Do you have general questions about WikiTree?

Question

Hi everyone!

Starting in December we are launching a new livecast series.  We recently started Feature Friday where every other Friday we highlight different features and tools on WikiTree that you may have missed or want to learn how to use.

December 8th at Noon Eastern (find your time here), we are excited to host our first "Ask Us Anything" livecast.  You may have seen "AMA"s (Ask Me Anything) happening around the internet.  The premise is you can ask questions and we will try to answer as many of them as we can during the livecast. 

December's theme will focus on general WikiTree questions.  In January we will have one focused on DNA with Mags Gaulden and in either February or March one about WikiTree+ with Ales. If you have questions specifically about either of those topics. we will collect those later on.

If you have general questions about WikiTree please post them below.  If we notice there are some topics that seem to have a lot of questions we may do a more focused "Ask Us Anything" for those. 

So ask your questions here and we will answer as many as we can during the livecast on December 8th!

Thanks!

Answer 1

My first would be to ask what AMA stands for?

Comments

AMA = Ask Me Anything, the usual form of Wikitree's "Ask Us Anything". 

Answer 2

It isn't exactly what you are asking, but I'd love to have a series on how to improve profiles. Or even if they had next years focus on 52 PIP improvements for the year. (Now, having done The Voyage, I've learned quite a bit already, but...) for example, on one given week, we could focus on adding wikipedia locations in the biography, ([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Sydney Sydney, Colony of New South Wales, Australia]) across all of our own managed profiles. That way we could gradually have a weekly goal for biography improvements through out the year. I'm sure I could come up with 52 weeks of PIP improvements, but even much better, the PIProject itself. So each week, the improvement could either be explained on the Weekly YouTube Update, or the Family Weekly Newsletter. Anyway, so we could have a year long biography challenge, or a once a year bio-a-thon, or one then the other. Anyway, just my thoughts. Take it or leave it.

Comments

Something like the monthly BioBuilders challenge?

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Perhaps I should look into that.

Actually, do they learn how to do different thinks to improve the profiles every month?

Answer 3

There are very common general questions:

1. How can I delete someone?

2. Why are people interfering with my tree? 

3. Why can't I create my whole tree by copying it from another site or uploading a Gedcom? 

4. I know all about my family history, don't ask me to provide records for it. 

I know all these questions have answers in various help sections, the place to find the answers is just not obvious enough. For example on the Trip Advisor Canada Forum page the questions below are pinned 

Top questions about Canada

What documentation do I require to enter Canada ? Do I need a passport ?

Electronic Travel Authorization (eTA)

New entry rules for Canadians with dual citizenship.

Bringing Firearms to Canada

Comments

Can we bring firearms to Wikitree?

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No! You can bring 2 arms that are permanently attached to your body.

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And don't set them on fire!

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Sounds like discrimination against amputees.

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Oh No that wasn't what I meant at all!

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M. I know that was not what you meant.

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It's okay, I didn't think your comment was to be intended to be taken seriously.

I had not actually thought of any other interpretation which on some occasions could be upsetting to some people.

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"You can't just go around deleting people!" LOL

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Why not ?  I have 2 of the same person and this has happened twice when I've merge with others, so no more merging for me.

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Yvonne, Here is the link to ʻHelpʻ regarding deleting people:

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Deletion_FAQ,

I wonder how you were able to merge with others without the OK from the other profile manager.

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That's funny, yet informative. Thank u!

Answer 4

A complaint I see quite often is that WikiTree is very U.S.-centric.  So I wonder if you might discuss the things WikiTree is doing to reach out to its users around the world and to attract new users from other countries.  Is there any chance the user interface can be translated into other languages?

Comments

Thanks, Julie.  I would love to hear about this, too.  

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And, even in Europe, outside the United Kingdom.

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Absolutely Julie. I mean, Wikitree is fantastic and all, but I really feel like we get forgotten sometimes, when the weekly focus is entirely U.S.-centric. But, to be fair, they have accomodated other countries on occasional weeks too.

I have hoped all year, that they could get some Australian's for the weekly genealogist challenges. But no such luck. You can understand it though, when most of the genealogy conferences are in the U.S., and so that is where many of the contestants have become known.

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@ Ben - if you knew of any, you could have nominated them.  The Netherlands Project did.

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@Ben, we did invite some,  they just declined.

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Please don't take it as a complaint. We simply don't have the number of people in Australia, as interested, as you have in the U.S.. It is disappointing that Australian genealogists declined. It was a loss for us. So, I do understand why things are the way they are, it isn't necessarily intentional.

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all my European  "cousins" are fond of geni

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I've been around WikiTree for long enough, that I'm pretty sure that "December 8th at Noon Eastern" means the Eastern seaboard of the USA (in other words New York when comparing time zones) but it might not be clear to everyone who isn't from the USA.

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Thanks Julie. From the (too few) French WikiTreers viewpoint, this is the Top Priority Question. Currently, I can count the really active French WikiTreers with the fingers of one hand. Since I joined in 2019, this number has kept going down. If the current trend is going on, WikiTree will end up locked in the Anglo-Saxon world, and it would be a pity.

And yes, John, any really worldwide community shoud adopt UTC (and SI units, you know, metric system invented in France more than two centuries ago )

[edited] : For those who wonder what SI stands for, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_System_of_Units. And in particular look at the map to see the "handful" of countries still sticking to their old-fashioned units.

This might seem off-topic, but is really characteristic of what can be called a cultural bias ...

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Just to try and bring it back to "General Questions", Why is Wikitree U.S.-centric? The U.S. probably has a far higher portion of people interested in genealogy, than other countries. In the same way, it can probably be said, there is a higher portion of people interested in genealogy in Utah. That means that Family Search and Ancestry are based in Utah, Wikitree and so many other genealogy sites are based in the U.S.. The rest of us benefit from that, because they willingly make their platforms available to the world. So we should expect some U.S.-centricism.

So keeping all of that in mind, I think Wikitree is often very mindful that their platform is international, then occasionally forget.

In response, I think we should be mindful of all the benefits we are receiving, and remember that often, we really don't have the international numbers that the U.S. brings to the platform.

I think we could ask, that Wikitree continue to recognise that they do have an international audience.

But, out of interest, could we see a summary of how many active members are in the most represented countries? And then also perhaps, how many are in Utah, because it wouldn't surprise me if they weren't over represented as well. I personally suspect that the breakdown of numbers in Australian states, would be similar to the population of each state. Unless Queensland has less people online, because they're out in the sun all day.

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Well. I've already mentioned several times in other threads, that there have been genealogists in Europe centuries before the U.S. were barely a concept.

In France, to speak only of a country I know well, every family has her/his genealogist, and a tree somewhere in a drawer. Online, you find ancestors of about anyone on Geneanet, which is the tool used by 99,9% (it seems) of French people putting their tree on-line. Not to mention other online data bases focused on French aristocracy, such as Roglo or Capedia.

Remind you that genealogy was not a hobby for noble families under the Ancien Régime, but a way to prove nobility, and you needed to seriously document several generations.

Add to this that birth, marriage and death official recording has been mandatory in France since the 16th century, and that all those often very well kept records are available online through public free interfaces, managed by municipal or regional Archives. So, if your ancestors are mostly French, you don't need any US-based resource whatsoever. I for one never ever use Ancestry or unameit-based-in-Utah.

So I would say that the interest in genealogy is at least as strong, and with no doubt more ancient here in France (again, would not speak for other European countries I don't know well) than on the other side of the pond.

Again, I've invited since I've been collaborating to WikiTree, many cousins, close or n-times removed, having impressive trees on Geneanet, fruit of thousands of hours, years of work. But all arguments to bring them in have been killed by the "American" look and feel. Not only the English-only interface, of course it's an issue, but the global feeling of all the thing. For example the challenges, badges and so-on. French genealogists are deadly serious - too much, certainly, and that kind of folklore is as far as possible of what could attract them. I suspect even the too kind greeters messages to be counter-productive, felt as too intrusive re. privacy.

Add the naming conventions, and the inherent complexity of WikiTree editing acknowledged by anyone, even the American-English native speakers, and you have added too many hurdles.

Some of my French cousins have accepted to register, happy to be connected to The Tree, but their activity afterwards has been next to nothing. Some have offered to help me in the back-office, so to speak, finding sources etc, but will let me do the actual job of adding profiles and editing.

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To start with, if WikiTree really want to have more international genealogists from "all over the world" is to actually say so. Why not mention it on the WT "about" page?

The phrase on the "about us" page says "Our shared tree is open to the world. Everyone is invited to enjoy the fruits of the tree." It does not really mention it is a community that welcomes members from all around the world to the community.

Why am I taking this up?  Because I once had it thrown in my face by another member that "this is an American site", more or less implicating that I (Swedish) should be glad to be allowed as a member here. Then I started looking for some kind of statement that this actually was a site that welcomed international members from all over the world in order to show the member wrong. I did not find any such statement.

Personally, I have sometimes felt that international profiles are very much welcome to WT but sometimes not so much the international genealogists. An example is when members are being taunted for wanting to have the profiles of their native country look as correct as possible, an example of this is the middle name issue. And when the GDPR discussion was going on, I actually left G2G for a while because it was becoming "hostile" to Europeans.

And like Bernard said, genealogy trees have been made in parts of Europe since "forever" in order to try to prove relationships, mainly to nobles or important families, it is not a "modern" thing or a "US" thing. I do not feel there is a shortage of people interested in genealogy in Sweden either.

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Thx Maggie for weighing in, even if we both seem to be off-topic in this very conversation. So to be back on topic about "features you might have missed", yes, please could WikiTree prose clarify the meaning of "We" used everywhere on WT Home Page and Honor Code, for example?

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We could contact libraries around the world, educating them about WikiTree, asking if they could check it out, and encouraging them to help us promote it. Especially the country-centered projects.

Answer 5

Does WikiTree have any plans to be more inclusive towards other cultures around the world which don't use the Latin alphabet or follow naming customs used in Western or Westernized countries?

For example, if users enter a person with a name not using the Latin alphabet, it just turns into a mess of "aka"s and quotation marks when displayed if users try to enter both the native and Romanized versions of the name. For an example of what I'm talking about, see here. This is currently being done using the nickname and other last name fields in the editor, but it would be great if there were specific separate fields that users could use to input both the native writing system and Romanized versions of the name.

Additionally, it would be nice if there were a box we could click in the editor to reverse the displayed name order for cultures who put surnames first (many East Asian cultures, Hungarians, etc.).

With regards to naming customs, many cultures and peoples around the world do not use surnames or have ancestors who didn't historically use them. Having users put "Unknown", "No last name", or a slaveholder's surname they never actually used during their lifetime, in the surname field for these individuals is wrong in my opinion. There should be an option or box we could check in the editor to indicate that individuals like these never used a surname. I understand some of these things are done for ease of searching, but that should not override historical accuracy in my opinion.

I'm not writing this due to any animosity towards WikiTree, but rather to try and help improve it, as I do really like the site and would love to use it to its full potential. I would be more than happy to correspond with anyone from WikiTree's tech team who could implement improvements like these.

Comments

Understandably, a lot of this, requires someone from a different culture, to take enough interest, to offer a lot of translating work.

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There should be an option or box we could check in the editor to indicate that individuals like these never used a surname. I understand some of these things are done for ease of searching, but that should not override historical accuracy in my opinion.

This is not just for the ease of searching, but also centers around one of the main features of WikiTree where the WikiTree ID is based on the surname and order of entry into the system. While there is a unique ID available, it would be a substantial change to the core of WikiTree to change the WikiTree ID usage or allow a new versioning method to account for "no surname" situations.

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The naming issues are surfacing again and again, I'd sworn to myself not to mingle any more in the debate, but ... c'est plus fort que moi. The congenital issue (or original sin) regarding naming in WikiTree is twofold.

#1 : As Steven says. Using a name, or even worse, a part of the name, as a base for identifiers, should be a non-starter for whoever has dealt a little with naming and identification in data bases. The most obvious consequence is the convoluted process of creation/merging you have to go through just to fix a typo at profile creation.

#2 : Using in #1 a part of the name which does not make sense in many cultural contexts, regions, and epochs. And more generally, using heavily culturally biased fields for names (such as the middle name). Not to mention that the LNAB is deemed unknown until you find a birth record. For many profiles you have just a death and/or marriage record. When you find out they are not using the name given at birth, you are again in this stupid create/merge process, costly in terms of performance because of all the redirections of pointers in the data base.

Adding new name fields without fixing the congenital issue first would be akin to add new epicycles to our broken Ptolemaic system. We need a Copernician revolution.

Just an example : Compare

https://viaf.org/viaf/77108191/ and https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Habsburg-Lorraine-10

Librarians have made their Copernician revolution with VIAF, putting an opaque id at the center, and the unbound diversity of names orbiting around it. This is the only way out of the naming mess we are in, in my opinion.

And librarians have been naming "authorities" for ages, if they have come to this solution together (VIAF is an international standard adopted by all major libraries in the world), believe me, they have carefully thought about it.

Added : regarding the example : Marie-Louise is a popular history character, well known by anyone in France. But I'm pretty sure no one here would search her under the "Habsburg-Lorraine" LNAB.

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I feel like this conversation has wandered into desired standards changes, instead of the intended purpose:

...we highlight different features and tools on WikiTree that you may have missed or want to learn how to use.

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Guilty as charged.

Answer 6

Are there any plans to add extra name or date fields to the top section of the biography?  

For instance over the years there have been requests for a baptism and burial date fields, as well as birth and death dates.  Similarly there have been a number of requests for extra name fields, to encompass naming variations from other cultures/countries.  A title name field has been mentioned several times to have a specific place to add royal/aristocratic titles.

Comments

On re-reading the question, this might not be what you are wanting to cover.  But maybe a later version could be about a 'future WikiTree'?  Where the Team see WikiTree going in the next couple of years, and people suggesting improvements or changes.  I know something like this is done on G2G but actually hearing people talk about this often has a different reaction to reading about the issues.

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That's a very interesting idea, John! We'll have to look into doing something like that.

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John, here's the answer to the baptism and burial fields question: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Christening,_Baptism,_and_Burial_Fields

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Chris, I'm quite sure John knows that help page, but John asks about "future plans". *shrug*

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Understand the cultural element of baptism. It actually has futher problems, because occasionally, people are baptised multiple times, going from one religion to another. Perhaps a check box, indicating baptism date being used in place of birth date and location, would be a happy medium in that regard.

I still think burial day and location would be an important addition, particularly considering, on of the major ways of doing family research, is from searching cemetery records. Currently we have a work around for it, by giving cemetery categories to every profile. This may actually confuse the matter. However, with the burial location, we may be able to use the current categories to help create auto-fill suggestions for the field. But, the field would need a work around, to allow plot location and cemetery section to be added too. Which leads to another point. It would be good if the auto complete on birth / death fields, could be designed to ignore the beginning of the field, and auto-fill beyond a certain point. eg, if I put in Box Hill Hospital, Box Hill, the current suggestions will recognise Box Hill, Victoria, Australia, and erase Box Hill Hospital. I understand that it has become policy to keep the field to less detail, but sometimes it comes in handy to have more, like if a location hasn't made it into the suggestion list yet.

Answer 7

To try and come up with something on topic. I really feel that I struggle with Wikitree+, despite watching it be explained on several occasions. Something I really appreciate now, is that error suggestions are appearing at the bottom of profiles. Perhaps it would be useful to have further explanation on error finding, error fixing. Although, in part, I think some of this is probably answered by learning how to craft biographies properly, so as to avoid mistakes.

Or maybe (drifting back to my previous answer), it might be useful taking people through from the beginning. How to sign up? How to view the need of having a policy that we agree to? How to begin to make your own profile? How to add a gedcom? How to enter family? How to make good profiles? How to write a G2G question? How to find answers in G2G? How to ensure our profiles remain based on sources? How to collaborate with others on a profile? How to get the most from other tools available?

Most of those questions, I've worked out myself. But then, I have worked with computers for 35 years, and not everyone will come at this as easily. But maybe by starting from a beginners point of view, and working through, gradually step by step, the things a Wikitreer will encounter. Eventually you could end up with a collection of useful tutorial videos. Although I tend to think a properly made set of tutorial videos, would be better than a live stream, with active questions coming from the audience. Anyway. Just some more thoughts. Looks like I get too many of these thoughts. Oops. (And because, maybe the people who follow G2G, aren't the ones who need a lot of questions answered, but the Wikitreers who are struggling with basics, potentially struggle to even deal with finding help.) 

Answer 8

I would like a general discussion of the "Category Process". Who controls how Categories are made? Does it vary from project to project?

What do I need to be aware of, careful of, in using or creating categories.

There seems to be a lot of rules about categories. How do I avoid creating problems?

These questions are vague, but then so is my understanding.

Comments

I am another one who is completely confused about  using categories, and I have been on WikiTree for almost 10 years.

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Bless you Janet.

Ahh, I am not alone!

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I also am confused about using categories, Janet.

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+1 Actually I don't use them at all. Too many of them.

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me too. Categories often double in function with templates or with information that's already in the top part of a profile. So I don't see the use of that kind of categories.

I really do not know when to use a template and  when to use a category

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Thanks Eef van Hout for mentioning templates. I don't understand them at all. Are they "super" categories? Some projects use Templates, some do not, some categorization is handled by projects, Some categorization seems to be independent of Projects.

Answer 9

How long does Sourcing Saturday last? 24 hours is what I've been going by.

Answer 10

I love the way the new system shows Suggestions at the bottom of the page but I would like to see them above the save button instead of below the save button. It is too easy to miss them if one doesn't scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page.

Another thing I would like to see on the Challenge Tracker is a check box for Data Doctors for the corrections they have completed (that aren't tagged). Data Doctors really aren't participating in the Challenges that are listed and a lot of times when they work on a profiles they find Suggestions that aren't listed anywhere on the Suggestions Report. The recent Challenge to clean GedCom junk; it was mentioned that many weren't tagged,

All in All the changes that have been made this year have made a large impact on using WikiTree. Thank you for these!

Answer 11

Is there a standard WikiTree "Underconstruction" image, symbol, sticker or method to indicate that a Space Page or Project Page is in progress?

Comments

Sometimes, I wish there was, and I have literally written: "In Progress" or "Under Construction" on pages I've worked on.

However, in another sense, all of our pages are works in progress!  I have often come back to a page I thought I was "finished" with, only to realize I'd left out something important. Or with new skills that allowed me to do better.  Or with newly discovered info that really helped the profile!  So, they are all "Under Construction"

But, the sadly obvious ones are the profiles that say "so-and-so will add sources by (date)" more than three years ago!

Answer 12

Is there a place that never changes to check to see when live videos are being broadcast and to get the link?

I missed watching the second "apps" live video because I got the time wrong and could not find the page where the actual link to the video was posted. I realized later it might be on Discord but . . .

Comments

You might find this link helpful:

• WikiTree Livecasts

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Wonderful !!

I've never seen that page !

Thanks