I had no idea

Question

I have been going through my watchlist to make sure all unsourced profiles have the template. I am finding that I am in horror at my performance. I am finding way more profiles with no sources than I thought and many that have sources, are not set very well.

I will have to tackle the latter ones after the source-a-thon but am wondering if I am the only one who just did not realize what their watchlist was looking like.

Comments

Glad you caught yourself, and committed to making good!  Have you looked at your Suggestions (formerly known as Error List)?

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Herbert,

Thank you for letting me know about that page. I was not familiar with it. I am working on  fixing what I can and noting what I can not.

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Lisa,   I use my to do list to help with the "ones that need more"  https://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Special:Showpage&f=to_do

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Robin,

Thank you hun, I will keep that in mind. The ones I was looking at and not being able to do is the pre-1500s ones. I have not yet gone in to get the certification for those and therefore must put a note that it needs 1500s help.

I will keep it in mind though to go there, I quite often put it in a document on my computer and end up with a bunch of random pages. That would make it much easier and more compact.

Answer 1

I have the same problem with lots of early profiles which need updating and inproving.  One useful thing to do is to pull up your watchlist and click on the  last edited column and in reverse order.  This will let you go through the profiles it's been the longest time since you edited.  My earliest ones are from late Feburary 2016 only 2 months from when I joined WikiTree.  So the all have need to be worked on.  You could try making it a goal to work on a couple of them each day you're on WikiTree and eventually you'll get things in order.

Comments

That is when most of mine are from also. I am just going through the whole thing so I can also put the unsourced template on for the source-a-thon. I also have a habit of picking up profiles from other parts of the tree that I am helping with or I add family for others. I have found there are many I do not even need and was pushing the 5000 limit. I have been going through and removing the extra profiles that do not really need to be in my watchlist.

Answer 2

I have the same problem. Ack! But at least this brings it to our attention to get things taken care of. :)

Comments

I just joined today and have made  a couple of serious mistakes in my family tree entries and I cannot seem to be able to correct them. For example I have entered one source as a wife instead of a mother and in my case I entered a anonymous sibling as a mistake. In a state of panic I probably made things worst by trying to correct as I could not see how to delete and re- enter the information.

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Check your profile and the pages with the messages about errors FJ. I went and gave you some steps on how to correct those, We all have those moments when we first start. Breath, you are doing fine.

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Charlotte,

Thank you hun, I am so glad to know I am not alone. I agree, the more that see this the better so we can get more corrected.

Answer 3

I think most of us have unsourced profiles on our watchlist. I do things different however, I look for a source for the profile before I even think about adding the unsourced template. I do not believe that having a contest to add as many sources as possible in a short time is the right approach and in fact it is not going to encourage people to actually figure if the source should belong on that profile. I have seen far too many times sources that could not possibly belong because the other person was in a rush. Adding sources is important, but adding them in haste can breed even more serious errors.

Comments

Hi hun,

Hope your day is a good one. Normally I do source any that I find, right away if possible. I would normally not put the template on but am wanting to participate in the source-a-thon and figured it would be good to start with my own. This gives me the chance to clear up my errors and beautify my family profiles as well and hopefully get in and help others.

There is also a profile or two that I just can not find anything for, they are in different locations (Ireland) so I was glad to be able to send it there and hopefully get some help.

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Ugh, I know the feeling. I manage some adopted profiles and periodically I look for sources, but haven't been able to find any. I also adopted some people I wanted to connect. Well 250 added profiles later, still no connection. I guess it's time to look at them again. They keep laughing at me from the safety of my watchlist. If they keep it up, I'll have to drop them.

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Lol, I too have the laughing wafting my way from the most inner sections of my list. I start working on a project, some mine and some others, and get sidetracked, get into the new one and get pulled another way. I have decided that going through for the source-a-thon and adding all the unsourced is the main goal.