Changing Variant Spelling of Unknown in LNAB

Question

A question came up recently regarding changing Unk to Unknown. The Unknowns Project does actively work on finding better sources for the variant spellings that we have found so far. If we are unable to find the correct Last Name at Birth (LNAB), we either change the spelling to Unknown or ask the profile manager to do so.

One of the responses to the question expressed concern that making the change to Unknown could cause extra redirects. I have verified with the Team that, in this case, the extra redirect is appropriate because "Unknown" is treated differently by the internal search engine. 

When profiles have the surname Unknown, they will show up in searches where a married name is searched, but there are profiles where the surname is not known. In other words, if you have "Elizabeth (Unknown) Martin," and you search for "Elizabeth Martin," profiles for Elizabeth Unknown are included in the search, whereas profiles for "Elizabeth Unk" or "Elizabeth MNU" are not.

Unknowns Project members always try to find a valid surname before changing from any of the Unknown variations. Only when it becomes apparent that the unknown name is not going to be easy to find do we go ahead and change it so that the profile is indexed properly for searching.

Comments

Thanks for clarification.  I will feel easier now to change Unk or other variations to Unknown.  I was concerned about the extra redirects.

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One small update to this (we will be updating the Unknown Project pages too). 

If the only change to the current Last Name at Birth would be adjusting the case of the letters in the LNAB (ex UNKNOWN or unknown to Unknown), please do not do a LNAB change. The internal search engine works properly with all three variations.

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I must admit I think this is a strange change in policy. We have always corrected unknown and UNKNOWN as spelling errors, and the vast majority I believe have already been corrected. UNKNOWN just doesn't look right.  I think it is more important to have some consistency in the look of WikiTree and the naming policies than worry about a hypothetical redirect problem. WikiTree is a massive database with millions of profiles that is unaffected by the tens of thousands of renames and redirects that already have been done and get done daily.  And really, how often will someone link to unknown-xxxx and have to be redirected to Unknown-yyyyyy? WikiTree's naming policies are a vastly bigger problem than this concern over redirects.

PS: Rose UNKNOWN-11328 needs her name fixed.

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Hi, Joe. This wasn't a policy change announcement, just a clarification of what the Profile Improvements Project Unknown Team does and doesn't do.

The Unknowns team would probably not work on Rose UNKNOWN-11328 Woodward as she is already project managed and the research note says that the research has already been done. We have plenty of profiles to work on from those that have never been touched.

The WikiTree Team has verified that the search engine now works properly with any of the variations. Changing the case then becomes a style issue and the Unknowns team leaves those to the profiles manager and the projects.

Answer 1

Recently I took a look at the "Changes" tab on this profile.  In 2015, the name was changed from "Unknown" to "Unk."

Comments

If we are talking about the same entry in the change log (10 Aug 2015 Merged Unknown-236424 into Unk-1402), that was a real merge of a profile with the surname Unknown, not a LNAB change. It should have gone in the other direction but probably went to Unk-1402 because the member went with the rule about going toward the lower number.

Answer 2

I have added project leaders and mentors to this post, as most of us were unaware of the direction given by the team to change LNAB aliases to Unknown.   I think some members have been critiqued for doing this because of the concern of re-directs.

Comments

Thanks, Robin.

As noted, the Unknowns Team ONLY encourages the change after research has been done to try to find the Last Name at Birth (LNAB). We don't ask for the change to Unknown and then do research. Research Notes should be added to the profile noting what records were looked at if nothing was found. At that point, making the unidentified Last Name at Birth (LNAB) conform to the guidelines is appropriate.