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Clarify the status of GEN (Unknown) sources #16

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martindholmes opened this issue Dec 29, 2024 · 1 comment
Open

Clarify the status of GEN (Unknown) sources #16

martindholmes opened this issue Dec 29, 2024 · 1 comment
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data interpretation/processing Issue related to how the source data should be interpreted or processed data quality Issue relating to errors or problems with the source data itself documentation Improvements or additions to documentation help wanted Extra attention is needed

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@martindholmes
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martindholmes commented Dec 29, 2024

One item in the sources list consists of the id "GEN" and the gloss "(Unknown)". There are 1028 links to this item, in 989 different trader records. Here is a collection of example records that have three or more such links:

https://hcmc.uvic.ca/project/bbti/collection.html?collTitle=Records%20with%20many%20links%20to%20GEN%20source&records=124036;122074;50459;95983;65347;122107

In many of these cases, a clear source is given in a note, so the link to "Unknown" is, on the face of it, erroneous. It seems to me that the pattern of assigning this source to a record, then adding a note with a true source in it, is mostly undertaken when the source is a text which is unlikely to be generally cited in other records, and therefore perhaps does not merit inclusion in the formal list of sources on the sources page.

However, the resulting record appears a little confusing, so I wonder if we might address these cases by perhaps adding another pseudo-source whose gloss/description better explains the situation, and reserving "Unknown" for cases where the source genuinely is unknown. Also, there may be some cases where a source does merit adding to the main sources list, and could then be re-linked in the conventional way.

@martindholmes martindholmes added documentation Improvements or additions to documentation help wanted Extra attention is needed data quality Issue relating to errors or problems with the source data itself data interpretation/processing Issue related to how the source data should be interpreted or processed labels Dec 29, 2024
@martindholmes martindholmes self-assigned this Dec 29, 2024
@DavidJamesShaw
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Yes, these 'GEN (unknown)' notes look quite confusing.
If it is possible to make some improvement, I can't see any objection.

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Labels
data interpretation/processing Issue related to how the source data should be interpreted or processed data quality Issue relating to errors or problems with the source data itself documentation Improvements or additions to documentation help wanted Extra attention is needed
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