Help:Person Profile
Categories: WikiTree Help | Profile Creation Help
Person profiles are the essential building blocks of WikiTree.
There are also free-space profiles for describing places, events, pets, and things that have been important to you or your ancestors. Click here for more on the difference between the two types of profiles.
Contents |
Profiles of People
Every person on our growing collaborative family tree has a profile page. Here's an example.
At the top of the left column is the person's full formal name and dates. This is followed by their spouse, siblings, and children. Clicking any of these names will take you to that other person's profile.
The heart of the page is the text section. This is for the Biography and Sources. It's also for Research Notes and Acknowledgements, if any.
You can add or change any information by clicking the Edit tab.
In the right column is space for Photos. There is also a Comments section for you to post messages for other people working on this person's family history.
Profiles of living people who are not WikiTree members can only be accessed by family members on the Trusted List. WikiTree members can choose one of three levels of privacy for their own profile. See Help:Privacy for more on privacy and control of profiles.
Creating New Profiles of People
If you are adding a family member to an existing profile, click here.
If you are creating a profile of an unrelated person, click here.
Additional Details
Advanced WikiTreers may be interested in the following.
Passive, pending, and active profiles
All person profiles on WikiTree — profiles for genealogists, their family members, and long-dead ancestors — look essentially the same but they may be passive, pending, or active.
A profile without an e-mail address is passive. These are usually profiles for non-living people. They are created, edited, and managed by others.
When you invite someone to join by adding an e-mail address to their profile it is considered pending. When the person accepts the invitation and creates their own password they "take possession" of the person profile and it becomes active.
Profiles of real people born AD/CE only
Person profiles on WikiTree should represent real, individual human beings who were born on Earth in the past two thousand years.
Profiles cannot be created for:
- unborn children,
- people born BC/BCE, i.e. before the year AD 1,
- fictional or mythical people,[1]
- families or husband-and-wife teams, or
- organizations, businesses, or other groups.
Free-Space Profiles can be created for the purposes above.
There are a small group of exceptions used by the WikiTree Team and Project Leaders for specific WikiTree purposes. These include:
- WikiTree Team Sysop Account
- MatchBot and other officially-approved bots
- Project Accounts
- Extension Testing WikiTree - an account for the Apple Store to use to review the WikiTree Browser Extension.
- Team-created testing and example profiles such as Example-6.
All of these exceptions must use the Last Name at Birth and Current Last Name of Example or WikiTree. This keeps them from polluting and confusing surname index pages, search results, etc. Non-person profiles can only be created by the WikiTree Team.
Minimum requirements for creating a profile
The requirements for creating a profile are:
- a name or relationship to another person,
- a date, though it may be estimated, and
- a source, saying where you obtained the information.
- ↑ If a profile has been created for a person and it later becomes clear that the person never existed, the profile doesn't necessarily need to be merged-away or removed. It does need to be removed if the supposed person is BC/BCE. Otherwise, it may be helpful to leave the profile with a full explanation, especially if others might try to add the person in the future. See Category:Uncertain Existence and Template:Uncertain_Existence. Additional information is outlined on About Frauds and Fabrications Categories.
This page was last modified 16:42, 19 April 2023. This page has been accessed 106,376 times.