Forum:People with no birth or death dates


 * (First portion copied from another forum under heading "People with no dates")

There is another issue which hasn't been mentioned which I see occasionally, which is spurious links: both Robert II, King of Scotland (1316-1390) and James II, King of Scotland (1430-1460) are listed as having a daughter named Margaret (Stewart), about whom nothing more is documented. But when these two pages were created, their child lists points to Margaret Stewart (?-?), which used to be (before I changed it) a redirect to Margaret Stewart (1206-1255), a totally different woman. So if we start giving people pages "generic" names, we are going to get these spurious links. I don't think I should have to invent "Compensatory distinguishing text" for people that I have no information about (and I don't plan to name the link Margaret Stewart daughter of James II, King of Scotland, though perhaps that is what I have to do, in view of my next parenthetical). (My philosophy is that if I have nothing else to say about a child, in particular for people who died in infancy, then they don't need their own page. So I would see those "Margaret Stewart (?-?)" links as permanently red) Thurstan 04:47, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

And the same occurs with parents: if I know that Mary Smith's father was John (because that's what her death registration says, so it could be doubted), I would like to show it as John Smith (?-?) and never have it point to anything. If I get more info about Mary's dad, I should be able to fill in at least one date, change the link, and then create a page with a less generic name. Thurstan 04:51, 9 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Good points. I suggest that if no dates are known, we just keep it as "John Smith" or "Margaret Stewart." This way, the links will go to disambiguation pages; If such a page for a person exists, the link can be changed. If not, we know that that particular person does not have an article yet. And just as you said, don't create the article if hardly anything is known. Just wait until there is more info. - AMK152 (talk • contribs) 04:57, 9 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Agreed. The problem with Margaret Stewart (?-?) was not the creation of that link but the improper redirecting of it by someone else ignoring existing or potential inbound links that were not 1206-1255. It now, very properly, redirects to Margaret Stewart, a hndis page that will be able to show whether there is a proper target for any particular instance, and where both of the shadowy princesses can be listed as daughters of their respective fathers. Going a little further, we may soon get duplicates such as "Mary Brown (1850-?)". They can have their own hndis pages linked from "Mary Brown", though one should not expect any automatic entries. If any of them are worth writing articles for, some "Compensatory distinguishing text" will be required, and the hndis page will show which text has already been used. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 02:58, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

In the last few days I have noticed a number of new "(?-?)" people pages. I presume that we will see more of them once the GEDCOM upload takes off, because it is likely that (unless we set exclusion guidelines) every person mentioned in a GEDCOM will get a separate page or be added to an existing page of the same name and the program will produce a form such as "John Smith (?-?)" unless we decide that that case should be treated exceptionally. Thurstan "would like to show it as John Smith (?-?) and never have it point to anything" - but that was in the context of a manual entry where a page for John's son or daughter can simply show the father's name with no intention of making it a page unless more info comes to light. I've made a few links for such people, generally not adding "(?-?)" but just using the plain name (which I presume AMK152 prefers) and sometimes creating the target hndis page soon after, and listing John there as "father of Mary Smith (1850) " or whatever. John Smith (?-?) can easily redirect to the same John Smith so that all such people can be noted there without needing separate pages. There should be no actual articles where the date section is "(?-?)"; each page of that form should redirect to the plain name, which becomes a hndis page that sorts them out. Not a problem for manual entries; and I suggest that we encourage contributors to do that or to link from articles straight to a plain hndis page rather than to leave a John Smith (?-?) sitting rather isolated somewhere to confuse a reader of another page that creates the same link for a clearly different person, as happened with Margaret Stewart (?-?). I further suggest that the GEDCOM process deal with such dateless persons by one of two methods: Until I know more detail of how the GEDCOM process works, I can't firm up the above ideas. I think it needs a separate forum with headings for distinguishing parts of the process. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 06:05, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) omit the brackets right from the start and create or add to the plain name page using the GEDCOM data for that person
 * 2) create the "(?-?)" page but turn it into a redirect to the plain name as above; that would create an apparently unnecessary redirect but if it happened programmatically it should take no more time and would forestall the manual creation of a "(?-?)" article.