Putting the Wiki in Genealogy!
It should come as no surprise when I tell you that I love wikis! That’s right. I love everything they’re about and everything they stand for…collaboration, the sharing of knowledge and the quintessential fact that if you happen to write ‘their’ instead of ‘there’, someone else can come along and fix the typo for you - like your older brother or dear Aunt Mable. And to imagine…only five short years ago I thought a wiki was a bar in the Caribbean. But everything I love about wikis started to concern me when I considered the family history that I was creating here on WikiTree. What if someone came along and changed my father’s name from Melvin McCann (stop laughing) to Charles Manson? Or inserted by ex-husband where my husband appears on the tree? That would not go over well. So I went to the source, Chris Whitten, the King of Wikis and the founder of WikiTree to get the answers to these questions.
He completely reassured me by explaining the feature called ‘Family Network.’ This allows only a limited number of people – the relatives you approve – to access and edit information within the primary branches of your family tree. You control who is in that network. Now if you allow your cousin Ned – who happens to be a real trickster – and he changes your mother’s name from Christine to Ednahellostupid, you’ll have to make some edits.
Now for people on your tree without any direct living relatives – like your great-great-grandfather – anyone can access and edit the information. As Chris explains, “These areas are completely wiki and they don’t have the same Family Network restrictions.” Which is good, because I’d really be creeped out if my father’s father’s father complained that someone had edited his information. But seriously, what’s really cool about this and why WikiTree is so unique (as explained by Chris) is that “a distant cousin of yours could edit this same great-great-grandfather without needing to have a relationship with you. This is important because the further back in time we go the more that strangers share the same ancestors. Our ancestors’ stories become part of world history.”
The bottom line is that your most important information is secure and only accessible to those you allow onto your Family Network. So what are you waiting for? Start building your history today – wiki style! I am!