US Southern Colonies Project Editing Guidance

Profile managers: Sandy Patak [send private message], Emily Holmberg [send private message], Jack Day [send private message], Scott McClain [send private message], Ken Spratlin [send private message], US Southern Colonies Project WikiTree [send private message], Beth Stephenson [send private message], Mary Richardson [send private message], Darlene Athey-Hill [send private message], and Laura DeSpain [send private message]

US Southern Colonies Project | Categories | Editing Guidance | Profile Example

Purpose

The US Southern Colonies Project works on Person Profiles of those born or settled in the Jamestown, Virginia Colony (1607-1625) and colonies of Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia prior to 4 July 1776.

This page provides guidance for creating and editing Person Profiles for US Southern Colonists. The Project bases its guidance on WikiTree guidance, and modifies and clarifies that guidance for the specific needs of this place in this era.

While this guidance is focused on Person Profiles, it is also applicable to Project Free-Space Profiles (Pages), Categories, Project Pages, and Help Pages.

There are already extensive Help pages. It would be redundant to repeat their content, and would require significant effort to track changes to them. This page therefore does not attempt to compile everything into one page, instead presenting a Quick Reference to the WikiTree and project-specific pages (for the detail), and highlighting the most frequently needed guidance here.

Honor Code

This guidance serves as a tool or an agreement to help us create and maintain mutual trust and a common understanding of how the community works. This guidance speaks to these elements of the WikiTree Genealogist Honor Code:

• collaboration
• accuracy
• sources

Pre-1700 Profiles

Many of the US Southern Colonists were obviously born before 1700. We have a higher standard for deep genealogy. Key guidelines for Pre-1700 Profiles include:

• Make sure there isn't already a profile.
  • Search for existing profiles using the name search, carefully reviewing all profiles with birth and death dates within +/- 50 years of the birth and death dates of the new profile. For female profiles, search using all known married names as well as LNAB.
  • During profile creation, review the Possible Matches, carefully reviewing all profiles with birth and death dates within +/- 50 years of the birth and death dates of the new profile.
• Carefully observe style rules.
• Cite reliable sources.
• You must never create a pre-1700 profile without citing a reliable source.
• A family tree on Geni, Ancestry, MyHeritage, FamilySearch, Find a Grave, or any other user-generated tree (like WikiTree itself) is not a sufficient source for creating a pre-1700 profile. They may be valuable resources and may help you find original, reliable sources, but they must never be the only source.

Profiles with Multiple Project Boxes

Sometimes, two projects actively collaborate on a profile. For these profiles, there may be confusion about which guidelines to follow. Generally, the guidelines of the more "specific" or "narrow" of the projects should be followed. For example, Project: US Presidents is more specific than Project: US Southern Colonies. If the guidelines of the two projects differ, you can ask for guidance by posting a comment on the profile before editing it.

Before Clicking Add or Edit

1. Consider joining the Project
2. Search for existing and duplicate profiles
3. Research
4. Only use derivative sources (uncertain information) as finding aids for reliable sources
5. Find reliable sources
6. Communicate

Communication

See communication guidelines for editing and pre-1700 changes.

There are three different methods to communicate, each reaching a different audience:

1. Comment on the profile.
2. Private message or e-mail the profile manager(s).
3. Post to the Project members (post to one or both of these):
   • Ask a G2G question tagged with the profile ID and southern_colonies.
   • Ask a question on the WikiTree US Southern Colonies Google Group.

To communicate directly with the Project Leadership or Project Teams:

• Private message or email a member of the appropriate Project Team.
• Request project management of a profile.
• Private message or email a member of the Managed Profiles Team to escalate an issue with a project-managed profile.

How long should you wait?

Reliable Sources

The accuracy of WikiTree depends on our use of reliable sources. For US Southern Colonists, see:

• US Southern Colonies Project Reliable Sources
• Category: US Southern Colonies Reliable Sources

Remember to:

• Strive to ensure each Person Profile is genealogically defined.
• Find the reliable source, or better yet the original record, for information referred to in genealogies and abstracts. Review it for accuracy.
• Ensure the record applies to the person, and is not conflated with someone else. If there is risk of conflation, document the risk in the Research Notes section.
• Add the reliable source as a source or reference.
• Consider whether adding unsourced family trees and genealogies as sources really contributes to the accuracy of the profile. Again, a family tree on Geni, Ancestry, MyHeritage, FamilySearch, Find a Grave, or any other user-generated tree (like WikiTree itself) is not a reliable source in and of itself. They may be valuable resources and may help you find original, reliable sources.
• Unsourced family trees are subject to removal from project-managed profiles.
• Do not merely add a URL as a source or citation.
• Formatting citations can be complex, so don't get hung up on this. At least include the author, publication, publisher, date, and page(s) in that order. Add a URL if the source is available online.
• Prefer URLs to free websites (e.g. Internet Archive, HathiTrust, FamilySearch) over paid websites if the same content is available on a free website.

Chicago Manual of Style is the citation format preferred on WikiTree, generally following Elizabeth Shown Mills' Evidence Explained:

• Evidence Explained examples
• Chicago Citation Generator

Not sure what is reliable? See derivative and original sources.

See Help: Sources FAQ for more information.

Editing

See Category: Profile Editing Help.

Styles and Standards

• Present original biographies, not simply copied text.

• Biographies
• US Southern Colonies Project Profile Example

See Proper Order for text sections and other elements. Note these Help errors (as of 21 Jan 2024):

1. Help: Project Boxes mistakenly fails to refer to the order of Research Note Boxes.

• Data in the Data Fields and the Biography should agree.
• The Biography section should focus on information about the person's life.
  • The use of subheadings in the Biography section is encouraged to organize the information (e.g. Birth, Marriage, Death, Children, Military Service, Timeline). Heading and subheading sections should describe an aspect of the person's life, provide citations of reliable sources, and provide context where important.
• The Research Notes section then focuses on the state of genealogical research, presents alternate and conflicting information, etc.
  • The use of subheadings in the Research Notes section is encouraged to organize the information by topic and author. Additions to the Research Notes section can be signed by adding ~~~~ (four tildas) to the end of a note. When the edit is saved, the four tildas will be converted into the user's profile ID and the date/time, and look something like this:

A well-researched, reliably sourced research note. WikiTree-24 12:00, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

• Use title case for headings and short subheadings. Sentence case is good for longer subheadings.
• Do not include citations (ref tags) in headings and subheadings.
• Do not use a horizontal line (----) in Person Profiles.
• Do not use colored text.
• Do not use "busy" background images. In general, an image of a flag, map, etc. is too busy.

Get inspired. See Examples. Then create a great profile.

See Category: Styles and Standards for more information.

Document Accurately

• Source each piece of information added to the Biography with a reliable source.
• Alternate, conflicting, or uncertain information should instead be added to the Research Notes section, and the source of that information should be listed.
• Ensure parent-child relationships adhere to Uncertain Parents guidelines.
• Use the name, date, location, and relationship status options.

Names

• For a woman married more than once, the last husband's last name should be in the Current Last Name data field. Married name(s) from the previous marriages should be in the Other Last Name(s) data field.
• Do not use "of [location]" or other research labels in name data fields.
• Do not add a middle name to the Middle Name data field unless there is a reliable source that the person was referred to with this middle name during their life. Remember that middle names were rare prior to the American Revolution.
• Do not add Jr., Sr., I, II, III, etc. to the Suffix data field unless there is a reliable source that the person was referred to with this suffix during their life.

Dates

• Help:Date Fields
• In date fields, "We attempt to use the modern Gregorian calendar in all cases, i.e. "New Style" dates." Therefore, for "Old Style" dates:
  • we change start of the year from 25 March to 1 January.
  • we do not adjust the day from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar (e.g. skipping 11 or 12 or any other number of days), as this is exceeding difficult and would create additional confusion between record dates and date fields.
• In the Biography, Research Notes, and Sources, we list the date as found in the record, and employ dual dating of just the year (e.g. George Washington's birthay of 11 February 1731 in the Julian calendar is listed as 11 February 1731/2, not 22 February 1731/2).

Location Names

• Do not use the location name suggested by the dropdown menu in the Birth, Death, and Marriage Place data fields.

The Project adheres to the WikiTree guiding principle for Name Fields and Location Fields: "use their convention instead of ours."

In general, locations will look like this specific example:

St. Anne's Parish, Albemarle County, Colony of Virginia

See US Southern Colonies Project Location Preferences for a detailed discussion of the Project's guidelines for location names, in particular:

• the names of the Colonies (e.g. Colony of Virginia, Province of Maryland)
• the use of the words Parish, County, District, etc. in location data fields
• Location Resources for researching the history of location names

See Help: Location Fields for more information.

If you aren't sure of the correct location name or format, add Category: US Southern Colonies Project Needs Location Research to the Person Profile.

Categories

• US Southern Colonies Categories
• Add Project Maintenance Categories to communicate work needed on a profile. Properly document the category so others can help.

See Help: Categorization for more information.

Research Note Boxes

• Research Note Boxes
• Uncertain Parents

Project Box

• Do not add, edit, or delete the project box or adjunct project box.

The Project's Managed Profiles Team adds or deletes the project box, keeps a list of project-managed profiles, and reviews periodic reports of errors in the use of these templates, the project account, and the PPP lock.

Stickers

• US Southern Colonies Stickers
• Stickers
• Category: Stickers

DNA Confirmation

Person Profiles display DNA Connections. It cannot be stressed enough that the listing of test-takers there does NOT mean that their relationship with the Person Profile has been proven with DNA. DNA Connections are a research aid listing names of test-takers who are currently attached to the Person Profile through a lineage that is estimated to possibly report a DNA match for the test type (Y-DNA, mitochondrial DNA, autosomal DNA). There may also be other test-takers who actually share DNA with the Person Profile that are not listed because they are attached to the incorrect lineage on WikiTree. Both the match and and the genealogy must be confirmed.

• Please do not use the Confirmed with DNA relationship status feature unless you have carefully read and understand the WikiTree Help pages listed directly below, and have performed all steps there.

See these two Help pages for detailed descriptions and instructions for adding the Confirmed with DNA relationship status to a profile:

• Confirmed with DNA
• DNA Confirmation

Suggestions

Are you all done? Before moving on, check the profile's suggestions and see what else needs to be done.

Data Doctors

There are a large number of reports available to assist us in identifying profiles with issues, some offering suggestions for the fix.

• Project: Data Doctors
• Project-Managed Profiles
  • Data Doctors Suggestions
  • WikiTree+ Suggestions

The Project's Managed Profiles Team monitors a number of these reports. See the Team's Workspace page for more detail. This Team handles all issues with the use of the project box, project account, and project protection.

Project Activity Monitoring

The Project's Managed Profiles Team reviews every change to the project-managed profiles.

When an edit is made that is not reliably sourced or otherwise fails to follow this guidance, the Team will take one or more actions including, but not limited to:

• Contacting the editor and requesting they promptly correct the edit
• Reversing the edit
• Correcting the edit
• Seeking a project member to oversee a review of the profile

Still Need Help?

If you still have questions after reading the guidance here, please contact the Project:

• Ask a G2G question tagged with the profile ID and southern_colonies.
• Ask a question on the WikiTree US Southern Colonies Google Group.

Last reviewed 22 May 2023.