What is the protocol here reusing profile?

Question

I have a profile I with to make for a Mary Scott

There is a very sparse profile for a Mary Scott, the sparse details match my Mary Scott.

Born before 1800 in Ayrshire, Scotland

Can I re-use this profile?

Comments

Hi NG. No, sorry. See

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Recycling_WikiTree_IDs

which says:

Even if the profile has very little information, we don't recycle the WikiTree ID.

and

Recycling IDs corrupts the change history of a profile. Being able to follow the history of changes to a page is critically important on a wiki.

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Ok, now I know.

Thank you.

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But if the new profile is for a Mary Scott born in Ayrshire before 1800 it isn't exactly recycling, is it?

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You seem to be questioning one of the strongest statements on any WikiTree Help page: not a recommendation, or a guideline, but a bald "we don't" prohibition.

Recycling here would indeed corrupt the history of changes. By looking at all the Scott or whatever name profiles created by the same person around the same time, with their original text, it might be possible to reconstruct what the whole family was about. Repurposing one of the profiles would interfere with that.

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The privacy settings of the original creator of the profile prevent any research being done by normal Wikitree users into how this profile might have been related to any other profile on WIkitree when it was created. There may be a select few on Wikitree who can resurrect the original intention of the profile, but unless one of those people is actually fixing these issues as they appear on WIkitree, leaving it sitting there is just leaving litter on the sidewalk.

The profile is not connected to any other profile, it has no manager, and the lone vital event matches the person who NG Hill is trying to profile.

There is nothing distinguishing the current profile from the person he is trying to profile, and there is no manager.

It seems to me that he not only *can* they enter more details for the profile, but they *should.* To do otherwise would be creating a duplicate.

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I have some sympathy with this argument, although it does not allow for the possibility that the contribution history may become available eventually.

However, I don't think a very precisely and clearly stated official WikiTree rule should be ignored. Instead, a policy change proposal could be submitted to allow suitably defined exceptions on that Help page (in addition to the only one mentioned there at present, for "Unknowns", which does not apply in this case).

Answer 1

Hi, NG —

The profile you are referencing has never been anyone but Mary Scott, has never had any connected family members, has a birth location the same as the person you want to create a profile for, and has a similar birth date, as well.

In other words, there’s no history to corrupt on this profile, so it would seem fine for you to go ahead and flesh out the information for this person.

Recycling would involve changing the name, location, or other information on this profile to make it into a completely different person.

Thanks for asking before acting! :-)

Comments

p.s. Another detail of note: the profile is orphaned. If it had a profile manager, it would be better to try to contact the profile manager to see if the details you want to add match with anything they know about the person.

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Julie, just to note that the Help page doesn't talk about recycling profiles, names, or locations. It speaks of recycling WikiTree IDs.

If the WikiTree ID is used for a person who is not known to be identical to the one intended by the creator of the profile, then the ID is being recycled.

This does seem a sensible step to take in this case. But it would be good if the Team could consider how the language of the Help page could be changed to make it clearer what is prohibited and what is permitted.

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In my opinion, this is neither reusing or recycling of a profile, but improvement - which we are encouraged to do all the time.

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'Mary' is a ubiquitous name, 'Scott' is common, and Ayrshire is a big place.  It will never be possible to say with confidence who Scott-8614 was intended to be.  It would be entirely reasonable for NG to use it for her new profile.  The current profile is just clutter.  If we insist on keeping it in its current state until we can confidently say who it was intended to represent, it will be in WikiTree in its present form 100 years from now.

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No. The way to deal with Scott-8614 is to merge it with Scott-8636. Those two, as Eva has pointed out, have a high probability of being duplicates according to the original intentions of the person who created them—far more so than the profile NG is working on.

Answer 2

Would answering this question,“Are we absolutely sure it is the same person?”, Answer the OP’s question?

Comments

Probably. But it is in the nature of genealogy that we cannot always be 100 % certain of the identity behind a name.

Personally, I wouldn't hesitate to go to work on the existing profile with the assumption that it was the same Mary Scott, given the similarities and the absence of any other information. Should somebody later find out that there were another, contemporary Mary Scott in the same area who might have been intended as the target of this profile, we have tools to deal with that. After all, we assume that mistakes are unintentional.

Answer 3

I thank all the replies and interest.

I did a WikiTree plus search "CreatedBy=Creator_6845195"

The other Scott that came up created around the same time and person, was enough to convince me it is not the family as the Mary Scott I have yet to add.

The other Scot  Scott-8636 Mary Scott aka Bryan.

So I will make a new profile (maybe today) and leave this one be.

And maybe go back later and try to find connections to this lonly Mary Scott ... sounds like fun...  unless someone else gets there before me.

I love WikiTree.

Again thank all of your Wonderful WIKITreer's for your replies.

Comments

So she's a duplicate of https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Scott-8636 then?

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Could be a duplicate, not enough detail.

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Thanks NG. It's good that you found a way to see profiles associated with the one in question. According to Scotland's People, there were at least 15 Mary Scotts born in Ayrshire before 1800 (several not long before), so the likelihood of a duplicate was always quite low.

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Scott-8614 was created 20 Nov 2013 by Rose-3278, who corrected her own LNAB later the same day and became Hall-10980, who then created Scott-8636 on Nov 21 2013, which is why I believe it is a duplicate.

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Sorry, Eva, I think we're talking about different things. I am saying that NG is correct in determining that the new profile being created now is not a duplicate of either Scott-8614 or Scott-8636. Therefore there is no case for recycling the ID Scott-8614.

You are probably right that Scott-8614 and Scott-8636 are duplicates of each other, but that is a separate question.