RTC - Guides

Profile managers: Sandy Patak [send private message] and Antonia Reuvers [send private message]

Background

Child mortality was very high before modern medicine and survival rates was low in some countries, areas, and classes throughout history. This project was created to help improve the many profiles of children added to WikiTree who sadly died early or never lived at all. There is usually limited information and sources to use to improve these profiles, and many are left with only an unknown name, birth and/or death date and no biography. Here are some information about what can be added to these profiles.

How to Add Sources

Make sure there is at least one reliable source added to the profile, if none can be found add a research notes header and explain where you have looked for sources, and that none can be found. Add the Unsourced template and if possible specify a country/state/county. Also, see, for well-sourced biographies.

Biography

Write a biography, however short, start with the basics, when and where the child or baby was born, who the parents was, where the birth and/or death happened. You might not know much about the child but a lot can be found looking at the rest of the family. What profession did the parents have, did they belong to a certain religion or culture? How many children did the parents end up having? What number was the baby/child amongst its siblings, was a younger sibling named after them? Where did the family live, what was life like there? If a death cause was given it can be explained here, along with any information about the burial.

Naming conventions. WikiTree has specific naming conventions and they can be viewed here.

If an infant died before he or she could be named use what is on their death record according to their conventions, otherwise use Unnamed Infant. Do not use Infant Boy, Baby Girl, etc. There is a Sex at Birth field for this.

Unmarried/No children

Make sure to mark them as unmarried, and that they had no children of their own. This helps separate them from a sibling born with the same or similar name and birth year. If a child died before puberty it is safe to say there is no descendants and unlikely a spouse. However depending on time and place children as young as 12 could have been married and had children only a few years later, before their 18th birthday. In these cases please review all sources available and make your own judgement about the likeliness of there being a spouse or a child. Please write your observations in the bio. This is how you set "no children" and "no spouse" on a profile.

How to set up the unmarried/no children status

1. From the edit-page for the profile click "add/remove spouse", scroll down to the bottom of the add spouse page, click "[Name Surname] had no spouse"
2. On the edit page under Children: [add/remove child] , check the box by “No Children” and save your changes.

Categories

Add the categories Infant Mortality and Child Mortality along with the corresponding country/state/county. If it was a stillbirth please add the Stillbirth category instead, and the corresponding state if it occurred in the US. Subcategories for other countries will likely be added in the future. Please add the parish category where the child was born, died or lived and if possible the cemetery category if this is known. If the mother died during childbirth, this category: [[Category: Maternal Mortality]] can be used but please select a lower level category.

See the RTC - Stickers and Categories Page for more information.

Images

Add a picture to the profile. It is not mandatory to add a profile picture. If there is a PM attached to the profile it is always better to leave the decision to them. Don't add pictures to profiles younger than 100 years or profiles who already have photos or images added unless you are related to the individual. We do not want to cause upset to living relatives. In most other cases adding a picture to the profile can make it look more cared for and more complete. The "empty swing in a tree" is the most neutral and suitable picture to add to baby and children profiles.

See the Profile Art and Backgrounds Page for photo resources.

How to add an image to a profile

Tree swing

You can use this image or any other image as the person’s profile primary photo by adding the profile ID to image.

• To add your own image, simply click the images tab on the profile and click Click here to upload it. Follow the steps on the following page and make sure to add a source, an explanation to where the image is from and what permissions have been granted to use said image.

• To add an image already on WikiTree like the one with the swing: Get the Profile ID by copying it from "Copy ID" in the top of the profile it looks something along the lines of this Surname-123.

• In the space shown on the screen grab below, add the Profile ID:

• Click Save Changes and make sure "Changes Saved" bar show at the top of the page.

• Click the ID you just added in the lower-right column and click "Set as Primary" beside the ID.

• If everything went well the image should appear as the profile picture (a reload of the page might be required) on the profile page. If you can only see it on the right side of the profile it is added but not set as "Primary", this can easily be added by clicking the picture, ticking the ID and then clicking the button "Set Primary". If the picture doesn't show at all, double-check so that the changes to the picture was indeed saved, or that you added the correct ID.

How to Find Profiles

WikiTree+ allows for a lookup by age at death. See the help page, text search section. You can also filter out profiles that already have the Died Young sticker. Here is an example search string for the text search:

Here are the profiles for age0-age10 without the Died Young sticker:

(you might have to keep clicking "next" to get to a list of Open Profiles)

Age0 | Age1 | Age2 | Age3 | Age4 | Age5 | Age6 | Age7 | Age8 | Age9 | Age10