Records with a ? for a name
Could you please delete these records that have no sources attached to them.
H9TL-HMM
H9TL-HCV
H9TL-4WS
H9TG-7XW
H9TG-8LT
H9T2-T3K
Thanks you
Answers
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Why do you want them deleted? I know it's not great that these profiles are unverifiable in their current state, but they are in no way whatever unusual in FT in being of such low quality, sadly.
Anyway they wouldn't be delete-able except by their original creator, and only then if no-one else had changed them since (which doesn't apply to the one I looked at).
If they are getting in the way of your work, you could always merge them into adequately matching profiles, or remove relationships that link them into your family, and/or contact the previous contributor(s) to discuss the matter; otherwise I'd just leave it all alone and move on.
(I'm assuming you can't find any sources for these profiles yourself-if you can, you have a perfect right to attach them if that is a better option than merging etc.)
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History Lesson Time!
The Origin of ? Profiles
As you may be aware, Family Tree is the combined product of every piece of genealogical information submitted by researchers to FamilySearch since it was established as the Genealogical Society of Utah in 1894. The form of these submissions and what they contained have, of course, changed dramatically over the past 130 years. And much of the information has been transferred through several systems before ending up in Family Tree. The sophistication and capabilities of the various storage systems have also varied. In particular, the early computerized systems did not have the capability of having interconnected family relationships in entries. Neither were they designed to store source information. In fact, Family Tree is really the first of the databases of user submitted information to really have an effective source model.
One of the previous databases was the International Genealogical Database, known as the IGI. In it there were two types of single line records. Birth records could consist of at most: child's name, birth date and place, christening date and place, father's name, and mother's name. No sources. Marriage records could consist of husband's name, wife's name, and marriage date and place. Again no sources. Do remember this was in the 1970s. Computer storage systems were very limited and primitive.
According to presentations I have heard regarding the creation of Family Tree, there was a problem that arose in the import process. For whatever reason, and I don't know the details about this and whether this was a programming requirement or a programming oversight, importing did not allow a child to be imported with just one parent. A person had to have either both parent fields empty or both parent fields with a data value. The IGI had hundred of thousands of children's record with just a father so to be able to import these into Family Tree, the ? was used to fill the mother's name data field that could not be blank.
The profiles of Father, ?, Child triplets when first imported into Family Tree then somehow showed up in three different forms:
Form A: Child with one set of parents with Father and ? in the same couple box.
Form B: Child with two sets of parents with Father by himself in one couple box and ? by herself in a second couple box.
Form C: Child with one set of parents with Father by himself in one couple box. Father in two couple boxes one by himself with the child under it and one with spouse ? and no child under them.
In their original form, it is easy to see who ? is. It is the child's mother whose name was unknown. If merges have been done without being aware of what is going on things can get messy because you can lose track of which ? went with which mother.
These ? profiles, like many of the profiles imported into Family Tree originally do not have sources because the previous database systems did not record and maintain the sources that came with the original submission. That is a shame but in 1970 no one was thinking that there would be a system in 2012 that could really have used those sources. This means that current users of Family Tree have to retrace the footsteps of the researchers who submitted the information originally and find the sources they did have.
End of lecture. Now to move on to practical matters.
I personally feel the best way to deal with these ? profiles is to try to determine who the ? was originally meant to be and if the mother has since been identified merge the ? into the correct mother's profile. This is because there is some background information for the relationship that will be lost if the ? is just detached. Also, merging prevents the creation of a bunch of free-floating ? profiles in the database.
Taking a look at your first example, H9TL-HMM, and going to her change log, you can see that she was originally the wife of Louis Richard Jones M1TB-K1D who has been merged away. Going to his change log, this copy of Louis was imported as the father of Henry C. Jones M1TB-KBY. The change log for the initial import is very clean and simple:
(In these imports, the contributors name could not be left blank either. Seeing FamilySearch here just means it was imported. FamilySearch did not create the information or do anything to it.)
This is a pretty typical format for an IGI entry of Child, birth and/or christening date and place (both missing in this particular entry), Father. The original submission probably had the entire family and additional information that did not carry over into the IGI. The import came over as a Form C type in Family Tree in which ? is the wife but no mother-child relationship was created, just the father-child relationship.
So now you know who the ? is. She is the mother of Henry C. Jones. If sufficient research has been done to identify her and you are positive that Henry C. Jones M1TB-KBY is the same person as Henry C. Jones M7JX-9D7, then the two Henry C. Jones should be merged and ? H9TL-HMM should be merged with Lucinda Johnette LCJ1-QSN.
If you do not think that the two Henry C Jones are the same person, then the two father of the two Henry C Jones should never have been merged and this should be undone and the Louis Richard Jones, ?, Henry C Jones triplet returned to its original state.
Do this with all of the ? profiles and you will be able to determine which of them are Lucinda and if any of them are Louis's second wife, Mary Ann.
Also to preserve background relationship states for this family, if you are sure that all the children listed under Louis where he does not have a spouse are duplicates of his children with Lucinda, then you should click Add Spouse in that last couple box and add a spouse lucinda without any other information then merge lucinda with Lucinda Johnette.
Going through this process will clean up the database and Louis' profile nicely.
(If you do not think that those six children in the last family are duplicates of children in the first family, then don't just remove them from the family. Restore their fathers that were merged into Louis so that their relatives can some day find them and put them in their proper families.)
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Such a shame that after Gordon taking so much time and effort to clearly describe the background of these "?" profiles (and how we should treat them) that his comments cannot be used as the basis of a specific "Help" article on the subject.
The matter arises here from time to time and I'm sure the situation confuses many more users than those who come here to query it. Hopefully, Gordon will keep a copy of this on his computer and be able to modify in order to address further, similar queries. However, for when he happens not to be around, FamilySearch really does need to have an "official" article (headed something like "What to do with ? Profiles") to which FS users can refer.
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There is a help article on this topic: Why does a person's name have a question mark in Family Tree? But it is not nearly so helpful as Gordon's comment.
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Just to expand a little on the topic of "source-less" Family Tree entries. For some of these profiles it is relatively easy to find the original source that just did not make it as far as Family Tree. Here is a profile that I was working with recently: which I did merge into some duplicates for the person. But if you look in the change log for this merged away profile, you can see that it was imported in 2012 and no sources were imported or attached for this man, his wife, or any of his children. However, this original submission can be found in this database entry which has restricted viewing: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-L9QT-C772?wc=WWXQ-X2Z%3A352087001%2C352287301%26cc%3D2060211&lang=en&i=749
Here is the pertinent section of the record:
Right there on the paper submission form are the sources recorded in the standard, required, conventional, accepted, state of the art format of 1957. Any researcher in 1957 would know exactly what that source (or those two sources?) is.
This source is a good illustration of why I am a proponent of throwing APA, MLA, Chicago, Turabian, IEEE, and all abbreviations in the garbage and creating citations that give full, complete, easy to read source information that will be comprehensible today and a hundred years from now even if they would give an English professor a heart attack.
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I'm not sure you received the answer to your question. Gordon Collett did a through presentation of the situation and what you have to do but without @mention it doesn't always go back to the originator.
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