Australia Project, Profile Improvement and Maintenance Categories

Profile managers: Melanie Paul [send private message] and Australia Project WikiTree [send private message]

The Australia Project is aiming for an integrated approach to improvement of Australian profiles, incorporating Sources, Biography, and Categories.

Project Priorities for Profile Improvement

These priorities are in no particular order, as each one is of equal value.

• Sourcing Unsourced profiles, that is, profiles that have no sources on them.
• Connecting Unconnected profiles
• Working on Suggestions, your own list or the Australian list, see link below.
• Improving the profiles on your own watchlist or orphaned profiles - (biography with inline sourcing, categories, stickers, images etc)
• Working on the "Australian Profile Improvement" categories (convicts, 5 star etc), see links below.
• Working on specific Australian maintenance categories - eg. "Needs Profiles Created" or "Immigrant Needs Voyage Category", Category: Australia, Maintenance Categories
• Other projects, challenges etc, as developed by the various Australia Project teams and posted in the Australia Project Google Group.

Links to Find Australian Profiles Needing Improvement

• Australia and State Unsourced Profiles
• Reports for Australia and States of Unconnected Profiles
• Australia, Profile Improvement - Orphans: A category for adding to orphan profiles we come across that need or could do with any type of improvements. Any Wikitree members can add this category to any orphans and any Wikitree members can work on these profiles, using the guidelines outlined above.
• The Australian Suggestions List, see the following sections and suggestion numbers:

• Biography: 802 (Empty), 803 (Almost Empty), 811 (Uncleaned after Merge), 853 (GEDCOM Junk)
• Profile Completeness: 467 (Short Biography)
• Wikidata: All numbers.

• Australia, Profile Improvement - Colonial Australia
• Australia, Profile Improvement - Convicts
• Australia, Profile Improvement - Five Star Profiles
• Australia, Profile Improvement - Indigenous
• Australia, Profile Improvement - Notables
• Australia, Profile Improvement - Military

7 Steps for Profile Improvement

• Note: Not all steps may be relevant for all profiles.

1. Find and add sources. Only one is required for the profile to be considered "sourced", or to remove an "Unsourced" tag (either template or category). The aim is to add as many as possible. The source does not need to be a birth/death/marriage record. See: Help:Sources and Australia, Profile Standards and Australia, Sources and Citation Examples for Australian source information. See also: When to add or remove the Unsourced template and categories.
2. Construct the biography from known information, (parents, spouse, locations of events, etc), in sentence format. See Help:Biographies
3. Does the biography or sources mention family members not yet on Wikitree? Add this category Australia, Needs Profiles Created so the family profiles can be added at a later date.
4. Is the profile an immigrant or a convict without a ship category? Add either the category Australia, Immigrant Needs Voyage Category Added or the category Australia, Convict Needs Voyage Category Added
5. Add some general categories (location, cemetery, migration, convicts, etc) to the profile. If you would like any help with categories, post a comment on this page or post in our Australia Project google group. If a category you want to add does not exist, add your request to our Category Request page
6. Add some stickers to the profile. See the list of Australian Stickers
7. See the list of Australia Project Guidelines for any relevant to the profile.

WikiTree Minimum Sourcing Standard

• A source is the identification of where you obtained information.
• Profiles with at least one source citation that would be sufficiently specific to identify a particular source for an event on the relevant profile, (see Sources FAQ for examples), satisfies WikiTree's minimum sourcing standard. The source is not required to be a primary source for post-1700 profiles.
• The Australia Project encourages project members to exceed WikiTree's minimum sourcing standard, by adding reliable sources, (ideally primary sources) whenever possible to their own profiles, orphaned profiles or profiles managed by other WikiTree members.
• The Australia Project supports the WikiTree standard as the minimum requirements for sourcing a profile.
• See Help:Sources, Help:Sources_FAQ and Help:Communication_Before_Editing

Adding and Using Maintenance Categories

• Maintenance categories can be useful when they are added thoughtfully to profiles, and in situations where the issue cannot be easily addressed while a member is currently editing a profile. Please remember that unlike Unsourced Profiles, Unconnected Profiles and Profiles with Database Suggestions, some maintenance categories aren't a specific priority for the Australia Project. If you are adding maintenance categories to Australian profiles, you should also be taking personal responsibility for working on and then removing maintenance categories from those profiles.

• Adding maintenance categories to a profile managed by someone else can be seen as a criticism of the work they have put into the profile or unnecessary pressure for them to hurry up and work on the profile.

• Before adding a maintenance category, please consider: Is this an issue that I can easily rectify myself in the future? If so, please consider adding a personal category to the profile instead, if you would like to remind yourself of a task to be done.

• List of all the Australia, Maintenance Categories
• To add maintenance categories to a profile, use the category picker tool in "Edit" mode on a profile.
• See Guidelines on Unsourced and Sourced Profiles. When adding the Unsourced template to a profile, use a state parameter if possible, otherwise use Australia as the parameter.. Two parameters can be added. eg. {{Unsourced|Yorkshire|Victoria}} or {{Unsourced|Queensland|New South Wales}} or {{Unsourced|Australia}}. Adding the parameters places the profile in those Unsourced categories. See Help:Sources FAQ for more on when to add the Unsourced template.
• All states now have a sub category [[Category:<state>, Maintenance Categories]] containing the 4 categories for each state, Unsourced, Needs Birth/Death/Marriage Source Researched, for members wanting to focus on a particular state. They also contain links to other state-based reports relating to profile improvement.

"Needs BDM Researched" Categories

• "State-based "Needs Birth/Death/Marriage Source Researched" categories should ONLY be added, to a member's own managed profiles, if the member would like assistance from others to find sources that they have been unable to find, OR to assist in improving orphan profiles OR to a profile managed by another profile manager AFTER communication with that profile manager to confirm that they would like a specific maintenance category added.
• Please assist us, by following the guidelines below when adding 'Needs BDM Researched' Categories to ANY profiles:
  • Other sourcing categories (such as these) should not be added to profiles which already have the Unsourced template or if the profile is eligible for the Unsourced template, ie. the profile is "Unsourced". In this case only the Unsourced template or category should be on the profile.
  • The BDM record has been searched for, at least in the relevant state online BDM registry or database, without success, and that information is included in a ==Research Notes== section in the biography.
  • The BDM event is within the available years in public domain registries and indexes.
  • There is a reasonable expectation that the BDM event occurred in the relevant state, and that information is included in a ==Research Notes== section in the biography. Examples: Family knowledge, siblings born in the state, family thought to have lived in the state at the time.
  • The profile has "Open" privacy level to allow for adding sources and editing of Research Notes section.

Generic "Needs" Categories

• The categories Category: Needs Birth Record, Category: Needs Death Record, Category: Needs Marriage Record and Category: Needs Biography (as well as many others) are generic WikiTree maintenance categories. They are managed by the Profile Improvement Project. The Australia Project does NOT recommend adding the generic categories to Australian profiles. However, there are currently many Australian profiles in the 4 categories mentioned, and each category has a link on the category page to a page of WikiTree Plus searches that can be used to find profiles by each Australian state in those categories.

Removal of Maintenance Categories

• Generally, the maintenance category should be removed once the maintenance action is completed.
• ALL Unsouced template and categories should be removed once the minimum one (or more) valid source is added to the profile. See also: Sourced and Unsourced Profiles
• The "Needs BDM Researched" categories: These would generally be actioned by a member experienced in research for the relevant state. If no source has been able to be found after such research:
  • Briefly document the research undertaken and results under the Research Notes section.
  • Remove the maintenance category if the profile is an orphan.
  • If managed by a PM, add a comment to the profile, noting the research has been unsuccessful, and recommend the PM remove the maintenance category.

• These guidelines work in conjunction with the WikiTree Help Pages. Please let us know if you notice any discrepancies.