Mother's name not added automatically to biography when creating child's profile

Question

When both parents' profiles already exist and you create a child's profile, the first line in the bio section includes parent's names in the form of a link to their profile. When only the father's profile already exists, the first line in the biography automatically includes the father's name, with a link to his profile. When only the mother's profile already exists, no automatic line in the biography is generated. Why is this? Can it be corrected?

Comments

that sounds like an interesting bug... you might want to add the "bugs" tag to your question

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thanks

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Seems like an oversight, thanks for reporting it.

Answer 1

I think this 'quirk' is a left-over from a time when it was common practice for a woman to be  considered less important,  less visible and not equal to men.  It was a mans world right on up to the first part of the last century.

Women werent  independent . Thats just how it was..

During my research into the past I have run into similiar situations, such as  early census records  and birth records where the mother/wife is not listed at all.    How do we fix  it?  One record at a time

Comments

Joy, Yes, I can't help thinking this was done because somebody wasn't taking "the second sex" into account when they were writing the code for this function. Like, "oh I care so much about that family name getting passed on through males, and that nuclear DNA which is so much more reliable, that I don't give much thought to the spouse function."

Thanks for your answer!  - Connie

Answer 2

There is no automated updating of the text section of an existing profile.

Although some biography sections were created by an automated process that added the parents' names and profile links in the first paragraph, there is no automated process for updating that information when new parents are added or the parents' identification is changed.

I don't think I would want the text to be changed automatically when the data fields are changed, since sometimes the changes in a data field are mistakes. There are also times when the profile data section is correct but the text is wrong. Either way, a mismatch between profile data and text is something that needs to be researched, not an occasion when I would want a computer algorithm to decide which entry is correct.

Comments

Hi Ellen, I don't quite understand your answer. Here's what I was trying to describe:

Let's say I want to add the child of a man whose profile is already done. I click on the yellow "child", fill out the required information on the page that opens. Automatically the new child's profile contains text "Julie is the daughter of [[Name-123|Parent Name]]. This saves me time, and none of the text is wrong. The rest of the biography needs completing but this much is done.

I noticed though that when a mom's profile is done, and I add a child, no automatic text is generated for the new profile. I have to do this manually: [[Name-123|Parent Name]]

If both the dad and the mom's profiles are already done, and I "add a child", the new profile for the child contains an automatically generated text in the biography section, with both parents' names conveniently already in brackets.

When a woman is alone it doesn't work.

I can't find an example to experiment on just now. But that about sums it up.

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Ellen, she's not talking about automatic "updates", but rather the automatic bio creation for a new profile.

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Yep. It's just a quirky little thing. I love it when the names come up automatically in brackets.

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Yes, i understand now what she's talking about. It's weird!

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It is weird. This looks like women getting less consideration than men, wouldn't you say?

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Sexist dang technology!