Why does WikiTree allow an obviously wrong Source to be added to a newly created profile?

Question

Why does WikiTree allow the following source on a new profile that is totally wrong?

Source:  Personal recollection of events witnessed by New Member as remembered 26 Aug 2023.

If the NEW MEMBER was not born during the years in which a person lived, why does WikiTree allow the above source to be added to a newly created profile?

WikiTree needs to check the birth year of the person creating the new profile with the year(s) entered for the new profile and determined if the above source is appropriate for the new profile.

Solution:  The above source should NOT be shown as an option if the person creating the new profile was NOT born before the death of the new profile to be created.

Comments

That and “Sources will be added later”

---

And "Unsourced Family Tree Handed Down to XXXX".

Annoying!  My approach would be to add {{Unsourced}} to the profile. That might get the attention of the PM and initiate a discussion. I hope.

---

I am and have been guilty of creating some profiles based upon “unsourced printed trees provided by xxxx” or similar.

I’ve limited those to “near memories” (deaths in the 1900s). It seems these would be as good as old family bibles. Even so, I consider those as draft profiles where I will build additional sources for them over time (which i have or am still). A built profile isn’t a completed profile.

I think I would be upset about this only if I found “unsourced …” as the only source several months after it was created.

Am I wrong in my thinking?

---

The problem is that almost no one goes back to fix profiles that were created with the "recollection" or "family tree" or "sources added later" statements.   People always think they will, but obviously either move on to add still more people or lose interest and never do anything more.

---

Agree that would be a problem. So far, I’m not guilty there. I’ve been enthusiastically increasing the sources, even for family I knew personally. The more sources the better.

---

Kristina, unfortunately Help:Sources FAQ specifically says we're not to use the unsourced research box for "Unsourced family tree handed down by X".

I don't agree with it, but it's there. :\

---

Yes, I know.  And I also do not agree with it.

I feel justified in adding it to profiles if:

5 years old and not touched again, or

PM made a bunch of profiles years ago and went away

---

It is just as easy to add a source, maybe get a thank you or WW and improve the health of the Tree.

---

I agree. It’s much easier to just take a few minutes to add a source or two. More often than not, these are profiles created by people who were only briefly active on WikiTree.

Answer 1

It says "as remembered by" which could be "grandma told me so, and I remembered it." ;)

Comments

My interpretation is that they "remembered" at the time of profile creation events that they previously "witnessed".  If grandma told me so, then the source would be something like, "Jones, Jane, personal recollections, as told to her granddaughter [[Member-1|New Member]] on several occasions in the 1980's"

Answer 2

I agree that without a better explanation, this is a very poor source. If one of my sources is along the lines of "Grandmother told me", I will do my best to explain how she knew the information and other circumstances.

However, I think the key issue is: Is there any way to check what text is actually inserted into the Source box when creating a profile?

If not, can something be programmed to add the capability to monitor what is actually included as the initial source? It seems to me that would be a difficult undertaking.

Answer 3

I see "NEW MEMBER"" If the entire profile is based on personal recall, this is a teaching moment. Reach out and show them how to source their profile. If I encounter an unsourced profile, and have a source, I add it. Problem solved.

Comments

This issue was discovered when the new member was spotted on the "1000" connections list. It's not just "1" profile.

---

That is a problem that should be addressed. Is that a task of a Ranger?

---

A Ranger's duty is first and foremost to spot and prevent vandalism. They may also, depending on time and inclination, watch out for proper pre-1700 sourcing, but that is not a primary task.

---

Unless the New Member creates hundreds of new profiles, all saying "Unsourced family tree handed down to..." of which about 60% are duplicates and someone (me) spends 3 months researching and merging them.  This has happened more than once.

---

Duplicate profiles are a separate issue, the original post implied single profile and single source. I've always questioned the wisdom "New Members" being able to jump in the deep end of the pool without any proof they can swim. As a new member, I created several duplicates. Since then, I have merged far more. It's part of the deal.

Answer 4

My interpretation is that the new member could have witnessed their child's birth, their grandmother's funeral, a relative's home or hobbies, or remember receiving a phone call that their great aunt died, but that they did not "witness" anything related to a person who died before they were, say, five years old.

A good way to handle this is to go in and add sources to a couple of the profiles, and leave a friendly comment on their profile telling them all about the WikiTree Sourcer (or your favorite way of finding and adding sources) and how easy it is to add sources.

Answer 5

This all goes to the information on the https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Sources_FAQ#Why_are_unreliable_sources_allowed_for_post-1700_profiles.3F Sources FAQ   I spend a lot of time adding Uncertainty to relationships, dates, etc on these kinds of profiles just to assure that everyone knows that while there is a source, it is not necessarily reliable.

Answer 6

Here's my proposal from two years ago: https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/1297286/proposal-remove-option-personal-recollection-profile-person.

The conclusion was that, although there was a lot of support for the idea, the Team was busy.

Answer 7

As a "data doctor" about half of the profiles I look at have the auto-created statement that the creator/manager will add sources by ...date ... and they never do. Often the creation date is more than a year in the past.

I have also see where they have "data dumped" a source or two but never remove the auto statement or write anything in the biography using the source as a reference.

The auto created statement actually serves no purpose and should be eliminated.

Comments

Here here. I continually bump into Steesy-1's completed corrections all over WikiTree+ and I'm sure he into mine. I'm shocked when I see a statement that somebody will add a source and the "by" date is less than a year ago.

I'll often check their contributions out of curiousity and either they've been 1) inactive for years, or 2) they've been cranking out new unsourced profiles every day since.

Answer 8

I have this on my mom profile and my husbands. They are both still alive.

I have however seen it on a profiles from the 1800’s before which I find very odd. By then there would have been something such as a birth, death certificate or a church record.

Answer 9

Where are such options when creating a profile?  I've made many profiles and never seen any kind of check box that says I will add sources later, personal recollections, or unsourced family tree (the latter I've presumed is typed in) yet the formats seem to be standard wording.

Further, the profile builder function tells me if it is unsourced before I create the profile.  Perhaps through that function an unsourced tag could be computer added to the profile on creation.

Comments

Cindy, if you have "Default to Advanced Option for Sources (text editing) when creating profiles" turned on at the bottom of your WikiTree Settings page, you won't see those options. Could that explain your first point?

---

BioCheck is very easily fooled, especially unintentionally. Here's an example.

I like to create new profiles in two steps: 1) add vitals in the checkboxes (using Sourcer to bring it over from Ancestry) and save, and 2) write a basic bio/source or three (using the Advanced Editor colored markup), and save.

Note that when I'm saving from step 1, I have no sources. BioCheck allows me to save if I just type the letters "findagrave" or "i'll get to it" under the sources heading and nothing else.

The time between save #1 and save #2 is like 3 minutes, so I don't feel that I'm do anything wrong, but this illustrates how easily it can be fooled (even by accident).

As an aside, the number of times I've removed leftover partial unsourced template calls from when someone new tries to delete just the word "unsourced" is pretty high.

---

If you save a profile without a source a warning and these options pop up.

Answer 10

While I'm not a fan of no-way-its-possible-first-hand "sources" in the slightest, I find them less frequently and find them to be less egregious than what I see daily:

Giant GEDCOMs imported with no usable sources and consisting entirely of numerous scrolling pages of unreadable junk. (I can't do much with just "1850 U.S. Census" cited with 18 different ref tags)

The vast majority seem to be coming from contributors who never come back to touch them. Rather, I see many staying and importing more GEDCOMs of the same.

The number of DBE 853 errors is north of 150,000. This only counts orphan profiles. I have no doubt that there's many, many times that number out there. These profiles are what a lot of visitors from search engines stumble upon WikiTree and see first, then promptly leave because it appears like AI scrapings or an incomprehensible site.

Answer 11

In my honest opinion, the World would be a boring place if we were al perfect.

When i started my journey on Family Tree building, i relied a lot on information taught me by my mother - Boy  did i get this wrong? Especially her advice on how one should conduct themselves in the workforce - she was an expert, never had a paid job in her life.

Now after three full years of Family Tree building and 10,000 profiles later, hopefully i have learnt how to post Sourced profiles.

Answer 12

I think personal knowledge requires a statement of how.  Like x is my grandparent who I saw every week from my birth till his or her death in year.   That gives context for the personal knowledge.  Or x is my great grandfather my mom talked about her grandfather at every family gathering and my aunts and uncles would jouninwith stories about him too.  Once again context of the knowledge.   

For trees handed down.  Define who created it and how they would know.   Oral history is not junk it needs definition. And look for collaborative official sources which should be findable if the tree is close to accurate. Having said that almost everything my mother told me about family history was wrong. She changed facts to fit the narrative she wanted.  She got angry when I found actual documents that refuted her narrative.

Answer 13

Can I be the only one on here for whom it is obvious that the software to do what you suggest is way beyond what you will see on WikiTree for a very long time? Beyond being WAY too complex to handle, it deals with a problem that is a fairly insignificant, and is best dealt with in other ways.

The One World Tree is built by and for volunteers, none of whom are paid, and none of whom are perfect, and none of whom are expected to be perfect.

The WikiTree way to handle this sort of thing, when you run across it, it if bothers you that much, is to try to establish who authored it, and to politely ask them to explain what they really mean, and what your concern is. Better yet, you can try to find, and then add, better sources, making that problematic source irrelevant. At least that's the way I think it's supposed to be on here. Getting up on a soap box about it doesn't really solve anything, and is really just a counterproductive waste of time.

Just within the last few days I ran across a profile for somebody that said they had died circa 2000. I pointed out to them that the person was listed among the survivors in her brother-in-law's obituary, which was less than 10 years ago, and that I doubted that she was even deceased. I didn't give some stern lecture, or call for magical software to inhibit this horrible infraction. Within 24 hours, the profile was private. Problem solved; no feathers ruffled.