Do you work on pre-1700 profiles? New rule on project coordination.

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Do you work on pre-1700 profiles? New rule on project coordination.

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Hi WikiTreers,

In the continuing effort to cut down on duplication, we've made a change regarding pre-1700 profiles.

The rule before was that you should find out if there's a related project before creating historically-significant people.

The new rule is that you must find out if there's a related project before creating or editing any person born before 1700, and coordinate your work through the project if there is.

This isn't too big a change. Collaboration has never been optional on WikiTree, and for as long as we've had them, projects have been the forum for collaboration on massively-common ancestors and famous people. Now we're just being clear that you have to check for a project before adding pre-1700 people, since there's such a good chance that the people you plan to add already exist and are part of a project.

To make it easy on members, we're starting a new Volunteer Coordinators project. Volunteer Coordinators will reach out to members who take the pre-1700 self-certification and help them figure out if there's a project that fits their ancestors or interests. If there is, the coordinators will personally introduce the members to the project leaders. The leaders will let the members know whether their ancestors already exist and how they can help.

For more information see http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Pre-1700_Profiles and http://www.wikitree.com/quiz/pre_1700

Post here if you have questions or comments.

Anyone interested in being a Volunteer Coordinator?

Onward and upward,

Chris

asked Mar 3, 2015 in The Tree House by Chris Whitten G2G Astronaut (1.5m points)

Show 16 previous comments

Hi Elizabeth, I see that you already belong to three projects, so you could follow the links from those to read up on a few of them that cross your path. It is always a good idea anyway to familiarize yourself with the project universe that exists in your area of interest.

You can see the global Projects top-level category for a fairly comprehensive list of all of them, or at least to the main gateways for various ones that are not yet categorized there.

The policy change is that you "must find out if there's a related project".

That is not a very high bar to cross. And if you do nothing for that on your own, you will be approached by Volunterr Coordinators, to direct you, after you certify pre-1700. The idea is to add awareness about which project territory you may be working in, for your benefit and for the benefit of the project.

Theoretically, every pre-1700 profile does, should, or will, be templated into a project. Otherwise, it is likely garbage that should be deleted, or blocked before creation. But any valid person who is documented as living before 1700 has millions of direct or close relation descendants. So over time, any such profile needs to be proven valid, get improved, protected, and brought under the umbrella of a project.

If you are creating good profiles, then project members will be taking these actions on your good profiles. So this is just a sensible way for all interested parties to be in contact with each other about it.

But if somebody is creating or is oddly editing profiles that are covered by a project's territory, then those project members need to be able to quickly know, so that they can mitigate any tree damage, and to make sure that the profiles comply with the project standards.

The projects all welcome good profiles. But once a good profile exists, it is important that it stay a good profile, and not get swamped in waves of new duplicates that are maybe not so good. So as I see it, this is merely a helpful step in the tree integrity process.

commented Mar 5, 2015 by Steven Mix G2G6 Mach 4 (48.1k points)

Michelle:

Subsequent to Erin putting the Volunteer Coordinator badge on my profile page, I received messages within WikiTree and via email from people expecting me to remove the perceived barrier they encountered in merging or creating pre-1700 profiles. One individual asked me to find “the project” his family's 25,000 relations should be associated within. The process for handling the teams objective was not yet written, so I forwarded the requests to Erin with a request to instruct me on how to respond.

Apart from the help pages Erin added to WikiTree, she has not replied to me. Consequently I do not know if she or another Volunteer Coordinator replied to the requests. Nor do I know if you and the other daily volunteers were active and successful. No one posted their experience and comments on the team's Google Group page!

Yesterday was my day on the project, and as my above message you replied to discloses, was entirely and eerily uneventful.

commented Mar 14, 2015 by George Blanchard G2G6 Mach 9 (97.1k points)

11 Answers

Answer 1 · 2015-03-03T21:04:38+0000

This is a great change. I'm encouraged that it has taken place.

I think this change strikes a good balance between collaboration and independence and is what WikiTree is really all about. The Pre-1700 self certifaction also encourages good genealogy.

After all, if we all fire in lines to William the Conqueror, guess what, there is a tremendous amount of overlap. That this change doesn't limit contibutions from members whose research has turned up pre-1700 individuals whose profiles we want created, is also hugely important. Again, I think it strikes the right balance.

Having front row seats to my friends at EuroAristo constantly having to put out fires (dealing with duplicates, bad merges, etc.), I'm encouraged that we'll get more of their energy focused on genealogy. They're a brilliant bunch and we want their genealogy contributions!

Within Magna Carta, we spend a lot of our time untangling the tree before we're able to build our trails from Gateway Ancestors to surety barons, so we see the need as well.

Thanks for making it happen!

Answer 2 · 2015-03-03T21:07:54+0000

Most pre-1700s profiles originating in North America and the British Isles are going to be relevant to a project, even tangentally. Let's say you had an ancestor from Pennsylvania who wasn't one of the Quakers who arrived with William Penn. If I was coordinating on that day, I may still decide to refer you to Kitty and Paula's William Penn and Early Pennsylvania Settlers project. Here's why:

1. They can let you know about existing categories you may want to use.

2. There may be a member who is researching lines related to yours, and the leaders can put you in contact with them.

3. Eventually the project hopes to branch out into non-Quaker settlers. When the project branches out, they know where to start looking for profiles. Having your research there already helps set a standard for when other genealogists want to join and add their non-Quaker families.

4. Project leaders can keep notes about which subjects keep coming up, that may make a good subproject or a whole new project.

5. You can decide on a g2g tag to use for discussing your research. They can advertise it on their project page so that people looking for non-Quaker early Pennsylvanians know how to start and find discussions.

6. If I came in and started creating a bunch of junk profiles connected to yours, the project leaders would have an idea about what is supposed to be a good profile and would be able to more effectively suggest mentoring or mediation. Rangers will be able to easily decide who to contact if they notice vandalism, and project leaders can confirm if a vandal needs to be mentored or immediately blocked.

Other cases:

1. You have a lot of information on one family, and your research may be suited to a One Name Study. The leaders of that project could discuss that option with you.

2. You've decided to transcribe the census for a place that doesn't have a project, or your pre-1700s ancestors are primarily from one area. The One Place Studies project would be glad to advise you.

If there really isn't a project that exists, I'm glad to answer questions or connect people with other folks who have similar interests. The Projects page has a list of suggested projects, and once there is sufficient interest Abby is always around to see if a leader would like to take it on.

commented Mar 4, 2015 by Erin Breen G2G6 Pilot (341k points)

While I understand why you're wanting to do this and agree with the concept, the implementation of this is going to determine how much impact this will have on the community. Personally I would have preferred a discussion around the problems we're experiencing and been able to work as a community towards a collaborative solution. I can understand RJ's frustration below in feeling like this was an abrupt decision. In reality, and in reading between the lines on odd threads here and there, as well as working in small bits and pieces on the NNS Project, there has been discussion on the issues occurring already (and multiple times), so I do understand why you want to go this route.

My belief is that the problems stem more from GEDCOM imports than anything else. How can we prevent pre-1700 GEDCOMS from dumping mass amounts of pre-1700 profiles into the system?

Likewise, there are any number of occasions when I'm following a line, and it strays into pre-1700 territory, and I hardly notice until I've got the profile entered already. Is there something we're going to put into place to prevent that from happening? Should the birth date field be modified so that it reflects a warning when you enter a pre-1700 date in it? (NOTICE: This is a pre-1700 date. Please check with the Project Coordinator before entering this profile. [click OK]).

And who will be monitoring and enforcing these new restrictions? I get that the Volunteers will be assisting with communicating which project applies to which profile, but will the pre-1700 Project Leaders now be tasked with monitoring potential new profiles to their project area and from there, sending notes to violators to remind them to check with them first before entering future profiles? Not that I want to increase someone's work out there, but if there's no one watching the henhouse, then all the chickens get out (and we basically have a rule that doesn't help fix the problem).

Sorry for so many questions - just trying to make sure I understand.

commented Mar 4, 2015 by Scott Fulkerson G2G Astronaut (1.5m points)

I agree with you, Scott, that it would have been nice for this collaborative community to have had an opportunity to discuss this before implementation. That way, the solution would have more support than it does when it appears to be a new rule that people didn't have input into.

Collaboration is not synonymous with Approval. However, here on WikiTree it seems to have turned into that, and I don't think that is a good direction unless the number of "approvers" and "gate-keepers" is increased substantially beforehand (and maybe not even then). To implement something of this magnitude without the proper infrastructure (technical support, volunteers, projects, communication, notification, education, etc.) in place ahead of time is likely to result in a lot of challenges and may even result in more than a few good people just walking away from WikiTree rather than trying to keep the Tree as healthy and accurate as possible by following new rules that seem difficult to comply with.

Just my 2 cents worth...

Sharon

commented Mar 4, 2015 by S Willson G2G6 Pilot (223k points)

Right, Scott, so many questions! :-)

I can appreciate this sounds confusing and sudden.

It really isn't all that sudden. This is part of a general discussion that's been going on for years. Admittedly, a lot of the discussion has happened on the private leaders e-mail list. (Leaders do get a somewhat larger voice in the community. It's not really fair to others, but it's some compensation for their heavy responsibilities.)

Anyway, everything is always a work in progress. We're just at the start of this.

Today I will work with Erin on a draft page explaining more about what coordinating with a project means in various circumstances. To be clear, S., this is not supposed to be about approval and control. It's supposed to be about communication and collaboration.

commented Mar 5, 2015 by Chris Whitten G2G Astronaut (1.5m points)

In response to Sharon's comment, I can tell you that there have been a bunch of extremely good, well qualified people that have walked away from Wikitree because of nothing being done to keep the tree 'healthy and accurate'. The steps that are being taken are absolutely necessary for the tree to be accurate. If nothing is done, Wikitree will be no better than ancestry.com as far as accuracy and won't be a 'one world tree' because there will be so many duplicates and wrong information. The overall population of Wikitreers has absolutely no idea what occurs on an almost daily basis on Wikitree with the older profiles. Were it not necessary to do something, then nothing would be done. This step is actually long overdue, and those of us that are constantly barraged with trying to fix the tree have hopes that this will be what is needed to bring the site up to its full potential.

commented Mar 5, 2015 by Darlene Athey-Hill G2G6 Pilot (540k points)

That's exactly right Darlene. This policy change is merely an awareness campaign. If it works as advertised, it should give active project members a bit of breathing room to be made aware of new participants who are straying into project territory, with either good profile work, or bad profile work.

Project members generally know if a new profile is right or not. As it is now, having to try to repair the tree after damage is done can be immensely frustrating, because we are likely to only stumble across a new series of profiles by happensance. So this will shorten that time-frame, upon new pre-1700 certification.

But I think the certification block should stay firmly in place until the Volunteer Coordinator makes first contact. So a simple two-stage process would be best. Too many people now simply certify, just to get through it, and then immediately dive into a bunch of unsourced profile creation as they intended to begin with.

commented Mar 5, 2015 by Steven Mix G2G6 Mach 4 (48.1k points)

Answer 3 · 2015-03-03T21:33:59+0000

"Thank you for making high-level contributions on pre-1700 profiles. Does Thomas fit within the time period, location, or topic covered by a project? If so, you need to coordinate your work. A Volunteer Coordinator can tell you if there's a project and introduce you to its leaders. They'll appreciate your help."

This is the message. I clicked on "project," and Thomas (an English goldsmith) doesn't seem to fit any of the projects listed. I'm not sure why "if there's a project" appears in the next line. Could that be interpreted as meaning that one needs to contact a coordinator even though you can't find a project that fits? I think we need an "If not..." line. Or am I just being way too picky?

Update: Okay, Chris. Just saw your notes above.

commented Mar 4, 2015 by Laurie Cruthers G2G6 Pilot (165k points)
edited Mar 4, 2015 by Laurie Cruthers

My main concern is that, for American colonial profiles from ~1620 to 1700 you could theoretically have multiple projects, one project or none depending on the individual and location. It's pretty difficult, even for an experienced user, to determine if their profile fits into any of the pre-1700 project(s) or not. I only know projects exist here because I'm a regular reader and contributor to the G2G, and it took me several months to figure out which ones were relevant to profiles I might be working on and even longer to figure out what their parameters were. There are some projects on the list where I honestly wouldn't have the first idea of how to determine if a profile I'm working on is a part of the project (Pocahontas descendants, for example). Others I know better, but for any particular person I'm not sure if they "count" or not when I'm setting up the profile (PGM).

It seems like I would have to poll the participants in several projects for every profile I set up, just to figure out which projects apply. Then I have to ask if there's already a profile even though I already searched for one. Even for a dedicated user like myself, I'm feeling like that's an awful lot of work to ask for on a profile-by-profile basis.

On a related note, I think the date range that's being used here could stand a tweak. I have found quite a lot of source information from town records and published, widely accepted genealogies for descendants in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th generations in New England. All of those generations potentially fit into the time frames covered by "pre-1700", so by setting the endpoint at 1700, I believe you're casting a much wider net than you're intending to with this process. I would suggest 1650 as the endpoint because that captures only the 1st and 2nd generations, which require, in my experience a much higher level of research savvy and a much smaller number of individuals.

commented Mar 4, 2015 by Kyle Dane G2G6 Pilot (112k points)

This is close to how I feel about this, Kyle. I've put a fair amount of my effort into merges, since it seems to be sorely needed. And honestly, I've got a lot of material on the 1600s and 1700s, and adding anything from either century is largely an effort at locating duplicates. That and adding links.

I also agree with the comment above that a big problem is GedCom uploads, which mostly seem to operate outside standing procedures. For example: When I manually enter a profile, I have to supply a birthdate, even if it be a total guess. (If you have the parents' names from a birth record, the father could have been anything from 20 to 50 years old when the child's born. I'd actually like to see a "total guess" vs. "approximate" birthdate, the latter being what you have with a census record or age at death/marriage, those being almost always within a year or two.

But lots of records have no birthdates at all. Which I think means GedComs have much looser constraints on them. If you've got material that goes back a ways, it really does need checking for duplicates at every step, and I usually do it a few ways each time.

The real cutoff for me comes with colonial cemeteries. Very few tombstones survive from before 1700, and the ones that do are mostly very rudimentary field stones, often with little more than initials, sometimes a year of death. But the 1700s, at least in New England, are when they started using those slate stones, many of which are in excellent condition. They have good information about relationships, not just by who's named on the stone, but also by who shares a burial plot.

My, my, I am rambling, somewhat off topic. At any rate, I don't see where "check with a group" solves the GedCom problem. I also don't see how it improves my work, which already has a strong component of constantly checking for duplicates. It just confuses me, and makes me think maybe I should stick to the 1700s and later, and not bother with this, which I don't understand anyhow.

commented Mar 5, 2015 by Living Winter G2G6 Mach 7 (78.5k points)

Answer 4 · 2015-03-04T01:06:39+0000

If they're the same, they need to be merged and that is a greater priority than assigning it a project. So, merge first and ask questions later. It's easier to refer one profile to a project than it is two. If we're going to nitpick, merging comes under the Profile Improvement Project and Arborists ;)

In seriousness, here are a few things you can do after the merge:

1. If you know what project it should be associated with, send a message to that project's leader.

2. If you don't know, post in G2G and ask for opinions on which project the profile (or family of profiles) should belong to. This is a good option especially if there aren't sources on the profile, so we can get discussion going on where this person even came from.

3. If nobody is replying in G2G, you can contact a Volunteer Coordinator and ask them to look into it.

commented Mar 4, 2015 by Erin Breen G2G6 Pilot (341k points)

Just a comment on "So, merge first and ask questions later."

Two caveat issues were brought up here, LNAB, and PPP.

There is a third and much more critical issue, and that is parental match disconnects. I have seen a bit of improvement on this lately, as far as warnings, but I still see far too many merge proposals in which parent matches differ, or conflict, and that difference is entirely ignored.

What results has direct beariing on projects like New Netherland, because often the unmatched parent that gets cut loose has scanty information, or has a name variant, which means that post-merge it becomes free-floating pollution that can no longer be matched readily to anything, if at all.

I want to see an outright BAN or BLOCK on all merges of descendants which have unmerged parents. It may be too late, because most of the damage has long since been done.

Much of the time now the parental disconnect are the direct result of newbies certifying pre-1700 or not, proposing a merge on their later descendant, and disregarding the older ancestor matches. It then becomes a scramble to find and match the older ancestors, or quickly clean up and merge propose them. But they still get disconnected anyway, because the descendant typically gets merged first.

The descendant being merged may not be in the project territory, but the ancestors who get cut loose are covered by the project, and now become extra difficult to resolve.

So anybody merging from the default approval list does certainly need to coordinate that action with appropriate projects. This would be solved if merging descendants across different parent matches were to be made impossible. Maybe it is a technical issue that it cannot be done as I wish, but it is a sorely needed change, and would be the best thing that WikiTree could ever implement, to protect tree integrity.

Another solution would be to implement a technical fix to allow mulitiple parents after merge, as Geni does, for example, which would also entirely mitigate the problem. Either change would make me fully happy.

commented Mar 4, 2015 by Steven Mix G2G6 Mach 4 (48.1k points)

Hi Erin, I did not read your comment as flippant. But it did give me my excuse to again mention my pet peeve about what sometimes goes wrong with the WikiTree prime directive of merging.

The real cold truth of it is that the tendency of many is to go direct to merge, regardless of any conflict issues, comments, discussions, template warnings, etc., which can then be too cumbersome to invest in, when better time is spent just doing triage work grappling with whatever random merge proposal happens to have its clock ticking at the moment. PPP helps, but only if it happens to be on the most appropriate profile, so even that is not always a good quick fix. And it only protects LNAB, not relationships, data, etc.

But WikiTree insists that merging should be the priority to handle all supposed matches, when I can wish alternatively for a garbage can or perhaps simply some sort of a grey area holding pen being a more sensible place to offload the vast majority of supposed matches and questionable antiquities that present themselves as valid and fully worthy equal members of the tree, whether they makes any sense or not.

Sadly, merging is the most destructive and unrecoverable action in WikiTree. So any tools that would automate the damage mitigation with it would be welcome.

commented Mar 4, 2015 by Steven Mix G2G6 Mach 4 (48.1k points)

Answer 5 · 2015-03-04T15:49:47+0000

I would not be in a hurry to categorize a bunch of existing profiles to any pre-1700 projects, because I would presume that the vast majority of them before, say, 1600 which are not yet categorized are utter garbage. Or maybe not quite that bad, but perhaps they are simply not verifiable, to be generous about it.

Although there are a huge number between 1600-1700 which are good profiles, and may be project material, but review and categorization of them all would be an overwhelming task.

For instance, in New Netherland we had 9,000 descendant Settlers just by the mid 1660s, most of whom are probably documented. There are many multiples of thousands more by 1700.

But so far we have only been able to validate and properly categorize a few thousand.

And PGM has potentially something like 20,000-30,000 immigrants, not even counting near desecendants.

So project categorization is going to take a very, very long time, to cover the full pre-1700 theoretical population of existing and potential profiles.

commented Mar 5, 2015 by Steven Mix G2G6 Mach 4 (48.1k points)

Exactly. The idea seems to be that you classify people by the info on the profile. But if the info on the profile were half-reliable we wouldn't have the problem.

If Magna Carta went by the info on the profile, it would have 10 times as many gateways.

There's a thread about Robert Constable, descendant of Sureties, ancestor of Robert E Lee, allegedly. No known Colonial descendants at all, actually. His source is totally untrustworthy, and he's too unimportant to show up anywhere that's not following the fictional American link, so I've yet to verify his existence. And obviously without the American link nobody gives a fig anyway. And he's not an isolated case, there are thousands of these unsourceable floaters. I think your quarantine idea was better.

commented Mar 6, 2015 by Living Horace G2G6 Pilot (633k points)

Answer 6 · 2015-03-04T19:47:55+0000

I have already started abandoning my pre 1700 profiles because I do not want to spend the time and effort involved with maintaining them under the new rules.

Answer 7 · 2015-03-04T21:19:02+0000

Hi Foster, you can quickly browse the Projects category list, to see if something obviously applies.

The green notice in the merge window is advisory. You can still complete the merge, but if you don't know the project area that you are merging in, then it is best to briefly check the list, and then reach out.

Theoretically, if people are merging, then a first thought should be that they are made a bit familiar with the project territory they are generally working in. Think in terms of global geography to narrow it down quickly.

Pre-1700 you typically either have to be in Europe, or on the North American eastern seaboard. Then you can narrow it down further from there.

Your options are to approach a Volunteer Coordinator, or else one of the project contacts. Or simply study the likely project for a bit, to get a feel for what the expectations are with those profiles. If you have a lot of profiles in the same area, then you should get familiar with the project anyway.

The point of projects is to coordinate and educate interested parties with the resources, standards, pitfalls, etc., so that everybody does not have to keep re-inventing the same wheel.

commented Mar 5, 2015 by Steven Mix G2G6 Mach 4 (48.1k points)

Answer 8 · 2015-03-09T16:52:56+0000

I absolutely applaud this move. However, my reasons may be a little different from others. I have collected a large amount of British pre-1700 data for my ancestors. However, well-meaning genealogists have, in the past, made links that were, in the writers' minds, satisfactory but do not stand up to the rigours of the modern genealogist.

I include my grandmother who died in 1956. She had drawn a beautiful family tree taking the Lane family, her maternal side, back to Norman times. I have come across other trees that give the same information. These are now on Ancestry and by repetition have become more and more "true"

I am not able to repeat the links that have been made. Primary sources may exist that will endorse them, but, if so, they have not been supplied. I am very much afraid that some of these links have been transferred into Wikitree, and already we are too late to disentangle fact from whimsy. I am now avoiding these areas as I do not want to hurt people's feelings by continually croaking "Please show me the source"

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