Sources Make All the Difference

LegacyUser

Dawn Maria Stephens said: I'm amazed at how many ancestors are created or attached without any sources given. It seems that Family Search would benefit from adding a reminder on it's home page that sources are important in doing the work. I know that it happens on the temple ordinances request page, but the created people are still floating out there causing lots of merging to happen.

LegacyUser

gasmodels said: Most of the records without sources that I have found are from old legacy systems. It is not the creator that is causing the duplicate records. There are some without sources but if there are duplicates and soon merged the issue goes away. I do agree that more users could spend time to more sure each individual in the tree is better documented but I do not believe there are lots of new records being created without sources. I least for ancestors in the areas I am dealing with -- england, Isle of Man and Switzerland.

LegacyUser

Gordon Collett said: One quick way to identify the reason is to check the Change Log. Look at the very first entry. If it is dated the spring of 2012 then this definitely came from one of the legacy databases gasmodels mentions. Most of these never included sources even if the submissions from users to those databases had sources originally. These entries will usually say FamilySearch created the record. This is just a place holder and signifies that the original creator of the entry in the previous database is not available.

If the Change Log show a post 2012 date and has the user who created the record, then that user just didn't add sources.

LegacyUser

Paul said: Dawn

Please remember that FamilySearch does not have any records / sources for certain locations. Also, that it is often fairly pointless to create "outside" sources, as URLs can soon disappear, or just take you to a website home page instead of exactly where the source was found.

Now that reason statements are clearly visible against the vitals (except, sadly, marriage events) I am inclined to describe my sources there rather than create what might soon become a meaningless item in the Sources section.

I'm sure you are not judging people, but you have to remember that (say in my case) I made notes about my ancestors' / relatives' vitals long before coming to FamilySearch. In many cases my note just mentions the source (e.g. "Upton parish register") and when and where I was when I recorded details of the event. Sometimes I looked at an original paper document, but any reference for this, or a particular microfilm, has probably changed from thirty years ago, so would be useless to cite today!

If I have any "source free" IDs there are usually valid reasons for them being like this.