As we leave 2017 and head into 2018 (our 10th Anniversary year!), we thought it would be fun to take a look back at some of the highlights of the year. Here are some of our favorites:
Over Three Million Profiles Added
Just after New Year’s Day in 2017, we passed a huge milestone – 13 million profiles, with about two million of those being added in 2016.
Our present to ourselves in 2017 was to pass 16 million profiles on Christmas Eve! Which means that in this one year, you all added over three million profiles to our growing family tree. Not only that, but because of our focus on sourcing and accuracy, our tree isn’t just getting bigger – it’s getting better!
RIP, Nancy Lee Cousins
Not all the highlights of the year were necessarily happy ones but we can’t look at 2017 without mentioning Nancy Lee Cousins, or Lee, as she liked to be called. In April, she lost her fight after battling a long illness.
Lee was a WikiTreer for about four years and made innumerable contributions. She was spunky, delightful and fun. During her struggles, she wrote to one of our team members and said, “I am an old woman and shortly after I retired, I had a massive stroke. That really put the old brakes on someone who was so active in everything. I had to give up all my projects that I had looked forward to working on in my ‘twilight years.’ Then came Wikitree and saved my life. It really gives me a reason to get up in the morning … I feel as if I know each of you and love you as friends.”
Lee was greeting new members until just a few weeks before she died. She continues to be greatly missed in our community.
Member-Created Apps
Our WikiTree Apps project is for programmers who want to help develop features and functions that enhance WikiTree for genealogists, and for outside developers and researchers who would like to make use of the global family tree for creative, non-profit purposes. This year members created some cool apps!
- Julian Laffey made an app that allows a quick search of your watchlist, photo face tagging and collapsible descendant trees.
- Created by Jamie Nelson, this app will give you a list of your brick wall/dead-end ancestors.
Successful “‘Thons”
In April, we held our first ever Spring Clean-a-Thon, an event that stemmed from Laura Bozzay’s idea for a community clean-up weekend. Our goal was to clear out as many database suggestions as possible. As a result of everyone’s hard work, in 72 hours we addressed 80,757 suggestions.
Top 5 Participants:
- Lucy Lavelle – 3,167
- Emma McBeth – 3,046
- Charlotte Shockey – 2,763
- Dorothy Barry – 1,897
- Anonymous J. Penny – 1,732
Later, in October, to celebrate Family History Month, we had our second annual Source-a-Thon, the goal being to add at least one source to as many unsourced profiles as possible. In 72 hours, we sourced 53, 245 profiles!
Top 5 Participants:
- Lucy Lavelle (again!) – 1,780
- Morgan Mulligan – 1,495
- Deb Durham – 1,445
- NJ J Penny – 1,242
- Emma MacBeath – 1,177
We can’t wait to see what you guys pull off in our 2018 “‘Thons”!
New Leaders
Almost everything on WikiTree is done by volunteers. Some volunteers become very active in the community and committed to its mission. They start and lead projects, take responsibility, and help others. From among these natural leaders, a very small group has been given the official status of “WikiTree Leader.” These Leaders have special powers and ongoing responsibilities. We were thrilled to have some amazing WikiTreers join our Leader ranks in 2017:
Ellen Smith, Cindy Lesure, Natalie Trott, Susie MacLeod, Isabelle Rassinot, Eva Ekeblad, Sarah Heiney, Sarah Rojas, Debi Hoag, Mel Lambert, Summer Orman and Jamie Nelson.
We were equally thrilled to have Guy Constantineau and Jillaine Smith return from “Leader Emeritus” status to become fully active leaders again.
Lastly, in February, we added a new member to our small team, Julie Ricketts. Though new to the team, she’s been heavily involved in essential WikiTree projects such as the Greeters and Mentors for years. Julie helps administer projects and project leaders.
RootsTech 2017
Each year a bunch of the Team, Leaders and other WikiTreers get together in Salt Lake City to work our booth at the RootsTech Conference. More of you join us each year and it’s a blast! It’s really the only opportunity we have where we can get together face to face for a few days and we really enjoy it. Last year’s group had way too much fun:
GEDCompare 2.0
As of September, we stopped doing traditional GEDCOM imports.
“Importing your tree” never really made sense here, where we share one tree. Working with the old system was like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. We forced you to compare everyone in your GEDCOM with potential matches on WikiTree, skip everyone who appeared to be a duplicate, and import the rest as new people, all in one painful step. And that was just the first step. If you didn’t go on to edit and improve the profiles that were created through the import you would be leaving messes for others to clean up later.
Now we have something that fits more comfortably with the way collaboration works here. It’s a dynamic process. It still begins with automatically-suggested matches. But as you compare them and explore existing WikiTree profiles, you can update those profiles and add relatives one person at a time using your GEDCOM data and your good judgment as a Wiki Genealogist.
Thanks to your feedback, we are continuing to improve this new process and look forward to it being even better in 2018.
Honorable Mentions
Here are a few more quick highlights we thought worth mentioning:
So as we move onward and upward into a new year, we want to say thank you, WikiTreers! WikiTree is what it is because of you and because of what you are contributing to our community.
2018 will be an exciting year as we celebrate our 10th Anniversary! Don’t miss the fun stuff already happening like the WikiTreer Awards, 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks, challenges, projects, ‘Thons and more.
See you around the Tree!
What an amazing weekend! Thank you so much to everyone who participated in our 2018 Spring Clean-a-Thon. It’s so great to see the community come together and have so much fun cleaning up our tree.
