Should I disconnect parent/child connection

Question

About a month ago a user connected parents to John M Smith.  I did have already have in the research notes of John's profile about who his parents could be.  I would argue there is no solid evidence to prove who is parents are.  I added little more info on his parents to the research notes today just to further clarify.

After the parents were added, I marked the connection as uncertain.  I understand why the user added them. It's listed this way on family search and has been copies on trees for a long time. However, there is another set of parents that gets speculated about and I've listed that in the research notes (you'll find this connection on most trees on ancestry).

Given the uncertainty around it, should I remove the current parent/child connect? I would of course keep the section in the notes about those parents and link to their profiles (and I can add notes to the parents profiles which currently has no bio and very little info). Or should I keep the connect and leave and keep it marked as uncertain?

Proving John's parents is one of my many brick walls. Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

As the profile manager disconnecting the parents would be your choice. You could contact the user who added them with a thank you and a quick explanation, also up to you.

And just a thought for you to consider... I see profiles where connections are made like that, despite notes saying please don't, very often it happens again. Leaving the uncertain parents there would prevent you having to go through the whole process again. When new information comes along to prove or disprove you can update the profile.

But of course your choice.

Comments

Thank you.

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Your welcome. The other thing you can do is put a template on the profile. This will flag anyone visiting that there is an uncertain status or disputed status. See this wikitree help page. I think either Uncertain Family or Disputed Parents Template would be appropriate. 

 https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Research_Note_Boxes#.7B.7BUncertain_Existence.7D.7D

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oh that's great! Thank you

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Your welcome, and thank you for the kind "best answer"! 

Answer 2

One thing in favor of keeping them is that sometimes having an anchor point for the research into those parents, and specifically space to add additional children of theirs, can result in finding those siblings listing one of your family members as a niece or nephew on a census.  I usually keep them marked Uncertain, but don't remove them and instead use research notes on their profile to store all of my working theories.  I can tweak them as needed if they're not-quite-right based on the research, and if I do end up having to remove them as the parents, at least there will be some detail in there, they won't just be a couple of names, and maybe they'll find the rest of their family.

Comments

Thank you