A request for consideration concerning Unsourced profiles! [closed]

Question

Hi everyone, a little venting here and offer thoughts of another way to resolve our unsourced profile issues especially those profiles that have been around a while, untouched. Please hear me out, read to the end, think awhile about it and see what you think. 

We have just completed a huge "Source A Thon", and have one going on for the month of October as well. However we still have a huge large list of unsourced profiles that somehow (at least for me) keeps growing. 

Case in point. Just tonight I sourced two profiles that were hard to work with, was happy with my result when I go check the unsourced list to make sure they were removed and found instead 4 new profiles added under a specific surname. 

My request for consideration is this: For those profiles that fall under projects like South Africa and New Zealand for instance or a state in the United States... Could we not first email the profile manager and ask them to work on the profile.. My observation as been that the projects somehow determined they belong to their project add their "category" but instead of working to get the profile sourced they just put the "unsourced tags" on it.  I  realize not everyone or every project does this, but it has been happening rather frequent lately. The two I worked on had been on a certain project's list but was not touched for several months, ie: clean up the GED codes that are from Ancestry.com or clear up the "suggestion" (formerly errors)  of removing the "interpert" date coding etc. 

Could we not slow down a little with the unsource tagging....and start coordinating with profile managers and work with them along with the project members that added their project category to the profile in question. Just adding the unsourced tag, doesn't always get the job done and the profiles just sit there. 

There has to be some type of  nudge or encouragement  or whatever word would fit, to actually get the profile managers (of the unsourced profiles) more involved in correcting and sourcing their own profiles from 2014, 2015 etc that have never been sourced and now someone tags them but the profile manager doesn't get notified... most likely they don't even remember having those profiles. Clean up of old GED codes etc has to be done as well as sourcing especially those long Ancestry.com coding that we continuously find on profiles. 

Ok, finished venting, but this might be a solution that we could use to clean up our unsourced profiles together with the profile manager listed. (Oh, I know someone will say a lot of the older profile managers are no longer active, I realize that too, but there are a lot of profile managers still with us and are active; we sure could use their help cleaning up the unsourced list. 

Thanks for reading, thanks for trying to understand where I am coming from and thanks for all you do on WikiTree to make it the best genealogy site on the internet!! 

 

Comments

Hi Dotothy

My mind set was that if they put their project name on it then they (in my mind) are also taking ownership in getting them cleaned up and sourced.This specific profile had sat on the "unsourced list" for over six months under a project covering but nothing done.  

What can I say but be especially thankful for the wonderful and unselfish work that project members are doing. Giving up their free time, but unfortunately they are human Dorothy. Please tell us what time limits are you setting in which profiles has to be completed by projects? Please don't forget the penalties for failure. Do you want the project members banished from WikiTree if they fail to complete the profiles?

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I do appreciate  wonderful and unselfish work that project members are doing,  just as you and I both do each day. That was not the point. In any given suggestion, readers like to have examples, a situation that sticks out, or just like finding relatives, a location, a birth/ death date, any relatives (facts to assist or facts to go by in order to understand what they ( or me in this case) are wanting for us to consider. 

So no, this was NOT a criticism, this was a suggestion with an example (in most cases not the norm).

There was no suggestion or comment about "penalties for failure". This is an unreasonable question here: Do you want the project members banished from WikiTree if they fail to complete the profiles?  "OF COURSE NOT!"

Limits???  as my example mentioned 6 months, a year, what do you say. And no, not a day, or week or even one or two months, that is not what I was recommending. The powers to be can discuss that, I was not. What would you like to see be done? Would it include the project teams, would it include the profile manager in sourcing his or her profile.... 

Lets hear your suggestion Louis!! How would you get the profile manager, project member or whom ever involved in sourcing profiles. It should not always be left up to the sourcers or source a thons to get this done. 

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i admit i'm guilty of creating profiles without sourcing them since it's a hassle and time consuming to try doing the proper source citation format for each profile i make especially if i'm mass adding them.

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Thank you Katy for your honestly, and in sharing your experiences .. This is something we can work with. :)

Let me ask you this, Have you considered asking for a "mentor" or post a question when you got stuck, say doing the proper source citation format?? I know serveral members who would be more then glad to give you ideas, answer your questions, help you along. I have noticed several questions on in-line citations were they shared a help page, or wrote out short instructions right here on the g2g forum. (There's even a youtube video going step by step).

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You also might think of making it a condition, that before joining a project or earning pre-1700 and pre-1500 badges,  a new member has ALL their family profiles truly sourced. Right now, when they enter a family member, they can put in sources "to be sourced later". One member who joined in July has around 200 family members Unsourced and seems to have run off to EuroAristos !

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I think membership requirements should be at the discretion of that project's leaders. Some projects specifically take on new members on WikiTree to get them more easily familiarized with WikiTree and getting a pre-1700 badge is part of the learning curve.

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Dorothy, you ask why people manage unsourced profiles.

I have 50 profiles on my watchlist that are in the Unsourced category. I believe that all of these are either (1) profiles I adopted or (2) profiles where another member added me as trusted list member or profile manager. A number of these people are mapped as my direct ancestors, some are related but not ancestors, some are of interest to a project I participate in, some I adopted because they were closely related to or have similar names to someone else I was working on, some of them are probably duplicates of another profile (but I couldn't tell so I adopted the profile in order to keep an eye on future merge requests or edits), and a couple of them may be nonexistent people. My main interest in adopting these profiles is to make sure that someone will be aware of changes that are made or proposed, so they don't get inappropriately merged into oblivion.

Speaking only for myself, I consider it an interruption of my day when I get an email message urging me to start working to find sources for one of these profiles that happens to have my name on it, such as Starns-21 or Vanbloemendaal-2.

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Hi Ellen. Your reason for adopting these profiles are great reasons thanks for sharing them.  

But still, for the sake of "discussion" only, (not criticism)-  I am not understanding why after awhile, when you have some free time,  you wouldn't want to try to source them. Again with all due respect, (and I do admire the work that you do on WikiTree), but when we adopt a profile isn't our responsible to 1. safeguard them, which you do, and 2. work on sourcing and maintaining them according to WikiTree standards.? What about the Honor Code that says we VIII  "We cite sources. Without sources we can't objectively resolve conflicting information".??

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Oh, I do sometimes work on the profiles on my unsourced list. But determining who these people were (it's often not at all clear!) and finding sources can be a major research project. Almost all of these people are pre-1700 (the birthdates range from 1526 to 1775, not counting one from the 1800s that someone else added to my watchlist for reasons I haven't discerned) and they are almost all nearly empty profiles created in the early days of WikiTree. These aren't people who can be sourced at the rate that some folks achieve during source-a-thons -- and I have plenty of projects that are more rewarding (as measured both in my personal satisfaction and in the amount of information I can develop).

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i may do that dorothy. also, another issue is that sometimes i forget to label my bookmarks when i bookmark a familysearch microfilm image that has useful/relevant information so that makes it harder for me to find the relevant source for a particular person. while i have been making effort with the silao profiles with the sourcing, i haven't done the same with my own family tree and a few other people i've been helping with their geneaology.

i'll see about getting some of my managed profiles currently without sources with sources soon. but that work will be done mostly on my mom's side since most of that can be found on familysearch(i'll probably start with pre-1700 profiles since there's more of those on her side of family tree). some of the names on my dad's side, on the other hand, aren't easily findable on familysearch, and few names - i'm not sure where my grandma karon got the information from(and since she passed away in 2010, i can't ask her and i tried asking my dad, but he's not sure either. but at least none of those profiles are pre-1700 though.)

Answer 1

Hi Dorothy. I think is a really good question. I had not collaborated much on wikitree before the source-a-thon, focussing instead on my little section of the world tree. Working on the source-a-thon and seeing some of the issues that some profiles was a real eye opener.

It's not just sourcing that's the problem. Just looking at my own watch list I see that I manage 279 profiles. I know that just 2 of those 279 are done to my full satisfaction with reasonable biographies and at least  20 sources. Almost all the rest have short bios and some sources but are far from complete. I may source the death but not the burial and stuff like that. It's a stuff I plan on improving.

Looking at my more serious issues I can see from my watchlist that I have 3 totally unsourced profiles so about 3%. 3 profiles not sourced out of 279 started off sounding like I was doing rather well but if we extend that rate to everyone that would translate to 450,000 unsourced profiles(ouch!) across the 15,000,000 records on wikitree. I am doing much better on suggestions with none on the records I manage having suggestions. I am doing much worse on unconnected profiles with 5 unconnected profiles that I manage.

I am also way behind on my 'confirmed with DNA' work.

So that's me, thinking I am doing fine but if I am the typical user it translates to a massive problem across all 15 million profiles.

One thing I did notice working on the source-a-thon was that I kept coming across the same profile managers time and time again who had lots and lots of un-sourced profiles. I must have sourced up 5 or more profiles from the same project managers time and time again

If we all average these percentages this is roughly how many unsourced profiles wikitree will have.

1% = 150,000 unsourced records on wikitree

2% = 300,000 unsourced records on wikitree

3% = 450,000 unsourced records on wikitree

4% = 600,000 unsourced records on wikitree

5% = 750,000 unsourced records on wikitree

10% = 1,500,000 unsourced records on wikitree

So even if everyone manages to source 90% of their profiles that still leaves 1.5 million unsourced records to sort out. Based on what I saw during the source-a-thom I am not confident that some people are even achieving 50% and that my 3 unsourced profiles are more of an issue than I ever thought.

Comments

Hi Earl, wow you put a lot of thought and research into this answer! Thank you for sharing your observations and stats!! I am picking it as best answer!

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As I said, I, the author of this question, is picking the above answer as Best Answer to my question. Thank you.

Answer 2

A possible technique for getting profile managers more involved in cases where they do not do much sourcing could be to add a comment saying something like «I have identified a source which may be relevant for this profile. Here is a link if you would like to evaluate it when you develop the profile».

Not sure how you could best address the situation of unsourced profiles with project categorisation though.

Comments

I like your suggestion Lynda, thank you for sharing. I wish I could communicate better, this was not meant to be a criticism  but a suggestion. So I hope projects would look at it  and suggest more ways to work with profile members instead of just tagging their profiles.  

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I read your question as constructive input Dorothy rather than criticism.

Answer 3

Regardless of what you say, Dorothy, this does seem like a criticism especially when the profiles I noted were unsourced earlier today, had just been sourced by you. That particular profile manager lives in the UK and those profiles did not have a New Zealand unsourced tag before I added it today. They had hung around for some time. Local knowledge is needed and there are sources like My Heritage and Find-a-grave that are not always trustworthy, especially when they do not match up with the information already on the profile. Rather than ignoring an unsourced profile, I will continue to add the unsourced tag in the hope that it will bring it to the profile manager's attention, and by adding a country, it may be looked at by those with local knowledge who can attach likely sources. By revisiting my Source-a-thon profiles, I will ensure they are as accurate as those for my own family.

Comments

I am trying to do the same thing Fiona. I am not asking you or WikiTree members to ignore unsourced profiles.  I am just trying to get project members or whom ever is adding the unsourced categoris to consider  working with the profile managers first, instead of just added unsourced tags. Yes, I rather they try to work it out with the profile manager before adding the tag because for some profiles they just sit there for six months like my example. .  I take it you are a part of New Zealand's project. Do you not think the project should help source the profile?? 

So my question is in general: why as a project member, would they not want to help source the profile. I just find it hard that projects would rather add a tag then to help source the profile. That is my concern.

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Dorothy, we sourced over 6000 profiles during the Source-a-thon to the point where there was little left tagged that we could source. Yes, I could have sourced those profiles today. Instead they were tagged so they could be found again......and I cooked my husband dinner.

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Yes I know, Together with the other teams we added sources to 53,245 profiles in the second annual Source-a-Thon last weekend! I myself lead a team. 

Again I was trying to make a point that sourcing should be a cooperative task not just left to sourcers and Source a Thon participates. And somehow, get the actual profile manager involved and responsible for their own profiles. Then my newest observation I tried to bring across is now we have projects that add unsourced tags with their country state or location.. but again, tagging alone can not look to be the answer. Anyway, I tried, it was a suggestion, that's it, just a suggestion. I would like to hear other suggestions to the problem. Thanks! PS: Have a great Friday everyone... the weekend is almost here. 

Answer 4

Dorothy, I can not say as you do that I have no unsourced profiles on my watchlist, I have several that have the category tag on them and I am sure I have many more that should have it.  Since I adopted most of them I have no Idea about the profiles that do not have the unsourced template on them until I work on them so a message would at the very least alert me to the problem sooner, but I check the activity feed every day so adding a source would also help a lot and I will check to make sure it is a source for that person.

Answer 5

"Could we not slow down a little with the unsource tagging...."

I disagree. The point of adding the unsourced tag is to help us find such profiles. Not adding the tag doesn't magically make them not unsourced. Contacting the PM or asking on G2G about the profile is all OK, but I don't see the point of not adding the unsourced tag.

Comments

The rest of that thought went on to say ...and start coordinating with profile managers and work with them along with the project members that added their project category to the profile in question. That was my point.. waiting a few hours until you hear from the profile manager to see if they will work with you or inform you that yes they need to do that but they forgot or got sidetracked or whatever.. 

Again, tagging profiles in itself was not the major point I was making.  It is the lack of communication to find out why profiles aren't sourced. Like one of the replies stated above, about how they thought  "it's a hassle and time consuming to try doing the proper source citation format for each profile i make especially if i'm mass adding them". That would be an indication they would benefit from a mentor, or training one on one how to source. I disagree also about never adding a tag, just slowing down.. and talk to our members... (I am sorry I can't make that more clearer.)

 

 

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I agree with the rest of your statement, which is why I only quoted the part I don't agree with. Tagging a profile as unsourced does not prevent someone from following up with communication which is why I don't like to see someone discouraging us from tagging a profile as unsourced.

I know you were venting and I apologize if my answer seemed to discount the overall frustration you were trying to convey. Keep in mind that many G2G readers are going to see this who are not involved with the same projects, and the part about slowing down the unsourced tagging was highlighted in bold. I want to make sure they don't think it's an overall recommendation.

Answer 6

People don't like to see the Unsourced tag on their profile. And posting on the comment section of the profile will notify the profile manager.

I think we have to add the tag and notify the manager.  But if you find a source, you should add it to the profile ant not just notify the manager about that source.