.

I take your comments to heart and I see that my suggestion is too simplistic.

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What doesn't kill us, makes us stronger. By discussing all of these issues before any action is taken, allows us to see all sides of these empty profiles. I have been going through each of the 901 profiles, making a spreadsheet of those who have profile information attached at a different level. Ellen helped me to see that some of these profiles are not blank as they first appear to be. Daryl you have pointed out some that are truly blank. I would like to know how many of these profiles are also listed on a merge list. That in of itself raises yet another issue.

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@Loretta can you merge a blank profile?

Sometimes it feels merging is done based on guessing instead of sources which is another problem...

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@ Mangus

Good point.

Re-phrase, almost empty profiles. As I have discovered, not all of the profiles in 901 are truly empty, they just appear to be empty on the surface. If one digs into the changes, some do have information available.

Does this makes sense?

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I can't think of any case where an "Unknown Unknown" profile makes sense. If the given fact is that two profiles have the same parents, it's at least a given that the LNAB for the father is known -- otherwise, how do you know that the other two profiles are for siblings? And there's no point in creating "Unknown Unknown" for the mother; just wait to create her until at least one of her names is known.

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Ditto, I believe, for creating "Unknown Unknown" for a spouse. However I have established the name for Unknown-83782. I have sent a private message to the profile manager. There has been no activity on that profile since it was created on 5 July 2011, and yes, you guessed it, by importing from a GEDCOM file, but the profile manager's own profile indicates activity in 2016 so I am hopeful of a response when things settled down in 2017. 

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Congrats on finding a name for an Unknown Unknown, Daryl. To get your information added to https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Unknown-83782 (a Public profile), I suggest that you do two things:

1. Post your information as a message on the profile page. That way it will be publicly visible while you wait for action by the profile manager.
2. Submit a Trusted List request for that profile. If there continues to be no response from the Profile Manager, the submission of a Trusted List request becomes the first step in the Unresponsive Profile Manager process.