We have a saying at WikiTree: Privacy controls are for privacy, not control. Privacy Levels and Trusted Lists enable you to collaborate while preserving necessary family privacy. They're not intended to enable certain family members to own and control the family history.
WikiTree profiles are not owned by Profile Managers.
Photos may be copyrighted. And specific text in biographies may be copyrighted, if so noted. However, the general profile web page is shared by the community and is not owned by any single community member.
WikiTree is not trying to own your genealogy. We are trying to make genealogy free and accessible for everyone. See the mission and Honor Code.
Sharing on WikiTree is personal and private when it comes to modern family history and living people. The family members have full control over the privacy settings.
Even here, the Profile Manager should not think of themselves as the owner of a profile. They're more like a steward or curator. They lead the family collaboration. They have a responsibility to share the profile with other family members. If they don't want this responsibility, they should let another family member be the Profile Manager.
If there's private information about a living person on a profile and nobody is available to manage it, it may be appropriate to delete the profile.
As you go further back in time, ancestors have more and more descendants. Since all descendants share the same ancestor profiles, these profiles cannot be tightly controlled.
The role of a Profile Manager is very different here. Privacy is not a concern. In order to facilitate the broad-based collaboration, especially on historically-significant ancestors, we have been developing projects. The project members act as the managers for some profiles. Any WikiTree member can join these projects and participate.
Misunderstandings and disagreements are common with profiles from hundreds of years ago. Collaboration isn't easy when you have thousands of people trying to agree on the same facts. Please be patient and assume that all WikiTreers have good intentions.
This page was last modified 07:59, 26 March 2013. This page has been accessed 1,740 times.