Should I do anything about this situation?

Question

Another WT member managed a profile with me and after I had posted in the Comment section, "I am 13 degree's from ___" the other manager flagged my comment and sent me this email: "Your personal relationship to L. is of no importance to anyone else researching the him. You could probably but hopefully not put similar comments on hundreds of other profiles."

I replied back: "Sorry I beg to differ with your opinion about adding one sentence about how I'm related/connected to the person."

I then added a picture to the profile of the person and emailed the other manager back: "I hope the pic is ok with you."

The other manager responded: "The photo is OK---that is an appropriate thing to add to a profile. Your relationship to him is not OK and of no importance to him! I cannot remove it but I have reported it for review by WikiTree. Maybe I should put something on your profile that you would not like. But I am above such action. Interesting that your biography is limited to your baby picture, weight and that you were baptized. Apparently you life since then has been so empty that it is not worth anything being said! And it is doubtful if anyone cares how much you weighed at birth. It shows how self-centered you are!"

I didn't respond to him.

He then ended with the last email: "You should be happy as I have removed myself from his profile. That way I won't have to know that some self-centered person is very distantly related to L. You probably put your "degree connection" on every profile you can such as Douglas Adams who is listed on the bottom of your profile. I am now deleting your communications so you should not hear from me again."

Should there be any action taken with this?

Comments

In my opinion (and I believe that various G2G discussions have resulted in a similar viewpoint), the proper place to note your relationship to other profiled individuals is on your own profile, since the other profiles could become overloaded with relationship statements from other related WikiTreers.

A word of caution: you may want to delete your current comment on the relevant profile, as it could easily be interpreted as discourteous.

Answer 1

I think comments like the "Nth degree from" are useless clutter.

That being said, the other person behaved badly. (Admittedly, after you baited him/her with the pic question.) I would refrain from having any further contact with him/her. If he/she continues to bother you, it is certainly worth reporting. Hopefully you won't have to.

Also, calling someone out in public posts on profiles, like you have done, only serves to make you look bad.  You may want to delete that.

Comments

There have been discussions about this in the past and it is strongly recommended "not" to put this type of information into the biography, as comments on profiles, or anywhere except your own profile. It is clutter and not pertinent to the person in the profile. It seems trite to say "if everyone did it", but if a thousand people decided to put this into the biography, we'd have a hard time sorting between the biography information on the person itself and the thousand reports of how far off each distantly related person was from them.

There's no explicit rule that says you can't do it, but it is not something recommended and having managed a number of Notables profiles, it is frustrating to have to go out and clear out these comments periodically when they get too busy in the profiles.

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Scott, wish you had posted this as an answer as it's the best response and worthy of the Gold Star.

Answer 2

As it relates to the question, I don't think there's anything that can be done at this point. I would let sleeping dogs lie, and give some space between you and the other individual and perhaps that will give everyone time to cool off.

If you wish to pursue action, you should not bring these to G2G, but follow the Problems with Members link and that way it's handled more privately and has less potential to inflame the situation.

Comments

I went through all of the questions on the Problems with members list and it actually said at one point, that it's ok to bring to G2G if done without names.

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It's allowed to bring to G2G, but it's awkward any way you do it. Either they can be identified by a profile you've shared, the verbiage of their communications, or sometimes the name slips out and it's just... awkward.

Answer 3

It's a major over reaction by the other person to file an MIR for one comment.

However, as a member of two projects where I receive emails for comments posted on project managed profiles, there are emails coming through on a regular basis where people are offering potentially useful information about the person featured in the profile, which can be added to the bio. Others are visitors to the site with a query about the profile or they are wanting information about their ancestors. In the midst of this is a never ending stream of emails from people who think we all want to know that this person is their 23rd cousin 6 times removed, or whatever their relationship is. Sorry, but this is of no interest to anyone else except the person who posted the comment. If it is a popular profile with some controversy, there are already lots of comments from people providing info relevant to the bio. Comments about distant relationships are contributing to clutter. They're also annoying people who already receive a lot of emails for project managed profiles. So whilst to you it is only one comment, that may not be the case for the person who blew up about it. Comments about distant relationships and connections are probably best placed on your own profile.

Answer 4

Having read the other answers and comments, I can see that it could be a problem if everyone started putting their relationship in the comments of a profile. I wouldn't have thought of it that way before, but now that it's been explained it seems perfectly reasonable.

The co-manager could have explained this to you in a direct, but polite manner. Instead they were rude to you. Repeatedly. They attacked you personally ("your life is so empty," "self-centered") and made vaguely threatening statements ("Maybe I should put something on your profile that you would not like."). I think a complaint is more than justified.

Comments

I disagree.  As threats go, putting something on one's profile is pretty innocuous.  We control our own profiles at WikiTree and can easily delete unwanted comments.  I would rather see our WT Leaders spend their time on more important things than monitoring petty bickering between members in private communications that should have remained private.