Best practices for cleaning an uncleaned profile after merge?

Question

I've come across a lot of 'uncleaned' profiles after merging and I think my next thing will to start tackling some of these and get them off the error reports and make the profiles a lot more readable (ie nicer).

I was wondering what are some of the best practices to consider when doing this. I know a lot of these hold data that has carried over from other website's trees and some of the links for sources appear to lead to nowhere...so before I commit folly, I'd rather get some helpful suggestions to help honor the people these profiles are about.

If there is a page someone can point me to, could you please point me in the right direction?

I encourage those who have done this in the past to give me some advice. Thank you in advance for all your input. I probably won't select a best answer, but someone else can. I believe all input can be helpful.

Comments

Gecdcom imports can be tricky, merged or not as there is a lot of 'stuff' there and I always worry about deleting something important in the quest to make things comprehensible!

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My best advice after the other responders' advice, Raewyn, is to focus on each profile individually and fully.

My second best advice is to copy the text section (at least if it is large or contains lots of GEDCOM data) to an offline program (Notepad, Wordpad, etc.) so you can work on it offline before you make any actual changes.

My third best advice is not to worry about deleting GEDCOM data; it will still be available in the Changes log. And deleting it as a whole unit will make it easier to restore in full or in section if you decide to do so.

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Deborah, that was my concern too - not wanting to take out something that might be crucial.

 

Thanks Lindy for the tip about the changes, the ability to restore etc.  I think I will go with the suggestion of starting in notepad and working that way. I don't just want to edit something just for the heck of it. Even if some people may have uploaded GEDCOM's and then disappeared forever, someone else one day may be interested in those profiles and if they're all messed up, well it might be a bit disheartening to begin with.

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I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who gave me their ideas, suggestions and links. I wouldn't want someone to go in and tear up my profiles (they're welcome to add sources if they wish!) , so I'm trying to consider the same for others - even if the profile may have been abandoned by the original profile manager (I'm speaking in general terms here - no specific profile comes to mind).

I'm sure all your answers will be helpful to others too.

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Deborah, don't be afraid of GEDCOM cleanups unless you know nothing about inline sourcing! It does seem intimidating at first, but if you watch Julie's video, it will ease your fears. (I know because this was also my story until recently!) Julie is a great teacher.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gJMhj-93fw

Answer 1

Mostly clean up involves removing duplicate data and combining the remainder into one  Biography, Sources etc sections.

Here is a page with a good guide for removing gedcom junk https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:GEDCOM-Created_Biographies

Beyond removing duplicates, I don't remove sources, working links or not - they could contain important clues to someone

Comments

Hi Patricia. That is a really good link for exactly what I'm looking at. I was too scared to delete anything really when just doing basic error fixes. I don't want to upset anyone. But if improving someone's profile helps someone else out, then it's a win-win. Tidier for Wikitree and tidier for a researcher with valid links to check into.

Well, I think I'll go find a profile and start on a notepad, as suggested by Lindy and work through some of the stuff, sourcing and removing the extraneous stuff that doesn't apply to a regular page (ie, not Ancestry).

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Thank you for seeking advise before jumping into this much needed housekeeping task - you are now ready to tidy up some messes. As I'm doing merges, just noticed something I do that I didn't see mentioned and I frequently encounter, is a discrepancy in a date or place, In such cases, I make a note something like:  Alternate birth date from merged profile: 1942  and mark the date selected as uncertain if no sources are found to prove which is correct.

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Thanks Patricia. And thanks for the tip regarding alternate birth dates on merged profiles. I do appreciate all the input!

Answer 2

You can also read this help page on biographies...

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Biographies

Comments

I feel it would be most helpful if questions were answered instead of links being given. 

I universally remove duplicate 'things', also the automatic blurbs that used to be appended, "you can remove this", etc. 

Also I verify that the 'sources'; from the GEDCOMs do not contain real sources, just references to Ancestry and remove them.

Often when the GEDCOM puts in 

Birth

Birth 1 Jan 1850

Birth Place Wabash, Indiana

Birth State Indiana

I condense that to

Birth, 1 Jan 1850, Wabash Indiana Untied States,

 and remove all duplicated words. 

This goes for "Christening" "Marriage" "Death" and any other listings. 

That's the kind of answer I'd like to see on all questions, answers not links. 

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Thank you for that link Guy. Knew that page must be down one of WikiTree roads, but couldn't locate it. I used to have those places bookmarked but sadly, did some housekeeping and eliminated too many.

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Hi Tom - good point about verifying the links are just to Ancestry. Ancestry while great sometimes, is an utter mess other times! Thanks for your suggestions.

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Hi Guy,

Thanks for sharing that link. It has some helpful information, I must confess I don't even use, when looking the section breakdowns.

The more I am on Wikitree, the more I find out how massive this site really is and not just loaded with family trees!

Answer 3

I do these things:

Look over the data in re birth, death, and marriages ,and edit it to remove mis-spellings, abbreviations, inclusion of USA too early, failure to include too late, etc., then I copy and edit that and add the place of burial to form a brief introductory bio. I add

== Citations == with <references /> under it; == Acknowledgments == with info in re the creation of the profile, when & by whom, and == Sources ==. If any links don't work I try to find a working link; if I can't I list the non-working link(s) & the date I attempted to access them.

I add censuses & an image of the census (& refs); a section === From ''Findagrave.com'' === with that info (& ref info of course).I add an image of the grave (& request permission to use same, of course).

If I can find marriage and/or death info from a primary source, I add that -- plus images of same.

I don't always do all of these of course -- just as the spirit moves me, I confess.  And of course I try to be sure it's all in chronological order.

Also, I try to put the Wikitree ID in for all or most of the other individuals mentioned, a link to Google maps for all obscure places, a link to Wikpedia articles for items of interest.

Here's one I did recently: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/McCord-623.

Also, if I am making dramatic changes to a long, repetitive, etc. bio, I  sometimes copy a whole original bio into my word processor, save it as a .pdf. and upload it to the profile and link to it in the bio.

In re sources, if I am ambitious, I clean them up so they are intellgible, findable, etc.

Pat

Comments

I perform a merge cleanup similarly, since many times a GEDCOM is involved, and sometimes it is two or three GEDCOMS to sift through.

In McCord's bio, the links could be enclosed in a set of brackets, so that they don't take up so much real estate and look neater. Perhaps I'm too much about aesthetics, but I don't see all of those long links in, say, Wikipedia. (I changed one as an example - number 3. I can revert the change, but I wanted you to see it.) You did a lovely job with that profile, Patricia!

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If there is a name not spelled correctly in the source information then that could be a clue that the misspelling originated in the source. That should not be corrected because a usable link may be easier to find searching for that misspelled name.

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I don't think you need to include images of census docs that are already in place at family search though. Just the link to the document is enough, since it can be viewed at familysearch. If it is at ancestry or another paid site, a link will only work for people with paid subscriptions. Those sites have their own TOS as to using their images.

Answer 4

There's a lot of great info in these answers. Just wanted to add one thing I didn't see and only just started doing myself after reading about it in G2G for what to do with personal files. I do my normal clearing of duplicate info and headers, and fix any minor errors I see. But for any type of gedcom clutter that may mean something, even if only to the person who put it there, rather than delete it as I used to, I now hide it between <!-- and -->. I know that deleted info can be restored, but it feels less intrusive to me to hide it where it can easily be found, just not visible to the public view.

Comments

What sort of gedcom clutter are you talking about? Not "User ID" and "Data changed on whatever date," "APID" and the like, right?

But otherwise, good idea, Stephanie!.

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Stephanie, good idea about hiding the data instead of deleting the data.

Not all deleted data can be recovered. if the profile gets merged into a lower numbered profile or LNAB is changed, then the information in the changes tab is LOST. Only the information in the biography section is moved to the new profile.

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no, its not lost... you can still view the changes of the merged away profile

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Here is an example. Note the best but was the first I found of the ones I've seen:

edited the data for Johann Jacob Beck. (Merged Peck-745 into Beck-520

Where are the changes to Peck-745 on the profile Beck-520?

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The previous changes from the profiles that are merged away are not on the new profile!

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click the link for 745: https://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Special:NetworkFeed&who=Peck-745

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Uhhhhh... no, Natalie!! Seriously, I thought that was the stuff we can delete without qualms. I'm talking about family trees, personal files, incomplete source names that might mean something to someone, those image codes or whatever they are that have @ with a number; basically anything I'm not sure about.

Please tell me if I somehow misunderstood the value of those things you mentioned.

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Dennis,

That link does not give you any information about the changes to that profile or even what information was added when the file was created. When you clink on the link for "imported the data" below it takes you to the new profile. The information is the lost.

Michael Glen Snider imported the data for Johann Jacob Peck from My Ancerstors.ged [Thank Michael Glen for this]

 

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Stephanie, I was just checking! No worries.You did not misunderstand.

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That's a good idea, Stephanie! The expression link that is hidden. I did that with one of my profiles...I actually requested that nobody remove the unsourced template because I only have one source and it's for the marriage, not much in relation to the person's history prior to that. If they find another source, by all means, delete the unsourced category template. But that wasn't a merged profile.

 

And yes to the others that have commented about the data being deleted. It's not. I've seen the changes. Last night I observed the profile I had edited and it was almost blank (orphan) and much less anemic when I was done with it. Seeing the side-by-side comparison is also an encourager.