Question

Hi I'm relatively new & would appreciate any help adding sources as I'm consistently getting it wrong. Cheers Mick

Comments

Nice to meet you Mick, you'll do great here. Welcome!

Answer 1

Hi Michael thanks for asking for assistance in your quest to get sources and/or add them correctly to your profiles. That is awesome to me, that you care enough to get it right. I did start to check some of your more recent profiles and noticed one thing that all of us encountered a time or two. Once you add a source you need to remove the unsourced tags and sentences left on the profile when it did not have a source. Those need to be removed manually. 

Once you add a source you need to go to the edit page, look at the "Biography section" and any where you see 

 "A source for this information is needed" or words like it, just take it out of the sentence it was added to. 

*In addition, on the top of the edit page where the word Biography is, there should be something that looks like 

{ { Unsourced } } above it... take that out.  This one is important as it will remove it from our unsourced lists. 

Another suggestion would be not to use a link that goes to a sign-up page to Ancestry.com 

These are usually spotted as a link to someone's tree on Ancestry or a story or photo on ancestry.

 Not everyone can get on the Ancestry site unless they have a paid account. 

What I did was take a US Census report, birth or death certificates etc and make it into a paragraph like this for example: 

• 1930 United States Federal Census Census & Voter Lists Name Vincent Campodamo Father Vincent Capodanno Mother Rachel Capodanno Sibling Marie Capodanno Birth 1929 - New York Residence 1930 - Richmond, Richmond, New York - Age: 1. Source Information Ancestry.com. [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012.
• Cook County, Illinois, Birth Certificates Index, 1871-1922 BIRTH, MARRIAGE Lists NAME: Thomas Barry MOTHER: Rose Mckenna FATHER: George Barry BIRTH: 9 April 1912, Cook County Illnios ["Illinois, Cook County Birth Certificates, 1878-1938," database. 

Also if you can find a Find A Grave Memorial, you would put the  Find A Grave Memorial number and URL to it like this:  Find A Grave Memorial # 61740497  URL: https://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=61740497

 

Anyway those are my suggestions to start with but for more information you could also check out: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Sources

Comments

One more recommendation if I may, instead of putting pertinent information in a "memory section", it might be better to add that in the actual Biography section. A great help page for formating a biography can be found here:

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Formatting. and https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Biographies (Which gives examples of some biographies written up) 

PS: Don't give up, it takes a while to get used to making a profile look good and you can always add or change things as you go along. 

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Thank you Dorothy very much appreciated

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Your welcome Michael! Also thanks to Iain Old for Best Answer!

Answer 2

Hi Michael,

It's not as difficult as it might seem at first. I had no clue how to source when I first got here, so don't feel bad. Under every record at familysearch.org, there is a "citing this source" line. Under that, just copy the text and past in your ancestor's box. I'd be happy to source a few of your ancestors if you'd like to get a visual idea of how it's done. You could also have a look at my ancestor's pages.

Cheers,

Jourdi

Comments

Thanks Jourdi,

 I would appreciate the help. I have had a little success & think I have conquered it only to do what I think is exactly the same thing and it not work.

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Hi Michael,

It's no problem at all. I added a source to a few of your ancestors as I could find them. 

Here is an example: Maud Lydia Porter

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Thank you, you are an absolute star