Can a GEDCOM be composed to be right first time after upload?

+4 votes
105 views
Suppose that we were living in an ideal world (called Lifelines or whatever) where our GEDCOM files contained exactly what we choose them to contain, neither more nor less. Is it possible to structure those files in such a way that after a GEDcompare and approval of certain identifications, no post-editing of the WikiTree profiles would be required?
in WikiTree Tech by Dirk Laurie G2G6 Mach 3 (39.5k points)

1 Answer

+5 votes
Wow, great question Dick,   While I believe you can get very, very close, the true answer really depends on the style you like your Profiles to have and the amount of data and sources per each name you are adding.  

I create gedcom files from Ancestry com.  I create new trees specifically to load to WikiTree. I take my large trees and make new smaller ones which allows me to verify the data again. But, the finished product, while close, does not make a great looking Profile to me.  Now I include some things that probably could be left out, like some name variations from different records, I feel they are important and the GEDCOMpare Add tends to bunch them together in one paragraph. I have to put a carriage return between each to separate.  You can clean this up when in the Add function, but you are still in essence, working on your import.

Also, I add categories for military service, cemeteries, etc, and those are WikiTree related and need to be added after the fact.  Yes, you can put them in the notes area ahead of time and import them, but some Categories are placement dependent and I have not yet devised a means to have them pop in where they should be without intervention after the import.

And some things will still have to be tweaked, Current Last Name and Other Last Name are not imported and sometimes the marriage data needs to be added manually.

So while I believe you can considerably cut your Post Gedom Import Clean Up time by building a lean clean gedcom file, you will still need to tweak those with more than one or two sources to have a good looking Profile that follows WikiTree Styles and Standards.

The GEDCOMpare has really helped in allowing you to work on your data before actually saving it.  The previous system, you had to clean up your imports, no exceptions, as they were funky.  LOL
by LJ Russell G2G6 Pilot (219k points)

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