Can we slow down just a little

Question

I was recently trying to connect a profile to the big tree and as a result I added some family members to try going sideways. In this family there were three people living in the ame area appearing on the census with the same name, I was only working on one. Two of these people had a spouse with the same given name and their birthdates and location were close enough to be confused with census records, but their children were different. I created a profile for the one I was working on and within just a short time on the same day another member was adding sources and suggesting other relatives. This profile was only a couple of hours old and I did not have time to check everything, some was correct, and in my rush I made a couple of mistakes. The other member could not wait until I had a little more time to work on the profile and created some duplicate profiles instead. The result is when I got it sorted out I proposed merges for the obvious duplicate. In the end all is well but the duplicates and merges could have been avoided by just checking the information for when the profile was created and allowing the creator time to work on it before trying to "fix" problems that did not really exist yet.

Comments

There was no communication before editing in this case.

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Did you try to communicate with them?  They probably thought they were being helpful.

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Dale,

So sorry that this happened to you.

I always fear this will happen. What I typically do is create the profile and then put in a bold note at the top of the biography currently working on this signed with 4 ~ then I save and work on the profile, often putting information about children, parents, etc in a Research Notes section. Once the kids are done I will remove the notes. Once I’ve got the profile together, I remove the bold note.

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Joe, Yes I did, I told them that I had stopped for a bit to take care of personal business and was still working on the family. They created duplicates anyway. I know the definition of the word Wiki is "quick" but sometimes we try to work too fast and create problems because of that.

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Kay, When the profile is only hours old that should not be necessary, it should be obvious that the creator is not done yet.

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Kay and Joe, as I said I made some mistakes at first and was partially responsible in this mess, but it could have been avoided by just giving me some time to sort out the sources and possibilities before rushing to create another profile.

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That happened to me. I was in the middle of building a profile and someone made a bunch of corrections so that I lost everything I had written before saving.

Answer 1

Know what you mean, had a similar thing happen to me weekend before last.  Working last one night, I began a profile with name, dates and a solid source.  Hit the sack and woke up sick as a dog the next day, so it was the second day before I could get back on to resume work and found that two different people had been making changes. I thought "oh boy, potential cousins!", but it was not to be.  Neither was related and looking at the overall changes they were making everwhere, I realized I had been the victim of one of those Data Doctor or similar weekend challenges.  One person had made changes to spelling and locations, adding "United States", which is fine, thats what cooperation is all about; however, the other had made several changes to the bio format and added a source.  My next thought was that they hadn't even waited for the body to get cold before grabbing the bedclothes.

The upshot of the second persons work is that it subtly modified points I was trying to make.  I quit working on that profile, even though I have much more to add.  I will eventually go back to it but other profiles have my attention at the moment.

I was wondering if a buffer period of maybe 3 to 5 days could be put in place to allow a person to finish the profile before it becomes fully accessible to all the other members

Plenty of time later to correct someones spelling and such.  I know I need it; my eyesight is not what it once was and I wind up having to spend lots of time correcting typos. Not even sure I got them all in this text.

Comments

Art, This happened on a weekday just a little over 4 hours after the profile was created. I have to break up my time on here with other more active activities for health reasons and I knew that there would be a bit of research needed to sort out the right genealogy for this profile.

Answer 2

I completely agree with you, Dale.  It is SO UPSETTING to create a profile, only to have someone bounce in all good-intentioned and start doing things to it before you have had a chance to breathe.

If I am about to add things to a profile (say, sources) I first look to see when the profile was created.  If it was only a few hours ago, I leave it out of courtesy.

Answer 3

Deliberately creating duplicates is also bad form. We are urged to not do that. I can understand your feelings. It would be different if the profile were months or years old but even then we aren't supposed to create duplicates. Perhaps they need a mentor to intervene.

Answer 4

The shame of it is that there are plenty of profiles that need work.  If people want to help, they should work on orphaned profiles and those created years ago by members who are no longer active.

Comments

Lucy, I was shocked when this happened. It is very rare when someone else works on any profile I manage and this one was only about 4 hours old. I had not mentioned this family on G2G at that time and the family was not connected yet, they are now, so that made it even more strange. I almost felt paranoid. Is someone watching everything I do? Where did you hide the camera? :D

Answer 5

To everyone, I am not asking for anything to be done about this problem, not even mentor intervention. I am partially to blame for the confusion and the other member creating a duplicate. I had to sort thru a lot of potential sources before I came to the hopefully correct conclusion and that takes time. I am limited in how much time I can spend here, probably for the rest of my life, but I do work on things in spurts throughout the day. Part of the problem was different sources had conflicting information about family members birth locations so I at first thought that they were different people. All these things take a lot of digging and research to make sure we are accurate. I just want us to slow down and give the profile manager a little time on new profiles before you jump in and start editing and suggesting links when the profile is just hours old.

Comments

Thank you Dale for pointing this out.  I often look at WHO created the profile but never thought to look at WHEN it was created.  I'll try to be more careful about this in the future (even though I'm pretty sure I wasn't the offender).  Research notes are super helpful as there have been other instances where someone had a certain path they were taking on a profile but it wasn't noted.  I'm going to do that more often myself, too.

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Cindy, No it was not you. Some can make an almost complete profile in just a few hours but in this case i was working more on connecting another profile and as a result I just put the bare minimum in to try and find connections. As a result I had to stop my research for a bit and someone else jumped in. Just an unrelated FYI, I see we are distant cousins so some of my family is also your family. Feel Free to help out if you can because I do not see me creating any new profiles soon. I am going to be very busy with other things until at least after July 4th.

Answer 6

To avoid loading partially completed profiles I keep a blog on blogspot where I accumulate my research notes and start drafting the biog. This is especially useful if there's a mystery to be solved.