Anonymous Names - Recommending technical & non-technical solutions

Question

As of now there are 10,293 profiles with Anonymous names in them.  This seems to be getting out of hand.  Looking at them, hundreds - if not thousands - are from non-living ancestors.  Some are mistakes, and some have been intentionally set to Anonymous.

For those Anonymous entries that are the result of a mistake, I propose a change to how WikiTree works: as I understand it, WikiTree inserts "Anonymous" if either the Preferred Name or Current Last Name field are blanked out by the user. Recommendations for fixing this going forward are twofold - things to prevent its occurence, and things to remedy it going forward:

1. Prevention

• If the user blanks out Preferred Name, the name in the Proper First Name field populates Preferred Name.
• If the user blanks out the Current Last Name field, the name in the LNAB populates it.  

1. Correction

• Send an email or other type of message to any profile manager of a non-living ancestor who has Anonymous in one of the required name fields, asking him or her to change it to the correct name (assuming it was a mistake).
• Going forward, create a list that identifies profiles for non-living ancestors that are being changed to Anonymous by users, so that people can follow up with those responsible, and help them.
• Initiating a project/effort to fix the "Anonymous" profiles without PMs
• Clarifying in the Honor Code that Anonymous is not an acceptable name choice for non-living ancestors.  This would have to be done carefully or people might just change everything to Unknown, which would not be any better.

It seems to me that if we don't fix the Anonymous name issue soon, the value of WikiTree as a Shared Tree will diminish significantly. Can we get something in place to fix this issue?

 

Comments

Update: If you try to clear out the Proper First Name, Preferred First, or Current Last Name, a big highlighted message appears explaining when it's appropriate to use Anonymous, etc.

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Thank you, Chris.  I'm sure this will help some people who accidently create Anonymous names.

Answer 1

S Wilson, I noticed that this topic has come up before so thought I would throw in my 2 cents. I cannot see any reason for anyone to use Anonymous in any name field unless the person is either under age, living, or the spouce of a living person.  You are right in my opinion, that using anonymous sort of defeats the purpose of a shared tree ! I'm sure there are those who will not share my view but Anonymous is often an irritating word !

Comments

It may be that anonymous is not put in intentionally but is a result of removing either a Preferred First Name or a Current Last Name without replacing it. This is an unintended result.

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It seems to me that WikiTree could be modified to use one of the names in the profile, rather than Anonymous.  That was the essence of my suggestion in the section above on "Prevention".

Answer 2

Hi S.,

I appreciate the problem, but I'm not sure auto-filling from the other name fields is appropriate.

It's what we do when the profile is created, e.g. if you don't enter a Current Last Name it defaults to what is entered as the Last Name at Birth. I'm not sure it's appropriate here. It could be very frustrating for some users. Often they are trying to delete family information because they're already frustrated for some reason.

We decided to have "Anonymous" auto-filled because anonymizing the profile is generally what the user is trying to do by deleting the name field. That is, they're trying to delete the name. If we required that they fill in something else, many people would put in junk.

"Anonymous" is the right thing to put in these fields in these cases. If we didn't autofill it, many people would put something else or mispell it. It is, after all, a hard word to spell. If it's not spelled correctly it defeats the purpose in some contexts, technically speaking.

I'm not just speculating. This is what happened before we started autofilling with "Anonymous. " People were entering junk characters when they discovered they couldn't easily delete profiles.

We went ahead and added a little bit of additional explanation, on the edit page and linked on the Name Fields page.

We can also have a little pop-up appear when you clear a name field. That would help a lot.

Chris

Comments

Chris, it might be time to re-think this. When editing existing profiles, I agree that "Anonymous" is likely the correct autofill for the Proper First Name when the field is deleted. But for Preferred Name & Current Last Name, the expectation is that the field would be autofilled from Proper First Name or the LNAB, respectively. Deleting those fields in an existing profile is far more likely to be an attempt to correct a typo or other problem with the name, expecting that the fields will revert to the "original" values.

I remember being very surprised to see "Anonymous" pop up in one of these fields when I tried to correct an error. After several attempts, I gave up & did a copy/paste from the other field; but that is counter-intuitive.

I would think that allowing "Anonymous" in Preferred Name or Current Last Name when there is a valid entry for Proper First Name or the LNAB should be an error...