WeRelate:Source patrol

Members of the Source Patrol are responsible for reviewing source pages. We want to help users understand our standards so they can have a more enjoyable experience at WeRelate and we also need to patrol for spam or inappropriate use of the site.

[edit]

Overview Committee Liaison

JBS66 is available as a liaison between this group and the Overview Committee. There may be times that additional help is needed for this group to operate smoothly. Some examples include: a need for additional volunteers, questions about tasks, requests for assistance with conflict resolution, requests for policy changes, etc. If you would like help, please feel free to contact me either via my talk page or via email

[edit]

Current Source Patrol Members

If you would like to participate in this committee, please leave a message on the talk page. Thank you!

[edit]

Getting Started

This page belongs to the Source Patrol. Please feel free to edit the instructions as you see fit.

Before you start, you may want to make sure your preferences are set to your local time. For instructions on how to monitor pages see Monitoring recent changes. In the case of spam or inappropriate use of WeRelate see Help:In case of vandalism or spam. When you see a page that could be easily improved, see WeRelate:Mentoring for tips on interacting with new users.

To view recent changes to Source Pages, click Admin -> Recent Changes. Choose "Source" in the drop-down menu above the list of pages.

[edit]

Instructions

Check that newly-created Source pages don't duplicate existing pages. If they do, merge them. (This is most likely for pages that appear to relate to Ancestry.com or FamilySearch databases that have in large part already been imported to the WeRelate database.)
1. If the similarity is between two different published versions of the same source (i.e., original publication and subsequent reprint), merge to the page for the original publication and include differentiating information on the page for subsequent printings.
Check that newly-created Source pages follow existing standards and patterns for similar types of pages.
1. Especially check that new pages for county-level census sources follow the established pattern, including the template for the census year and the category for state & year.
Maintain a distinction between a Source page for an original courthouse-type source (e.g., marriages, probates, land records, civil court records) and subsequently published compilations and abstracts of those records. The former are primary sources while the latter are secondary; the two should not be merged on the same page.
1. Note that, at WeRelate, exact images of original sources are themselves considered "original." This includes images of census pages from Ancestry.com, images of military rosters from NARA, images of newspaper articles from GenealogyBank.com, etc., as well as photographic images taken by a researcher while visiting a courthouse.
For book-type and journal-type secondary sources, be sure a full bibliographical citation is included on the page.
For sources found at Ancestry.com or other commercial websites, add a link to the relevant Ancestry page. This is especially important if the source cited is exclusive to Ancestry.com.
For sources found at GenWeb, RootsWeb, FamilySearch, or other noncommercial websites, add a link to the relevant page at the website. This should be done even if the Source page cites a source originally published in book form. If the link has been omitted by the user and you cannot easily find it, leave a note on the talk page.
Source pages that cite only family tree websites should be deleted, as an undocumented family tree does not constitute a "source." Whether the patroler or the user should clean up the Person & Family pages that cite such a page is a matter of discretion, depending on the extent of the source page, the number of pages citing it, and the experience of the user. (You can use the "Cleanup Request" template to flag such pages, as the work can be done by either the page creator or others.)

[edit]

Rename log

Monitor the Rename log for obvious renaming errors of Source pages. The Rename log can be viewed by going to Admin>Logs>choose Rename from the dropdown box>press the Go button.

[edit]