I use the Quarter Date range when I do not have the exact date of an event. When I upload to GenesReunited this does not pose a problem for marriages (which GR converts to e.g. 'BET OCT 1853 AND DEC 1853') but for births and deaths only the first 10 characters show up (e.g. 'BET JUL 19' instead of 'BET JUL 1909 AND DEC 1909'). What this means is that no date of birth is shown for the person on search results. Is there a way round this short of altering each entry manually?
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Windsurfing_Widow
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ChrisBowyer
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Since the only reason for uploading to GR is to match other people's trees, and other people don't in general use quarter dates, we came to the conclusion that the best thing to do for births is to record an approximate year with the GRO reference in the citation. (The same applies to baptisms... FH deals comfortably with people with a baptism but no birth date, but sites like GR don't.)
And since GedCom doesn't represent quarter dates properly, FH stores them, as you say, as 'Between', which in common English useage is exclusive rather than inclusive (the same applies to Before and After) so can be misleading. Q4 1853 should literally be 'Between Sep 1853 and Jan 1854', and anyway, a birth registerd in Q4 could easily be a couple of months earlier than that, and in Q1 is likely to be the year before.
And since GedCom doesn't represent quarter dates properly, FH stores them, as you say, as 'Between', which in common English useage is exclusive rather than inclusive (the same applies to Before and After) so can be misleading. Q4 1853 should literally be 'Between Sep 1853 and Jan 1854', and anyway, a birth registerd in Q4 could easily be a couple of months earlier than that, and in Q1 is likely to be the year before.
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nsw
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While I fully appreciate and agree with your comments about a birth registered could actually have happened in the previous quarter, I don't entirely agree with you about 'between' meaning exclusive.
If someone doing a magic trick says 'choose a number between 1 and 10', I think most people would assume this includes 1 and 10. Likewise if someone is born sometime between 1900 and 1905 I would take that as meaning any of those 6 years.
It seems a shame to me that because of limitations in Genes Reunited people might change their way of recording information and make the data less accurate. Its Genes Reunited that needs fixing not necessarily your recording methods!
If someone doing a magic trick says 'choose a number between 1 and 10', I think most people would assume this includes 1 and 10. Likewise if someone is born sometime between 1900 and 1905 I would take that as meaning any of those 6 years.
It seems a shame to me that because of limitations in Genes Reunited people might change their way of recording information and make the data less accurate. Its Genes Reunited that needs fixing not necessarily your recording methods!
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ChrisBowyer
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Agreed Nick, Between is ambiguous and can depend on the context. And yes, it does seem a shame to change the way you record things for the benefit of GR, but it's much harder to get GR (and other sites... none I've found understand quarter dates) to change.
What I'd prefer is an FH feature to 'Prepare for GR' of which Split Tree helper is a part. Maybe if we can persuade Simon to do FH plug-ins...
P.S. I'm not sure accuracy is necessarily the point... A 'Birth in 1888 (approx) sourced GRO Birth Index Q1 1888' is as accurate a statement as 'born between Jan 1888 and Mar 1888', and arguably more so. To be strictly accurate you should record some kind of 'Birth registered in' event instead, but that's clumsy. You have to think about what you're recording all this stuff for, and do whatever works best for you.
What I'd prefer is an FH feature to 'Prepare for GR' of which Split Tree helper is a part. Maybe if we can persuade Simon to do FH plug-ins...
P.S. I'm not sure accuracy is necessarily the point... A 'Birth in 1888 (approx) sourced GRO Birth Index Q1 1888' is as accurate a statement as 'born between Jan 1888 and Mar 1888', and arguably more so. To be strictly accurate you should record some kind of 'Birth registered in' event instead, but that's clumsy. You have to think about what you're recording all this stuff for, and do whatever works best for you.
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Talking about GR, it's not just the import that has problems. The export of a Gedcom from GR mucks up the occupation field. What GR does is put the occupation in the PLAC field followed by the place. So when you work with places in FH you get loads of unusual places! [smile]
eg. 1 OCCU Ag Lab Preston, Lancs
I've reported it. We'll see how long they take to fix it.
eg. 1 OCCU Ag Lab Preston, Lancs
I've reported it. We'll see how long they take to fix it.