Who would be interested in helping clean up WikiTree?

+12 votes
725 views

This is a springboard off comments by Erin Breen on this post:

http://www.wikitree.com/g2g/4090/adding-profiles-over-300-years-or-200

 

I know how much I focus on European Aristocratic profiles but we need help with the site as a whole. Who would be interested in helping clean up profiles... this could be several things...

 

1. Merging Duplicates

2. Cleaning up Gedcom/junk data from profiles

3. Merging multiple biographies, notes sections, sources, etc

4. Categorizing profiles- like tracking down Royal profiles and adding Royalty Categories

 

I know there are a TON more... suggest something if you like it...

 

If you want to handle ALL pieces of certain profiles, great. If you want to handle bio cleanup of profiles fellow users submit, only, AWESOME... we need help in any way we can get it!

 

Who would be interested?

 

Also, I added ANOTHER question on standards for this, here:

 

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

 

 

 

in Requests for Project Volunteers by Lindsay Tyrie G2G6 Mach 1 (19.6k points)
edited by Ellen Smith
Count me in.  I've been trying to do that as I run across them, but I wouldn't mind working from a list as well.
Ill give you a list...

http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Plantagenet-70
http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Plantagenet-378
http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Plantagenet-373

These make my head hurt... and I keep giving up at E(dward) and running away... how will I get to the rest of the alphabet at this rate??
I've been looking at http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Special:Longpages to find really bad ones. I generally avoid ones managed by really active people, like Lindsay, Roger, etc., to avoid stepping on toes, but it seems that maybe Lindsay doesn't mind. :P

Just this morning I edited the longest profile on WikiTree down to a typical small profile. It just had LDS baptism info duplicated several hundred times.
Oh, thats useful! Of course it makes me want to cry at how many are Plantagenet's!
Haha 3 Plantagenets are nothing. I just got through merging 20+ duplicate Henry Adams and John Adams of MA, though there's still a few differences left to be resolved, and the bio is still a work in progress. When I finish the merges I then merge the biography/source sections (it would be nice if these sections were merged in the right order automatically, but that would require parsing the words properly).

On long profiles I provide first a quick summary paragraph. Next all of the firsthand references/sources, in chronological order (parents, birth, childhood, marriage, children, death). Next all of the sources merged together in a list, with all of the 'noise' removed, i.e. a single ancestry.com or oneworldtree link, no comments or 'click here' or 'created by'. I leave ancestry info in place but merged down to a single non-duplicate link, so that we at least know the info originally came from ancestry.com even though we can't view the info. I put those at the bottom of the sources. Any sources with specific firsthand knowledge (census, birth/death/will records) or links to sites with firsthand sources, I put first in the sources list, with a comment about the info contained if not obvious from the website name. Next I add <references/>. After that, I move 'created by' 'imported by' 'firsthand knowledge' info to the bottom of the page, in the order of creation. I believe that the profile history info is still relevant, but probably the last thing that profile reviewers want to look at, thus at the bottom. I try not to duplicate biographical info available elsewhere, linking instead.

Hi Timothy,

I merged the ones that hadn't already been done, except for http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Wheeler-1897. That one has different parents. Are you sure it's the same person?

I merged some of the parents, but most of them I set as unmerged matches, because they had whole trees attached, and I would've been here all day merging up the tree. :)

~Lianne

I'm in but what's the standard?  I know some of mine have messed up info that came from my GEDCOM.  I'd like to make sure I'm doing the sourcing the right way.
1) a comment:

I think that one day, I'd like to take a more active role in volunteering for special projects, clean-up or otherwise. I'm still pretty new, and naturally less knowledgeable about how everything works.

2) a question:

Is this something we should be doing on the profiles we already manage? By which I mean, are we supposed to be deleting all source references at the bottom of our managed profiles? Or are we deleting only duplicate source citations?

3) another comment (lol)

I recently realized uploading my rather large gedcom was only the beginning of the work - merging, cleaning(?), etc were the real "meat" of the work.

Thanks for letting me air nube-ish questions

~ Matt
Ahhhh, I see. Thank you Bob Fields - I should have read your comment before posting mine. This clears it up nicely.
would be glad to help.

7 Answers

+5 votes
I already mentioned this on that other question, but I'll say it here too. Erin and I have started Project:Profile Improvement! http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Project:Profile_Improvement

Also, there's a Project:Categorization. http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Project:Categorization

We'll use these to bring together interested WikiTreers, as well as useful resources. I'm super excited about this!
by Liander Lavoie G2G6 Pilot (454k points)
+4 votes
I'm willing to go through and edit obvious typos, Weird naming mishaps (I think...), Fix up the locations stuff,( It would be nice to  be able to have a searchable birthplace field etc.). However my tree is just getting started really.
by Living Belcher G2G6 (7.9k points)
Great! Sign up under the page

http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Project:Profile_Improvement

just edit the page with your contact name and specific interests if you have some. Glad to have you on board!
The link itself won't let anybody but coordinators do anything including adding names. Where would be the appropriate place?
Hi Richard. I had thought that anyone could edit those pages, but I see now that you're right, only Supervisors can at the moment. I've emailed Chris to see if this can be changed. In the meantime, I'll add your name to the participants list. Sorry about that!
BTW how does one go about getting more universal editing priveleges? A lot of the stuff with truly bad errors in it is not editable at all by me unless I ask for editing priveleges which a LOT of people will not give, or have abandoned the wiki altogether.
Do you mean for editing profiles? Even Supervisors don't have much more power there. You can already edit Open profiles. As for the rest:

1) If you see a profile that is for a person over 200 years old, but it's not Open, let me know, and I'll open it.
2) If a profile manager is not responding, see http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Unresponsive_Profile_Managers

Does that answer your question?
+5 votes
5 years later and this post still applies, and is more important than ever. The big changes are Sourcerers, Connectors, Biographers, and Data Doctors. Anyone know the membership and profile numbers from July 1, 2012 versus today?
by Bob Keniston G2G6 Pilot (264k points)
+4 votes
I am confused by what this post is asking for? Are you proposing a new project or sub project?

I know we already have the Profile Improvement Project in which we do all that you mentioned.
by Emma MacBeath G2G Astronaut (1.2m points)
LOL Emma, I was puzzled as well. That is a post from 2012! It's been bumped by Bob above.

Quite a few projects have been put into place since, but the issue is still current though, isn't it?
Oh my gosh, Isabelle!  LOL.  I didn't even check the date!  I usually do :-)  Thanks for clearing that up!
+4 votes
How can I help with this
by David Urquhart G2G6 Pilot (167k points)

Hi, David!

This is quite an old post. :-) 

If you're interested in helping out, there are a number of ways you can chip in.

First, add the CHALLENGES tag to your profile by going here: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Special:Following

You can also look into helping through the Profile Improvements or Arborist projects.

Finally, you can go to any Surname page (see: My WikiTree > Surnames) and click on the Suggestions link to find errors that need to be fixed. Here's a link to the URQUART profiles: https://www.wikitree.com/genealogy/urquart

Have fun and thank you for offering to pitch in!!! :-D

(p.s. These aren't the only ways to help, but they'll give you a good start.)

+3 votes
Love to I really enjoy making a messy profile look nice.

Jules
by Jules Charman G2G5 (5.8k points)
+3 votes
Um, unofficially I've been doing this for a few years now...
by Richard Shelley G2G6 Pilot (247k points)
That's because this thread was from 2012 !!!
Why don't we close it?

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