Unknown, Unknown

Question

Happy New Year.  I just came across a profile which has a name and dates, so far so good.

The PM created at least 16 Unknown Unknown profiles to represent the siblings, children, and parents of this individual. It appears that grandparents were also named Unknown Unknown. Such a boring family.

The profiles were created a while ago, but their existence is a perfect example of why there needs to be some kind of control/education for new members.

I wonder if the solution to this particular family is to start merging the unknowns into each other until only one exists.

Comments

Please start by contacting the profile manager to ask for sources to explain the creation of the additional unnamed profiles. They may have gotten sidetracked and forgot to return to complete the sourcing and further details. Merging profiles is a dangerous path unless you know for certain that the people did not exist.

Answer 1

Kristina, that depends on whether there are signs that these particular family members actually did exist.  If they were real people then we don't want to merge them all.

Have you checked the change pages for them?  There have been a few times in the past when a member decides to close their account and wants to delete their work here.  Since profiles cannot be deleted, they do their best to anonymize them.  In such a case, the change pages would have records of any names these people originally had and the profiles can be restored.

If there is still a manager, have you checked whether he/she is active?  If so, I would think the first step would be to write to them to ask what gives with this family.

Comments

I did not check all the pages. The parent pages are obviously just there to prove that the person had parents (no data at all), I assume the grandparents would be the same.

It would not make sense to leave any profiles with actual names and dates if one were trying to anonymize all their profiles.

The PM is still active.

Answer 2

Perhaps these unknown siblings were created because there is a record naming them without names. For instance, some church records will mention the death of someone, with the note: leaving behind 4 children. Or there's an obituary that mentions: the oldest of three children. That might be the clue that these unknowns actually existed, but there's no name for them.

Since you mentioned the PM is still active, I would send them a note asking them for their reasoning behind the unknown profiles. And maybe work with them to try and name some of them. Even if the unknown profiles are not based on any sources, there might be siblings, and you might be able to name them. That would be better than merging them away, only to have to make new profiles.

Answer 3

This gedcom upload contains 657 profiles, with 490 with Unknown in them. This is not genealogy.