2018 Spring Clean-A-Thon / Team 811 (merge cleanup) Chat

Question

Hello Team 811!

This is where we will hangout, share stories, commiserate on dreadful merges, ask for help, keep each other awake, and generally have a good time during the 2018 Clean-a-thon, April 21-23 from Saturday 00.00.01am til Monday 11:59:59pm EDT (GMT-4).

Take a minute to add an answer and introduce yourself to the group. If you've not checked the Team 811 page lately, check that out too. There are some tips and tricks on there that you might find helpful.

Comments

I've just updated the error report on the Team page with the final update from Aleš. That's what we'll be working on so get your cleanup supplies ready.

---

Thanks, Debi! Don’t know what we’d do without you!

---

You'd have been fine but I'm really glad to be able to help. I really enjoy the behind the scenes coding and stuff.

Answer 1

I guess it's me first since I'm instigating ...

I'm Debi and I love making merged profiles readable. There! Now that I've confessed to the first part, I'll also admit that I seldom do it because I seldom find duplicates for the profiles on my watch list. That's why I'm nutty enough to look forward to the Clean-a-Thon.

I live in Florida but most of my ancestors are from North Carolina. I also research my husband and ex-husband's families from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Florida.

I'm going to miss part of the event because our local Genealogical Society meets that weekend. Both before and after the meeting, I facilitate a WikiTree Special Interest Group. That means that I'll be missing in action from 8am-4pm on Saturday. I'll do my best to make up for it by sleeping in cat naps and working the rest of the 72 hours.

Answer 2

Hiya, I am Cindy~a compatriot of Debi's!  We hang out on some of the same Projects, like Greeting, Messengering & Rangering!  I do not participate in a lot of the challenges, but this one is really a cool one and like Debi I love a nice tidy profile especially when it was left in the aftermath of an old gedcom and now the profile needs a dustbuster!  I am looking forward to this cleanathon as I have something specific I can embrace!

I live in Florida as well as Debi, (someday I am going to get to her Genealogy Group!).  I love it here even though there is no history in Florida.  HA, just kidding!!  My family lines I am studying come from mostly West Virginia and Pennsylvania!  I look forward to our challenge and want to help as much as needed!

Thanks Debi for inviting me!!

Comments

Yay, it's Cindy!

Answer 3

Hi everyone! I'm Lori in Virginia and I started this group last year. So grateful to Debi to step up as co-captain because my life has been crazy this year. I had planned to take the Monday off for the CAT but I've missed a lot of time recently with a stomach bug, court and a car accident. I may still take that day, I'll have to see how I feel.

Recently discovered a half-sister through DNA. She lives in the town I was born in, Pensacola and we were born almost two months apart. Lived most of my life as an only child and now I have two half siblings. (Found a brother 2 years ago)

Most of my research is in Missouri, Kentucky, Arkansas, Tennessee and Oklahoma.

If you know anyone interested in the CAT that doesn't have a team, please recruit them for Team 811!! We need all the folks we can get.

Comments

Are you ready, Lori? Let's do this!

Answer 4

HI

I'm Don

While I live in LA now my family started in western NY.  I'm new to this process.  I have used Ancestory.com to build my tree and RootsMajic and FamilySearch to add to it and to try to find errors/duplicates.  Based on the ancestory work I then created GEDCOMs and have added to WikiTree primarily Sage/Brownell/Beck/Baldwin.  The good news is that I was able to contribute new people to the tree.  The bad news is that the GEDCOM import gave me really messy merges-the bios look really cluttered and have many sources OR the sources didn't transfer in at all  :-(

 

Not sure what I did wrong but...

So since I made the mess, I'm gonna try to help fix it; I needed to learn how to created sourced Bios anyway so this seemed like a good way to learn!

 

The ancestory to wikitree merges seem to use a combonation of "approved" and unapproved control codes which I am now trying to understand.  This all reminds me of WordPerfect but without the colored coding  :-(

There are a lot of tricks I dont think I have figured out yet, we need a clever person to write a macro in Word that helps create the Bio which will automatically format the sourcing footnotes.  I wish.

Some of these imports I have look so complicated that I think I'm better off just erasing what was pulled in and starting nearly from scratch.

Oh well.

 

I made the newbie mistake of assuming that the FamilySearch ID actually meant that the person was "well-sourced" verified.  WRONG.  Wish I had learned how to export a GEDCOM from Wikitree sooner than last week.  It would have saved me a lot of pain.  :-)

 

I'll be in and out all weekend tryintg to help

My wife thinks I'm nuts.

This has become a obsession since I retired.

Once I figure out how to do the Bio and Sourcing I think I will be dangerous

Comments

Hi Don, thanks for telling us about yourself. If anyone had watched me while I read, they would have noticed me grin several times as I saw myself in your words (retired, obssesed, WordPerfect, gedcom cleanup, dangerous LOL). Watch out for that!

When the Clean-a-Thon is over, check out the Profile Improvements Project's welcome thread here in G2G. Even if you don't join the project, the links in the first post may provide just the tips you need for the next phase of your cleanup.

 

Answer 5

Hi, I'm Paul from Toronto, Canada.  

When Ales first reported this error, there were profiles with around 30 merges!  By the end of the last Clean-a-thon, we were down in the 10 merge range as the upper limit.  I am happy to see that the max merges now are around 6.

I've checked the Canada profiles.  There were a few 3 merges.  I've cleared them (open profiles) for warmup.  I think I'll start to just clear the max merges without regard to location.

The nature of this Suggestion is that I won't generate high cleanup stats, but that is ok with me.

Comments

Hi Paul and thanks for coming back to Team 811 this year. Slow and steady for us; it won't win a high number race but it's a definite win for WikiTree as a whole.

Answer 6

Hi. I have had less time for the Clean-a-Thon this weekend than I initially planned, but I first cleaned up all errors on my own profiles (not too many left, none 811), and then started working on profiles with 811 errors in Warren County, Kentucky (where I have ancestors). So far I have cleaned up two orphaned profiles, both with 811 errors and one with an additional 835 errors, and added some sources.

Comments

Cleared orphan 811 profiles in Kentucky and a couple of orphan 811 profiles in North Carolina (but one of the North Carolina ones I worked on also has a father died too long before child's birth error that I didn't have time to fix).

---

Thanks for your work on the 811s, Lynn. I think we did great.

Answer 7

Hello everyone, Looks like we have made a dent in the 811's.  Didn't have as much time as I would like to spend on them but have cleaned some of the orphan's and added sources which many seem to lack.

Comments

I'm just now catching up on emails and discovered that I'd missed this. You did great and thanks so much!