Help please for profile and sourcing.

Question

I would appreciate someone checking out the profile Hayward-1888 please. I just discovered FamilySearch for the URL's for sources today as I always use ancestry.co.uk and of course they aren't any good as a linked source as you have to be a paid up member to see the record. I think I've entered the citations correctly.

At present the profile is open so that it can be checked but I would appreciate members thoughts on whether it should stay that way because some of the information in the bio could be seen as sensitive.  The bio is not finished as yet.

Answer 1

Oh my gosh, Anna, that is magnificent!!!  It could serve as an example of best practice for sourcing, as well as writing a narrative!!!

By the way, any time you want to, you can add a category to a profile, by putting the following on the top line:

[[Category: Profile style review requested]]

(note that this is case sensitive)

If you do that then a member of the Profile project will review it and give you feedback and any recommendations for anything that should be done to it.

 

Comments

Ditto what Gaile said.

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Psst Anna - Anne is the leader of the Profile project, so her opinion is the ultimate word on these kinds of things.

Answer 2

Anna: Hello & congratulations on what must be one of the most accomplished 'profile pages' to be found on WikiTree.

It seems you had all the bases covered when you hit this 'home-run' (as you can gather I am not as familiar with baseball as I am with genealogy ! ).

What a shining example of what a 'profile' can/should be - unless, of course, there is something I have missed - in which case, I am sure, those equipped to do so will certainly draw our attention to any shortcomings in your results.

Keep up the good work.  Best regards  Phil (Grace-883)

Comments

I concur with all the comments here. If I were to make any changes, it would be to incorporate those last "hanging" sources into inline citations.

Thanks for sharing this great profile.

As for the privacy level, the primary reason for changing it from Open to Public would be to protect the privacy of the living children.

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I'm not sure where I'm meant to reply to all of your wonderful comments but here goes. This is to Gaille, Anne B, Phil and Jullaine -

Thank you so much, I never dreamt that the response would be so complimentary and it makes me so happy to read your comments. 

He was one of my brick walls because of his birth name, while I had the exact birth date I was searching for the wrong name. When I started searching I had to go to the local records office to search the indexes on microfiche and I can't tell you how many times I went through them, just in case I'd missed him.  It wasn't until the 1901 census was published online  that I was able to find his birthplace and when I  still couldn't find him as Clarke I searched for Hayward and there he was.  During my researches into his life and because of discussions with his then surviving children I felt he was one of the ancestors I would have loved if I'd known him.  I wanted to do him proud in his profile and your comments make me feel as if I have; not that I have finished yet.

Jillaine Thanks for the suggestion about the hanging sources, I didn't like those myself.  I hope what I have done with those doesn't make it too cluttered with citation numbers.

The hanging ones were the FamilySearch GRO index citations where the inline ones were to the copy certificates which I have. To my mind they are two distinct sources, with the certificates being the more reliable although errors were made on those and still are.

Thank you again! 

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Yes, the index is separate; frankly, if I have the certificate, I don't include the index. But that's me. There are others here who like to list every possible source out there, including online trees.

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Thanks Jillaine, I'll remove the index citations. I include the index references with my citations on the certificates as it's part of my citations in my family history software so it seemed like duplication to me.

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Jillaine,

I'm one of the guilty parties who includes everything I can find, whether a real source or just information somebody decided to put on the internet just because they know how to upload or enter things.

Maybe it's an excuse, but most of the profiles I work on are very challenging and I am not able to find what I have now learned are good sources.  I figure that if I at least throw up there all the information I have found, and always include the statement the "A more reliable source for this information is required." it might help somebody else somewhere down the road who has more capability than I do to find a better source.  In some cases, the multiple private (and unsourced) trees have variations in spellings or dates or places that could point to other possible ways to search.  I'll use what appears to be the source of information most likely to be correct (in my uneducated opinion) for footnotes and dump the rest into the "See also:" section.

I guess my modus operandi here is that if I can't dazzle them with brilliance, I'll baffle them with ... umm ... err ... sorry, but as a respectable grandmother, I don't know what I can baffle them with.  I would treasure your opinion of whether I shouldn't include all this extraneous stuff.  THANX!!!

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My two penneth Gaile is that sometimes it's the acumulation of little things that point you in the right direction for the big breakthrough. I'm new to this as far as Wiki is concerned and the right way to do things on Wikie but the only reason I got rid of the GRO indexes as a source on their own is that I include those in the sources for the actual certificates. There's a difference between duplication and having multiple different sources for the same fact I would have thought.

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Gaile, in the situation you describe it makes absolute sense to include a variety of sources. While solving problems, it's really important to convey what we have looked at.

I was speaking about when you find an original source that directly answers the question at hand-- when was so-and-so born or who were her parents?-- I don't think it's necessary to include the index that listed that source for example.

AND this is just my practice. My opinion. Others have expressed other opinions and practices.