Data Doctors and National Military Cemeteries request for help?

Question

In looking at the Cemetery Reports for several of the US National Cemeteries for military personnel and their families, I have noticed that

1) Ainsworth-1886 represents a great many profiles that contain only the Find-a-Grave source citation and limited bios, but many do not even contain the rank or conflict for the service member in the military cemetery. From his birth in 1807 to his death in 1873, I could not find information on his military service, but that he was a lawyer and a judge.

2) many service men, women, and their families are not listed in the cemetery category for, say, Fayetteville National Cemetery, Arkansas or Forest Hill Cemetery, Madison, Wisconsin or Wyeuka Cemetery in Lincoln, Nebraska, where they are interred due to the fact that the profiles have not been categorized to the cemetery. Simple fixes, but there are thousands not showing up in the cemetery.

I'm working on categorizing, but it is too much for me. Help!

Could Wikitree come up with a challenge to help make members more aware of the need to add military cemetery categories to profiles?

Bev

Answer 1

Bev,

There are a lot of us out there in the same boat with you.  Working on cemeteries the size of the ones you mentioned makes it seem like you will never get through with it.

My pet peeve are those profiles that should be in the cemetery category but are marked private so you can't put them there.  I have run across a lot of those in a couple of the large cemeteries that I have worked on categorizing.

By the way, the cemeterist project just completed a challenge to get cemeteries categorized.  It was a weekly one and very few people worked on it.  That may have been that they missed the announcement which I didn't see until the last day of the challenge and I am in the project.

Comments

I guess I missed challenge for getting cemeteries categorized. I have added a few and am interested in working on more.

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Try not to take privacy personally. Someone is missing out on your free assistance so unfortunately, their relative will not show up in the cemetery for that location.

Sometimes I email the manager and provide the category heading so they can enter it in the profile if they so choose.

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Yeah, sometimes I take the time to email them too.  Some will add the profile to the cemetery category and some won't.

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Unfortunately, I haven't joined contests because my computer skills aren't great, but the contests are really worthwhile.

Somehow, Wikitree has a lot of profiles that only have Find-a-grave sourcing and we don't consider that "the best" source. Also, when we work on cemeteries as one-place studies (like I do) we work from Find-a Grave entries and compare those to profiles already on Wikitree. The duplicate profile is not always pulled up because what we know about someone when they have immigrated and have started their families (let's say New York) is very different from where their lives end (Rural, Waupaca County in Wisconsin).

Just entering a Find-a-Grave profile does not automatically put the profile in the Wikitree Cemetery Category. That is the biggest rub I see. If that is the only source, we should also require the cemetery category be added - or is there a way that the cemetery can be captured from the FG citation or profile number to automatically populate the category?

Also, I noticed that if the FG source from Family Search does not include the FG Memorial ID #, the profile will not populate in the cemetery category until that ID# is entered - this is a part of what data doctors do.

These two factors will result in duplicate profiles and in confusion until every name on each cemetery report is updated.

Members have a right to make profiles private. I wish they would understand this classification issue better though. Trying to explain it is not easy.

Answer 2

Some what related. I see many profiles that have been created with minimum data and the only source is the Find-a-Grave Memorial and the creator did not even bother to add the cemetery category when they dumped the source on the profile.

Comments

I didn't create the original Find-a-Grave profiles, and I don't take privacy personally. I just want to help move the profiles along on their journey to finding family and relatives.

When I began doctoring the data a few weeks ago, I initially did just add the category, but it didn't take long before I started adding sources from family search - takes so little time to add even just 1 census record so those family genealogists that want to research their relative have a couple of sources to help them.

Then I started adding more records but thought, in the case of the military cemeteries, that perhaps the profiles were being 'caught' at that point so the people that are working on military and war categories could add branch of service, rank, etc.

Now, I add 1 or two sources, but if FamilySearch doesn't yield more than the find-a-grave reference, or if the manager has only added DNA information, I only add the category until someone requests otherwise.

What do you think?

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I was saying that in general those that just add a Find-a-Grave Memorial often do not add the cemetery category. I wasn't saying that was you.

More managers should take your lead and provide more sources AND at the same time use them as inline references within the biography that is should be written. Too many members just dump sources without ever using them to support statements.

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It is difficult for me to stay in my lane as a data doctor, meaning, should I just categorize, or do more? I want to leave room in a profile for the family genealogist to research. I want to leave them a few clues. I want them to find their relative in the correct cemetery. I want Wikitree to be the premier genealogical site! Hopefully, that's what we all want.

Answer 3

Bev, I like your ideal. We have to go with what we know now, and sometimes there is missing information that we would prefer to have.

When I'm categorizing, I try to include what I can, even if some information is missing. For example, I know someone served in the Army during World War II, but I don't know their dates, unit, rank, etc.

Adding the sticker, or just the category [[Category: United States Army, World War II]], will put them in a grouping, which someone can later work on to fill in the missing gaps.

If people used the stickers, it would add them to the appropriate categories I mentioned above, even if some details are missing.

Stickers seem to be the easy way to accomplish this, rather than explain all the category options to everyone.

Maybe we could focus on the purpose of stickers and encourage their use. Then a future challenge could use that main category to find those missing details.

Comments

Thank you for your comment. I'm not very good at stickers but that's a great idea.

I've noticed help within many of the Find-a-Grave profiles. Many contain a photo of the memorial marker that has the rank and other military information. Granted, some are almost impossible to read, but we can use what we have to help provide better profiles.

Answer 4

If you are working with US National Cemeteries operated by the Veterans Administration, gravelocator.cem.va.gov is the primary source.  That database also includes information on military gravestones issued to other cemeteries since the late 1990s.  The Army operates Arlington National Cemetery, the Soldiers & Sailors Home National Cemetery, as well as several post cemeteries including the West Point Military Academy cemetery.  They have recently consolidate the records for all these in their ANC Explorer database (they also have a mobile phone app).  The Army also has a number of legacy civilian/family cemeteries located within various Army bases.  At last check the Army had very little detailed information posted on those.  There is a separate official database for US Overseas Military Cemeteries,  Lastly, the National Parks Service operates several Battleground National Park Cemteries, mostly Civil War, but also Little Big Horn.  At leat one (Andersonville) seems to be incorporated into the VA database, but others appear to have no index (Little Big Horn) or separately compiled listings (Fredericksburg/Spotsylvania/Gettysburg). See the main list of NPS Cemeteries.

Comments

These are great sites so I have bookmarked them on my computer for use in the future.

Bev