Why would anyone create a profile without sources?

+20 votes
771 views
What number one mistake almost all new genealogists make and regret it later?
in Genealogy Help by Cheryl Givens G2G6 Mach 1 (11.8k points)
retagged by Maggie N.
I honestly don't know... Most of what I'm seeing as "unsourced" are gedcoms that were just dumped in, most dating ~way~ back. I've tried letting some know that I've added sources, even photos in some instances, and they don't seem to care enough to say thanks. But I figure I'm making their profiles better since I have documentation to share, and that's a good feeling!

10 Answers

+40 votes
 
Best answer
Personally I don't think it is as simple as that. As a beginner (which I am not of course) I might consider I don't need sources for a profile of my father as, well, he is my father. I know who he is.

On another site I used to be on, a conspiracy theory site, it was always said "if it isn't sourced it didn't happen" but it is not always so easy to say that of genealogy.

Rather than a mistake I would say that creating a profile without any sources is a method or if you like behaviour which we should discourage by education. One should also bear in mind that if you create the profiles of two brothers, for whom you have sources of course, the SYSTEM creates the father without any sources.

To my mind the number one mistake in genealogy is not creating profiles without sources but believing the information supplied by others without checking it for yourself. 'Blessed is he that believes yet has not seen' has NO place in genealogy.
by David Loring G2G6 Pilot (125k points)
selected by Ron Johnson
My late mother, who had probably never given a moment's thought to something as, well, "impractical", as genealogy, was known to say with a fair amount of regularity: "Don't believe anything you hear, and only half of what you see."

RE: "actually, for the new profiles being created, and I refer to those done in the last week or so, the line that seems to be getting added automatically is ''sources will be added by so-and-so by x date''  which I find highly dubious, since it was actually at or past the due date.

commented  ago by Danielle Liard"

==========

I've seen that too. I believe that a wikibot should go through, find the profiles that have that comment that are more than 48 hours past due, worm its way back to the profile creator's computer, and install a huge flashing red neon light sign reading "Put In Your Resources NOW or ELSE!" that would pop up every time his/her browser is opened.

nah, that would be invasion of privacy or some such, the bot on WikiTree is an edit bot, could perhaps trade that for unsourced template though on the profiles

RE: "nah, that would be invasion of privacy or some such, ..."

Well, it was kind of meant as a joke born of frustration, not really meant to be a "thing". But yeah, swapping it out for an unsourced template would at least help. Wouldn't cure the original profile-makewr's carelessness, though ... or be as much fun.

Greg, I experienced this for the first time today. Created a brother and got Unknown Jenkins for the father, completely blank text box. Had to “fix” that, even though not directly related to me, something had to go there. 

What would happen to that profile if I never went back to it? It at least needed he headers in the text box. And... as you suggested, {Unsourced}} so it would get noticed.

When I began here I had unsourced profiles because I did the family tree long ago and the sources I had were all dead links by now - some from rootsweb and ancestry message boards have since come back - and I did not figure it would take me long to source most of them but then you get off on one branch and hang out there - adding sibling, reading threads in G2G about LNAB of this one or wrong parents in another and you learn, and source a bunch of profiles - in your tree or helping someone who is looking for help in a time and place your ancestors were too - now I go back to where I began and see I did not ever get back to some of them - but I will get caught up....someday
lol, Navarro, I've been on WikiTree for a few years now and I still have some where all that's on the profile is a very generic source of Drouin collection.  In between everything else I try to get some of them done properly with minimal bio and specific sources.
On the "sources will be added by such and such date", I've done that, then something happens either in life outside of genealogy, or within genealogy itself [i.e. a merge gets proposed, and I hate to hold people up on merges because I'm busy with something else], and we just forget, but I do eventually come back to it. Fortunately I don't do it very often.
It is the newer ones that I did not get back to, for the most part - but a couple of projects I put on hold and needed a break from - meaning to go back in a day or two and that turns into three weeks!    I hop around some and get better at the finding of good primary sources faster and easier as time goes on but still have so much work to do - fun for me
actually, the method I use for those automatic parents is to put a note on them to the effect that no data is known about them other than the children are proven siblings.  With the source for that last fact, of course.
+21 votes
If you go to the genealogy room of a local library or a historical society, you can probably find shelves full of old homemade genealogies by long-deceased residents of the area.  Many were done in the earlier 20th century, and the neater ones may actually be typed and in some type of binder.  But for the most part they were unpublished, the result of a personal project undertaken by someone interested in his/her ancestors, and there is no mention of sources.  Of the ones I've looked at, they seem to be pretty accurate, and it's sometimes possible now to find applicable sources, perhaps the same ones used originally that weren't documented.  In those days, it just wasn't the custom to record sources, and people didn't question it.  I suspect that the emphasis on documenting sources is relatively recent, and is probably fueled by the proliferation of junk on the web that is so easily replicated over and over and just won't ever go away completely.  That's just an observation, not meant as a justification for skipping sources.
by Dennis Barton G2G6 Pilot (546k points)
I think genealogies of people who were contemporary with their authors tend to be reliable. It's when they start trying to do research on previous generations that they run into trouble. Even in the 16th century, you can see a stark difference between genealogists who list their sources and genealogists who don't. They didn't cite things the way we do, but the need to source information is something that reality forces people to discover. I even used one 12th century source in a profile, a hagiography, that meticulously names its sources, not with a bibliography but by saying things like "I was told this by Walter, the cousin of Osbert the village priest." The author lived in a society with 5% literacy, and even he saw how critical sourcing was.
One of the reasons I like using genealogies written in the late 19th or early 20th centuries is just that:  I can see the author either (1) writing to his kin for info on their family back to grand-dad or maybe great-granddad (people they personally remember) or (2) sitting on the porch talking to your neighbors about their family remembered.  

Sometimes this is even more "accurate" than our documentary evidence.  My mother's marriage record shows as her mother someone totally unrelated.  It wasn't till I was looking at the documents I noticed.  Also, the government conflated the death records of my father and brother of the same name.  It gave them the same birth date and different death dates.  Go figure!

In conclusion, one government document might not be as good as grandma remembering her grandma.
Ben and Kathy, I agree with you.  Not all sourceless profiles are carelessness, just as not all who take part in wikitree are 'real' (professional) genealogists.  Especially with recent past (like parents' cousins, aunts and uncles etc) you hear information from your family that you know to be true, but it's not always easy to get hold of those branches of the family or source the documents. One hopes that by putting as much information as you have, with photographs, that someone who is more closely related to the person will find the profile and add the better source than " as remembered by ..."

I realise the proper documentation is the gold star for a well referenced profile, but is a profile with a photograph of the person and a known relationship to another profile on wikitree "as remembered by ..." a really big problem?
+19 votes
In defense of new genealogists but my first family tree (after trudging back and forth from reading Microfilms and visiting cemeteries) had no citation of sources! This was in the 1970's but no excuse. I had to redo my searches again.
by Maggie N. G2G Astronaut (1.2m points)
And I am quite certain that my first few gedcoms uploaded to WikiTree lacked proper citations! Learn and live.
I can't even claim the 1970s or gedcoms as an excuse!  I'm a relatively new practitioner of the hobby, and it just took a little while to come to the realization that genealogy is a new game now, and you can't approach it the way grandma did.
That is the only reason why all of my initial entries didn't have references. I knew that I had seen the reference because I took notes, but that was back in the day of microfilms and cemetery visits. All I had was my notes and so I entered the profiles knowing the information was correct, but that I have to do the research again, this time online.
Though not an academic citation, I think that "birth record viewed by X on xx-xx-xxxx (date) at Y Public Library" is at least a start for someone else.  That is your notes saying the type of document, even if not the catalogue and document number, is a decent source.  Others will know where to find it and will know you didn't just pick up the date/fact from another undocumented site.
That is the other thing , lots of source material I have to make time to scan and upload and I just have not had time at all lately
+18 votes
In Wikitree many unsourced profiles are imported in gedcoms. They are usually profiles connected to a subject person or family name by marriage. As the research dealt with a specific family name, often it was not done on the spouse.
by George Churchill G2G6 Mach 9 (95.4k points)
Never thought about that reason. Thanks, George.
That's why I think we should not allow imports of gedcoms, only use them to show people which people in the gedcom are already on wikitree. When I created my own gedcom I never recorded sources. So when I joined wikitree and it was all about sources I used my gedcom as my guide to go looking for information that I knew must exist somewhere, and then created the profiles with sources. I probably have more people in my gedcom than I added from my own family on wikitree, but a lot of that info in my gedcom came from ancestry trees and other dubious sources so it is conjecture at best.
+20 votes
When I started I was happy to make a profile as a ‘place getter’ with the idea of going back later to source it.

Now I know it is better to take the time to find sources before moving on. Guess I needed to slow down, got carried away with the excitement of finding all these family members!
by Living Poole G2G Astronaut (1.3m points)
Thanks for the star Karin
+13 votes
I spent almost all of last week Sourcing profiles entered by someone who chose not to add any sources what so ever and then Orphaned them all. The reason I spent so much time Sourcing them all was due to some suggesting a merger of two individuals with the same first and last name. Turned out not be the same person.
by T Lacey G2G6 Mach 3 (34.0k points)
I have in my surname family twice females with the same first second and third given names AND the same surname. The first thing I did when I discovered that: I wrote a line: "Do NOT merge this one with the other one, those are two different persons!" They have different birthdates, one died as a toddler, the other one married, but how do I know if someone keeps an eye on that. So I think it's better to put that warning in the first line of the biography.
Just so you know, if a person adds a bunch of unsourced profiles and then removes their account from wikitree then all the profiles they managed become orphaned. Tony, this may have been what you ran into.

And Jelena, in a case like that, you should also set up a "rejected match" which will block someone trying to merge them unless they delete the rejected match.
To follow up on Steven's point, I'd check the change logs in the profiles and try to identify the person doing the profile creation. It's a fine line, but if they're creating a lot of unsourced, difficult to handle and interpret profiles with no intention of hanging around to improve them, it's probably worth recommending a mentor intervention.
lol, now picture this one:  A man and wife who have identical names to another man and wife.  Both couples living within a few miles of each other.  Was a nightmare sorting who had which kids, and when came around to the kids' marriages, ooooh, walk carefully!
Welcome to my Newfoundland nightmare. I have multple cases of couples named John Butt, married to a Mary-Ann, each with birthdates no more than 5 years apart, living and having children within several miles of each other, naming the children with identical (traditional) family names.
lol, I hear you, mine had the same last name for the women also.

At least my son's nameganger lives 9500 miles away from my son.  (Son in Queensland, Australia, the nameganger, married to a woman with the same name as my daughter-in-law, lives in Chicago, Illinois.)

It's bad enough sorting through generations of ancestors who name their kids after themselves, so you confuse the marriage of the daughter with a remarriage of the mother.  blush

(Edit to exchange an a for an i.)

reading through all this sounds like I can be happy that I have "only" two cousins who have identical names, both are born within 16 days in Sep 1855 in the same town. One was married, the other one died unmarried. But still the best bet to discern them is to look for the women in their lives. They have different mothers and one also has a wife.

cute Jelena, in my family, my mother and aunts all made some sort of agreement not to duplicate names, they actually reserved the names they wanted.  The only duplicates are my father's sister's kids, who bear a different last.name in any case.

Considering that my father had 4 brothers and 1 sister, and between him and his brothers they had 40 kids, (his sister had 8 to add to that), you can imagine the infighting to get certain names reserved.  My mother had 3 boys before me, and had reserved the name Danielle for any girl she might have.  She had to argue with her sisters-in-law to keep it reserved, until I finally came along.  laugh

+10 votes
I personally have created an unsourced, empty profile when I had two people who were siblings that needed to have a connection, but due to the lack of parish records, was unable to determine anything about their father. The fact that they are born supports the existence of a parent, surely. I don't think that it's unreasonable to connect people in this way.
by Gillian Causier G2G6 Pilot (288k points)
Even though you might not have found birth certificates for the sisters--or even a marriage record for the parents--doesn't mean the profile can't be created or sourced for the presumed father.  What is the other evidence that he was their father?  Did mother take his name?  Are they all together on a census record?  Are they buried together?  That is all circumstantial evidence to infer that he is their Daddy, if not their biological father, and referenced in the Research Notes.
Sometimes you have direct evidence that two people are siblings, but you don't know anything about their birth or parentage at all.

In fact they could be half-siblings, but if so, you don't know which parent they share.

WikiTree's database doesn't record siblings directly.  Unnamed Father is simply WikiTree's conventional mechanism for connecting siblings with unknown parentage.

Evidence is only needed for claims being made.  Unknowns don't need evidence.
+11 votes
I know in my case that up until 2 1/2 years ago, Grandma Bates was just that to me. I didn't know her first name or her maiden name, nothing, nada...but I knew she was my Grandma. I created her WikiTree profile, stated all that in it.

Someone, a wonderful WikiTree person helped me find her first name, but all of the documentation I was finding didn't match what I had been told about her, so the profile still had no sources for over a year. With what little information that was in there, a second cousin, once removed found me through that profile and sent me a slew (24 pages) of information on Grandma Bates (who really never was a Bates to begin with), and also with that information came a ton of sources (and it turned out that the documentation that I had found and was smart enough to save when first found) turned that profile into a completely sourced profile.

So in my humble opinion, a profile with no sources, can at times have value...but that's from my experienced.
by T Counce G2G6 Mach 7 (72.5k points)
+6 votes
I realise this thread is months old but I just came across it.  Several of the respondents have commented on the situation where the system has created an Unknown profile for the father of siblings.  That's fine.  I've thought that it those situations you would add as the source the documents proving the siblings were children of this unknown person, e.g., reference to the two birth certificates, death certiciates, census, etc.  Something entered is better that leaving the profile blank and will only take a moment.
by Kenneth Evans G2G6 Pilot (244k points)
+5 votes
I for my case can say for the only unsourced profile on my watchlist I really don't have sources. I created a profile for the brother of a grandaunt who had married into my Serbian family. So the system created automatically their father. And no, I don't know NOTHING about him. Literally nothing. And I can't find out anything unless I don't go into the town where they were born or where their records are held. This won't happen this summer.
by Jelena Eckstädt G2G Astronaut (1.4m points)

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