Invalid Sources and Pre-1700 Certification

Question

What do we do with profiles (how do we annotate these) that are pre-1700, but many sources are Ancestry.com or Family Data Collection?  Do we add citation needed template? do we delete the sources with a note?

Comments

The wikitree policy is to leave these citations alone until you find a better one.

You can still add {{citation needed}} to specific claims.

There's also a template for putting at the top for profiles that have no sources:

{{Unsourced}}

 

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I understand the problem of just "accepting" what "could be" unproved on many of the Ancestry, etc. as sources but I do use sites from World Connect, Find A Grave, etc. after I've done all the other research I can think of and I see they agree or they have excellent sourcing already listed on that site.  There are so many people who truly worked hard putting the info out there that has ended up at Ancestry and other sites to ignore automatically.  I think it comes down to remembering we still have to do the search, not just accept what we see or hear is correct.  Even our sweet ol' Aunt or Granny could get their "facts" wrong in the telling.  Do I need to get off my soap-box?  Jaws tired so guess I do.  As my sweet Eeyore would say, "oh, bother!"

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I do agree, family can get the facts wrong.  My father told me his mother died when he was 10 and his brother was 2, according to burial records and his birth record, he was 18 and his brother 12!

Answer 1

This is an excellent question, Vicki. 

We hope that contributors to these profiles are reading about all the projects here that use particular reliable sources for Pre-1700  profiles.

For example, Puritan Great Migration use Robert Anderson's book as a bottomline source for those profiles. Early EuroAristo rely heavily on Charles Cawley' s medieval lands.

Google Books is a great source for early American Pennsylvania and others. 

We also hope the contributors  read the Style Guide for sources too.

http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Sources_Style_Guide

 

Comments

Forgot to answer your other question >> Generally, I TEST the Ancestry link to see if it goes anywhere worthwhle that can be used as a source. If it does, I keep it as long as it's not an unsourced Public members tree. Otherwise, I remove it.

Family Data Collections ? It all depends on how well they are sourced 

 

Answer 2

I would not delete any sources until you come up with a better source.

Comments

Hi Vivki,

Regarding the ancestry.com regerences I would suggest checking them carefully as they can reference microfiche numbers for a specific record that has been digitised and can lead back to places such as the General Regsitrars Office in Scotland, England (Wales is included with England), Ireland. I know the Registrar's office has annotated records from family bibles, as they are the only sources, for pre 1700 records (usually denoted by the code FR and a number) for example.

All the best

Billy

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Michael I like your answer. Especially when I have adopted a profile and someone says " Trudy are you sure about this?" Then I go to the profile and poof  the source is gone. At least if the info is still  there, there is some where to start. Then if better sources are added remove inaccurate or inaccessible info.

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When source information has been removed from a profile, you should still be able to see the removed information under the "Changes" tab.

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That may be true, but is not what I would call user friendly, you have to seek out something you may not know exists.  I.M.H.O. if you are going to flat out remove sources, you might as well remove the data the source represents.  Is anyone suggesting that?  I certainly hope not.  So yes, I.M.H.O., the first rule should be do no harm, do not remove less than perfect sources (which often can point you in the right direction) unless you replace it with a better source.

Under the current standard, things taken as personal knowledge 100 years from now could be wiped out as a source, without a primary document.  Genealogies published 100 years ago were filled with personal knowledge, collections of far flung individuals pieced together.  Should all those be tossed out?

I understand the desire for "purity" in wanting to purge things less than perfect.  However, we should not let perfection be the enemy of progress, when that less than perfect source can point someone else in the right direction.

Bad Idea

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I'm not defending the deletion of sources, merely pointing out that if a source does go "poof" due to another contributor's edit, the info is not lost forever.

In my limited involvement here, I've seen a lot of "sources" -- like "Source: S-2123128525 Repository: #R-2145025786" or http://trees.ancestry.com/rd?f=image&guid=16704ec0-376c-4a4a-a275-0100bd8ecd61&tid=27624422&pid=260 and http://trees.ancestry.com/pt/AMTCitationRedir.aspx?tid=27624422&pid=260 -- that are dead ends for me. I tiptoe around them because I cannot tell whether the notations are meaningful to someone else (for example, the person who uploaded the gedcom that created them), but I can readily sympathize with someone who concluded that they are meaningless garbage.

Answer 3

I tend to agree with those who would allow Ancestry.com sources that gave information about the person and not just lead them to the paid site front page.

In researching my family members (especially on my father's side) I found a lot of misspellings caused not by Ancestry necessarily, but by those who had to take the handwritten US Federal Censuses reports and type them into what we have today as a source. Cursive writing can cause a "D" to like like an "O" for example and an "a" to look like an "o" or "e".

From those sources other sources could be found on "Family Search" or other more accurate sites that may meet the need of Wiki-Tree better, but at least it got us that much needed information that is much better then an empty page with no sources at all. The same with "Find A Grave",

There also have been many type o' and misinformation from those with good intentions & working hard to get information from the grave sites, which I am sure was not done intentionally for the most part. Again reading paper records and converting to text may be the issue.

I was glad to find these sources and then I went to see if I could find more by googling the name, date of birth, death and location. You be surprised on the new information that came out of that search even if a date of birth was not right on the mark but within a year say, you still get the information you desire from the google search or other search engines.