Challenge of the week: Help clean up problematic dates

Question

Hi WikiTreers,

Will you join our Data Doctors Challenge for this week?            

Aleš's "WikiTree+" data analysis has uncovered thousands of profiles with dates that need some special attention, e.g. people who lived 115+ years, or had children after they were 100, or got married before they were born, etc. Some of these are obvious typos and easy to fix. Many require research.

Here is the table of profiles with problematic dates.

After you investigate something, set the status [more info]. That will earn you a point. The member with the most points at 11:59pm EDT on Sunday night will get the badge and the bragging rights. But we'll all benefit from a neater, cleaner shared tree.            

If you're participating, please post here to let us know. It helps us avoid stepping on each others' toes, and it's nice to cheer each other on. Also post here if you have any questions about how to participate. 

Thanks for helping!

P.S. If you want to chat or coordinate what you are working on with others, in addition to this G2G post there is a handy spreadsheet courtesy of Steven Tibbetts. 

Real-time tracking results: See your stats
alongside other participants here.

Top 10

• Ron J. Raymer - 663
• Sue M. Burns - 318
• Rebecca Peterson - 155
• Debra L. Akin - 150
• Deanna C. McHugh - 88
• Erin J. English Bailey - 46
• Terry McClintock - 37
• Helen E. Edwards - 31
• Linda J. Peterson - 29
• Charles C. Avis - 25

Comments

Challenge is active.

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Challenge accepted.

Answer 1

What fun!  I've spent the weekend resolving Unknown LNAB; the weekend is done, and I'm ready to move on to a new challenge.  I'll start when I've figured out how to "set the status" (using "more info" of course).

Answer 2

I'm in again!

I had fun on Sunday with last week's challenge.

Answer 3

I'll get a bunch done.

Answer 4

Please count me in for this week. Looking forward to it. Thanks.

Answer 5

I'm brand new to this format but not to genealogy, I'd like to give it a try!

Answer 6

Stillwell-411 has some references that were flagged and may need to be improved, corrected, or eliminated, but I'm not sure what to do about them.

I made a few changes in the profiles suggested but I'm not sure whether the changes are correct. In some profiles, sources differ on dates. Other profiles have only one source and the information was copied letter for letter from that source, so the spelling may have been incorrect in the source. I would have thought that the suggested or implied correction made the profile better, but the Higgs family in the Bahamas is known to have used unusual given names.

Answer 7

I have cleaned up one of my own death year typos, and I will see what else I can do to clean up some others.  I have noticed that sometimes profiles have a century entered rather than a "born before" or "died after" date, and this may be producing more errors than we would wish.  Is a 15 year birth date to offspring birth date enough to avoid errors?

Answer 8

I'm in again

Answer 9

A little here, a little there. Challenge accepted.

Answer 10

I'll see about doing some of these.

Answer 11

The Challenge ended last night and I am already Jonesing. What's the next fun?