Template talk:Houston family tree

WP:PROVIT

From my talk page:

Big question - why are you slapping the family tree templates with "unreferenced" tags? And by whose authorization are you running this automation to do this? Has there been a discussion somewhere about changing the policy of how family trees are done? Are you acting on your own to do this? And why the navbox addition? First of all, navboxes don't have to have referencing. And secondly, templates are easily transcluded without being navboxes. What's the point in what you are doing?— Maile (talk) 21:34, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

@— Maile . I have copied your questions here because this seems the most relevant public talk page, because I edited this page adding a request for citation and you removed it.

The templates in Category:Family tree templates are not navigation templates. Indeed in many cases they are only used in one article and ought to be moved into article space as translucence templates are confusing for inexperienced editors and a barrier to their editing them (One of the things I have been changing is the headers so that they are editable from article space).

I am using WP:AWB it is not a bot and not automatic in that sense. It is a semi-automatic tool and if you look at the edit history of my usage you will notice that although some edits are within a minute of each many are further apart than that. This is not the footprint of a automated system, or even a semi-automated system making lots of small changes. As I am not operating a BOT I do not need authorisation for the changes I have been making.

I disagree with your statement "First of all, navboxes don't have to have referencing". Like all information that appears in article space this information fall under WP:V, unlike simple navigation temples ancestry trees and family trees contain information between elements in the tree. If they were simple navigation templates then all the elements in the tree would be available in the nodes. Yet the tree in this example has lots of information that is not mentioned in any article. For example here is a snippet from the tree:

• • • • • • • • [SNIP]
              • Mary Houston (1898–1977)
        • William Houston m. Mary Ball
        • Isabella Houston
        • Mary Houston
          • m. Col. Matthew Wallace
          • m. Gen. William Wallace
        • [SNIP]

Mentioned in another article is not really relevant however, as for example, I have pointed out in Template talk:Kennedy family tree#Inline citations. The small amount of the Kennedy family tree for which I added citations was taken from the two article that are at the top of the tree, but the number of entries in the tree for which those two articles contained reliable sources was only 5 out of 16 members, and in fact there was no reliable citation in the two articles to confirm that they were father and son!

The source given is:

• Sam Houston State University – Houston genealogy, Star of the Republic Museum, Samuel Houston Family Tree, Retrieved November 23, 2013

Although it states "Retrieved November 23, 2013" but there is no link provided. There is no date of publication author, or page numbers, and no ISBN or other identifier so that the publication can be found.

In WP:V there is a section to which various links exist. There include WP:CHALLENGE and WP:BURDEN. It makes clear that general references of the sort provide at the bottom of the table is not adequate ("Attribute all quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged to a reliable, published source using an inline citation"). In the same section of the policy the next paragraph starts "Any material lacking a reliable source directly supporting...", in the spirit of that paragraph instead of simply removing elements of the tee and insisting on the requirements of WP:BURDEN, I followed the guidance in footnote 3 "It may be that the article contains so few citations that it is impractical to add specific citation needed tags, in which case consider tagging a section with {{unreferencedsection}}". So as I have challenged this information by adding a template as specified in the article you ought not remove it until you meet the requirements of burden.

The other issue is that the content of this template is not editable by user editing an article. To do that they need to know about template space. So I am going to alter the heading so that it is editable from within articles. -- PBS (talk) 08:31, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

@— Maile thank you for providing a link to the reference. I have now added inline citations for all the entries in the chart that also appear in the reference. There are still around 30 names in the tree that are not supported with citations so I have added {{refimprove section}} under (WP:CHALLENGE). -- PBS (talk) 18:26, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Date problems

How exactly does a woman born in 1852 give birth in 1850?

Antoinette Power Houston (1852–1932)[ii] m. Dr. William S. Lorraine Bringhurst (1844–1913)[iii] Antoinette Bush Bringhurst (b.1850)[viii] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.110.21.196 (talk) 17:24, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

Andrew Jackson Houston (1854–1941)[ii] United States Senator m. Carrie Glenn Purnell (1858–1884)[iii] Ariadne T. Houston (1979–1969)[ix] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.110.21.196 (talk • contribs) 17:31, 14 June 2015 (UTC)