April is for About Cleanup!

Got me. I borrow a friend's account. :)

LOL...can I borrow, too?!?!?!? jk...thanks.

It's like $20 or $30 a month per month or like $12/mo if you buy a year at a time. Or something like that.

I finished a "about me" cleanup pass on Rev. Andrew Willett, Sr.

Generally I like to remove a profile from this project as soon as the "about me" section is cleaned up but Andrew and his wife currently have 20 children listed which probably indicates mistakes so I'd like to keep him attached to the project for now as a reminder to revisit his family and clean up any children that don't belong.

--Randy

Thanks, Randy. Andrew is now marked MP.

Just a thought, would it be helpful for me to include notes like your above comment in Curator notes directly on the profile while they remain a work in progress? Is there risk of people taking those 25 children as fact? Is a progress status here sufficient?

Private User Hey! Don't knock yourself for being a newbie. The first profile you asked me to look at for your ggfather was beautifully done!

There are so many varied experts, knowledgeable scholars, tech-savy users, specialists in one subject or another... Often, the strong opinions, language barriers, etc., can make even the kindest of helpers' authoritative tones seem to teeter on condescension or judgment.

It can be easy to be intimidated. What seems like common knowledge to one -- "They didn't use maiden names then!" -- can be entirely new to a well intentioned, otherwise accurate, profile manager. Even the most crude of cut and paste jobs, (even if it *is* wikipedia!) shows someone making an effort and is better than an empty profile!

One of the things I find so refreshing about *you* is your willingness to ask questions. There are so many fascinating things to learn here. A thirst for understanding will take you far!

Erica - Thanks for sharing your templates. It's nice to have a starting place, especially when the available biographical information for individuals can be so varied.

Wow, thanks, Jenna, i appreciate your kindness. I am willing to do what it takes to learn how to do all of this correctly and will ask questions til the sun goes down, but I know sometimes it must be hard for the experienced people to explain the same things over and over. Poor Shmuel just had to practically hit me over the head with a brick to help me understand another issue I was having.

I am so appreciative of all the kind, helpful, and very patient individuals on Geni! I can't say it often enough -thank you.

Erica! Your "cheat sheet" is fantastic, thank you so much! It would have taken me another year to figure out what and where to list all of those things - and I shudder to think of the job I'dve had on my hands going back through every profile to fix them. Wow, where do I send the chocolate? /grin

(Shmuel enjoys hitting us over the head... But he always does it with love!)

Well, as long as it's with love... /lol!!!

Just wanted to say how excited I am to see where this is going! :) Go Team Cleanup! I'm going to try to tackle a few today while at work...

I've cleaned up:

Jacobine Willett

Capt. Thomas Willett

Rev. Andrew Willett, Sr.

And removed them from this project.

--Randy

Thanks, Randy.

These three are now done:
Rev. Thomas Hooker, Jr.

Rev. Samuel Hooker

Susannah Goodwin

They have been removed from the project.
--Randy

Those profiles look amazing now! I have been wondering what the phrase died "without issue" means. It seems from reading your profiles that this may mean "without children," is that correct? I feel like I've seen that phrase used for people with children too, but I could be mistaken in that.

Also, what does "D.D." stand for? I've seen it a few times, and so far to me it seems to be related to religious leaders/reverends. How do you achieve it?

Randy

I just read the Thomas Hooker profile and I agree, it's gorgeous, also fascinating. Thank you so much. BTW his dad already needs merging - I'll take care of it.

Just as a general note about *why* I didn't want to move too quickly to "asking for templates" -- you have to test it! And it's not a "one size fits all" situation.

Brittany

Hopefully I got it right but yes, you are correct: without issue means "no children." I think they also abbreviated d.s.p.

D.D. is doctor of divinity and again correct, used for religious leaders. For the period we're concerned with (Colonial America) assume the English usage of the degree, not the current American.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_of_Divinity

This New England Puritan project contains some historically important colonial American profiles and most could use some cleanup except for a couple that Erica or others have cleaned up.

http://www.geni.com/projects/people/New-England-Puritans

Are collaborators for this project in favor of large scale profile additions to the project or would it be preferable to add just a few profiles to focus on at a time?

--Randy

I'm kind of in favor of the philosophy that if you add, for example, 5 unedited profiles to the project that you are tacitly agreeing that you'll either clean up and edit those 5 profiles, or 5 other profiles that are already waiting in our about me "clean up" list before adding more. And it should be already apparent that I'm in favor of immediately removing a profile from the project once it has been cleaned up. I would however like a more formal way of noting progress by the group maintaining a list of profiles that have been edited.

Thoughts?

--Randy

To add to what Erica Howton said, "without issue" is generally reserved for royalty and nobility. It historically refers to people who, due to not reproducing, did not leave an heir for their title. But I know that a lot of people have expanded it to refer to anyone these days, so I'm not sure that old rule still applies.

A little old fashioned sounding, right? I think I'd write it out a little more simply at least for more contemporaneous ancestors as "no children."

I've seen "without issue" in Colonial American wills.

There's an encyclopedia of genealogy site which is experiencing a "cloud outage" at the moment, a little ironic when we're talking about medieval terminology: http://www.eogen.com/

But the google cache tells me:
d.s.p. is an abbreviation for the Latin phrase, descessit sine prole; died without issue. That is, he or she left no heirs. See also sine prole.

Randy

Personally? There is nothing more satisfying than a project "done." If you don't note the progress who will ever pat you on the back, even if it's yourself twisting around (the real story behind my sprained wrist ... ).

Thanks for the answers guys! I appreciate it!

Regarding the editing: I am careful with which profiles I edit because I always hesitate to go in if there's a *lot* of information and it's for a person with whom I'm not very familiar. I do my best, but I'm afraid I'm guilty of adding more profiles than I remove. I guess it would be ideal if we had a roughly 25/75 split in the project -- 25% of people adding, 75% of people editing (since that takes longer). Not entirely fair, but it would maintain a decent in/out flow of profiles.

I just knocked off:

Sarah Willard
Cpl. Thomas Willard, Jr.

Regrettably, no content *added* for them, but at least what was there is tidy now!

Ashley -

I'd *love* to have you assist in cleaning up the First Ladies. They could really use a strong editor -- aware of the amazing contributions many of them made, even beyond the scope of the "behind every successful man" function.

Are you game? You can join the project or I could slowly add a few here... Let me know what you think.

I have removed my 11th great-grandmother. Jane Bolling

It's nothing fantastic yet, but it's much better than it was. :-P

By the way, her family is still a mess. There was a note in the "about me" clearly pointing out how she could not be related to a certain line that ties in with George W. Bush. That all still remains for now. You can clearly look at her "Timeline" and see how it all conflicts. But that's a task for another day.

Here is a summary of cleaned profiles by all collaborators to this particular thread as of Friday April 22:

Jane Bolling

Sarah Willard

Cpl. Thomas Willard, Jr.

Susannah Goodwin

Rev. Samuel Hooker

Rev. Thomas Hooker, Jr.

Rev. Andrew Willett, Sr.

Capt. Thomas Willett

Jacobine Willett

Miles P. Romney

Sarah Willard

Wright Anderson Moore

John Hankins

Nicolas "Nic" Stampfler

--Randy

Jenna: First Ladies is definitely something I can help with! You clearly know how to lure me in -- it doesn't take much more than a mention of women's history to get me excited. :) I'll join the project and start working my way through them.

Perhaps that's a good approach for us to take -- put profiles unaffiliated with other projects under this this, and then direct other messy profiles we find back to their "home" projects for review?