Why does WikiTree insist that birth date is estimated

Question

I've been enhancing the existing profile for Josiah Hill. WikiTree gives me an alert saying the birth date is estimated. His birth date is recorded in several records, so it's as exact as can be, and I've checked the "exact/certain" box for his birth.

I don't understand.

Answer 1

The box is present because the first line of the profile is '{{Estimated Date}}'. Delete that and the box will disappear.

Comments

I removed the tag from his profile.

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So many little hidden "gotchas" in WikiTree. Well, hidden until you run into them.  Thanks!

But now I wonder what's the advantage of this tag over checking the "estimated/approximate" option that's available for virtually all dates.

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David,

There are a lot of facets to the program. I see you started in 2021. Keep in mind that the program has evolved and some 'relics'  and other oddities will be seen every now and then. 

One of the most powerful things about the program is the ability to review the entire history of the profile. After you spend some time working here, the back story will become clearer to you. In the example of Josiah Hill you can see that it was one of the near original GEDcom downloads from 2010. Then it sat until 2018 when a round of work was done trying to get those old 2010's identified & more up to speed and that ''Estimated Date'' tag was added. 

The 2022 work that you have done has changed the profile from a vague semi - question mark into a functional & fully identifiable individual! Thank You!  Whenever you see an old tag like that (or any of the others from the various changes wikitree has gone through) that no longer have any value--be confident in deleting them--your change will ALSO remain in the profile's history.

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Thanks! This helps.

And I'm still pretty much a newbie on all of this. At least at this point most of the 1500+ entries in my GEDCOM now have links to WikiTree profiles. Now comes the long task of comparing each to see which of us has more detail, and updating whichever needs updating. (Sometimes both.)