Unknowns Process Update

Question

The Profile Improvement Project's Unknowns team, at the request of the WikiTree Team, has stopped designating profiles to be recycled. Most Unknown profiles (of any variation) were originally created for a reason. Per the WikiTree Team:

There isn't an issue with the number of profiles created on WikiTree. If Unknowns number in the millions eventually, that is OK [as long as they are] representing real people and/or connected to other profiles that have more information in them

The problem is finding identifying information and/or where the profile was meant to be connected. Profiles are sometimes disconnected because of closed member accounts, early broken GEDCOM imports, or vandalism. What happens if you can't figure it out? Those profiles should not be recycled (changed to be a different person). 

The Unknowns team specializes in tracking down sources and lost connections to identify the unknown and get the profiles renamed and reconnected. See the Recycling Wiki IDs Help page for more information on why not to recycle and on how to bring profiles to the attention of the Unknowns team.

Answer 1

Interesting, so what do you do with profiles that are obvious place-holders with absolutely no data?  Such as this one:

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Inconnu-26

Have often seen very old gedcom imported profiles that read something like ''inconnu ancêtre'' or ''(family name as given name) ancêtre''  and other variations on a theme, very obvious place holders, we know the person had to have had parents, but we know absolutely nothing about them.

I went browsing through the ''Inconnu'' list, 2 of them I was able to add sources and substantiate that no LNAB can be found for them.

Comments

"See the Recycling Wiki IDs Help page for more information on why not to recycle and on how to bring profiles to the attention of the Unknowns team." -- The Unknowns Project was created to work with profiles with the last name "Unknown" and equivalent aliases. They deal with profiles that meet these very strict criteria, unusual as they may be:

1. There is no personally identifiable information at all. There are no names, dates, locations, and/or relationships on the profile that can be used to connect it to a real person.
2. There is no personally identifiable information in the change history. That is, the profile never had any personally identifiable information. Often a member will clear out the information on a profile but it's still in the history.

To call a profile to the attention of the Unknowns Project, add [[Category:Unknowns]].

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Stephanie, my question was what do you do with the placeholders that can't be sourced?  That page doesn't answer this question.

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Thanks for working on those two, Danielle. Stephanie has already given you the information on how to draw the profiles to the attention of the Unknowns Team.

They will then follow a set of steps to determine what to do. The one you used as an example would be left as is with a research note on what has been tried to identify the wife and mother. She was a real person and her profile is connected to profiles that have dates and places.

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unfortunately, that profile and the supposed husband and child are all unsourced.  

My biggest problem with leaving this sort of profile connected to families is that it gives a false image.  In the year of accuracy, we want to avoid giving the idea that something is known about a family when we don't actually know anything about them.  We all came from somewhere, that is a given.  But creating a profile for an ancestor/ress for whom there is NO data available is counterproductive.  It falls in the purview of the uncertain existence project, or uncertain family.

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I guess the only thing one can do in that situation is to use the unsourced and estimated dates templates, and to add a research note that says nothing is known and no proof of their existence has been found in the relevant sources. To me such a research note is a challenge to any family researchers, and you never know what might surface.

I agree that it is a waste of time to create such profiles. Let the one who has actual information create the profile. But for the ones already created...? I imagine the Unknowns team may end up adding the uncertain existence category to some of them.

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Creating placeholder and unsourced profiles is counter to guidelines and actively discouraged through all the official channels. Meanwhile, the Unknowns Team works to get the ones already created cleaned up.

To end on a better note, I want to give a huge shout-out to members of the France Project over on Discord. Thanks to their assistance, the source for the marriage of the daughter was found and the mother's name was on the record. They took over and have sourced a number of the profiles and written short biographies.

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oh great!  There are some wonderful people in France project, have helped me out with cross-over profiles countless times.

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What about placeholders like Mrs Xxxx Yyyy from the Viking period? They are females but with male patronymics (which causes an error). The reason they are added as Mrs of somone is that they are not mentioned by name in any saga.

Or even better, profiles like that from before the Viking age, imported in the early days of WT which will never be changed into something useful.

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Hi, Maggie, I understand your concern but need to clarify a couple of things. First, I am specifically speaking of the process used by the Unknowns Team in this thread. Second, different projects may have established different understandings with the Team. I have no way of answering questions for profiles that fall under those projects.

Both of your examples seem to fall under the guidelines of the Early Scandinavia Project. I wouldn't expect the Unknowns Team to be working with those as your examples indicate they currently have Last Names at Birth (LNAB). If the LNAB  is determined to be wrong and changed to Unknown, a research note should be included explaining what research was done and that it is unexpected that a surname will be found. 

If the LNAB is changed to Unknown, the Unknowns Team would review the research notes and skip those profiles per their process checklist. You can review the checklist to better understand how they choose profiles to work on in the Unknowns Team Task List following item C.

Answer 2

Having seen the fate of some recycle unknowns profiles, I am not sorry to see it go.

(I've seen a few that had once been connected as unknown spouses or parents and later been disconnected and tagged for recyling - and had then been adopted and recycled by changing their LNAB, entirely defeating the purpose of recycling in the first place! Others had been placed for recycling with a known first name only to be given a new first name when they were picked up.)