Is it possible that "Too many cooks spoils the broth" relates also to too many profile managers?

Question

It seems that the more managers a profile has the less likely it is to get a response when requesting a merger or other info.  I have wondered if it is because each of them assumes the others will deal with it.  (I would hope that those who wish not to participate or respond would remove themselves as managers from those profiles, or at least check to see that one of the others is dealing with it for them.)  I see that it's not just an issue involving novice wiki-genealogists like myself; some profiles that I cannot get a response from have almost a dozen super-star master-managers with more badges than a retired major-general.

Is it possible that these managers might be too comfortable with the profiles the way they are based on the fact that other super-star managers are also attatched to them; maybe don't feel confident enough to deal with mergers and such for the others?  Maybe defer to each other so much that it's hard to get things done?

Perhaps there should be a "Primary Manager" who ultimately takes responsibility for the profile or relinquishes it to someone else.

Thoughts and insights are appreciated.....thank you very much.

Comments

Robert,

What was happened, i.e. the reason there are so many profile managers on a profile, is that profiles have been merged numerous times, thus resulting in everyone that created a profile being a manager on them.  From what I've seen, many people uploaded gedcoms, had their profiles merged into others, then continue on as managers with no real interest in the profile.

I don't see a need for a 'primary manager', as I don't think any one person needs to take responsibility.  I do think it is a good idea to remove yourself from profiles if you don't want to have to deal with merges.

As to RJ's comment, I would suggest you post, in bold, a comment at the top of the biography section of a profile stating you've adopted the profile but are willing to relinquish it to anyone that has an interest in the family.  Someone could come up with a template for this to make it even easier to do...

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Thank you for your generous answer.  I'm taking it all in.

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I think that if a profile manager hasn't been active in a certain time frame (say a year) they shoud be removed from profiles. This means that only active people would remain as profile managers.

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I concur with Christy. Especially on "deep" ancestors.

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As someone with the least experience of all of you with WikiTree, I must comment that the Profile Manager business is quite frustrating.

I limit my Wiki participation to families I have actively (hands-on) researched. It is discouraging to attempt to resolve duplicate profiles when the managers are not active, but I understand that is why the Unresponsive Profile Manager process exists. Then there are active people who instead of participating in resolving issues with profiles they already created are busily creating new profiles!

And, finally, the biggest frustration is "inheriting" lax, incompetent, inactive, or disinterested profile managers when their duplicates are merged into profiles that I am attempting to responsibly document. This causes me to hesitate before proposing merges of duplicates because no one wants to be saddled with those types of profile managers.

Tonight I looked at a profile that I worked quite diligently on for five months. It now has five or six profile managers. This is totally unwieldy and chaotic. I wrote two of those who have not been active for over a year and attempted diplomatically to ask if they would relinquish their profile manager status. I do not expect to hear back from them, and then I will have to go the "Unresponsive Profile Manager" route. Two of the other profile managers on the same profile are active, but they are contributors who casually create profiles and never look back.

Kathy

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I am in the process of trying to shed a bunch of profiles that aren't connected with my family.

For instance, I obtained and uploaded a large GEDCOM of the family tree of the Slade Baronets, in hopes that I would find a connection to my own family. That didn't work out, but somebody has been diligently sourcing the family tree out several links in every direction, so recently we agreed that I would make him profile manager on all the profiles from the GEDCOM for people not actually named "Slade".

On the other hand, the largest number of managers I've run into (there are four of us), is on a profile of a person who is related to me (albeit not very closely), so I intend to hang onto my managership there, because I have an interest in making sure that line is accurate.

Greg

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Greg wrote, " I intend to hang onto my managership there, because I have an interest in making sure that line is accurate."

Sure. That is logical and efficient. Otherwise, you would not have an opportunity to decline a proposed merger and explain why it is inappropriate.

It is the other frustrating situations that I was addressing.

Kathy

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Kathy,

I think in your situation, where you're not getting any active responses, it's time just to take control of the situation and 'just do it.' Go the unresponsive profile manager route, get control of the profiles, (it will take a week or so, but it works) and make the changes that you can provide sources for. The key to it is that you have *sources*. Be bold, be brave... take care of it. You obviously have done the research, so no one is going to come back to you with "why did you do this" if you've provided sources and given the PMs the opportunity to discuss your intended changes.

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And on those profiles where you are manager with a bunch of inactive managers, you can downgrade them to Trusted List through the Privacy tab. I will do this on profiles of "deep" ancestors where the PM has not made any contributions to wikitree in over a year.

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A big thank you for the excellent guidance in finding my way out of the maze. G2g is a great aid.

Kathy

Answer 1

Trouble is, when proposing a merge, there's no way to distinguish between "Would somebody have a look at these please, with a view to a possible merge" and "I've investigated these, and I believe they should be merged".

So the PM doesn't quite know what they need to do.  And they don't have any way of saying "Pass - I'm too busy, but I'm happy for somebody else to look at this one, if they haven't already".

Comments

Understood.  Thank you very much for sharing this.

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And it sounds like you sort of agree.... there are still some kinks that could be ironed out in this regard.   Respectfully - Keith

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I agree entirely.  Also, given there's a prejudice against orphaning profiles, it would be good if there were a way to put them on offer, to say "I'll leave my name on this so long as nobody else wants it, but if anybody else would like to take it off my hands, they're welcome."

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RJ, You can certainly add details such as you write above, in the explanation box of the merge proposal.

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RJ,

Match - "Would somebody have a look at these please, with a view to a possible merge" 

Merge - "I've investigated these, and I believe they should be merged".

 

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Rob, I feel like the "match" behaves more like "I'm thinking these are a match, but I need to research further so no one merge them in the meantime." It's frustrating to me that the "unmerged match" prevents others from proceeding.

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Lundie,

No merge should be completed without having confidence that the two profiles represent the same person.

Match means that the profiles might be the same person but that there is not enough information in one or both profiles to say, with confidence, the two profiles represent the same person. Ideally the profile managers of the two profiles should look at the profiles and compare notes to see if they are the same person, entirely different people, or if the details of the two people have become confused because they have similar names. Anyone who has the requisite evidence to have the confidence the two profiles are the same person can move from matching to merging.

"unmerged match" does not prevent people from proceeding - the lack of evidence does.

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 what rob said!

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RJ, you wrote:

"there's a prejudice against orphaning profiles..."

While I've seen some individuals express a dislike for orphaned/orphaning profiles, I haven't seen a widespread prejudice. 

Could you say more about this? Where do you see this expressed?

Thanks.

-- Jillaine

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So am I wrong in the understanding that I effectively stop someone else from merging the profiles by placing a unmerged match on the two items? I'm talking functionality, not philosophy.

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Lundie,

Both Unmerged Match and Rejected Match FUNCTIONALLY stop a merge from continuing.

 Unmerged match is the thing to select when more work needs to be done to confirm the match or if you have a question about it. For example, I recently used it on two profiles that were clearly the same man but had different mothers.  There was no information in the narrative of either profile to indicate which mother was correct. Until that gets figured out and sourced, the merge should not go through.

If the two people are definitely not the same, use rejected match.

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I should add that once the information is confirmed about-- in this example -- who the right mother is -- one can remove the unmerged match and re-propose a match now that it's clear.

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Take the profile Maheu-10 as an example.

As of this moment as I write this post I look at the profile and see there are 3 unmerged matches: Maheu-31, Maheu-26, and Maheux-6 - these 3 profiles are all already related to one another.

Now Maheu-10 has pretty scant details to work with, but I take a stab at it anyway. I pull open a relevant source, such as:

Tanguay, Cyprien. Dictionnaire généalogique des familles canadiennes depuis la fondation de la colonie jusqu'à nos jours. vol. 5 sect. 2 : Lei-Mer; page 455, Québec, Canada: Eusèbe Senécal, 1871-1890. Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Canada. [Digital Image] Ancestry.com

In this source I find:

1. Pierre (son of Jean Maheu and Michelle Chovin) b.1634, m.1659 Jeanne Drouin (Maheux-6)

2. Charles (son of Pierre Maheux and Jeanne Drouin) b,1666, m.1688 Marie Charlotte Garnier (Maheux-5)

3. Pierre (son of Pierre Maheux and Jeanne Drouin) b. 1669, m.1691 Marie-Louise Garnier. (Maheu-31)

4. Pierre (son of Charles Maheu and Marie-Charlotte Garnier) b.1693, m.1715 Louise Giroux (Maheux-4)

5. Pierre (son of Pierre Maheu and Marie-Louise Garnier) b.1694, m.1715, Suzanne Giroux (Maheu-26)

6. Pierre (son of Pierre Maheu and Louise Girou)  b 1717, m.1739,  Antoinette Guevremont. (Maheu-10)

I can now say that all the unmerged matches on Maheu-10 should be rejected, and, as it happens, I can also say that Maheu-10 should be connected as the son  of Maheux-4. Had the additional research instead indicated that Maheu-10 was in fact the same person as one of the other profiles I would have proposed merges instead of rejecting the matches.

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...and since Maheu-10 was an orphan and the profile manager of Maheux-4 has not been active for a year I went ahead and connected Maheu-10 and Maheux-4, added the missing date of birth to Maheu-10, added the source I found to the various profiles where it had not already been cited, and rejected or removed all the incorrect matches from Maheu-10.

(In general you should reject if the two profiles are similar and might be confused again for example Maheux-4 and Maheux-26 which have the same name, and similar year of birth, year of marriage, and spouse names and could easily become confused, simply remove the match if the profiles with their updated details are not likely to become confused any longer)

To recap that was three unmerged matches which did not stop me from doing the research, making a decision if the match should be become a merge proposal or be rejected and taking the appropriate action based on the evidence.

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Like.

Answer 2

Robert,

I have seen many references throughout g2g over the years to the recommendation that profiles have only one or two profile managers. I used to disagree with this recommendation because I thought that the more managers there were, the more likely they WOULD respond to merge and other requests. But as your experience is demonstrating, that's not often so.

On PGM profiles, post multi-merge, I will review the profile manager list, and "downgrade" profile managers to Trusted List if they have been inactive on wikitree for over a year. But I rarely get it down to 1-2. But lately, I've found that most of the post-merge Profile Managers are active. 

Sometimes I will post a message to the profile along the following lines:

This profile, merged from multiple duplicates, now has many profile managers; Wikitree recommends only a few. Unless you are actively working on this profile, please consider downgrading from Profile Manager to Trusted List (on the Privacy tab). You'll still be notified of changes to the profile.

Sometimes it works. 

But the other issue that your post raises for me is the need to communicate more through the merge request. Perhaps this calls for adding to the proposal:

If you have questions about this proposal, please post a message to the profile.

Or something... 

 

Comments

Thank you very much for your time and clear response.  Through the conversation here I am gaining a general knowledge on the subject that will make me a better member of the community.  I appreciate this G2G and those who contribute.

Answer 3

Hello

I agree that having unresponsive profile managers is a headache; we've all run across them whether or not they have collected a lot of badges... Two possible "solutions" do exist:  1)  Include a detailed - but brief - message in your merge request - this goes to ALL profile managers and hopefully will get the attention of at least one.  Include things like - "I'd like to add new research results" or "This is my GGG ancestor and so I am very interested in merging with xxx profile as I have other data to add..." etc. Be personal and polite and most likely someone will reply.  2)  Use the "personal message" system - you can copy and paste the same message to all managers - they will get it in their email.

Also, WikiTree automatically allows you to merge profiles if no one has objected or replied after 30 days have passed.  So make a note of what date you requested a merge and then 30 days later you can make the merge if no one's replied.  Many merges happen this way.  

Finally, all profiles older than 200 years can be edited (except for last name at birth) by anyone so you can "clean up" one of the profiles and then after 30 days merge it and your biography section will be in the new merged profile.  Edit that section and put your better biography on top and you have a good profile that says what you want to say.  IF the profile is "project protected" then find the project manager - usually a WikiTree Leader - and he/she will almost always reply quickly and help you.

Happy Ancestor Hunting!

Chet Snow

Answer 4

Hi Robert,

Yes, too many profile managers can be problematic. Often times long lists of profile managers is the result of multiple merges of a profile.

The suggestion given [here] is that "four or five is too many". For Project Protected Profiles, there should be a project member that is the 'lead collaborator' which is somewhat the same as your suggestion of a "Primary Manager".

Unfortunately, as you alluded to, some users are just reluctant to relinquish their status as profile manager for a variety of reasons, concerns, and/or excuses. The issue of who is a profile manager can be a very controversial and confrontational topic so there is naturally a reluctance to remove other managers without discussing it with them - as a result people who do not respond are often left on the list of PM's.

While the best situation is that profile managers would remove themselves when they are not willing/able to continue collaborating on a profile; when this does not happen there is a process for addressing the issue of Unresponsive Profile Managers. This process does take quite a while because it tries to fairly balance the fact that people have lives outside of Wikitree and might not respond to an e-mail for a few days (or even weeks if they are on vacation), againt the interests of individuals who want to collaborate on and contribute to a profile.

Answer 5

I would be pretty irritated if MY gedcom which I uploaded, were namaged by someone other than me without having permissions to do so. I am more than happy to assist with merges and the necessary investigations but to immediately have my little part of the world forcefully and suddenly given to someone else would drive me away.

I do admit there is a semblence of abuse many times but I do not think that's the case. WikiTree's goals are different than most other genealogy sites and some people just have trouble getting their heads around it (myself included).

So I tend to doubt that a master manager for every pm is the answer but at the same time don't have an opinion of how to make it much better.

Comments

Tom, I think what most of us have been discussing in this post deals with profiles that are for people more than 200 years old (i.e. open profiles) that are shared by many people.  As I mentioned above, the reason we end up with a lot of profile managers is that people don't search for duplicates before they upload a gedcom.  It happens over and over again, and people locate the duplicates and merge them, and then you end up with a ton of profile managers.  I don't think anyone is suggesting that the gedcom you upload be taken away from you.  And your profiles wouldn't have a lot of profile managers, as many of your uploaded profiles would probably be closed as opposed to open due to the time period in which they lived.

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What Darlene said AND remember: once we've uploaded "our" GEDCOM, it's really no longer "ours."  We've contributed it to the single, collaborative family tree that is Wikitree.

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I don't have any answers ... just more questions to add to the complexity of the inherent problem.

Thinking about what Tom said, it occurred to me that if someone skips what would otherwise become a duplicate during the gedcom import process, then they are not profile manager or even on the trusted list for the profile that is already here.  If they allow the duplicate to be created during import and then merge it afterward then they will be able to edit the profile.

This seems to argue in favor of something that is definitely not wanted here!

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Gaile, as you know, people can request to be on the trusted list for a profile. And if they don't receive a response, they can report the person as unresponsive (only on open profiles, everyone needs to keep in mind, so only those that are of people that lived over 200 years ago).

Also keep in mind that anyone can edit a profile.  You don't have to be a profile manager or on the trusted list to do so.  The only time you need that is if it's locked or closed.

Duplicates are not to be created.  I think what you mention is the very reason that some people create them anyway.  Which is NOT proper behavior on Wikitree...

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I have to admit to having been guilty of deliberately creating a duplicate profile when I first joined WikiTree, but not for anything related to profile manager or trusted list consideration - I didn't know anything about any of that stuff.  I also didn't know anything about either genealogy work or WikiTree at the time.

Of course, when I joined, my own profile was automatically created.  I saw something about gedcoms and looked into learning about it because it seemed far more efficient to accumulate data on my computer and then upload it all at once than to manually enter it all.  By "all", I really mean practically nothing - at that time, I thought that about 50 family members (most living) was a lot.  Anyhow, I put my data in a database, ported it to a spreadsheet, and manually created a gedcom file, which I then imported.  Of course the file included a record for me to have the relationships in it.  When offered the choice of skipping, I said no because I wanted the data in the gedcom file to come into my record.  After that, I immediately merged to get rid of my "clone" record.

My point in publicly shaming myself for that is that I was totally clueless that I had committed a no-no.  I would like to suggest that more information be given to new members when they sign up about not creating duplicate records so that they understand everything I learned long after having done bad stuff so unintentionally.

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Gaile points out a true weakness in the GEDCOM matching program-- that by skipping a profile in your gedcom, you not only don't get Profile Manager, or even Trusted List status in the result, you also leave behind any additional information that was in your GEDCOM but not in the existing wikitree profile. It would be far better if the GEDCOM matching program offered the ability to merge directly from the GEDCOM into the existing Wikitree profile.

(Another reason I work on profiles manually.)

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Great idea, Jillaine.  That certainly would have encouraged me to skip creating the duplicate.  Your suggestion gives me an idea for something else that might be offered during the gedcom import process to encourage those who are concerned about ability to edit the existing record -

How about offering an option of being added to the trusted list for the existing profile during the import process?

Answer 6

My note to Becky yesterday :) Howdy Becky, as you are "Leader of Mayflower Project" (& as I have previously made some big messes w/ some of my previous mergers of PPP Mayflower profiles. "Witch I intensely apologize" for ) Do I need Leaders approval before making Merge of Cook-2723 & Cooke-30

I think that they are ready now for merge, as long as you approve? And should I also ask Project Leader of any other PPP for any future mergers ? P.S. I already qualify for my "1K Contributions" this month. Thank You, John.   

And so I have 3 pending mergers with 2 un-responsive profile mgrs. :) I helped cause some of the mess & I am here to help clean it up also. I am not to busy to assist dis entangle Mayflower PPP profiles But it takes some kind of response from the GEDCOM up-loaders. I am disabled/retired at 53y/o therefore all my time is my own. I have over 1,200 contribution points at this time for the month, and I am grateful  to be a part of wikitree. I am here and at Mayflower Project service, True I don't have much experience here. I am still trying to learn styles & standards of html coding. I taught myself DOS, used to dispatch 80+ hours a week on an ancient AS-400 mainframe, 179,000 sq. miles 146 trucks / drivers / routes. I am an ex USN Nuke Submariner there is not much I can not do. I also recently created 2 Projects & with a little help they are doing great. Yesterday I adopted some connected no mgr profiles... & initiated 10 mergers this month, mostly to do w/ Mayflower , Quaker Friends Connecting profiles. Ya'll Hollar' Back, I am suited-up & show-up,,, "Put me in Coach, I want to play" lol, Peace Out, John :)

Answer 7

There are some great answers here so I won't repeat what was said. I do a lot of work here, on GENI and on FamilySearch. Familysearch doesn't have any profile managers and there is no "test" you need to take to edit profiles pre1700. GENI has profile managers but they also have something called a "curator" on most of the older profiles. You can always reach a curator and they will always make the changes/mergers you need provided you have sources. And they respond that very day. No waiting. So the admins don't need to respond. You can add yourself as an admin with great ease. So the role of the admins is different there. GENI's admins are more of a collaboration team to bounce ideas off of, start discussions and share sources with. A curator can always handle getting work done.

I've come to the conclusion that having admins in the sense that we have them here on Wikitree for profiles of people born over 200 years ago is really bad idea. I'd prefer we have no admins in this sense - just a voluntary collaboration pool of researchers and then have higher level tested curators to handle big changes that are always present and responsive. So it means opening up access to profiles to people ad hoc. And it means giving the keys to some trained and dedicated volunteers who are willing to respond on the same day a request is sent. GENI is closer to this model and I can clean up a circa 1620 family group in a day there and in some cases it takes me over a year to apply the same fix to the same family group on Wikitree.

Anyway - these are early days for Internet genealogy. It's all one big experiment and I think in 10 years new and better platforms will evolve.