Requiring Birth/Death to Save Changes to Profile [closed]

Question

I have been working on this week's Data Doctors change.  When I try to make a change to a profile that doesn't have a birth or death date, I get an error that can not be over-ridden. 

"Error: Invalid data. The following must be corrected:

1. Either a Birth Date or Death Date is required.

  [more info] "

Has there been a change that you can't make a change to a profile that doesn't have a Birth or Death Date?

Comments

The change took effect on March 23rd.

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My concern would be that this person might still be alive, especially if she were the youngest child. My understanding was that birth of death dates have been required at profile creation for some years. This profile has been around since 2013, so dates would not have been required then.

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Basically, I did a search for the father on Ancestry. A tree came up listing the daughter.

Ancestry Tree: Birth: 05 JUNE 1910 • Asheville, North Carolina, USA

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Sister, Mildred only one surviving at time of Claud's death.

Obituary listed on Claud's Find a Grave page.

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Junie was listed as the oldest child on Ancestry Tree.

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#3 above

Thank you, This is the BEST answer.

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Hi

I've sourced three of Junie's siblings, naming both parents, in Family Search.  Hope this helps!

Answer 1

I've noticed this too. I wonder if it was associated with the change that was made to prevent profiles imported with GEDCOMpare from having no dates at all.

In any case, it is a good change. All profiles should have one or more dates, so that at least one knows something about what century the person was living in. Without this it is almost impossible to check for and reject possible duplicates.

If you cannot find an exact date, then it ought to be possible to work out a Before or After date for either birth or death. The {{Estimated Date}} template can be applied. See

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

Comments

If you can't find any sources, related profiles have no dates (unfortunately we have generations like this), leave a comment on the profile with the change that is needed that you can't make if you don't know a date and can't calculate one.  

If you 'estimate' a date, make sure to include something in the biography about how you estimated the date, as well as including the Estimated date template.

Answer 2

What if you are going to add a birth or death date?

Comments

If you are adding a birth or death date, then you will have a date entered and you won't get the message. You can't add a marriage date if one of the profiles doesn't have a birth or death date.

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The original question asks-"Has there been a change that you can't make a change to a profile that doesn't have a Birth or Death Date?" 

The answer was Yes, perhaps I'm being stupid but as stated you can't make a change because there is no birth or death date, it doesn't say except for adding the DOB or DOD. 

Or does it really mean you can enter information but can't save changes, if one of those changes is not the addition of a DOB or DOD. 

I wasn't thinking about when someone creates a new profile, I thought the problem would more likely arise when a profile was adopted or worked on for a Thon of some sort

I'm not disagreeing profiles should not be created without dates.

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You can 'try' to make changes to any field, but when you 'save', you get a message at the top stating that Birth or Death Date is needed and you 'can not' actually save the profile unless you add a birth or death date. If you fill in a birth or death date, then try saving the changes, it will work.  It is a new change in the last week, which is why there have been a couple of questions about it.

Until they stopped the Gedcom profiles from being created with no dates, they couldn't 'require' a date on all profiles.  Gedcom update was done this week, so now they could implement this final change.

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I think this is a much-needed change, so hooray! I think we should celebrate it and hope to work out the kinks.

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Thanks Linda; that's the detail I was looking for. I have no experience with Gedcoms either now or in the past and wasn't aware that profiles could previously be created without dates.

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Any wikitree profile could be created without dates in the past, but they made a very welcomed change to require at least one of the dates when profiles were created manually. Unfortunately Gedcom were still allowed to create profiles with no dates, but that loophole was closed on Mar 23, so now the Saving of any profile requires that a date be added, if none existed previously.  I suspect we will have a lot more estimated dates, but hopefully people will be able to find sources and not just use estimated dates which will not be necessarily accurate. It will be better than no dates though

Answer 3

On profiles like this, I spend a bit of time looking for a date.  Since someone found the sister's birthdate, I'd use that to create an estimated birth date, adding or subtracting 2 years.  Then I'd put a note in the biography about where the date came from and add the estimated date|birth  template, assuming I couldn't find another source than an internet tree.

It's a reasonable amount of work for one correction, but it clears the suggestions and makes the profile more searchable.

If I find that the person could be living, I send a note to info at WikiTree so it can be dealt with as a living person.

I wouldn't leave a note on the profile unless I couldn't find anything.

Answer 4

I am very much behind the change to stop new profiles from being created without any date. However, I see some issues with working on and correcting existing profiles if you can't make basic edits like adding a biography header.

I usually start a research notes section while I am trying to find a date for a profile. I've got a couple of ideas for getting around this. First, if there is an attached profile with at least one date I think I will add research notes for the associated profile on the profile with a date. Another option is to create a free space page for my notes on profiles I am researching.

Overall it is definitely a step in the right direction - it will just take some work around for those where a date is not easily found or estimated.

Answer 5

Just be aware if one of the dates places the profile into a recent era and you aren't the PM or on the trusted list, it will turn the privacy level to Private and you won't be able to edit any further (such as adding a marriage as has been mentioned here).

Comments

Same for pre-1500, unless you are pre-1500 qualified.

Answer 6

I see this and when looking at parents and/or siblings I can find a date that is often more than a hundred years ago.

Then create an estimated date, set the status as estimated, and add the {{Estimated Date}} template.

Then SAVE