Discussion Dutch Roots Project: new criteria for managing profiles by the Project (PMP's and PPP"S)

Question

Het Dutch Roots Project heeft op het moment veel te veel profielen (meer dan 48.000) die het managed. Dat heeft te maken met de regels die we daar tot nu toe voor hanteren binnen het project.  Daar moet verandering in komen. Bij deze een voorstel voor nieuwe afspraken rond Project Managed Profiles (PMP's) en Project Protected  Profiles (=PPP's) binnen het DRP. De discussie gaat vooral om waar we precies grenzen gaan leggen.

Volgorde van aanpak:

* discussie in deze G2G-post
* nieuwe afspraken
* stappenplan om naar nieuwe situatie te komen
* oproep vrijwilligers om mee te helpen

The Dutch Roots Project has way too many profiles to manage at the moment (more than 48,000) This is due to the  rules in the project we adhere to till now. So those rules have to change. In this post I present a proposal for new rules around PMP's and PPP's for the DRP. The discussion will be about where the new limits will be.

order of approach:

* discussion in this G2G-post
* new rules
* roadmap to new situation
* call for volunteers to help to get there.

Nederlands
Voorstel:

Project Managed Profielen zijn profielen waarbij het project als (een van de) manager(s) aan het profiel is toegevoegd. Ze staan daardoor op de Watchlist van het project en van aangebrachte wijzigingen krijgt het project daardoor direct bericht. Ze moeten aan de volgende voorwaarden voldoen:

* Profiel van iemand die in Nederland geboren is, de Nederlandse nationaliteit had  of een groot deel van zijn/haar leven hier heeft doorgebracht

en daarnaast

*  een belangrijke rol spelen in de Nederlandse geschiedenis (discussie: wat is belangrijk) en Notable zijn (wikipedia pagina)
of
* een profiel zijn van iemand voor de periode dat we doop/trouw/begraafgegevens hebben (discussie: waar ligt die grens)

Project Protected Profielen zijn profielen waar van de LNAB en de connecties met de ouders en kinderen beschermd worden. Ze  moeten voldoen aan één van de de volgende voorwaarden:

* het profiel moet omstreden, controversieel onbewezen of speculatief zijn
* het profiel heeft een Last Name At Birth waarover onduidelijkheden en/of meningsverschillen bestaan
* Het profiel heeft ouders en/of kinderen waarover meningsverschillen bestaan, binnen of buiten wikitree
* Van de persoon in het profiel zijn in het verleden vaak meerdere profielen aangemaakt die merges nodig maakten.

PPP's zijn altijd ook PMP's. Niet alle profielen die aan de voorwaarde voor PMP voldoen hoeven persé  gemanaged te worden door het project. Per geval bekijken.

Het voorstel heeft nog wat discussie en fijnere afstelling nodig. Dus laat  horen wat je mening is.

English
Proposal:

Prpject Managed Profiles (=PMP's) are profiles with the project as (one of the) manager(s). The profile will be on the watchlist of the project so the project therefor receives messages when something has been changed on it. They have to adhere to the following conditions:

* It must be a profile of someone born in the Netherlands, who has the Dutch nationality or has been living in the Netherlands for a large part of their life.

and next to that

* the person has to have been important(discussion about who is important) to  Dutch History and must be Notable  (wikipedia page)
or
* it's a profile of a person from before the period we have baptism/marriage or burial records (discussion: where in time is that)

Project Protected Profiles (=PPP's) are profiles of which the LNAB and the connections to parents and children are protected.They have to adhere to one of the following conditions:

* The profile has to be contentious, controversial, unproven or speculative.
* The profile has a LNAB which is disputed or unsure.
* The profile has parents and/or children which are disputed in or outside wikitree
* The person in the profile has been duplicated a lot in the past so merges were neccessary.

PPP's are alway also PMP's. Not all the profiles whomeet the conditions of PMP have to be managed by the project. It has to be decided per profile.

This proposal needs some discussion and finetuning. So let me hear your opinion.

Eef van Hout (co-project leader DRP)

Comments

At the moment the DRP encourages every manager of a profile with a birth date from before 1811 to make  the project (co-)manager. And those profiles become PMP's this way.

At the same time every completed profile, with all possible sources added is up for Profile Protected Profile. You just had to sent a message  to get Project protection.

These rules worked fine when most profiles were ancestors of American immigrants from periods with unsure sources. And the numbers of dutch profiles were small. But that's not the case anymore.

Nowadays in the Netherlands we have more and more free sources and more and more baptisms, marriages and burials from before 1811 are online. So the need to put a hard limit at 1811 is not neccessary anymore.

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I'll be making short notes about the different arguments and propositions while the discussion is going on.

Answer 1

Have you discussed with Bea yet as to what her knowledge and vision for PMP's and PPP's is?  She's told me before that she knows the DRP has far too many profiles according to WikiTree's rules and she was trying to think of things that we could do to keep all the currently protected files protected properly.

Comments

It definitely takes some time to create a well organized and informative one place study like the one I did on Grafschaft Bentheim.  I believe some other people have also created a few for Dutch towns and cities.  Bea did create a place for them on one of our many DRP pages - it's now a matter of finding them back!  

If we did them by town / city, there may be a way to access a file with all profiles with births in a specific place listed.  If we did them by area (West-Friesland, Twents, Westergo, etc.) we'd have to search each profile individually - which would be very time consuming.  

Creating ways to access the one place studies shouldn't be too difficult.  There are already ways to access them from the one place study I did on Grafschaft Bentheim.  Go to the first paragraph on that page and click on 1 .  Right now the Netherlands Place Studies has nothing under it.  The German one has a few on it; the United States one is differently done but more developed.

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If you want to know more about one place studies, I believe Wendy Sullivan is the person to contact.

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I like your enthousiasm. I will keep it in mind but let's go on with the main discussion: new criteria for PMP's and PPP's.

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oh, by the way, I love your one place study about Bentheim!!

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OK.  Sorry about going off topic.

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@Bertram: Regarding the large amount of profiles you manage, It might be an idea to create a second account that can manage the 5000 profiles that would be orphaned.  For example, by a family member that you also have access to?

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I think I understand why Bea did this.  By making 5000 profiles Project Managed you fell within the norm for WikiTree of a maximum of 5000 profiles that a profile manager is allowed to manage.  Because these profiles are finished, they basically don't need any more attention except for a notification that something is changed.  This is a nice idea in itself, but shifts the problem to the Project as it turns out that we now manage almost 50,000 profiles with 5 people, so 10,000 per person.  It also sets a precedent.

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I'll look into the idea of creating a second account.  Considering how many profiles I've given you to remove PPP from, I don't want to cause WikiTree any more trouble!

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Hi Bertram, I see that you can also act as manager of the account Dutch Roots project.  This way you can manage your profiles that have been transferred to the project.  Bea has seen this as a solution for those 5000 profiles and it works well in principle.  What she probably didn't think of is that if you log in with the DR account and work on those profiles for a few hours, we coordinators won't be able to log in.  Rarely is this necessary, but in principle undesirable.

For the time being, it will remain that way, we are busy discussing how we can best solve this.  In any case, you are not to blame and wait a little longer before taking action.

En zo als Phillip het mooi verwoorde in het zuid-Afrikaans: Alles Sal regkom....

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That's good to know, Joop.  Thanks for letting me know.  I didn't realize I could act as manager of the DRP account, and I'm not sure how to log into it anyway.  I figure if you need me to log into it for any reason you'll tell me and teach me at the right time.

Answer 2

In de eerste plaats ben ik er volledig mee eens dat hieraan iets gedaan moet worden. 

Ik ben van mening dat PMP en PPP een uitzondering moeten zijn en moeten voldoen aan de eerder genoemde voorwaarden. Misschien zelfs nog strikter.

Daarnaast wat houd projectbeheer in? Wie moeten en mogen dat doen? Wij zijn met twee (drie) Leaders en 5 coördinatoren die bepaalde geblokkeerde handelingen op PPP profielen mogen doen. Om manager werkzaamheden te kunnen doen op PMP profielen moeten wij eerst inloggen als Dutch Roots om vervolgens bijvoorbeeld een LNAB te kunnen wijzigen. Dat is omslachtig, onhandig en 48000 is veel te veel om te beheren.

Veel profielen die Dutch Roots Managed zijn hebben ook nog een persoon als manager. Dat is op zich al overbodig en kan wat mij betreft Dutch Roots als manager verwijderd worden. 

Eef je kunt mij in ieder geval noteren als vrijwilliger als er werk moet worden gedaan. Als we er uit zijn met deze discussie kan Aleš misschien ook wat voor ons betekenen.

Bedankt dat je dit op de agenda hebt gezet. 

First of all, I fully agree that something needs to be done about this.

 I believe that PMP and PPP should be an exception and should meet the aforementioned conditions.  Maybe even stricter.

 In addition, what does project management entail?  Who should and may do that?  We have two (three) Leaders and 5 Coordinators who are allowed to do certain blocked actions on PPP profiles.  In order to be able to do manager work on PMP profiles, we must first log in as Dutch Roots in order to be able to change an LNAB, for example.  That's cumbersome, clunky and 48,000 is way too much to manage.

Many profiles that are Dutch Roots Managed also have a person as a manager.  That in itself is superfluous and as far as I'm concerned Dutch Roots can be removed as manager.

Eef you can at least note me as a volunteer if there is work to be done.  If we're done with this discussion, Aleš might also be of some help to us.

Thank you for putting this on the agenda.

Comments

See my comment here and my comment here.

Answer 3

A first step could be stemming the flow. Promote the maintenance sticker over the project box for profiles lacking significant data, such as LNAB.

Comments

W. Koster, I would also like to change the maintenance sticker. Because we now only have the Needs=Birth or Needs=More Records options. However there are 3 things important on a profile. Birth, Marriage/Relationship and Death. I would suggest to be able to put this on the sticker. If I only miss a valid source for death I find it strange to put on the needs=More Records label. I would like to be able to see if the B, M or D source is missing on my profiles.

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Or separate the categories from the two templates so that we can use the category picker and not have as many typos to fix in sticker/project template.

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safe this topic for another time. It is on the to do and discuss list.

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Yes, of course. I apologize for derailing and going off on a tangent

Answer 4

Hi Eef,

Wat ik belangrijk vind als uitgangspunt is dat het project een toevoeging moet zijn en niet als 'last' ervaren wordt. Dus ja er moeten duidelijker regels komen, maar we moeten ook durven 'los' te laten. 

Dus inderdaad alleen PMP als het echt een Nederlands Profiel is wat belangrijk is voor onze vaderlandse geschiedenis óf belangrijk is voor het bewaken van het uitgangspunt één profiel per persoon. (dit laatste is inderdaad discutabel als we soms kijken naar de alleroudste profielen als gevolg van het Patroniemen stelsel.)

Ik zie dus wel de connectie tussen als het een PPP status heeft is het altijd PMP, maar ik worstel met wanneer is het een PMP en geen PPP.

We hebben hiervoor duidelijke richtlijnen nodig. Ik denk zelf dat alles voor 1700 Project Managed zou kunnen zijn en jongere profielen zouden aan extra voorwaardes moeten voldoen.

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Hi Eef,

What I find important is that the project should be an addition and not be experienced as a 'burden'. So yes there must be clearer rules, but we must also dare to 'let it go'.

Yes I agree only PMP if it really is a Dutch Profile which is important for our national history or is important for monitoring the basic rule of Wikitree one profile per person. (This is indeed debatable if we sometimes look at our oldest profiles as a result of the Patronym System.)

And where I do see the connection between if it has a PPP status it is always PMP, I struggle however with when is it a PMP and not a PPP.

We need very good guidelines around the issue. To my opinion all profiles before 1700 could be Project Managed and if the profile is younger we need additional requirements.

Comments

If members get a subset of profiles, then why do you need a project in between that. It's just an extra layer of communication and adding difficulty to the process.

Remember where the DRP is coming from: 10s of thousands of profiles managed by a project with hardly any active members in it. If the project cannot deliver, then don't make it look like it is. Leave it to the community.

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@Philip.  OK, you have all kinds of objections, but come up with a workable solution how we with 5 to 6 members (which is a lot because in practice it comes down to one or two members doing that) should manage this and imagine that you are one of us who has to carry it out. More then 48000 profiles.

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I was under the impression that the whole 'comment' system as now widely implemented in WikiTree would do away with the 'extra layer' of communication. Instead, it gives better access to [co-]project managed profiles. In serves as a direct access to the 'grape vine' of project managed profiles.

It does not add more 'difficulty' to the process, it facilitates the process.

The 'community' cannot take care of profiles the way that projects do. The 'community' is the vanguard of the project, not the replacer - the project is the glue, the community the individual parts.

All projects experience difficulties at one time or another. It is not project management as such that defines failure, rather the circumstances and stressors that the management has to face, that can create issues. One of the main issues - there was no cut off point agreed on for profile protection it seems in this Dutch Roots Project.

It is a question (again - stated with emphasis) of thorough deliberation.

For the Dutch - when did standardization of surnames set in - with Napoleon. So there is your first criterium - after the "Fransche Tijd" no more profile protection.

Also another criterium might be (pre-1795 for example) - if the spelling knows little variation, then it does not need any protection.

Now I have suggested two criteria to be considered for protection or not.

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philip,

I think we are ont the same course in formulating criteria (see also the thread below this one)

post Napoleontic: almost every profile can go; exceptions can be made for specila reasons (we have to state those)

pre napoleontic: Profiles with stabile family names  and proper sources can go ( definition of stabile and proper is needed)

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oh and pre-Napoleotic can be somewhere between 1795 and 1811, depending ont the area.

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Hi Philip,

This argument in this context I don't understand:

The 'community' cannot take care of profiles the way that projects do. The 'community' is the vanguard of the project, not the replacer - the project is the glue, the community the individual parts.

In principle, the project account has the same rights as the account of standard profile managers (the community).  If I want to do something on a Dutch Roots managed profile on behalf of the project, I must first log out of my own account and then log in to the Dutch Roots account.  Then I act as profile manager and it should be clear that if someone is logged in to this, someone else can no longer do that.  So basically there is no difference and only one person can work on these types of profiles at a time. In this respect, I do not see the added value of a project vis-à-vis the community or individual Profielmanagers.

Basically what happens with Project Managing is that problems from individual profile managers are transferred to a Project. The profile manager is then rid of it and the project (in our case 6 people) is stuck with it.  From what I understood from your words, this was conceived and not grown that way.  Sorry to say this but I find it ungrateful from these creators to these volunteers who are always willing to help other members and are charged with this in this way.

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Hi Joop, the project is the collective. It is not the google group that is activated as active manager of a profile when a template is placed on a profile, with or without project profile protection. 

However - with the Google group activated as active manager, the comments system can be effectively used so that many people (who follow the group email) can stay in touch. So the project is the community (those who feel responsible) working and contributing through (among other means) the comments system. This works immensely well. I just have to thank members all the time because people now feel a shared responsibility for taking care of their ancestral profiles. Their 'common identity'.

Yes - many creators create profiles all over the place and leave them for others to merge, clean up or they make edits (for example family  connections) ... This is a given, project or no project. 

The few do the work for the many - this is a given.

That WikiTree policies somehow encourages it - this is a given.

Projects & Project management was conceived to give more structure to genealogical research. Yes, many people then just [still] feel no obligation to do anything, but some do. We have similar issues in the Dutch Cape Colony project (and the related SAR & PROG projects) - few doing the work of many; emails abunding. But when structure is given and surity that there is some protection, people are more willing to share their time and make the effort.

Rome was not built in one day. A project is not finished in one day - it is a long-term enterprise. 

If it was not for the project, I would have quit a long time ago with WikiTree. I was there in the beginning when it was a big, big mess. Really - and it took tens (myself) / hundreds (the collective) of thousands of hours of constant labor to stem the flow of duplicates. There are thousands of profiles with more than 5-10 merges (variants). Many have more than 10.

If you leave this to the 'community' - you might as well stop with WikiTree ... 

P.s. If you are constantly logging out of your own account and into the project account - this is an issue. I was doing the same believing it necessary (for example to add the project profile as co-manager) but because of mistrust I was informed that I had to sign in every time I logged in for an activity, and again to sign out every time I logged out after having performed that activity. When I was asked to do this - I refused. I refused because I was expected to sign somewhere that I was logging in and out. This system was thought up and very very unpractical, a very big drag. So I refused. Eventually (also because of other reasons) my coordinating badge was taken away from me. Now there is only 1 coordinator left (who never logs into the project profile at all) and 1 leader - who besides the odd merging only locks and unlocks profiles when asked and when she has the time. And some 5 active but dedicated teammembers doing all the work and editing profiles according to the protocols. And then some 10-15 members who are latent, some times active and some times not. And always many new, enthousiastic people greeted by a wonderful, warm greeter with a South African background. 

Communication is vital, task division within project important; acknowledgement even more important.

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Thanks Phillip for the detailed explanation, it made me a bit wiser.  Well, we'll see what the outcome of this discussion will be, but it is noticeable that relatively few members participate in the discussion. 

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Kop op beste jongen vertel ik mezelf altijd ... zoals de boeren altijd zeggen: 'Alles sal regkom' ... 

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Ja die uitdrukking kennen wij ook. Wij Zeeuwen zeggen als iets lastig is: Luktet vandaeg nie dan luktet merge.... (Lukt het vandaag niet dan lukt het morgen) 

Answer 5

Many other projects include the criteria:

1. Those who have confusion surrounding them or mistakes established in certain sources such as books.

2. As above mentioned, Notables.

Maybe, it might be useful to keep an eye on those using paytronomics (Excuse spelling.) etc. as it can be confusing to figure out correct parents in certain situations, note especially when it just a paytronomic (") and no surname.

Comments

The problem is that in the past the creators did not give proper thought to the consequences of the PPP and PMP system.  We as a project have 6 active members (Leader and Project Coordinators) who can perform the task of Dutch Roots manager.  Currently there are already more than 48,000 profiles that are PMP and that is only growing.  That is simply not feasible, also because we have other tasks such as organizing challenges.

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One then needs to re-organize the project, it's goals, sub-goals, and attract more project members than current. I agree - not every Dutch profile needs protection. But also not every Dutch profile (see my argument here) needs de-protection. 

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Reorganizing is now what we are arguing about with the aim of making the whole manageable.

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I am trying to give an opinion on the criteria that could be said, there could be something organised to rid surplus profiles that do not follow criteria.

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I agree with you Francis. Those criteria must be such that we, executors of the project managent dutch roots, can perform this task properly.

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re-organizing how we manage the  PMP and PPP profiles is a subject that will come up later.(and it has to happen, we need more people).  Now we are talking about which rules we will apply te see if a profile has to be managed by the project.

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The criteria should not be as encompassing is as well known, other than criteria how is that the numbers can be reduced, could it be an event or is more care needed, this, of course, should be added to the goals of the project. Any ideas?

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I want to start that discussion later. But it seems the topic comes up in every thread of this post....

Step by step I think. First the most obvious ones. Later  - and more carefully - the less obviuos ones. where every profile has  to be looke at, one by one.

That's why I'm looking for criteria to let profiles go. Till now it seems most comments lead to the following (temporary, not definitive) conclusion:

post- Napoleontic: almost every profile can go; exceptions can be made for special reasons (we have to state those)

pre-Napoleontic: profiles with family names and proper sources can go (definition of "proper" is needed)

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and pre-1500: let go: covered by rangers and pre-1500 project and not many (Dutch Roots) wikitreers have the pre 1500 certificate.

Answer 6

I think we also need to look at this in the context of some other changes in wikitree.

Pre-1500 profiles can only be edited by people who are authorized to edit pre-1500 profiles and that number is fairly small, so they may be safer now from incorrect changes (at least after they have been sourced, especially for the last name at birth)

Pre-1700 profiles have higher sourcing guidelines, but can be edited by many people. But again, if the profiles are well sourced (esp LNAB and relationships), how likely are there to be problems today? (I don't have any idea about this)

GEDCOM uploads are entirely different than in the past. Can people alter pre-1500 or pre-1700 profiles through that process? Since they need to edit profiles, they would need to be able to edit those profiles, right? (again, I am not quite sure about how this works)

Wikitree+ has many robust search features and it is quite possible to monitor profiles based on various types of criteria (for example, in my case, US Netherlands 19cen orphans -- to check suggestions). This means the project may not need to be a project manager of profiles, but we may be able to watch over various areas as members of the project.

I am sure there are other changes that have happened as well (beyond the growth of profiles and the increasing availability of freely available sources online as Eef mentioned) that may help inform this discussion.

Comments

and more and more projects have a kind of "orphan trail" where new members of wikitree learn how to make proper profiles with proper sources. Something to look into in the future for the new dutch volunteers. It is a way to prevent mistakes made and lessen the cause for  protecting or managing profiles by the project

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@W: I agree with you.  As for pre 1500, I would like to add that, in my view, it is indeed in general, not necessary for them to be PMP or PPP as well.  As I mentioned before they are protected by the Pre 1500 badge and guarded by the Rangers.

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Pre-1700 should be pre-1800. Despite everything (the changes to WikiTree policy, the well documented, widely available and thoroughly decent primary and secondary sources right to the mid-19th century), in the Dutch Cape Colony project it is a daily battle against the tide of duplicates being made. 

The saving grace of this project has been the considered and well-guarded validation process, which results in a profile being Project Profile Protected. Which works as an incentive for more members - project and non-project, to contribute to the profiles and edit collaboratively.

It is not about letting go (because we get too overwhelmed). It is about taking responsibility [which is happening now with this essential G2G discussion] (because otherwise we will get even more overwhelmed met alle gevolgen van dien). 

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Good point W. Only a very small subset of the project members has the Pre-1500 badge, and I don't see many new volunteers obtaining the badge. So that safeguards those profiles well enough.

On the other hand: are they all well sourced and proven?

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Philip - are you suggesting the project should focus on post 1700 and pre 1810 profiles since they lack any editing protection and have weak sourcing rules?

Eef - the orphan trail is a great idea for a future discussion. If we want to do this, orphaning profiles now would not be a problem as they are what we would use for teaching others.

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Michel dat is een goed punt, wij hebben vorige week op meer dan 500 pre-1500 "Nederlandse" profielen de template Unsourced geplaatst. De meeste hadden ook de project-box dus Dutch Roots managed. Dit geeft aan dat in veel gevallen Project Managed en de Pre-1500 bescherming van geen of weinig betekenis is.

Michel that's a good point, last week we placed the template Unsourced on more than 500 pre-1500 "Dutch" profiles.  Most also had the project box, so Dutch Roots managed.  This indicates that In many cases Project Managed and the Pre-1500 protection is of little or no significance.

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There are currently 2342 profiles managed by the project that are labelled unsourced -- 354 of these are also PPP despite lacking any sources or research notes

There are far more that are unsourced and project managed, they just have not yet been marked as unsourced (I have been adding it to a lot of post-1500 profiles). 

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Correct, you will find that those have the needs=Birth as equivalent to unsourced. (But Eef wants to keep the template out of this discussion, which I agree with  ).

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Several of us have been adding the unsourced template to these (leaving the template as is). I am hoping this not only helps to eventually get these sourced, but by adding the unsourced template we get a better sense of the issues and problems with project managed profiles so that eventually (future discussion) we can make more informed decisions about them.

Answer 7

Whenever I see a profile that is managed by a project, I expect a multi member group of active members responding to comments and looking after the quality of those profiles.

Whenever I see a profile without a manager I feel very free to add sources, want to take care of the quality and make it look cleaner.. and then leave it for others again.

I strongly advice to keep things manageable. If the profiles are managed, make sure you have the people to do the work. If the profiles are protected, have the arguments for it. We currently are nearing 500K Dutch profiles. I've read a very interesting post last year stating that there might have lived 5 Billions (NL: miljard) Dutch people up to now. Does any project want to look after that many as a manager? I think we better put our positive energy in educating current and new members in creating well sourced good looking profiles.

Comments

You describe exactly how I feel when I see a Protected or orphaned profile.If others feel differently or the same I would like to hear about it because it will give an indication how protecting or orphaning profiles works in the minds of other volunteers. It could influence our decision making.

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I agree completely with Michel.

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I usually work on my own profiles and orphans. If a profile has a manager, regardless if it is in a project or not, I tend to stay away from it.

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The only exception I make for not editing an open profile is where I see it is probably a work in progress. But a managed profile last edited months or longer ago, I just edit. Of course only with original sources!

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Whenever I find a source, regardless if it is managed or unmanaged, I add the source to the Profile. Lot's of profiles are generated as Gedcoms and Profile managers have a very though task to source the complete upload (like me ;-) ) I hope that anybody that stumbles on a profile of mine, with a valid source, would be so kind to add that source.

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I wish I could thumbs up your reply, Margreet.

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To clarify, a profile managed by a project, a group of people with an organizational structure and goals, is -for me- something different than a profile managed by a user/member.

Answer 8

Over the past few days, I've been challenged and changed my perspective on what the Dutch Roots Project is about and how it does things.  This is good.  I realize I'm not a very active member - most of the work I do is on my own genealogy and then I aim for less than 6 months a year.  But I do want to understand the topic of this particular G2G post and am happy to contribute to it.  

I realize that 48,000 profiles is far too many for one project to handle.  Therefore I have concerns about some of the criteria that could easily leave our leaders with over 20,000 profiles to manage.  Since I am not involved in the direct management of many of those our leaders manage, I feel it's best to leave it up to them to decide what should be PMP'd and PPP'd.  But I do have some questions regarding what should or should not be so that I know what to look for in making any such suggestions.  I'll add them here as replies.

Comments

First, I realize you've tried to answer this several times, but I'm still confused.  What is the purpose of PMPing and PPPing profiles?  My understanding was that it keeps just anyone from changing or adding parents, children, siblings and spouses without permission from the managers, and that it warns people who want to add information that they should consult the manager before making sweeping changes to the biography.

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Secondly, I realize that having every profile I've made be PMPed and PPPed by the DRP is not something that is helpful or desired.  I am fine with having the maintenance sticker, PPP symbol, etc. removed from the profiles I've made. We can deal with the problems that arise from that later.  However, I would like to understand what would be good to be PPPed and what wouldn't.  

One of the conditions being discussed is to PPP any profile where the person has no last name recorded.  I think I understand why, but this would probably apply to over half the 48,000 profiles in question.  And I don't want to see this overburden our leaders. So... is this a manageable condition?

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It doesn't matter to me if the following are included in profiles being PPPed or not; you may have a good reason to PPP them so I'm bringing them up.  Is there some way to word one or more of the conditions so that it's clearer whether these are included or not?

1. Some people are given a last name in one or more document they are listed in, but not in all of them.  Sometimes their last name appears only in their burial document.  If we're PPPing all those who don't have last names, do we include those who don't always have last names in documents?  

2. Several of my ancestors have 2 or 3 different last names they used on different occasions. This sometimes causes duplicate profiles.  

3. Some baptism, marriage and burial documents have mistakes in them.  Some are obvious mistakes (mother / wife given father / husband's patronymic; mother and getuige switched; etc.)  Others are discrepancies that after research it was agreed this was a mistake (a patronymic that was a grandfather's name, etc.)  For myself, I usually record these mistakes in the biography.  I realize not everyone does, and not everyone viewing the profile reads the biography.

4. On rare occasions, two children in the family are given the same name.  I have this occurring 4 times in my ancestry, and 2 of them caused a lot of extra discussion and research!

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Hi Bertram, I wasn't planning on spending another (beautiful, sunshiny) day discussing this at length, but it is only fair that you are answered. So I'll try to be short.

a) What is the purpose of the Project Profile Protection ? - discussed at length in many a G2G threads (see here for example) - you only need to search on PPP in the G2G to find many previous discussions on the pro's and con's).

b) Helpful or desired ...? In my view the validation process / research process, along with the specific project goals (every project is different because of historical factors), determine whether PPP, [co-]project management / maintenance categories are desired or not. Overburdening leaders? Yes the leaders are burdened. But here in this thread it is about the team members who are overburdened ...

c) Differing last names on differing documents? - this can be solved by taking as guide the general rule that the first known document (primary sourced) for any individual, - the exact spelling - is taken as the LNAB to be protected (and patronymics inferred and collaborative discussed - this is where it is handy to have a project to discuss it in and with), not solving duplication, but ensuring 1 target profile to merge the rest into. In many case that would be a baptismal spelling. In the 19th/20th century birth certificates came into use. But generally we are speaking here of pre-1800 profiles where the harmonization of surnames have generally not yet taken place. And of course the discrepancies / mistakes and other exceptions such as patronymics etc. are to be deliberated in research notes ... Many more mistakes are made in death notices than in baptisms; it was not rare for children to be named after dead siblings - it was a very frequent occurrence in big families with at times as many as 17/18 siblings and half-siblings (infant mortality was high in the previous centuries, as where deaths by childbirth and second & third marriages - all the more reason to have relationships and the done research & extra discussion protected).

Answer 9

For PPPs I agree with the suggestion of the proposal, though I'd add that there needs to be an evaluation when the request is made by the profile manager. When good notes on the profile regarding LNAB or a same-name person on the profile are enough, then perhaps PPP is not necessary. On the other hand, if there have been several instances already of clearly wrong changes, despite such notes, then yes, as a profile manager do request PPP status for the profile. I think the criteria as in the proposal are good enough to evaluate requests for PPP.

For PMPs, your suggestions right now are to only have profiles be a PMP when:

1. the person has to have been important(discussion about who is important) to  Dutch History and must be Notable  (wikipedia page)
or
2. it's a profile of a person from before the period we have baptism/marriage or burial records (discussion: where in time is that)

For number 1, would that not fall under the notables project? Would all Dutch notables automatically be under the Dutch Roots project? If this is about downsizing the watchlist, then perhaps Dutch notables should remain/go to the notables project?

For number 2, what would PMP add?

To be quite honest, while I see the value in PPP, I am quite confused about PMP status. What does it add to the management of the profile? What would be the goal of making a profile a PMP (especially when it has a manager already)?

Comments

If it has a manager already, there may not be much value. PMP means the project would receive notifications of any comments left on the profile and any edits to the profile. It would mean the project leaders (and anyone else on the trusted list) could edit the LNAB. I think it might allow a profile that was otherwise an orphan to be PPP.  It would be requirement if there was interest in having a living notable somewhat viewable (such as Dutch royalty). Project management may also make sense for recently deceased notables with living relatives where a more closed viewing level would make sense.

Answer 10

Reading all this and responding to the call I see three problems.

1. too many profiles have been added to the project.
2. the work the project has is too much too handle considering the number of leaders and coordinators.
3. the architecture of Wikitree limiting 5000 profiles per person. 

The solutions I suggest, based on my experiences:

1. In order to lessen the number of PPPs, the conditions need to be either stricter or more upheld. 
   • Suggestion 1: move from Pre-1811 to Pre-1750 or even Pre-1700. Or leave out people who died after 1811.
   • Suggestion 2: a profile becomes PPP if it meets 1 of the 4 conditions. Tighten this to 2/4 or 3/4 conditions 
   • Suggestion 3: do not accept profiles that do not meet the condition(s). 
   • Suggestion 4: add a condition. Do not accept incomplete profiles (marriage/children clearly incomplete when browsing around a little)
2. Spread the work
   • Membership of DRP brings me nothing but a few mails about Dutch subjects (boldly stated). I can manage some PPP profiles, but I need access (easy, without obstacles; Wikitree is technical enough as it is). Broaden the number of people who can manage a profile. 
   • Split the project in some regional subprojects. I have experience in the North of the Netherlands and in Limburg. Researching both involves different strategies. Every region has it's own 'peculiarities' or 'need-to-knows'.
3. Talk to the wikitree hosts.
   • If the architecture blocks a project, then talk to the architect. A profile limit for each user seems OK, but for a project as well? Is it possible to make exceptions (for users, pro projects)? Under what conditions? Someone managing 5000 profiles could easily manage 10.000 as well. If they are that active on wikitree, this should be encouraged. 

I agree that something has to be done. I encounter profiles that are PPP which either don't meet the conditions or are far from complete. When working on a profile, a long time of response by a project leader/coordinator can be a strong demotivator, especially when the profile is so incomplete that it really needs work.

Answer 11

Hi everyone, 

As mentioned above, my real life has been, and unfortunately still is quite hectic at the moment, and my family was and still is needing me, I also was and still am struggling with email problems, so my time was limited since last year and I'm really very sorry for being away for a while and for all the trouble it all and my absence may have caused you all. 

But I'm very happy we have a co-leader, so Eef welcome to the team and many thanks for the help ! 

I get the idea that it's not so clear why we (and other projects) are working like this, so I think it's important to first explain things a bit more (again).

PPP, project boxes, stickers and needs of course and for sure are not invented to bother or to annoy anyone or to ''hijack'' profiles of members, on the contrary it all was invented to improve things for everyone, and especially for all profiles and WikiTree, to make sure we all one day will be able reach our main goal to have just one accurate, well sourced, and good looking profile for every person that ever lived/was born and also for projects and their members that all were (and still are) trying so very hard to clean up, source and improve all, in this case, Dutch or Dutch related profiles and to keep them all free from duplicates.

We started projects because at some point it looked like we would never be able to reach our main goal anymore, and although things are improved now, we still are dealing wit a lot of the same problems. We still are working on cleaning up, sourcing / improving profiles and correcting last names at birth (LNAB), we still are dealing with a lot of (unsourced) gedcom profiles, duplicates and with merging (for technical reasons we all are trying to prevent unneeded merges: after a merge a duplicate isn't gone, it's just hidden, a LNAB is the same as a merge, because after a LNAB merge the old profile is also hidden..so the more merges the more space they all take, space is expensive), this also is reason why most patronymics are project managed (with or without PPP), because if not PPP't or at least project managed they often get duplicated and merged away (unnoticed by anyone) into the later duplicates with again the backwards projected or 'wrong' LNAB or even worse, merged away in a totally different profile with the same name/patronymic and similar dates..causing a mixed up family because these duplicates are not seen as duplicates by the matching system, so these merges are very easy preventable by PPP-ing the LNAB, so the already correct patronymics or by at least adding the project account a manager to make sure a merge proposal is noticed in the project google group and the profile can be PPP't before that merge. 

So 'unfortunately' we, and this isn't the same for all projects, are dealing with a huge amount of (Pre-1811) patronymics and some where different last names including a patronymic, or multiple generation patronymics or farmnames etc. were used in the Netherlands, many of them are confusing for many members and causing duplicates, unneeded merges and other problems this also is why we probably have more project managed (with or without PPP) profiles and there just isn't a quick fix for this...the only thing would be to add extra project accounts (if the 5000 restriction is hold on to we probably in the end would need one for each most common patronymic and for some perhaps even more) so even better and preferred, is as Melle mentioned, to let go of the limit of 5000 profiles for project accounts because they are not a person, but only a way that makes it possible for all projectmembers together to share, watch over and work on all these profiles ... and to try to add at least one active manager to PPP profiles. 

Adding members as managers is also how we worked when we started with projects (before we had PPP or project accounts), those days active project members were added as (co-)manager to all profiles that needed help (merging, cleaning up, sources, LNAB corrected etc. and /or PPP), but the problem with this was that all these members soon had huge watchlists including an overload of emails from those profiles, while the other projectmembers (the less active ones) often didn't know exactly what was going on within the project, what profiles were falling under the project, what was happening with the profiles, where to find them or where or how they could help, so there was no project overview or a place where all members could see what was happening, where they could help or what needed to be done, the only way was trough G2G, which often caused a lot of work and email for the member managing the profile or the member starting and respond to the G2G. So that's when and why project accounts were invented and why we now have our project boxes and stickers with needs...

So since WIkiTree started we have had many changes, many things were improved and in 2017 we had some major (for consistency) ones and that's when we all discussed and decided how we would work in this project update G2G .

But a new change came along, now it was decided that project accounts, just like members only could manage 5000 profiles..even though project accounts were totally diferent from a normal member account, because the project accounts are not 'managers'  (members) themselves, the project accounts just are a way to make it possible to share and work on all profiles with hundreds or maybe even thousands of members together using the project account google group (= the project account's watchlist and email / inbox). 

This way all members could be 'co-manager' of all profiles falling under the project without their own watchlist becoming to large and without all the email one would get with such a watchlist..the email is only send to the project account (=project google group) and all members can read and respond to all mail within WikiTree..for example if someone posts something at a profile that has the project account as (co)manager..all members can see and read it in the googlegroup and respond to the post at the profile...this again can be followed by all project members, so everyone can help or ask for help trough posts added to the profile(s) that have a project account added as co-manager. If a merge is proposed this also is visible in the project google group. So this way the profiles and workload are shared by all members and the email is reduced for all project members.

So the project account is not only added for PPP (PPP is only protecting the LNAB and prevents that perhaps wrong parents or children are connected to or correct ones removed from them which was/is something that happened a lot as well), but the most important thing was that working like this now all project members sort of would become 'co-managers' of all project profiles and would have the same overview and everyone could help and respond. If there's no other active manager added or present at a profile, only project coordinators or project leaders can work with (on behalf of the projectmembers) the project account to, for example, connect parents or children if correct and requested, so to add an active member as co-manager to make sure there's always someone who can work on that is great and no problem. 

The only way to solve the 'problem' of the the 5000 limit, would be to add more project accounts, but this would probably mean more googlegroups and wouldn't make things easier, because members would have to join and keep track of all those google groups as well, while the whole purpose of the project accounts was to make things easier for everyone and to reduce the watchlists and amount of emails for everyone. So I was trying to figure out how we could keep just one overview in one google group with possibly more project accounts, but that's not easy...so if someone has an idea how that could be done?

Something I proposed to the coordinators, I think it was short before my hubby had his surgery, was if perhaps it was an idea to work with teams, each team could have one or maybe also two, so one Dutch speaking and one English speaking, team captain and the teams could work on all profiles together with maybe just the sticker or needs categories..or maybe team stickers with just the needs is an idea as well? Or maybe even a project account for each team, so they at least would have one overview and a team google group as well. 

The teams could work with the Dutch Roots Challenges project as well, so with teams perhaps we could have a monthly DR challenge, every team that would like some help could organize one ...for example if we would have a team for each Province (12) they all could organize one each year .. just an idea of course..a Pre-1500 team was requested as well, and I know there were other ideas for teams, so all ideas are welcome I think eeh...

Comments

We hebben meer dan 54.000 profielen op de Watchlist waarvan 48.000 project Managed. WikiTree regel is Max, 5000 per Profielmanager. Dat betekend dat wij minstens 11 mensen nodig hebben,  maar eerder 20 aangezien ieder ook zijn eigen Watchlist heeft, om dit te beheren. Dit is simpelweg niet haalbaar.

Het aantal groeide explosief dus het probleem werd alleen maar groter!

We have more than 54,000 profiles on the Watchlist, 48,000 of which are Project Managed.  WikiTree rule is Max, 5000 per Profile Manager.  That means we need at least 11 people, but rather 20 as each has their own Watchlist to manage this.  This is simply not feasible.

 The number grew explosively so the problem only got bigger.

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Wat PMP betreft heb ik gezien dat van Profiel managers met een zeer groot aantal profielen, tussen de 10.000 en 20.000 profielen een overgroot gedeelte is overgezet op het Project. Alleen al voor twee van deze profielmanagers zijn er meer dan 19.000 profielen overgenomen die nu het project belasten. Ik vind het een bedenkelijke oplossing om de verantwoording af te schuiven op een project.

As far as PMP is concerned, I have seen that of Profile managers with a very large number of profiles, between 10,000 and 20,000 profiles have been transferred to the Project.  For two of these profile managers alone, more than 19, 000 profiles have been acquired and are now in charge of the project.  I find this a dubious solution to shift responsibility to a project.

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In principe ligt de verantwoording bij de profiel manager. Als een profile manager een enorm aantal profielen heeft is en blijft dat zijn verantwoording. Het kan toch niet de bedoeling zijn dat een project dit voor hem of haar gaat beheren.

In principle, the responsibility lies with the profile manager.  If a profile manager has a huge number of profiles, that is and remains his responsibility.  Surely it cannot be the intention that a project will manage this for him or her.

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Als toevoeging aan hetgeen Joop al zei: er zijn nu al zo'n 200.000 Nederlandse pre-1811 profielen. Volgens die onvoorwaardelijke pre-1811 regel zouden die dus allemaal door het project (mede) beheerd moeten worden. Een onmogelijke taak, voortvloeiend uit dat cijfermatig niet onderbouwde voorschrift.

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In addition to what Joop said: there are already about 200,000 Dutch pre-1811 profiles. 
According to that unconditional pre-1811 rule, they should all be (co-)managed by the project. 
An impossible task, resulting from that rule that is not supported by numbers.

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Dit moeten we dus duidelijk voorkomen!

We must therefore clearly prevent this!

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HI everyone, I'm working on answers to Joop's G2G post he started but I can clarify that a project should absolutely not be managing 200,000+ profiles. The focus should really be on downsizing the current watchlist not on adding more to it.

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HALLO allemaal, ik werk aan antwoorden op Joop's G2G-post die hij begon, maar ik kan verduidelijken dat een project absoluut geen meer dan 200.000 profielen zou moeten beheren. De focus moet echt liggen op het inkrimpen van de huidige volglijst en niet op het toevoegen van meer. (Forgive me for having to use Bing Translate )

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@Jan hoeveel profielen worden er PMP na 1811 als we de project regels volgen? Ook in de Dutch after1811 sub project  wordt aangemoedigd om profielen PMP en PPP te maken als ze klaar zijn.

@Jan how many profiles will be PMP after 1811 if we follow the project rules?  Also in the Project Dutch after 1811 sub project it is encouraged to create profiles PMP and PPP when they are ready.

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Er is geen definitie gegeven van het klaar zijn van profielen. Dus vraag is niet te beantwoorden. In het ideale geval zijn alle proifelen klaar, dus dan uiteindelijk ALLE Nederlandse profielen PMP.

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No definition was given of completed profiles. So question cannot be answered. Ideally all profiles would be completed, meaning ALL Dutch profiles would have to be PMP

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Bedankt Jan!

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I would suggest sub-projects as a solution. The sub-projects can be divided into regions for a specific period and they only need one co-ordinator each. One co-ordinater can have more than one sub-project.

E-mail on Gmail of the sub-project can be set to automatic forwarding to the main project's gmail on google groups. This will ensure that members are not affected.

Bulk transfer of selected profiles can be done from the main projects account to the sub-project by adding the sub-project's e-mail

The sub-project then does a bulk removal of the main project's e-mail from the profiles.

This will not effect PPP on the profiles and no edits on profiles are needed.

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Als oplossing zou ik subprojecten voorstellen. De deelprojecten kunnen voor een bepaalde periode in regio's worden opgedeeld en hebben elk slechts één coördinator nodig. Eén coördinator kan meer dan één subproject hebben.

E-mail op Gmail van het subproject kan worden ingesteld op automatisch doorsturen naar de Gmail van het hoofdproject op Google Groups. Dit zorgt ervoor dat leden niet worden getroffen.

Bulkoverdracht van geselecteerde profielen kan worden gedaan van het hoofdprojectaccount naar het subproject door de e-mail van het subproject toe te voegen

Het subproject verwijdert vervolgens de e-mail van het hoofdproject in grote hoeveelheden uit de profielen.

Dit heeft geen invloed op PPP op de profielen en er zijn geen bewerkingen op profielen nodig. (Google translate)

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Er zijn staan momenteel circa 54.000 profielen op de Watchlist van ons Project. Per Profielmanager is de limiet 5000 profielen. Er vanuitgaande dat de doorsnee Wikitreeer niet meer dan 2500 profielen op de Watchlist heeft staan zou betekenen dat 54.000/2500 er 22 leden beschikbaar zouden moeten zijn om "andermans" profielen te beheren.

Betere oplossing voor het project is het aantal te reduceren naar minder dan 5000.

In principe kun je ook bedenken dat een Profielmanager zelf verantwoordelijk is voor de stamboom die hij of zij beheerd, is die groter dan 5000 profielen dan moet de rest van die profielen in ieder geval niet op een project worden afgeschoven. Je kunt ook bedenken dat bijvoorbeeld een naaste familielid een account aanmaakt en een deel beheerd.

Het doel van ons project om leden te helpen om goede en betrouwbare profielen te maken zodat de stamboom betrouwbaar is. Niet om hun profielen te beheren.

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This is just a model to subdivide the watchlist, not to add control. In practise you could only use one co-ordinator or even use the project account as co-ordinator.

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Dit is slechts een model om de volglijst onder te verdelen, niet om controle toe te voegen. In de praktijk kon je maar één coördinator gebruiken of zelfs het projectaccount als coördinator gebruiken.

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Hi Eowyn,

Is there already any idea on how to solve the question, because it seems that we (DRP) are not the only project struggling with the large amounts of profiles in a project and how to handle them.