Should I create profiles or not?

Question

ie at what point do I decide there is insufficient information at present to create a profile on wiki tree?

 I've been working on this profile which is a good example of what I mean.

I  will be adding  profiles of Edward Crouch's  children,  but  do I stop there or should I also create profiles for his other relatives?

1. His wife (I know her name and the marriage date but not her dob or death) 
2. His siblings ( I know their dates of birth)?
3. His  father mentioned in his apprenticeship documents (occupation and residence only)
4. His wife's father named  in non conformist records (no dates )

I'd create profiles on my home family tree software but should I also do the same here; I'm reluctant to guestimate dates. 

Answer 1

After three years on WikiTree, these are the guidelines I have developed for myself:

1. I do not create profiles for living people, ever, unless I have their express permission.

2. I do not create profiles for recently deceased (with still living immediate family) except if the profile can be created with truly publicly available information (e.g., a Google or Bing search would reveal the information).

3. I do not create a profile unless I have a credible source for birth year and place (at at least the state/province level) and a current intention to continue to research that person and add additional information to the profile.

Otherwise, I include the information I have in the biography, such as names of children, possible parents and siblings, etc.  (FYI, the text of biographies is fully searchable). I also, every so often, do "maintenance" on the profiles I have created and check to see if people I have included in the text have had profiles added to WikiTree by others. Sometimes they have been, and then I link them up as appropriate.

With these guidelines, I am comfortable I am growing a  healthy WikiTree. Others probably have developed other guidelines that work for them.

Comments

And of course the absolutely first thing you should do is make sure that a profile doesn't already exist!

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Agree on living people, I haven't created profiles for my children or my husband's siblings and have only created profiles with birth dates for our parent's.

Good reminder about checking for duplicates. It would actually be great if I found someone since  I don't have ancestors in common with anyone else on wiki tree yet . (there is one profile  that purports to be linked but I'm extremely uncertain about that one)

Thank you

Answer 2

Hi Helen,

Very good question - I (all too often) stop in my tracks to think about "to create or not to create ... that is the question".

I can't say what you "should" do ... that's too much an individual choice here, with the only absolute rule being that you must have a name and at least one date (even if it is a guess) to create a profile.  All I can do is share with you how I make these decisions (which is likely to be different from how others make them).

I only resort to having to guess a date if the new profile will be the only connection between its parent and its child (or children) that either are already here or for whom I know a date.

I also will not ever enter a profile for a living person without knowing at least a birth date.

Other than that, I will create profiles for family members of a person for whom I have enough information to write at least a half-way decent bio.

I hope this helps - I KNOW that I'm very interested in seeing how other members make these decisions.  Thank you so much for asking this question!

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Edited to add an afterthought:

In the case of siblings, if you don't have a parent to connect them to, you can't make the sibling connection!  You can still enter the sibling's profile, though, and put a link to other siblings in the bio section.

Comments

Thank you, It's been interesting to read the various replies.  As I said, at home I'd put these people on the tree but then no-one  at home is going to come along and link unrelated people to them just  because they share the same name.

Answer 3

Personally - I would create profiles for:

#1: You have a name and the marriage date - this is really important information - I would want to share this - simply for others who might be looking for this couple.

#2: If you only know dates of birth but do not know their names, I wouldn't create profiles for them.  But - if you have a source with their names, I would create the profiles.  Case-in-point, one of the Jones families I have studied only appears in the 1850 and 1860 census.  They have 7 children named.  Even though I know nothing else about them, I have created profiles for the 7 children and their parents - as I hope that either I will run into them at some point or maybe one of their descendants will find their profiles and add to them.  I'm really interested in this family and hope that my profiles might pull someone in at some point.

#3:  This is a judgment call.  I would say that in most cases, I would not create a profile for someone based solely on a mention in an apprenticeship document.  The exception for this would be if this was one of my brick wall ancestors.  If I found an apprenticeship document mentioning a parent of a brickwall ancestor, I would not only create a profile, but I would probably obsess over it and make g2g posts about it.  :)

#4: This is another judgment call.  Since you know the name and have a document supporting the name, you could just create a profile and list his birthdate before <her year of birth minus 18 years>  I probably wouldn't do this for a distant or collateral relative, but if this was a brickwall ancestor, I would be all about it and would be making g2g posts asking about the non-conformist movement.

Comments

#2 - I would not hesitate to create profiles for people based on a census listing from a census that reported names and ages. The age on a census record provides a good basis for a close estimate of a birthdate -- that's not a guess (although some census records are way off, probably because the person who entered the data was guessing at another person's age).

#3 - The apprenticeship document cited in the Edward Crouch biography gives the father's name and occupation, and it provides evidence that the father was alive on the date of the document. That provides a basis for the beginnings of a biography for this father, with birthdate guesstimated from the son's birthdate and a later date that can be used to define an "after this date" for his death. I'd be more comfortable creating his profile, though, if the "data" entries weren't going to be treated as precise values.

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Thank you,  lots to think about and lot's of possible profiles to create.

I was excited to find these on this Protestant dissenter's registry. I'd never come across before There is far more information than in parish records.

There's a talk on the register and the reasons behind it here

http://media.nationalarchives.gov.uk/index.php/dr-williams-library-an-early-birth-registry/

Answer 4

Nice work on that profile, Helen.

I also don't like to create profiles when I have nothing more than a rough guesstimate for the dates. When you do guess a date, you can place the {{DateGuess}} or {{BirthGuess}} template on the profile so that anyone who views the profile will recognize that the date is just a guess.

I'd feel better about guesstimating dates if the WikiTree search utilities didn't treat the guesstimates as precise dates. As near as I can tell, a date of "before 1780" (or "about 1780") is currently treated the same as a date certain of 1780. Thus, if someone shows up to create a profile for this person with a date of 1765 (or even 1778), the profile with the "before 1780" date is not identified as a potential match.

Comments

Thank you again.

Answer 5

Every time I discover a profile documented with a single verifiable fact, I celebrate. Inevitably, I've stumble upon the profile while researching or working on another profile that in some manner is associated with the person I'm chronicling.

Currently, I'm working with a census report for a household of two families living together, along with their hired help. As I work through the report, person by person, an intricate tapestry is slowly revealing a significant part of their lives. If you were to stumble upon some of their WikiTree profiles you likely will not see what I've seen, unless you in turn view the people they were living with at the time of the census. Some of the profiles have at least a brief biography, some only a single verifiable source document. All are equally important. All are a gift to anyone seeking their heritage, or longing to understand the past.

Collaboration is a give and take relationship. If you have only one proof to offer, it is a gift worth giving, and should be graciously received.

Comments

Thank you, I like the idea of  little bits of information fitting together to make a whole which is of course what we do when we're searching on our own.

That's the bit of wiki tree I haven't really got into as I'm still very much putting 'my tree' online .

Answer 6

Here's what I'd say, if you are able to do anywhere near as well sourcing the related profiles as you did with Edward's, you're going to have profiles that anyone on WikiTree will be happy with.  

As George alluded to, if you enter a profile here with one strong source, you're ahead of the game.