Understanding England and County Statistics

Contents 1 Understanding England and County Statistics 1.1 How Profiles are allocated to Countries and Counties 1.2 Quality Measures 1.2.1 Unsourced Profiles 1.2.2 Unconnected Profiles 1.2.3 Suggestions 1.2.4 Unknowns 1.3 Reading the England and County tables 1.4 Reading the Unknown County table 1.5 Join A Team

Understanding England and County Statistics

How Profiles are allocated to Countries and Counties

An individual is recorded as an England profile if he or she was born, married or died in England. The England Statistics Table summarises the number of profiles in the England branch of the tree, sets out measures of quality and highlights the impact of our ongoing improvement initiatives.

There are equivalent tables for each of our counties. A person who was born in Cheshire, married in Lancashire and died in Yorkshire would be counted in all three counties, although that profile would only be counted once in the 'England' table.

Not all England births, marriages and deaths can be allocated to our counties. This might be because the only information we have about an individual is that he or she was born, married or died in England. Alternatively, a village, town or county may have been input into a location field in a way that isn’t recognised by Wikitree's system. Both types of profile are allocated to a 'county' we have named 'England Unknown County'. By correcting the formatting of existing detail in the location field or by finding sources that allow us to add a more precise birth, marriage or death location, these profiles can be allocated to one of our recognised counties where they are more likely to be given further attention by a member of our County or Profile Improvement teams.

Quality Measures

Our members improve profiles on an ongoing basis adding sources, addressing "Suggestions" (suggested improvements), identifying "Unknowns" (profiles with unknown first names and surnames), and connecting profiles and 'loose branches' to the main tree.

We track our progress though reports generated from a weekly download of the Wikitree database, which is completed in the early hours of Sunday morning UK time. It usually takes three or four days to process the data and the results are summarised in various Wikitree reports as detailed below.

Headline data is taken from these reports and is presented in our England and County tables. These tables follow a consistent format (with the exception of England Unknown County which is explained below). The examples are for the Lancashire reports. Clicking on 'LANCASHIRE' will take you to the Lancashire County Team Page. Under this, highlighted in red, there are links to the various Wikitree reports described below.

These reports have their limitations but they serve to give us an idea of fantastic efforts that are being made by our team to improve the tree and to show the progress we are making.

Unsourced Profiles

An Unsourced Profile Report looks like this:

Profiles are counted as unsourced if:

1. an 'Unsourced', 'Unsourced|England' or 'Unsourced|County' template has been added to the profile
2. the profile has been categorised as 'Unsourced', 'Unsourced England' or 'Unsourced County'. eg Category: Berkshire, Unsourced Profiles (wrapped in square brackets)
3. the profile has been picked up by suggestion 802 or 803 (an empty or almost empty profile)
4. the profile has been picked up by suggestion 131-134 ( a profile with no birth or death dates)

If birth, marriage or death locations have been entered for a profile with a recognised county, any unsourced template or category will ensure that a profile will appear on the England report and in the appropriate reports for all counties for which a location has been entered.

Adding a simple 'Unsourced' template is usually the easiest and most effective way of flagging on reports for all relevant counties that the profile is lacking sources, but there are rules governing when an Unsourced template can be added

The number that is carried forward to the Lancashire table is in the top left hand corner of the table. (6,505 in the example table above). Profiles are split into different time periods; and any added in the last 7 days are shown in the right hand column. This figure includes any older profiles to which an unsourced template had been added in the last week.

Be aware that there are many profiles that are not sourced to England Project standards which aren't counted in these reports. The numbers are not a count of quality; rather an indication of profiles that have been labelled as needing sources. Numbers can rise purely because someone has worked through a list of profiles adding a template to them.

The Profiles count in this report is an adjusted figure and is not the number that we use in our tables. (We use the figure in the Suggestions Report - see below)

Unconnected Profiles

An Unconnected Profile report looks like this:

Two types of profiles are shown in this report:

1. Unconnected - profiles with at least one connected relative, but part of a branch that isn't connected to the main tree.
2. Unlinked - single profiles without a spouse, parent or child

The number that is carried forward to the table is in the top left hand corner of the report. (43,557 in the example table above).

Profiles are split into different time periods; and profiles that have been added in the last 7 days are shown in the right hand column.

All the profiles shown in the table are Lancashire profiles (ie the individual was born, married or died in Lancashire).

The profile list below the table shows the largest unconnected branches containing at least one Lancashire profile; the tree size shows the size of the whole branch, regardless of location. (There may be just one Lancashire profile in the branch.)

Suggestions

The first few lines of a Suggestions Report looks like this:

The reports contains various sections clustered into different suggestion types as follows:

1. Gender Issues
2. Date errors
3. Relationship Queries
4. Name issues
5. Locations
6. Privacy
7. Biography
8. Templates
9. Categories
10. References
11. Span Errors
12. Links
13. DNA

The total of these suggestion types is shown in the summary box (under Total: top left). This is the figure that is carried forward into our table.

There are other types of Suggestion that we don't include in our count:

1. Unique name Queries
2. Wikidata Suggestions
3. FindaGrave Queries

These are hints for further research. They may or may not be valid or useful.

Profile Completeness Suggestions are only shown if individual profile managers request them for their own profiles.

New routines are being developed on an ongoing basis that highlight suggestions that haven't previously been identified; and from time to time we will see increases in the numbers because of this. Notes will be added under the tables when new suggestion types are created or when changes in processes have a sgnificant impact on the numbers. We will keep a log of these changes.

Unknowns

Example: Lancashire Unknowns Report

If a profile has Unknown as the First Name, Last Name at Birth or Current Last Name, it can be more difficult that to match it with any new profiles that are created. If we can reduce the number of 'Unknown' profiles, we are improving the health of the tree.

The 'Unknowns' reports are not standard to Wikitree. They are bespoke reports created in Wikitree+ for England overall and each county in the project. The report not only picks up Unknown as a first or last name, but also includes Preferred Names and Other Last Names which can often easily be corrected.

These reports are updated each week using data that has been downloaded from the Wikitree system each weekend.

Reading the England and County tables

The tables show the progress we are making in our counties and at country level across the various measures. New profiles are being added daily to the tree by inexperienced members and many of them need tidying up.

The top panel of each table shows profiles counted in each category expressed as numbers and also as percentages of total profiles. They are compared with the year-end position from the previous year. Green and red colouring highlights whether the numbers and percentages have improved or deteriorated. It is possible for the numbers to increase but for the percentages to improve. Green percentages are a reasonable indicator that overall quality is improving.

The Net Movements panel shows recent trends in the absolute numbers over recent weeks, again using the red and green indicators; with a summary position compared to the start of the year.

The third panel, Weekly Improvements, illustrates how many profiles have been tackled over the previous 4 weeks with the cumulative total figure since the start of the year.

Occasionally we may see a surge in numbers, for example, a spike in new profiles in the week after a 'Connect-a-Thon' or suggestions might increase dramatically as a new suggestions code is introduced. When this happens, a note will be added to the tables, although this facilty is not yet available.

Reading the Unknown County table

Unlike our England and County profiles, we want to see the figures for Unknown County reduce. As profiles are allocated to our Counties, we would expect the Unsourced, Suggestions and other figures to decline.

The headline Unknown County numbers are therefore expressed as a percentage of the England figures (unlike the other counties which are explained above). Reductions in these percentages are shown in green.

Note that if a person married more than once that a profile may be included in 'Unknown County' even though the marriage locations are properly formatted. There are about 1,000 profiles with a non-England marriage location as well as an England marriage location. Many of the England locations include an English county that is properly formatted and should therefore not appear in our Unknown County counts. There is currently no way of excluding them from the count. Whitfield-2424 18:28, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

Join A Team

If you want to help improve the quality of the English branches of our tree, you might consider joining one of our teams. You don't have to join a team to improve profiles but our members benefit from mutual support and collaboration that our teams provide.

You can find out more about our teams here.

Thank you to everyone who works to improve our profiles.