When does someone become historically significant?

Question

How many years back do we have to go to get someone to be historically significant? What's the cutoff.

I just ran into a situation where I could add a son to someone for whom I'm not on the Trusted List, but I couldn't add a father to said person. More specifically,

I'm working up my BAILEY branch. I created Eliphalet Bailey (Bailey-3552). I then found that his parents were already in wikitree -- James Bailey (Bailey-2484) and Lucy Gay (Gay-992). These two have a PM, yet I was able to add them as parents of my Eliphalet.

In this case, the PM didn't have parents for James Bailey. But I found his parents already on the system-- Joseph Bailey (Bailey-239) and Abigail Ingraham (Ingraham-25). They didn't have PMs, so I adopted them.

From Joseph's page, I then attempted to add James Bailey as a son. The system told me I couldn't add James, because I wasn't on his Trusted List.

So while I could add James as father of Eliphalet (even though I wasn't on James' trusted list), I cannot add James as son of Joseph. That seems inconsistent to me. That's one problem.

But the other question is: when does someone become historically significant so that their profile opens up? James was born in 1735. That's over 200 years ago. What's the cut off for HSAs?

In the meantime, I've requested to be added to the Trusted List of James.

Thanks.

Comments

Okay, elsewhere Ii've found that an HSA designation requires the person be born 300 years ago, but if merging, there's expediting at 200 years. (That explains why I was confused about the cutoff.)

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Oh and... thanks for explaining the distinction between HSAs and open profiles due to 200+ years. I just figured that most people 200+ years ago would be HSAs since so many people are likely to be descended from them. But I now understand that HSAs are a user-group typa thang.

got it.

until I forget. 

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OMG, I got my first Mach1 designation. I'm dizzy with excitement!

Answer 1

Hi Jillaine,

Keep in mind that HSA is not the same thing as the profile being Open. Every profile of a person over 200 years old should always be Open.

The historically significant designation has more to do with the user groups. It puts the page on the page that says this profile is being managed by a user group (or project). The requirements are that it has to be user group related, and the person has to be either 200 years old or "notable" (ie. presidents, royalty, etc. can be HSA even if they're under 200).

As for your other question, you can't add someone as a child if you're not on the trusted list, because that would be editing that person's parents, which you have to be on the trusted list for. I actually thought you had to be on the trusted list of the parent too, but perhaps I'm wrong if you were able to.

Comments

Okay, this person is older than 200 years, so why isn't his profile open? Not that it matters now because the PM added me to the Trusted List.. BUT I bet I'll run into this again.

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That profile should have been Open. I fixed that.

The problem is that if you create a profile with no birth date, it's set to Public. Then if the date is entered later, and it's pre 1812, the privacy setting doesn't update automatically (though we do occasionally run a script that checks for these and fixes them).

I can always open up profiles that should be Open. I know it's not ideal, but at least it gets people access. And I do check my WikiTree email at least once a day (usually more), so I'm typically pretty fast at getting that kinda stuff done.

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THanks, Lianne. You rock.