Help:Invitations

Categories: Email and Communication Help | Social Media and Sharing Help | WikiTree Help

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Please invite your family members and friends to join you on WikiTree! Here is how.

Inviting Family Members

Family members can enjoy the fruits of our tree, whether or not they want to help you and others grow it. We call this a "Family Member" account.

To invite a family member simply include an email address when you create their profile or edit it. You'll be asked to include a personal comment. This will generate an email like the sample below.

Sample invitation

The invitation they receive will look like this:

[Your name] invites you to view and share family history on WikiTree.

Personal notes from [your name]: ...

WikiTree is the world's leading collaborative genealogy platform and it's completely free. See this 90-second YouTube video for an introduction.

Click here to create a password for private access to what [your name] has added.

WikiTree takes privacy very seriously. If you don't create a password within 30 days, 1.) [your name] will be informed, 2.) the email address used to send this invitation will be removed, and 3.) an "Anonymous [Last Name]" placeholder will privately appear on the family tree to politely inform other family members (those who have permission from [your name] and created a password) that you do not wish to participate. Instead of letting the invitation expire, you can click here to decline the invitation and have all this done immediately.

You can go further and delete the invitation. All data related to you will be removed from the family tree. [your name] will be informed, but we cannot prevent other family members from inviting you in the future because we will have no record of this interaction. To leave a record of your privacy preferences, decline the invitation instead.

If you have questions, ask [your name] at [your email address] by replying to this email, or see Have you been invited to WikiTree?

This is a one-time email. You do not need to unsubscribe. However, if you don't know [your name] and suspect abuse, please alert us at info@wikitree.com.

See Help:Anonymous Placeholders for more about what happens to their profile if they don't accept your invitation.

What information to include on their profile

Generally speaking, when creating a profile for a living person and inviting them with an email address, you can include the same information as you would on any other profile.

However, you should not invest much time on this. If the person does not accept your invitation, all the personal information you added will be removed and the profile will become an anonymous placeholder.

Inviting Friends

The best way to invite a friend, fellow genealogist, or someone who is only distantly related to you is simply to tell them to check out <http://www.wikitree.com> and our 90-second video introduction on YouTube: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDZ13G7HSPY>.

If the person has asked you to help with their genealogy, you can add them as an unrelated person and include their email address as if they were a family member. Do not do this unless they are expecting it. See Help:Living People for more about our policies.

Resending Invitations

Please do not send an invitation more than once without speaking to the person. This could look like spam.

Invitations that are not received

If the person tells you they did not receive the invitation:

First confirm that the email address on the edit page of their profile is correct. If it isn't, changing the email address will automatically send a new invitation.
If the email address is correct, click the "send a new invitation" link below the email address field on the edit page of their profile. This will send a second invitation.
If they still don't get the invitation, ask them to search their spam folder for "wikitree".

If it's still not there, it may be that their email provider is holding it. It will usually arrive within a few hours. If it still can't be found, email info@wikitree.com.

Invitations that are accidentally declined

If the invitation was accidentally declined or the person has changed their mind and would like a new invitation, you can edit their profile to add back their email address. This will send a new invitation.

Note that when a person declines an invitation their profile becomes an anonymous placeholder. By editing it again, you will be reversing this. Do not take this step unless the person has specifically asked to be invited again.

Retracting invitations

Invitations should not be retracted unless they were accidentally sent to the wrong person, i.e. the wrong email address.

You can edit the profile to remove or replace the email address. The latter will send a new invitation to the corrected address.

When you remove or replace the email address, the old invitation is deleted from our database and cannot be accepted. However, the recipient will still have received the email message saying that you invited them. To avoid confusing them, please send a personal message to the old email address saying something like, "You may see an invitation that I accidentally sent to you through WikiTree. I am sorry. I made a mistake when entering the email address of my relative. The mistake has been corrected, so you can just delete the message. My apologies."

This page was last modified 20:27, 1 April 2024. This page has been accessed 76,596 times.