Hi WikiTreers,
Today you may notice that your profile page looks different. As an active member, your profile now has what we are calling a "Genealogist Section."
This section contains the things that make a member's profile different from any other person profile on our tree: DNA tests taken, tags followed, badges, etc.
It will also contain your "Communication Preferences" once you have set them. These say:
- who you want to communicate with about genealogy, and
- whether or where others can see your family tree.
As you'll see, the text is fully customizable, and the entire section can be hidden.
The Genealogist Section is what will be most visible to you, but there are even more significant changes for new members today. New members no longer need to "volunteer" to help grow our tree and then wait for confirmation from a Greeter. See Help:New Member Process if you're interested in the steps for a new member.
Today's changes are the culmination of a large project we first started discussing here in November to welcome more genealogists as members and improve communication between WikiTreers and those who do their genealogy elsewhere.
If you're interested in the background, see these G2G conversations: 1, 2, 3. Note that we have not created any new member types (something we discussed) nor have any permissions for member types changed.
For more information, see these two new help pages:
As with any big set of changes, there may be bugs, and we will almost certainly be able to make further improvements. If you see a problem, have questions that aren't answered in the help pages, or want to make suggestions, please post an answer here.
Since I expect a lot of members will have input in the coming days, I'd like to ask everyone to post with an answer instead of a comment on this initial post. Then, if you have more input, edit your answer or post a comment on it. Every answer will be read. If you want to suggest significant changes, new policies, etc., that is best done in a new proposal.
Thanks!
Chris