Proposal for improving pre-1500 profile editing [closed]

Question

The pre-1500 method for editing profiles for people who don't have a badge seems quite cumbersome. I had a quick search through G2G and couldn't find anthing that looks similar.

It occurs to me that what is needed is something akin to the GitHub or GitLab pull request and verification process for a merge (for those who know what I'm talking about).

What that means in practice is that anyone can create an edit of a profile, but it requires approval from a qualified person (namely someone with a pre-1500 badge) to 'publish' it onto the profile. That means the qualified person should hopefully have to put minimal time from their valuable time into doing the actual profile editing, and only needs to ensure the edit meets the required style and source standards. A rejection could be sent bavk with suggestions for improvement. The practical upshot though is that the actual editing doesn't have to be done via a very limited resource of people, but a much wider range of people.

The working without a badge page already calls for the proposals to match as closely as possible what needs to be added to the profile.

The only thing I don't know is whether such an edit plus review process is technically possible within WikiTree.

Comments

Are you referring to this process?

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Pre-1500_Work_without_a_Badge

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Yes, that's the one.

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I added some tags to try and bring your post to the attention of more people . . .

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Great to know about this. It's new to me.

Answer 1

I have seen the suggestion for a "Sandbox" to help with this process.

A member can call up the sandbox - rather like we can call up the preview page - and enter the data and text of the proposed pre-1500 profile.  But instead of posting the text in the sandbox, SAVE would hold it for review.

This would help avoid some of the formatting problems we have encountered.

Comments

That is why we are using Free Space pages as indicated in the process above....that way all the mark up is already there.

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What would help with this sort of sandbox is being able to get access to, and copy, a read-only version of the existing markup.

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A very good suggestion. How it could work is the question, as it involves the edit function.

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On software I work with, what we do is allow the editing area to be opened, but none of the fields can be changed and there is no Save button. THat does however allow the user to have full access to all the properties and state.

So for Wikitree you would allow the Edit tab to show the details (instead of the current message), but would not have any Save buttons and would ideally also make all the entry boxes read only (assuming the full proposal isn't implemented).

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When I've worked with folks wanting to update a pre-1500 profile who don't yet have the badge, I copy the edit-view text of the "live" profile into the sandbox space page, and post a notice on the live profile to hold off editing the profile page, with a link to the sandbox page.

Answer 2

As a recently badged pre-1500 person, I highly recommend using the Sandbox process.  It allows other experienced pre-1500 badge holders to review your research, your page layout and wiki-markup to ensure that it meets pre-1500 standards.  It also helps to prevent serious mistakes on these early profiles.

I still use my sandbox for preparing large or complex edits before adding them to profiles.

Answer 3

The problem I see with this (other than the amount of work it would take to implement something like this) is that it creates more work for the pre-1500 certified people. Pre-1500 and PPP were both created to reduce the amount of work needed to fix bad changes. Having to review and either accept or reject (and provide feedback) changes just creates a ton more work again.

If someone is capable of researching a pre-1500 profile, they really shouldn't have any issue getting certified.

Comments

Is feedback not provided currently when requested edits are rejected? Maybe I'm mis-understanding what is done at the moment, but I was under the impression that a review was already effectively done, but the pre-1500 person also had to add the edits to the profile themselves.

Speaking personally, the problem with pre-1500 certification isn't the skills involved, it's the process. Right now, I really don't have the time or inclination to be involved with a pre-1700 project, none of which coincide wuth my own lines as far as I know. However, I do have information that can be added to pre-1500 profiles (new or existing) as I add my tree into WikiTree.

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As it is now, people with the pre-1500 badge spend time on G2G looking for posts with the tag so they can offer this help. The sandbox process would de-randomize this.

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Ideally, people with this information would add it in a comment on the profile, which would be sent to the project covering that profile to act on.  However, the process isn't ideal, as it involves human beings.  Forex, too many comments on notable profiles, especially, are people declaring the subject their xxx-great-great-grandparent, so people don't always pay enough attention to the comments.

Also - such a process doesn't account for the need to add a new profile for a new person, when such a need arises.

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If the process required much less effort than making a space page, I'm sure there would be a lot of junk edit requests (from the same sorts of people leaving those junk comments).

Answer 4

The Pre-1500 Work without a Badge already addresses these issues. There is a single change model for requesting to change some information. It seems to me that the Free Space Profile option works just fine also for creating and pre-editing a profile for review.

You say that a Pre-1500 would "...only need to ensure the edit meets the required style and source standards.". I do not agree with that, they would also have to verify any sources that would be required to make some changes.

They would need to verify the correct spelling of the lnab. Information that would be entered in the data fields would need to be verified. The Pre-1500 badged member would still have to follow the same guidelines for working on Pre-1500 profiles. Any Pre-1500 badged member who moved the information to a profile is responsible for what they add to it.

So, for those reasons it would not be just a matter of looking at the styles and sourcing standards. I have seen acceptable sources used but, after checking them they did not verify the information that they were used to source in the profile.