Help:Collaboration

Search WikiTree's help pages:

Categories: WikiTree Help | Courtesy and Community Rules | Conflict Help

Language: en | de | fr | nl

Collaboration means working together on a common project.

A wiki is a type of website designed for collaboration.

What exactly does collaboration mean on WikiTree?

Contents

WikiTree's Collaborative Mission

WikiTree's mission is to grow a free and increasingly-accurate single family tree. This is the grand project that unites our community.

WikiTree enables:

  1. close family members to collaborate on modern family history,
  2. distant cousins to collaborate on shared genealogy, and ultimately,
  3. the entire world to collaborate on a single, shared family tree.

Our privacy controls are on individual person profiles instead of families or trees. This means that the three levels of collaboration can be seamlessly integrated on the same system — the one tree that we all share — without compromising privacy.

One Profile for Every Individual

The first point of our Honor Code reads:

We collaborate. When we share ancestors we work together on the same ancestor profiles.

To grow one shared tree we need to share the same profiles. Every person who ever lived should have one and only one profile on WikiTree.

If a duplicate profile has been created unintentionally we merge them.

Collaboration Requires Communication

There are many ways to communicate with other WikiTreers — change explanations, comments on profiles, private messages, private email, group email lists, social media — but the heart of our community is the G2G (Genealogist-to-Genealogist) Discussion Forum. This is our town center, our community bulletin board.

When you're not sure what to do, ask.

Misunderstandings Are Inevitable

Misunderstandings and disagreements are inevitable when you're working with other people.

Most collaboration problems can be resolved by citing sources, communicating with courtesy, and abiding by a few other basic rules. This is why we require all contributing genealogists to sign the Honor Code.

When you need help resolving collaboration problems, start at Problems with Members.



This page was last modified 07:49, 18 October 2023. This page has been accessed 127,303 times.