WikiTree should red flag profiles when a child is listed with a birth year before the before the mother

Question

The profile of Eleanor Margery Smoot Warren (Smoot-63) gives Eleanor's year of birth as 1638 in England and her mother is listed as Jane Batten Smoot (Batten-727) whose year of birth is given as 1639 in Virginia.  Eleanor's year of death is given as 1758 which means she was 120 years old when she died.  There should be a red flag on this profile questioning Jane Batten Smoot (Batten-727)  as Eleanor's mother based on Eleanor being born the year before Jane was born.  I believe WikiTree flags issues like this when you create a profile and allows an over ride but the red flag should stay visible to alert viewers to obvious conflicts in dates where a child is born before the listed parents.

Comments

That will generate error messages whenever someone tries to edit the profile. It also will appear on "Suggestions" reports available to Trusted List members and monitored by Data Doctors.

Answer 1

Hi Caroline

I do not know if this will work in your WikiTree world, but I have the following suggestion.

In both the Cape of Good Hope and SA Roots projects we copy  the red warning that comes up while editing.  We then past it to the comment box of the profile with a little note that more research is needed.

This works for us and many a mistake (error)  are corrected this way, because every member on the project sees the original comment in there mail feed.

 Happy to say - many are willing to jump in and fix the problem with sources. Collaboration in overdrive.  :-D

Comments

That is a great idea Ronel. I get that warning once in a while doing data_dr edits.

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Great suggestion and work around.  Thanks

Answer 2

Carolyn, are you talking about something like the Unsourced tag?  That if there are unresolved birth issues, children b. too close together, either parent too young, or other things that just aren't copacetic??

I agree!!! Now wwatch 101 reason why it can't or shouldn't be done be posted after this!!

Answer 3

Ellens comment should have been an answer so it could have been chosen as best. In the case of your example those profiles would actually generate at least "suggestions". Red flagging anything like that would be a poor idea because we all make mistakes, in fact the Honor Code states that mistakes happen and we should assume that they were just that and not done intentionally. Those kind of errors will eventually get fixed, it just may take a little longer than some would like to find sources to make sure we fix it and not just make it worse by blind guessing.