

This project relates to cleaning up copy-paste dumps from external websites on historical profiles.
We will be developing guidelines for how to do this in the near future, in the meantime please add profiles with copy-paste issues to this project.
Am excellent template for how to write up an "About" narrative is provided by Erica Howton here:
http://www.geni.com/discussions/92632?msg=689908
Erica's Master Profile Cheat Sheet, notes in parentheses. General note: Leave off altogether if info not known by you; put in "not known" if info not known by historical source.
First Name (bold) Middle Name (bold) Last Name (bold) was born XX Month XXXX in (place name, historically appropriate, present day name), and died XX Month XXXX. (baptism / christening / burial data as known.) S/he was also known as (nicknames, other languages, etc.)
IF it applies: a nice Wikipedia type line summarizing a Notable such as "He was an Irish Politician active in the Cromwell era." "Originally a Quaker missionary, she became a noted abolitionist and public speaker." It helps orient a reader in time and place to have this kind of one liner.
Parents: (child # of) (father and mother with their dates / places) [n.b. some like father & mother on separate lines; I actually find it saves space & usually fits together fine on one line]
Married:
Children of (name) and (spouse1): in date order, oldest to youngest (n.b. you'd be surprised to see how often that's not always the case when copying from a source document)
Children of (name) and (spouse2): n.b. this is a tad controversial: some prefer the spouse and children together rather than wives together / children together. Obviously I seem to prefer a list of wives and then a list of children. :)
Sections are made by this:
Soooo -- my section after the Vitals is usually (but not always!)
That's where I love getting unique, including with the name of the section. Often research digs up something really cool about an ancestor, my own personal tree favorite being "Abijah Ross and the Bear Dogs Treeing a Wildcat." This is the telling anecdote that gives you the flavor of a man or woman.
I mean, wouldn't you read on if you saw:
"Red Mary was said to have 25 husbands. In truth she was tried for the murder attempt of one of them, but acquitted (see below)."
Optional but frequently used other sections include:
Sources can be done in a variety of ways and it's all good. But I like breaking it out sometimes.
particularly important for book references. I copy & paste a paragrph from a google book / archives.org book result for instance for the bio section and give the full reference here.
how is this different from links? Wikipedia could be your link, and within the Wiki article are citations. So you copy & paste that source info.
The devil is in the details and footnotes are the place for the devil! They're not nice & easy (yet) like Wikipedia but doesn't mean they don't come up and shouldn't be used.