Database cleanup of people named ?
While working with Familysearch records, I find a lot of records with the person's name as "?".
Sometimes the only other information on that record is the spouse's name (and link to their record). Or I find a child record linked to the father's record and mother as "?".
In both of these cases, the "?" record could be deleted. This would save us from many merges that do nothing but get rid of the "?" record.
Comments
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Please never remove ? as a spouse or as a parent. Always work to determine through proper research who these people, usually wives and mothers, are, replace the ? with their names, and then properly merge families together.
These come from old IGI entries that contained people and just their father but not their mother. When those records were imported into Family Tree from the IGI, as I have heard in podcasts from FamilySearch personnel, they could not import a blank field for the mother and decided to use the ? to allow them to import these records.
Probably depending on the structure of the IGI record, I have seen these as "Child with parents: Father and ?" and as "Child with Parent: Father but no mother, but Father with spouse ? without children."
If you find a ? without any family relationships, you will always find in the Change Log were that ? was removed from a family, which should not have been done.
These records always have underlying data connecting the family which may or may not be visible depending on the type of account you have.
If you have a church member account, you see this data as child to parent sealing information. Sometimes the dates do not appear in the Child/Father - Father/? Spouse configuration until this is changed to the Child/Father+? configuration.
If you have a regular public account, you cannot see the ordinance page and cannot see that clue that family relationships do exist that need to be maintained.
Please continue to correctly merge these ?s. It is not wasted work.
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I realise this subject has been raised previously and you have always offered similar advice. Unfortunately, most users will be inclined to take the easy option in just detaching these "?" IDs, rather than go to the bother of merging them with a known individual - usually a spouse.
The problem is largely due to two factors. Firstly, the lack of direct advice from FamilySearch on the issue (I note you do not reference any Help article on the issue - is there one?) and, secondly, the pure annoyance that these IDs were ever created. I know you give a reason here, but surely (as I have suggested before) someone called "?" has not had this name taken to the Temple for ordinance work?
Obviously, there are points us "non-LDS" will find difficult to follow. But, whilst most of us respect the primary reason for having the Family Tree project, you can surely see that - unless there is some sort of mandatory instruction - many will not see the necessity in sticking to your advice?
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@Paul W, I know this is probably a fruitless endeavor but since we as genealogist should be interested in history, including the history of records we work with, I'll continue to try to teach the history of these question marks. I realize that only a small fraction of family tree users will ever see any posts here in Communities and a similarly small fraction of users ever bother with the Help Center (there is, in fact an article about these ? people: https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/article/why-does-a-persons-name-have-a-question-mark-in-family-tree ) But if even one person decides to handle these ? properly, that is at least one user who is spending a few extra minutes and saving other users hour of work trying to figure out where relationships were deleted and restoring them.
So back to history!
Here is basic information about the IGI: https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/International_Genealogical_Index
In the IGI people were not linked as families. Each individual could be listed as a single entry just as him- or herself, with parents, or with a spouse.
Let's take a theoretical family of John Smith, wife Mary Jones, and children Ann, Ben, and Cindy. The three children could be listed with parents in the IGI in one of three forms depending on what the sources for the children showed:
- Ann Smith, daughter of John Smith and Mary Jones
- Ben Smith, son of John Smith and Mary Jones
- Cindy Smith, daughter of John Smith and Mary Jones
Or
- Ann Smith, daughter of John Smith and Mrs. John Smith
- Ben Smith, son of John Smith and Mrs. John Smith
- Cindy Smith, daughter of John Smith and Mrs. John Smith
Or
- Ann Smith, daughter of John Smith
- Ben Smith, son of John Smith
- Cindy Smith, daughter of John Smith
What was allowed depended on whatever policy was in force, that is, whatever accepted best practice or standard was required at the time.
When this family was imported into Family Tree, it would have come in as three isolated child plus parent clusters. The first two situations appeared in Family Tree as they are. The third had ? entered for the mother's name due to the requirements of the import routine.
What I find fascinating is that no one thinks twice about merging the three Mary Jones or the three Mrs. John Smiths, even though they grumble about the Mrs. John Smith construction, but then want to just erase all the ? even though the ? are completely equivalent to Mrs. John Smith. Both are just meaningless placeholders.
(Paul, since you asked about ordinance work, yes, in a sense, ? was used. Here again policies have changed through the years. Once one had to have the mother's name to seal a child to his or her parents but it was accepted to use Mrs. John Smith. Then for a few decades it was policy to allow, for example, Ann Smith to be sealed to John Smith and her mother. That is exactly where those IGI records with no mother's name and the ? came from. The policy changed again to require the mother's name. So people are back to using Mrs. John Smith when it is not known.)
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Thank you very much for your patience in taking time to explain the issue in further detail, together with the links. This does help me understand the situation better - and will make me think twice, in future, before I think about deleting any "?" IDs!
Whilst there is a proper place for "Temple" queries in Community, I have always been of the opinion that users that are not LDS Church members should be aware of certain facts attached to ordinance work, so they can better understand the possible consequences of their work within Family Tree. Hence, raising certain "Church" matters under other Community categories can often be a good thing.
It is a shame that your remarks cannot be more widely read, in order for many more users (especially those who never visit this forum) to understand the important aspects of this issue.
I'm sure you are only too aware of the "negative" side of having public accounts (e.g. people like me unintentionally messing things up), as well as the "positive" side - e.g. in getting many, many more names added to Family Tree, through allowing access to the general public!
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I have read and understood the reason for the "?". Then I suggest that FamilySearch remove the "illegal character warning in the name field" when it is a "?".
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Then I suggest that FamilySearch remove the "illegal character warning in the name field" when it is a "?".
Those warnings don't bother me. I think they are entirely appropriate. All the "?" profiles need to be resolved, one way or another; what that happens the warning goes away.
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It is a shame that your remarks cannot be more widely read
Everyone contributing here should be aware that everything posted here is world-readable. Web search engines see and index all of it.
Try a Google search for "Database cleanup of people named" and you'll find this discussion.
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