British BMD data in gedcom files

Question

19th century BMD catalogues in the UK are by calendar quarter. Thus many dates are registered by UK genealogists as, for example Q1 1881, or BET. Jan 1 and March 31 1881.

These are then transferred with our gedcoms. This is not changed but is in the Biography under B, M, or D date.

For Wikitree purposes we then put date as 1881 "Certain", or Mar 31 1881, "before this date"

The error and warning report prompts me to change the Gedcom data as Error 851  GEDCOM uncleaned Interpret date  . 

What action should we take, to be consistent. Personally, I would like the facility to record Q1 1881 in the Wikitree Date field.

Comments

The whole problem would become moot if we had the option of using 2 date fields for births, marriages, and deaths.  That way, when we know a date is approximate, certain, before, or after, we would use the first date field for it, mark certainty appropriately, and leave the second date field blank.  When we know a date range, we could then use the first field for the "after" date and the second field for the "before" date, with the result being displayed "between (date1) and (date2)".

Unfortunately, I predict this improvement will never happen.

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Gaile,

You're so right.

My specific complaint is that the error 851 refers to information within the Biography. My view is the Error Report should not be looking for things like date errors within the Biography. If I choose to write BET. 1st Jan 1881 and 31st Mar 1881 in the Biography it's my choice, and anyone reading it will totally understand it. It is not an error.

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The error is NOT complaining about the date format.

The error is complaining that you failed to clean up (remove) the GEDCOM error message from the Biography..

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If a date is shown as q4 1900, it is before 31 Dec 1900 but it may not be on or after 1 oct 1900; it may not have been registered timeously.

Also if the date is recorded as before 1901 then Aleš's programme tends, I think, to strip out the "before" and thinks = instead.

Answer 1

Personally, I would like the facility to record Q1 1881 in the Wikitree Date field.

Steve - I'd second that 100%.

Answer 2

To avoid getting picked up by the report, I just put the year in the data field, then the entire registration (St Germans, 5c, 43, Jun q 1881) in the Sources section.

Comments

I do that too Ros, as I want the District and vol/page number in the notes as it gives more info that just the year, but I do like Steve's idea too.

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Ros,

You're so right.

My point is that if we all have different work-arounds it defeats the Wikitree objective.

More importantly, it is not an error!!

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I also just put the year in the date field, with the "quarter" information in the biography.

Similarly, when I have a baptism or burial date, just put the year in the date field.

I think the GEDCOM error just means that it  (the software) did not understand the date, not that it needed to be changed.

I think the reason it is marked as an error is that it indicates a GEDCOM  download that has NOT been "cleaned up".

"Cleaning up" would include REMOVING the text "GEDCOM uncleaned Interpret date "
Yes, the option to enter the Quarter would be useful.

Answer 3

What about picking the middle month and marking it as "uncertain"? You can't be more than one month out, and the fact that you do provide a month suggests the uncertainty is more than a day but less than a year even to people unfamiliar with the British convention.

Then get your project leader to make a nice template so you just need to say {{BritishBMD}} in the biography rather like the {{DateGuess}} we already have, to put in an easily recognizable standard explanation.

Comments

Excellent idea.

Answer 4

Don't forget that the BMD quarters are based on the date of event registration, and not the date of the actual event. There is no certainty that an event occurred within that quarter, or even in the previous quarter.

At best, the BMD quarter provides an approximate date only.

Comments

For instance, I was born in the November, but my parents didn't get around to registering me for the regulation 6 weeks, so my birth registration is in the March quarter (they registered me in the January of the next year).