The Lost and Found Project

Profile managers: Greg Slade [send private message] and Carol Keeling [send private message]

The Lost and Found Project is a sub-project of the Connectors Project. This project is designed to help identify, source, and connect profiles uploaded by GEDCOM which have somehow become disconnected from one another.

There are at least some GEDCOMs which were uploaded around 2010 to 2011 in which the profiles have somehow become disconnected from one another, yet there is nothing on the Changes page about anybody disconnecting them. Possibly, GEDCOMs affected didn't contain links between the profiles in it, or those links weren't formatted correctly, or, at the time, WikiTree wasn't parsing GEDCOMs correctly, and the links didn't get transferred (or possibly something else happened that hasn't occurred to me).

It is also possible for individual profiles or small branches to become disconnected from the rest of the profiles in a GEDCOM if the person adding the GEDCOM skips importing people who already have profiles on WikiTree. If a skipped profile happened to be the only link between one or more profiles in a GEDCOM and the rest of that family, those profiles can end up being unconnected.

In any case, since then, if you want to help link together profiles from affected GEDCOMs, you can look for profiles which were originally created through uploading the GEDCOMs listed below. (Or, if you find another GEDCOM where the profiles have also become disconnected, please add it to the list.)

Please note that this page is not for tracking all profiles which have been added to WikiTree through uploaded GEDCOMs, but only for cases where profiles which have been uploaded through the same GEDCOM have become disconnected from one another. If you manage to connect all the profiles which were uploaded through the same GEDCOM to each other (even if they're not connected to the main tree), you can remove the category for that GEDCOM from each profile, and delete the category once it's empty.

And, of course, any work you do in any of the profiles in these unconnected GEDCOMs would count towards the Sourcerers Challenge and/or the Connectors Challenge.

Here is a list of GEDCOMs where this has happened, along with the family names which have been discovered in each so far.

We can run a WikiTree+ report in order to identify all profiles that were uploaded in a particular gedcom.

As an example, this is the script for the Westhunkin Family Tree.ged: https://plus.wikitree.com/default.htm?report=srch1&Query=Westhunkin_family_tree_ged&MaxProfiles=5000&SortOrder=LNAB&PageSize=500.

And the report to identify all unconnected profiles from that same gedcom: https://plus.wikitree.com/default.htm?report=srch1&Query=Westhunkin_family_tree_ged+unconnected&MaxProfiles=5000&SortOrder=LNAB&PageSize=500

Within the search box in WikiTree+, simply insert the gedcom name, replacing all spaces and punctuation marks with an underscore. The unconnected number can be ascertained by adding the word 'unconnected' to the search criteria. Similar reports can be run using 'connected' and 'unlinked'.

If you find a disconnected GEDCOM, please put a category in every profile from that GEDCOM that you can find. Enter a new line at the top of the profile, and start with two opening square brackets ([), then the word 'Category', then a colon (:), then the filename of the GEDCOM file (replacing spaces and periods/full stops with underscores), then two closing square brackets (]), like this: [[Category:Example_family_tree_123_ged]]. When you save the profile and look at it again, you will probably see 'Example_family_tree_123_ged' in red (unless somebody else has already created that category). Click on it, and then enter [[Category:Lost_and_Found_Project]] and save the category. From then on, every profile you mark with the category for that GEDCOM will be linked to a category showing all the other profiles marked as belonging to that GEDCOM, and that category will be linked to the Lost and Found Project category, which, in turn, links to this page.

Free space profiles (like this one) work pretty much the same way that profiles for people do, so all the same syntax applies. So to add a new GEDCOM, edit this page, scroll down to the table, insert a new line before the closing pipe (|) and brace (}) and the end of the table, then then add in the information for the new GEDCOM. On the new line, enter a pipe (|), then two opening square brackets ([), then a colon (:), then the filename of the GEDCOM file (replacing spaces and periods/full stops with underscores), then another pipe, then the proper filename of the GEDCOM, then two closing square brackets (]), then put two more pipes between each successive column, like this: |[[:Example_family_tree_123_ged|Example family tree 123.ged]]||2009-08-07||[[Grubstake-1|Grubstake]]||[[Slade-590|Greg Slade]].

Hints and Tips

• Here are some tips on how to find profiles which have become disconnected from their GEDCOMs:
  1. Under the "Find" menu, click on "Unconnected People".
  2. The next page should start with "WikiTree's mission is to connect the human family on one tree. A total of..." Click on "total" to see a list of all unconnected people.
  3. Click on "Fewest Connections on Top", and the list will sort that way, and you should see a long list of people with 0 connection.
  4. If you want, you can enter a name from your own family tree or a one-name study that you're working on, and click on the "Go" button to limit the list to only those profiles with that last name.
  5. If you go into a profile, and you see that it was created through a GEDCOM upload, then it's a candidate for the Lost and Found Project, because it has become disconnected from the rest of its GEDCOM.
• Here are Greg's tips for working on profiles from a GEDCOM upload which have become disconnected:
  1. Check the Lost and Found Project page to see if that GEDCOM is already listed (and add it if it isn't).
  2. For each profile in the GEDCOM, check the profiles before and after it to see if they came from the same GEDCOM, even if they're not connected. (So if you're looking at Example-137, check Example-136 and Example-138.) You may find that the GEDCOM extends to dozens of profiles with the same last name, and because they come from the same GEDCOM, they'll have consecutive numbers except for those which have been deleted or merged away.
     • You may also find that, while most other connections have been lost, at least some spouses from disconnected GEDCOMs are still connected to one another, so that can lead you to more last names that you can check for consecutive profiles.
  3. Another way you can find other profiles from the same GEDCOM is this:
     1. While you're looking at a profile from a given GEDCOM, click on the "Changes" tab.
     2. Unless the profile has been merged, the first entry (at the bottom of the list) should say something like "[Name] imported the data for [Name] from [GEDCOM filename]." Click on the "imported the data" link.
     3. Near the bottom of the next page, you should see a 'View all contributions by [Name]" link. If you click on that, you should see a list of that person's contributions. (If that contributor has been very active, you may have to scroll through a number of pages to find the entries for profiles created through that GEDCOM.)
  4. I find it useful to keep a spreadsheet for a disconnected GEDCOM I'm working on. I put each family name on a separate line, and then put numbers in each cell in that line for the WikiTree IDs with that last name. (For instance, if a GEDCOM has, say, Jones-123 to Jones-157, I put Jones in the first cell, 123 in the next, 124, in the next, and so on. That way, each profile gets its own cell, but the columns don't have to be very wide. Then I colour each cell depending on its status: green if that profile is connected to the main tree, yellow if it's connected to other profiles in the same GEDCOM but not connected to the main tree, orange if I haven't been able to identify or connect that profile at all, and red for profiles which somebody else is managing and has set the privacy to public or higher. (And, of course, the ones I haven't worked on yet, I leave white.) I also add comments in the cells to link between family names. For instance, if Smith-123 is married to Jones-456, I put in a comment so I know that they're linked together. That way, if I connect a profile, I can go back and mark all the other profiles that are connected to it green as well. This helps me to keep track of my progress, and tells me where to focus my efforts.
  5. If you find multiple profiles with the same first and last names, and the same (or close) birth dates and places, you may be tempted to merge them, but check first to make sure that you aren't dealing with cousins who have been given the same name to honour a grandparent, or (at least in some places at some times) siblings where the older sibling died before the younger sibling was born, and then the younger sibling was given the same name.
     • The person who uploaded the GEDCOM may have been working on that tree for weeks, months, or even years before uploading it, and in my own reconnecting work, I have sometimes made changes on the basis of a first pass at the sources, and then had to go back and restore the original data after checking further.