Collaborating on a large descendancy chart complete with living people

Question

I am new to WikiTree but searched the archives to see if a question like mine had already been answered. The closest I found was the question "Why can I not add my new grandchild??" where one reply poses a counter question, "why would you even want to make a profile for a newborn baby on a public website?" Here's why I want to, and I am open to suggestions for other ways to do this.

I came to WikiTree hoping this would be a good platform to collaboratively gather information for a descendancy chart for a family reunion this summer of the descendants of my maternal great-grandparents.

At past reunions, a cousin distributed a hardcopy chart he generated using desktop genealogy software, but he has passed away and his wife says we no longer have access to the software or data. Since we're almost starting from scratch, I am hoping to find a way to engage representatives from each branch of the family (my great-grandparents had eight children and their oldest, my grandmother, had nine so there are a lot of us) to add their own marriages and births since the last reunion.

The benefits of WikiTree include the fact that I can enter data on all our common deceased ancestors once and everyone can view it and, of course, anyone who wants to help can join WikiTree for free. But here are the challenges I see with using WikiTree:

1. I can add many of our elderly living relatives (like my mother who is 94 and has dementia), but I will need to make sure my helpers who join WikiTree are on the Trusted Lists for each of those profiles.

2. Children, especially young children, must be entered by their parents. That would mean, for example, that I couldn't be the branch representative for all my grandmother's descendants; I would have to get a parent for each small child to join WikiTree.

3. Many of the 100+ profiles for living descendants would be unlisted which is fine, but in order to generate a full descendancy chart, someone (me?) would need to be on the Trusted List of every profile. If we wanted to have a representative in each family branch who could generate charts, they would need to be on every profile as well.

Any thoughts, suggestions, or clarifications of things I'm misunderstanding about completing this project in WikiTree? Has anyone had experience doing something this large involving living people on another platform or another way?

Comments

Thank you for the thoughtful question, Paul, and welcome to G2G.

You are probably aware of this already, but for the benefit of anyone else wondering, the policy on this is for reasons beyond WikiTree's control. The requirement for profiles of children under 13 to be created only by a parent or guardian is legally necessary because of provisions of the European General Data Protection Regulation, specifically Article 8. See also

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:GDPR_FAQ

in particular section 3.

There've been good suggestions for alternative approaches in the answers below.

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Yes, Jim, there have been good suggestions made and I appreciate how quickly you and others responded to my question. This is a pretty cool community.

To be clear, I'm not complaining about how WikiTree works as far as things like Trusted Lists and creating profiles for young children. I think that's good and important stuff--I just wanted to be sure I wasn't misunderstanding the challenge I would be facing or making it harder than it needs to be. As a project, doing it alone may be easier in some ways. But as an opportunity to collaborate as a family, I think if we take the right approach the extra effort will be worthwhile many times over.

If WikiTree becomes even a part of our solution, I'll come back and post how we ended up doing it. Who knows? Getting that many of my cousins to join WikiTree to help complete this project may be a great way to get some of them off the sidelines and started on their own family history as they see what you all have built here and how much help and encouragement is available. So thanks, all!

Answer 1

I think for the non-living individuals, WikiTree is a great option, but you will need to provide sources for each person.

For those individuals who are living, in my opinion, it makes more sense to use a free desktop genealogy program since you are basically only needing to save names, addresses, and email or other contact information. I don't know if there is some sort of collaborative program on the internet, but I would hesitate to post so much personal information on living people and would just bite the bullet and be the compiler on my own computer.

I use Legacy Family Tree and have the ability to print out charts, but I use the pay version, so I am not sure if that is available with the free version (which is still a very good program). I went to a reunion of the first planters of Beverly, Massachusetts and they had long printouts of our ancestors and that was a wonderful feature and very popular.

Answer 2

I did something very similar to this for a family reunion a number of years ago, before WikiTree existed.

I did this using a desk top genealogy program, PAF, and a separate report/chart generating program, Charting Companion. There are other, newer software that will do the same. PAF reports are OK, but leave lot’s of room for improvement, so I seldom use the built-in reporting routines.

Charting Companion produces very nice ahnentafel and register (descendant) reports that can be bound into a book (most print shops can do this … a spiral bound book costs around $6). Charting Companion can produce very large charts, I’ve created charts as large as 3 x 10 ft using a large format printer at a print shop (a few years back this was about 50c a square foot for black and white, expect higher now; color can be a few dollars per square foot, depending on the amount of color coverage).

If I generate a report for someone, I am particular about style, format, and content. I want it to be as professional looking as I can make it. Hence, I use genealogy software.

Answer 3

Do you have your family history on another site? I have Family Tree Maker, which can create printed trees but it doesn't work well for multiple generations.

I found a UK company that does marvellous printed family trees, not cheap but really good, unfortunately last year computer issues deleted all my favourites.

I could find it on a previous G2G post if you're interested.

Answer 4

Here are the guidelines for adding living family, as long as you follow those guidelines, you will be fine.

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Privacy_Policy#Information_on_Living_Family_Members