WeRelate:Suggestions/Burials -- Order in Facts and Events
[edit]

Status

This suggestion was fully implemented 21 Oct 2020, using the rules described below. The example given below (Person:John Stafford (7)) now works correctly. The death event in Person:Richard Bennett (32) also sorts correctly.--DataAnalyst 15:48, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

[edit]

Rules Implemented (21 Oct 2020)

  1. Facts and events are sorted in modified date order (see below) even if this means that events are displayed in an impossible order, such as death before birth.
    • Rationale: If, for example, the death date is before the birth date, we want it displayed that way to highlight the fact that one or both of the dates is incorrect.
  2. Modified date order: When determining whether one date should be sorted before or after another date, the following rules are applied:
    • If the date is a pair of dates (using qualifiers “Bet/and” or “From/to”), use the first date of the pair.
    • If the date has a qualifier of “Bef” or “To” (without the “From”):
    • If the date is day, month and year, subtract one day from the date.
    • If the date is only month and year, subtract one month from the date.
    • If the date is only year, subtract one year from the date.
    • If the date has a qualifier of “Aft”, “Bet” or “From”
    • If the date is day, month and year, add one day from the date.
    • If the date is only month and year, add one month from the date.
    • If the date is only year, add one year from the date.
    • After adjusting the dates if applicable, consider 2 dates to be equivalent if:
    • They are exactly the same day, month, and year.
    • One date has only month and year and the other date has the same month and year (with or without the day).
    • One date has only year and the other date has the same year (with or without month and/or day).
  3. If 2 facts or events have equivalent dates, sort them in the following order:
    • Birth
    • Alt Birth
    • Christening
    • Alt Christening
    • Other person facts/events (not specified in this list) in alpha order
    • Family facts in the following order:
    • Engagement
    • Marriage Banns
    • Marriage Bond
    • Marriage Contract
    • Marriage License
    • Marriage Notice
    • Marriage Settlement
    • Marriage
    • Alt Marriage
    • Census
    • Residence
    • Other
    • Separation
    • Divorce Filing
    • Divorce
    • Annulment
    • Death
    • Alt Death
    • Obituary
    • Funeral
    • Cremation
    • Burial
    • Alt Burial
    • Estate Inventory
    • Probate
    • Estate Settlement
  4. The following types of facts without a date are displayed in alphabetical order after all facts and events of other types:
    • Ancestral File Number
    • Caste
    • Cause of Death
    • Citizenship
    • DNA
    • Namesake
    • Nationality
    • Other
    • Physical Description
    • Reference Number
    • Religion
    • Soc Sec No
    • Title (nobility)
  5. All other person facts and events without a date are displayed in alphabetical order immediately before Death (or where Death would come in the list if there is no Death event).
  6. All other family facts and events without a date are displayed in the order listed above (for family facts), after any facts/events for a prior marriage and before any facts/events for a subsequent marriage.
[edit]

Original Suggestion and Discussion

I would like to suggest that the order of the standard facts--Birth, Christening/Baptism, <Marriage(s)>, Death, Burial--should stay fixed on all pages. As things stand, if someone enters a death date of, say, 8 Sep 1921 and a burial date of Sep 1921, the burial is listed first. This is silly.

Other events, such as residence, occupation or census finds, will probably have a date attached that can be included in a person's timeline. But events (except for birth and marriage) for which dates cannot be provided, should be placed after the death entry. This includes burials.

I notice that the type of event "memorial" is still not included. I am using "other" but would like to be more specific. I have a family in which one son erected a stone to his parents and siblings in a cemetery where three of his sisters are each buried with their husbands. The dates of the burials and the "other" event are unknown and have been left blank. In each case the "other" entry is listed in the timeline before the burial with the spouse. Rearranging the order of sources does not help.----goldenoldie 06:48, 6 May 2013 (EDT)

Sorting with before and after has some side effects that can cause dates to be displayed out of order. Not sure how it is being done. I think there is a need to get more precise about the semantics. The meaning of before or after should consider the precision of the date when being implemented Thus before 1850 should be before any date in the year 1850 but after any day in any early valued year. But before 5 May 1850 should be before any date equal to or greater than 5 May 1850 but after 4 May 1850. Therefore a death of an infant born 3 May 1850, died before 5 May 1850 would sort correctly. Or a will dated 13 Jan 1785 and a death before 8 Apr 1785 will sort correctly (Person:John Stafford (7)). It currently does not. One cannot enter an accurate description using before and after that will order close dates correctly. And entering just the year or some other modified date, besides sacrificing accuracy and precision, will often not work either. --Jrich 00:41, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

Related suggestion: WeRelate:Suggestions/Sorting Facts/Events without dates.

My initial thought with relation to these two suggestions is that there might be a need to be able to add arbitrary order to Facts. Just a sequence number or similar, so that undated or broadly-dated (i.e. only a year provided) Facts can be given explicit order. Don't know what that'd take to implement though.

— Sam Wilson ( Talk • Contribs ) … 22:39, 6 May 2013 (EDT)

I notice that especially GEDCOM uploads will have census sources out of chronological order. If they can't be put in correct order automatically, perhaps some sort order could be allowed on the person page so that events and/or sources could be sorted manually. --janiejac 01:34, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

I'm a little confused by this comment. Events and Sources can be sorted manually on each page as it is right now. Usually, it is not considered good wiki etiquette to move other people's sources to put one of your own higher in the Citation list, since it implies more value, but in the case of Census citations on a genealogy site, I doubt anyone here would object. Is that what you are asking? --cos1776 19:36, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
I am not aware of the ability to manually re-order events or sources - certainly it does not appear to work the same way as manually re-ordering marriages or children. Can you validate that this is possible and provide instructions on how to do so? Thanks.--DataAnalyst 17:22, 9 April 2017 (UTC)
Yes, I am guilty of uploading GEDCOMs with my census citations out of chronological order (because I never find them in order and list them as I find them). But on this public site, I would like the ability to sort by year. And when a Find-a-Grave citation comes before the census records, I would change that too. Maybe not important, but neater. --janiejac 16:20, 25 June 2016 (UTC)
Retrieved from "https://www.werelate.org/wiki/WeRelate:Suggestions/Burials_--_Order_in_Facts_and_Events"