Spring Clean-a-Thon 2018 Sandringham Strollers team chat

Question

Hi Sandringham Strollers

This is where we can get to know each other, discuss what suggestions we are planning to work on and generally chat and have fun throughout the Clean-a-Thon. Fun and friendly is the priority.

We are planning to work on some of the more complicated suggestions involving England profiles - focusing on quality rather than quantity. We are also a great team for people who are just starting out with data doctoring - we can help you find some suggestions that are easier to work on, and you can just take your time!

This is the link to the Spring Clean-a-Thon help page: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Spring_Clean-a-Thon which has the times of the Clean-a-Thon and timezones. A word of warning - I'm from Australia, so will be sleeping at all the wrong times. So if an 'England-based' person wants to take on to be deputy, just pipe up.

Feel free to post and introduce yourself to the others on the team.

England Error Report for the Clean-a-Thon-https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/DBE_ErrorList_ENG

Gillian

Comments

I love the team name Gillian :-)

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Thank you Emma. We're starting to wind up towards the big weekend!

Answer 1

I just fixed up the three sisters of this guy:

Apsley George Benet Cherry-Garrard (2 January 1886 – 18 May 1959) was an English explorer of Antarctica. He was a member of the Terra Nova Expedition and is acclaimed for his historical account of this expedition, The Worst Journey in the World.
. . .
In 1922, encouraged by his friend George Bernard Shaw, Cherry-Garrard wrote The Worst Journey in the World. Over 80 years later this book is still in print and is often cited as a classic of travel literature, having been acclaimed as the greatest true adventure story ever written.
 

 Thou shalt not get distracted by interesting profiles while Spring Cleaning! LOL

Comments

Another one - Thou shalt not get involved in real life while spring cleaning.

I’m sure there are another 8 to be proclaimed!

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3rd commandment: Thou shall not drink anything except coffee.

Answer 2

Hi fellow Sandringhan Strollers, I am Shaun from South Africa and I am honoured to be part of the team.
Thank you Gillian for adding me.
This is my first Clean-a-thon so any advice or assistence will be most appreciated.
Nice to meet you all

Comments

Welcome to your first Clean-a-thon Shaun,

Just to get you started, you might like to try to clear a few 802, empty profile suggestions, which I find one of the easiest to do.

Choose profiles of people who lived during the census years, and have some locations mentioned and family members attached to them. I tend to just use the familysearch website, and try and add two or three sources to each profile, along with the standard headings that should be in the bio section.

Another fairly easy suggestion code that is in need of some work is 851, gedcom uncleaned interpret date. If the date has already been corrected, then simply remove the gedcom statement from the bio. Otherwise add the date from the bio to whichever location it refers to, and then tidy the bio. The three easiest formats to correct are a number string, as in 1361925, those that contain 'th' as in 13^th June 1925, and those with '/' as in 13/06/1925.

Whichever suggestion codes you chose to work on, always try and remember to leave a comment in the 'Explain your changes' box. For the 802 suggestions I'd put something like 'Clean-a-Thon 2018, added bio headings and sources'. And for the 851, something like 'Clean-a-Thon 2018, tidied gedcom date error in bio'. The profile manager will then know what you've done and it should limit any feedback that you get.

Maybe you could have a little practice before next weekend, so you feel happier with what you are doing.

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Thanks Carol! Great advice for Shaun.

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Thank you Carol for the great advice

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Hi Shaun

Just one other point please update the status once you have amended any errors.

I sometimes also leave additional comments for example

"Messaged Profile manager with link to the suggestion list"

I use this if I come across profiles with several family members with same errors. I had one the other day a new member 15 profiles same error.

See you around

Janet

Answer 3

I’m new to Clean-a-thon & happy to be here

Comments

Hi Lin - excellent. I'll add you to the list. Carol's advice to Shaun would be useful for you to read. Any other questions.... just ask!

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Welcome Lin

Answer 4

I'm planning to work on gender '500' errors across England. I'll focus first on the 17th century.

Comments

I noticed lots of Johans in that list which are probably mostly false errors.

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Hopefully they aren't married then - that makes it really complicated!

Answer 5

I've added links to the Custom Error report for England to our Sandringham Strollers page, plus a tutorial and a help page. 

Here's the link for the Error Report for England - https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/DBE_ErrorList_ENG

Comments

Thanks Gillian

Can you post the link to the page here for us all?

Ops just spotted at the top

Janet

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Just added the actual error report on the chat page! Thanks Janet.

Answer 6

Hi Everyone

 

I plan on working o n the 640 and 641 locations starting with the 1700 through to 1899

Janet

Comments

Excellent, Janet - hopefully you'll be able to clear all those for England. Thank you.

Answer 7

Hello Strollers, I'm working this weekend, away in Germany, but I will do what I can to help in my spare time. Would looking at the ref tag errors be useful (861, 862, 863 ) or should I tackle more complicated errors ?

Regards

Joe

Comments

Hi Joe, great to hear from you! Whichever errors you feel that you can focus on while being away will be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much.

Answer 8

Hi everyone, 

I've already posted on the Sandringham Strollers team page that I'm going to be concentrating on Sussex date errors, and mainly the 205,6,10 and 305,6,10, (father or mother too young, too old or dead before birth of children). Some of those can be quite complicated, so will also try and clear some easier ones as well, just to give my brain a rest. And having looked at the list of England suggestions, I guess I could clear a few of the 811, uncleaned profile after merge as well. Maybe we could all tackle a few of those, just to get the number down. Aleš has run a few county specific reports this week, one of which is Sussex, so I've got a ready prepared list to work from.

Here's a link to show the individual English counties covered 

Comments

That's great Carol. I agree that the date errors can be quite complicated and often take some research as well. Thanks for tackling these. And definitely work on something easier to give yourself a break.

Answer 9

I will also be looking at father or mother too young, too old or dead before birth of children type errors, concentrating on those West Country counties that have parish registers on Ancestry (Dorset, Somerset, Wilts)

To get a few contributions in (I know from experience that I can get stuck on a family  for a long time )  I'll start with something easier such as 826 (inline citation doesn't start with <ref> .We have quite a lot of those. I'll start pre 1500 and work forwards in time.

Comments

Great Helen! Thanks a lot. Sounds like a good plan. With you doing those counties and Carol focusing on similar errors in Sussex that will work really well. They are such good errors to sort out.

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It's good to be on a 'non competitive team' I spent almost all this morning on one empty profile and a great big rabbit hole!

I transcribed her father's will which mentioned the  lady and her husband and seemingly all her children up until 1620. "Sarah and her three children" Fly in the ointment another 'child'  born in 1612 was supposed to be a puritan migrant but she wasn't mentioned in the will . That led me to making comments on the child's profile, which led me to searching  registers in Dorset and Devon... none of which gained any contributions for the team.

I did few more reg tags to get some more contributions in but am giving up and going for a walk for the rest of the afternoon (hope it's better than yesterday when after a lovely day stuck at a computer, I went for a walk and got soaked in a thunder storm.

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Helen - that's brilliant. You are, by the way, an absolutely incredible transcriber. I usually just get the main gist and make out what names I can. Distractions are good. Thank you!

Answer 10

I will have a go at the Norfolk errors 802, 803, 851 and 863, but may also bounce around the errors for Norfolk a bit.

Comments

Also free source wise, you can also use www.freebmd.org.uk to get the birth death and marriage registration references for Brits from 1837 onwards.

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Excellent Paula. And thanks for the source tip. And no-one else is working on Norfolk from our team, so that's perfect.

Answer 11

Hi there, I live in British Columbia, Canada, so I will actually be able to get started tonight :-)
Not sure what I'll work on - this is my first Clean-a-Thon so probably whatever looks easy!
I have busy daytimes this weekend, so not sure how much I'll be able to do, but I'll try my best.

Comments

Hi Darcie

Have a look on this link. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/DBE_ErrorList_ENG 

Some of the 800 (biography) errors are quite good ones to start on, unless you see something else you prefer. Make sure once you have corrected an error, that you click on the status button, and make sure your Wiki-ID is in the box before you complete and update the status. That will make sure your contribution is counted. Once you've put it in once, you don't usually need to do it again.

Answer 12

I will work mainly on pre 1500 errors, not sure which ones but there are plenty to choose from!

Comments

Great - thanks Vivienne. Good choice.

Answer 13

Question - I have done a couple profiles with UNKNOWN surnames - the error is the wording that the GEDCOM upload spits out when it can't recognize the name: "The last name X couldn't be parsed, so used UNKNOWN instead." I believe if you remove that wording from the biography then the error doesn't come up anymore, correct? For the two I did I was able to figure out the surname fairly easily, but can't change it because only the Profile Manager has rights. I removed the offending note from the biography and added the new info either in the biography itself or in a post to the PM. Added surname in Other Last Names for now. I changed the status to Corrected, but now I wonder if it should be Not Corrected. What if the PM never bothers to change the LNAB? The database error has been dealt with (the UNKNOWN designation was investigated), and now an unnecessary UNKNOWN surname is the problem. But we don't need an error report to find those, do we?

In those two cases the Wikitreer truly didn't know the surname. But in another one, the error was a slash in the surname due to spelling variation, e.g. Eidman/Eidmann. So we definitely want to change the LNAB to one or the other. Again, only the profile manager can do this, but if they look inactive, is posting a note to them on the profile enough? What should the status be changed to - Not corrected, Comment = left a note for the Profile Manager? Leave the offending language in the biography so that it continues to pop in error reports?

Sorry this is so long-winded. Will try something a little more straightforward tomorrow :-p

Comments

Hi Darcie. I think that it is correct that you just delete the section in the bio as you have. One option is to add the surname as the Current Last Name until such times as its confirmed and the pm edits the LNAB. But its also good to write it in the bio in the normal way, as that won't generate an error. When there are two alternative names, you can write an explanation in the bio in your own words about the alternative names.

As the main object was to correct the parsing error in the bio, you can mark it as corrected.

I hope that is correct! If someone knows differently, please correct me.

Answer 14

I love this source which I just found while working on Devon ref tag errors:

"Primary source
I remembered my grandmothers middle name , Lily, as i picked some Lily of the valley in my garden. So i rang my aunt to confirm her mother's name."

Comments

That's classic!

Answer 15

Hey everyone, how are you all going? I'm heading to bed soon. Before I go I'll try to work out how we follow our progress. Have a great day and I'll talk to you in the morning!

So I just checked and it seems we're coming 16th, which is very impressive considering we aren't playing to win! You can find the stats on the help page in the question above.

Comments

How we all doing now?

Can you add the link for the tracking sheets

I am covering the guest and volunteer feeds as well so but slow on the suggestions, sorry

Janet

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Hi Janet, I hope I've correctly added the tracking sheets as an answer  but here it is again http://wikitree.sdms.si/Challenges/CleanAThon/TeamDetailed.htm

If you click any of the links at the top, you'll see other reports.

Answer 16

I am going to get back to it now. I was working on some non-open profiles this morning, leaving messages for Profile Managers, and I was flag by the anti-spam protection and locked out of commenting :-( No one on G2G has answered my question about it except to say, "work on profiles that are open." Well, sure, I will, but it is frustrating to not be able to comment. Our team is voluntarily taking on the not-so-quick ones that no one else wants to do, and if no one ever contacts the managers, they will never be fixed, right? Anyway, vent over.

Comments

Hi Darcie, how annoying! Anyway, it was definitely a great contribution to have made. I think if you have the data doctors badge, you are allowed to post more messages than if you don't have it. Might be something for you to  look at joining down the track. But that won't help now. Hope you've found some other suggestions to settle in to since that distraction. Thanks for all the work you are doing.

Answer 17

Here is a link to the progress report - I hope its what you wanted, Janet.

http://wikitree.sdms.si/Challenges/CleanAThon/TeamDetailed.htm

Have fun checking out how we are going. We're 20 on the list at the moment. But we are doing an amazing job with the more complicated errors. Thank you everyone!

Answer 18

Hi everyone, just checked our current scores

Well done Darcie - you're the top of our team, with Paula coming second and Joe 3rd. Congratulations all of you.

Well done everyone. I'm delighted with how we are going.

Answer 19

I'm going to tackle some Sussex '811' errors (post merge clean-ups), this morning. They may not be the most complicated to sort out, but there are so many of them, that they need some serious attention.

Good luck everyone, keep up the good work.

Comments

Excellent Carol. Thanks

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I just looked at the stats - you are having a great day Carol! You too Gillian! Go Team SS!

I am getting back to it for the first time today (it's 1 pm here) - I'll see if I can catch up :-)

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Thanks Darcie. Switched over from the 'harder' ones to some simple corrections so that boosted my totals. Now just off to bed, I hope I've set you a good target to aim for.

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Fantastic work everyone. I just woke up. See that we are still going great. Congratulations Carol, you're still beating us all. Well done Darcie, you're back in 3rd place.

I'm planning to work on relation errors today. Sticking with 16th and 17th c, unless I start doing and discover someone else has been doing them. Sleep well eveyone heading for bed.

Answer 20

Very slow and steady progress today. I worked only on "almost empty" profiles and was able to find at least one and often two sources for nearly all of them. Some were tricky - one poor lady connected to the wrong family.

Question - when you see London as a county before it was appropriate do you change it, e.g. to Middlesex? I have only been doing so when I am certain (I think there was a large boundary change in 1889 when the county of London was greatly expanded to include the metropolis). And therefore these profiles would get an {{Unsourced|Middlesex}} tag if they need one.

My kids have the day off school tomorrow :-( I'll see if can get a few more done during "quiet time" lol

Comments

Hi Darcie. complex question about London / Middlesex, and which I don't feel qualified to answer. Probably a question to raise after the clean-a-thon. But definitely an unsourced Middlesex template is great. I see we maintained our position overnight!