Challenge of the Week: Add missing Find A Grave connections between existing profiles

Question

Hi WikiTreers,

Aleš's WikiTree+ data analysis has found thousands of people who are connected as parents and children or spouses on Wikidata pages or Find A Grave memorials, but are not connected on WikiTree even though they both have profiles.

The Wikidata hints can be difficult to address. The Find A Grave hints are much more abundant and easier to handle.

For example, here's how to handle items on the table for FindAGrave - Possible mother (1800-1899), i.e. 19th century mother-child connections.

Look in the Relation (Rel.) column for any child-mother pair and click the links to open their WikiTree profiles. Then click the links below those to open their Find A Grave memorials. You might want to right-click the links and keep all four open in separate tabs to review them.

Not all the information on Find A Grave is reliable. If there is a photo of a single gravestone that connects the mother and child, you can use that as your only source to connect them. Otherwise, either look for other sources to verify the connection, or mark the relationship as uncertain and add a Research Notes section on the child's profile saying that the relationship is based on Find A Grave and has not been independently verified.

Will you work on some of these with us? If so, or if you have any questions, please post below.

Thanks for helping!

Comments

Challenge is active.

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Hello

Hope to connect a few in this challenge

Answer 1

I am going to try a few of these.  Thanks for this.

Answer 2

I will try to overcome my FindAGrave aversion and attempt a few of these.

Answer 3

I still think this is a very bad idea. There are so many errors and complete fabrications on Find a Grave.

Wikidata is more fantasy than research basing it's information on a secondary knowledge base that collects and links to references to such knowledge such as unsourced information from many sites.

See this conversation from March of this year

https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/1553682/challenge-missing-connections-between-existing-profiles

Comments

Good Point and Warning .. M Ross .. I'm careful to connect only when there are substantiating and standard based sources outside of Find a Grave. Thank you for the due diligence reminder.   

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Thanks for the reminder.

I think this is a good idea if we approach it from a fact checking standpoint and emphasize that these are Data Doctor/WikiTree+ SUGGESTIONS. Part of the point of the  challenge is to remove hints from these suggestion lists, and if they aren't a match, they still can be removed by making a note of it.

Answer 4

Are suggestions going to be updated this week?  Everything is still dated last week Oct 22.

Answer 5

Enthusiastically helping ... C'est Bon Magnifique

Answer 6

These, honestly, are my favorite DDs to work on, because if correct, we can get branches connected, and when wrong, they're always very interesting research problems! (A common FG error to look out for is putting a FG id into the "spouse" box when it was intended to go into the "mother" box just above.) Try filtering by your favorite state/region/place and "19cen"
 or "20cen" if you want to get your feet wet.

Stay skeptical and add sources to our profiles, especially when the FG memorial is the only source. 

Answer 7

I have tried a few already.

Answer 8

I'll do a few of these.

Answer 9

This is a great way to fill in the blanks or to confirm connections. I have been making great progress with many branches on Wikitree using Find a Grave.

Answer 10

Working on [[Morse-9610| Abigail Morse]] - attached her birth record and marriage record; also added parents' marriage record on her mom's profile .. is that enough? Do I need to do anything else?

Answer 11

Yes :) I've been matching people up in cemeteries and am interested in copying things over to WikiTree

Answer 12

what great infro true

graves must be proven

how found lots of mistakes there

and also incorrect spelling of names

thats way wiki-tree is better than other programs

Comments

i have found the names in find a grave and then gone too

cenetery where there records are great

this is where name of cemertery is than tons of infromation comes out of visit

Answer 13

I’m up for this challenge!

Answer 14

I'm late, but I will work some today.

Answer 15

I'm joining late, too, but will try to add a few today.

Answer 16

Am working on some. Mainly FindAGrave errors so far.

Answer 17

Many of these profiles have no source at all besides Find a Grave, so it's a great chance to improve the sourcing on the profiles as well.