Category:Unconnected profiles (deletion suggested)

Question

I was checking Unconnected profiles category and subcategories. and I noticed, there are quite a few connected profiles in them. I know it is impossible to check 8240 profiles regularly, but I can.

I can either create a suggestion for you, or instruct EditBot to remove all connected profiles from this categories. I checked and more than 1693 of profiles in Unconnected or Unlinked categories are connected to global tree. 1055 of them are connected to global tree over public connections, and other 650 through private ones. I would run it each week after the dump is processed.

EditBOT could also move profiles between Unlinked and Unconnected categories depending on having any relative or not. But I really don't see the need to have two category trees for actually the same thing. And the third one for Unconnected Notables.

Comments

 "move profiles between Unlinked and Unconnected categories depending on having any relative or not. But I really don't see the need to have two category trees for actually the same thing"

Agreed. When i'm looking for an unlinked profile to work on, I go to Unconnected and sort by o fewest connections.  Lists many pages of profiles to choose from

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I've never seen much purpose in Category:Unconnected_Profiles, since the automated system at Find > Unconnected allows me to locate Unconnected profiles by a variety of different criteria.

I guess people have been adding that category manually (that's a lot of work!), and the category seldom gets removed when an unconnected person gets connected because the connection often is made through an edit to some other profile.

What's the purpose of having this category?

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I was not even aware that such a category existed. I use Find Unconnected and I look at the numbers to see if they are linked to a small group or not.

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The category was pretty much all there was before the Unconnected page existed (it was created in Sep 2015).

The categories are still kind of useful if you want to find unconnected people in a specific place, specific project, or people that are notables. Since you can only limit by surname.

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Well here is a full list of this categories.

http://wikitree.sdms.si/function/WTWebCategoryNavigate/Category.htm?Category=Unconnected_Profiles&Levels=3

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If someone still doesnt know, you can also search like this

http://wikitree.sdms.si/default.htm?report=srch1&Query=unconnected+notables+New+York

and click Get Profiles

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I added categorisation tag since the subject shifted to completely delete them.

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First thousand connected profiles removed from Unconnected categories.

http://www.softdata.si/wt/EditBot/AutomatedUnconnectedLog%2020171104%20174137.htm

I will run this bot on a weekly bases, probably on wednesdays.

Answer 1

I think the Unconnected category should be removed altogether. The categories are for grouping profiles. There is no need to group unconnected profiles. Like others have stated there are easier ways to find unconnected profiles.  Also, as stated, it is impossible to edit to remove the category because more often than not, a profile gets connected because a relative's profile gets connected.

Comments

Isn't this a category (and related sub-categories) that was manually added to profiles and that can be removed by deleting the category code/text?

The link from our Watchlists uses the Special namespace; the profiles in that list wouldn't appear in any Unconnected categories unless the category code(s) had been added to those profiles.

Is my understanding of the issue not correct?

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I'm all for removing the Unconnected categories - it's far too labor intensive to maintain them and we can easily search for what we need without them. The only alternative would be to teach and mentor everyone on WikiTree that they MUST use the categories, and then constantly be on guard to keep them up - or even worse, add this to another team's responsibility and then increase their size to push to maintain them. There's just too many to keep track of this way and it would drive someone batty trying to keep up with them. I think they're mostly forgotten now except perhaps by a very few - removing them now most likely won't have any impact out there.

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Lindy - I think the special function from our pull-down list is based on connection to the global tree and not on the categories added to the profile. These manually added categories are helpful to the few who might be using them to track a small number of profiles overall that are currently unconnected. I think they're more special function than anything else, and since so few appear to even know about them much else use them, it would be simpler if they just went away. At least in my humble opinion.

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Scott, I understand the value of the Unconnected Notables category, plus a few other Unconnected Profiles categories that are related to focused projects like the Titanic project. I think those focused categories could continue to exist while we get rid of the Unconnected_Profiles_by_location categorization for profiles like https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Hite-594 (one that I selected kind of at random).

However, I know that you could access the list of Unconnected profiles that have the Notables project profile as manager by logging in as the Notables project and selecting Find > Unconnected. It seems to me that there should be a technical means of making that list (and similar lists for other projects) available to other interested WikiTree members (on a periodic basis, if not all the time), so it wouldn't be necessary to maintain the Unconnected Profiles categories.

(edit : unsourced -> unconnected, clarification)

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I added a few keywords to WikiTree+ Search, that you can use.

• unconnected That means that profile is unconnected. It is on 5.544.231 profiles
• unlinked That means that profile has no connections. It is on 2.709.301 profiles
• connected Profiles that are connected to global tree. It is on 9.761.073 profiles
• privatetree Profiles that are connected to global tree through private connections. It is on 538.034 profiles
• treexx to show all profiles on one unconnected small tree. This will be used on internal links.

This keywords will enable you to search for any unconnected profiles. 

Examples: (Click Get profiles on displayed page)

• This lists all unconnected notables in new york born in 18th century
  http://wikitree.sdms.si/default.htm?report=srch1&Query=unconnected+notables+new+york+18cen
• This lists all unlinked notables in new york 
  http://wikitree.sdms.si/default.htm?report=srch1&Query=unlinked+notables+new+york

You can try almost any combination of words.

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This is biggest unconnected group of people at the moment. It has 3744 profiles, that can be connected at once.

http://wikitree.sdms.si/default.htm?report=srch1&Query=tree7&MaxProfiles=5000

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Unfortunately, the definition of Unconnected used on Ales' server is very different from the way it's defined in Wikitree. On Wikitree, only  about 3.4 million profiles are Unconnected. The difference (about 2.1 million) exists because of people who connect through private profiles (many of these connections are private because they are living people); those connections can't be detected by Ales' data analysis.

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Actually That is not entirely correct. I found a way to reduce those false unconnected. It is privatetree  number. Those are connected on wikitree. And I will increase this number in the future, so it will be close to WikiTree number.

Answer 2

I think removing the category from those that are connected is a great idea. As far as removing them altogether, I don't know about that. I agree the unconnected tool works fantastically, but there are some folks who use specific ones. Before moving forward with any deletion of those categories, I'd like to hear from project members who may still be using them. Thanks Aleš for helping us out!!

Comments

I had no intention to delete them. I was thinking of merging them into single location tree. But here all comments are about not using these categories at all.

Answer 3

I agree with Abby, that removing the category tag from all the connected profiles would be of huge benefit. I do sometimes use the list for the county of Sussex, (I added many of the category tags for that county long before we had Find > Unconnected People), but it has been a problem maintaining it, and checking and removing the tags has become an onerous task.

Answer 4

I think the problem is that so few people even understand the need to connect people to the main tree. It seems like every week, somebody starts a thread asking what "Unconnected" means, because a 568, 569, or Unconnected category has shown up in their watchlist.

I will admit that I haven't been watching the unconnected categories that I normally watch lately, because I've been chasing off on other projects. At one point, I had the British Columbia Unconnected category all emptied out, but now I see that it's filled up again.

I agree that using EditBot to remove unconnected categories from profiles once they're connected would be a great idea. It would save time for connectors who go into a list to try to clear it, only to find that bunches of people in the list are already connected.

I didn't create the unlinked category, and I don't know who did, but I do think that it's important to be able to find completely unlinked profiles.

If I remember correctly, the last database dump you sent me listed about 2.5 million branches with a size of 1 (which would be the unlinked profiles). Since the total unconnected profiles are about 3 million, that means that roughly 5 out of 6 unconnected profiles have no connections at all. If we're going to bring down the total number of unconnected profiles, at some point we're going to have to address those. (Personally, I think a challenge/connect-a-thon would go a long way towards addressing that problem, but I have absolutely no ambitions to try to run one.)

That said, I don't know that it's necessary to have an unlinked category. If you created a suggestion for profiles with no links at all, that should help identify those profiles with a lot less manual effort. On the other hand, if 2.5 million profiles are going to be too many for a suggestion, then we can stick with the categories until we can get those numbers down to a more manageable level.

I will say, though, that using EditBot to move people out of the unlinked categories into the unconnected categories once they have a connection to at least one other profile makes a lot of sense.

As for the unconnected notables categories, I can see replacing them with reports, something like what you did with the unconnected profiles. Just let me know where to find the reports, give me a couple of weeks to replace the links to categories with links to the reports, and then you can move all the unconnected notables into the normal unconnected categories.

Comments

the more I read these answers the more confused I get - so would it be a mistake to delete what is in my  unconnected profiles in my watch list or just ignore them as I do not know  any more information then what is already there not even sure how they got in my watchlist to start off with

                      Martha

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Martha,

I definitely don't recommend deleting data, because somebody else will eventually have to research it and re-enter it. If you have unconnected profiles in your watchlist, that's not a black mark against you or anything. (It took me ages to connect my family to the main tree, so don't give up. Either you'll make the connection eventually, or somebody else will connect you.)