Adding profiles over 300 years (or 200??)

Question

I just read something from a new user... and I know that most of the problems we EuroAristo's have are related-- and anyone else with very historically significant profiles in their tree feels me on this... but new users are unaware of what zillions of duplicates do to the system...

I propose that in addition to being required to sign the honor code an additional 300+ year old profile page be signed... it doesnt even need to trigger until you start creating DOB's manually of 300 (or 200?).

there are multiple issues with this... one, people dont check for duplicates and assume people are not the same... each level back is more and more likely to be there... in addition the name field guidelines arent known... like you should not find a "De Neville" duplicate... but you WILL find a NEVILLE duplicate... because it adheres to the naming conventions...

One could manually post "Of England" profiles for 10 generations before realizing the house of Plantagenet is listed as Plantagenet, etc... (and I see this happening, often)

Newbies just dont know this... and it is REALLY stressfull to those of us that do know to see people keep coming along making new profiles... when they just dont know what they are doing... as its not a "Wrong" way, its just not the chosen way we do it here...

I would vote for things on the list to at least include looking at (READING!!) the HSP homepage - http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Historically-significant_ancestors and naming convention subpages... as well as know that the user groups exist...

At a MINIMUM at least make the HSP homepage explain the most obvious issues with not being able to find existing duplicates and why it is important to NOT make duplicates.

Thoughts?

 

 

Answer 1

I wish those HIstorically significant ancestors had a different identifying radio button 

something 'shocking' -

brightly neon color not used anywhere else on WikiTree ?

blinking light!!! ?   

square/triangle/star  instead of round?    

or some other way to tip you off when looking at potential matches/merges - that would indicate:

This person already has a major profile, lots of details and lots and descendants and they're already HERE.

Sometimes potential match lists are quite long, some may be a similar name, but different dates etc.  Some have no detail, some have lots.  Some come from imported gedcoms so you can't check any sources, because the link brings you to private or some other unavailable site or a  pay to view site, so how do you know?

If the fairly complete Historically Significant, already merged profiles  were somehow noted in a very obvious manner, that was indicative of : Hey, I'm HERE, Look at ME FIRST - I think it would be very useful.

Comments

I have had this in my head for a long time... I like blinking lights! jk :)

But I do agree something special for these special people!

Answer 2

Lindsay, I think this is a really interesting idea. Something like a "Wiki Historian Honor Code" that you have to sign before adding or editing profiles over 300 years old.

BTW1: There's no reason matches shouldn't come up when creating a new profile if "Of England" etc., is an alternate last name. I think we fixed that with the last search improvement.

 

BTW2: I think we need to find a way to start cleaning up biographies. Every time I look into these examples the sore thumb that sticks out is the horrible, merged-in biography. These pages are scaring people away. We're not going to attract the right kind of genealogist collaborators with these pages. I can't imagine how many people are seeing them and deciding that WikiTree is for junk.

 

Chris, I see what you're saying. I don't know if having another Privacy Level for these would be right. Some of what you describe could only be done if there were a separate Privacy Level. But some might be done through the "locked IDs" that we now do. Lindsay has also been begging for a banner on profiles that identifies them. That's on the to-do list.

 

Chris

 

P.S. I just created two new questions:

• If there were an Honor Code for editing historically-significant ancestors what would it include?
• Would it be possible to use the ID locking mechanism to identify historically-signficant ancestor profiles?

 

 

Comments

I understand that but its a matter of manpower and volume of profiles at this point. We are working as fast as we can, for the few of us that are working on it...

I know that isnt obvious in the forefront, though... The finished LNABS (except Plantagenet)  I have are bio cleaned up for the most part...

Thats another reason everyone merging into them is no fun, have to remove extra bio junk, managers, make sure merge notice is there, etc... after EACH merge

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Thanks for all you do, Lindsay.

Maybe my problem is that I keep looking at the Plantagenets as examples. :-)

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i know i need to make that next priority... those bios because we constantly use them a s examples

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For cleaning up profiles, could we get a specific user group for this? I know that I don't always have the time to do research necessary for merges, but I do have time to grab a few profiles and scrub junk links and GEDCOM gibberish from the bio. We could set up guidelines on what is appropriate to remove from bios and what subsections could be set up, so interested parties could get started. The user group list could be used for questions and heads up on certain profiles, and members from other user groups could ask the cleaners to come in and handle certain surnames or family groupings. (Also, it eventually gets a bunch of stuff cleaned pre-merge, so less clutter ends up in the final profile.)

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Erin, you rock! I love it. Yes, yes, yes.

Maybe we could use our new Projects space for this. It could be an experiment to see how it works.

Lianne is just getting started on this so we haven't announced anything yet. Erin, I'll make sure Lianne connects with you on this.

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I still think editing pre-merged profiles is mostly a waste-- Im always a fan of merging first unless the profile bio is so huge it will be eaten by the system... I would rather go through one final profile and delete ten sets of junk at once than have to look through 10 profiles individually... but if someone just wants to do it that way it doesnt hurt anything... Ill take volunteers any way we can get them.

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I vote this one to be the first for "cleanup"

http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Plantagenet-373

I dont even know what to do with that! HAHA

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I added two new questions...

http://www.wikitree.com/g2g/4330/who-would-be-interested-in-helping-clean-up-wikitree

http://www.wikitree.com/g2g/4331/volunteers-clean-profile-merge-duplicates-would-standard