I like the term Proof Profile and I don't see any confusion, but maybe just some clarifying ideas here:
It is similar to the same kind of bar that needs to be reached for a successful Profile of the Week. A Proof Profile is accurate, well-sourced, complete, and adheres to WikiTree style guidelines. It is easy to read, has a nice picture, maybe a good document or two. Family connections are all in order. Additionally, it must be in Open profile territory, or at least a highly notable person if less than 200 years old. It has a large number of people interested in it, either as descendants or otherwise.
On great work done by non-family members, that is exactly why the Proof Profile cannot be at the mercy of the editors from the Trusted List. Those members are often merely very random people, perhaps somebody adopted it at one time, and now all their family members are on the Trusted List.
So there needs to be some other desginated team to manage the Proof Profile.
That said, I am now seeing a problem in that there are not enough proper team members to go around, on all the candidate profiles. They cannot simply be added to the existing Trusted List, because it will grow their own Watchlist too far for comfort.
So here is another thought for a solution. Lock down every Proof Profile. The Trusted List can stay, and does not need permission to add new people. A person can simply *join* any Proof Profile Trusted List.
That way they get to have their ancestor in their Watchlist. But they cannot do any edits at all.
No Proof Profile will have any designated Manager at all. Any current Managers will simply be dropped down to the Trusted List.
Any edits or new information or sources will simply be presented from the Proof Profile to G2G. People who are interested can follow the surname, or tag, or whatever. There can be a proof_profile tag, for instance.
If a change really needs to be made to the profile, then any three interested people can join a temporary Proof Manager team to implement the change. If less than three people join, then no change is allowed. But as soon as the third person joins, then any one of those three can manage the change. This is similar to a Robert's Rules of Order procedure, in which somebody makes a motion, and the motion gets seconded, and in this case thirded, and is so passed.
The change must be only the one that the community agrees to in the G2G. there is major disagreement, then joining the list to push the change through would be a clear violation, subject to member sanction.
The Proof Manager team expires after one day.
Mergiing would have to be different for a Proof profile. Any merge attempt would be incapable of completion.
This is very similar to what exists now on merges with Private profiles. I have merge proposals that sit there for years, uncompleted, because the manager is absent.
This would have the benefit that no change needs to be made. Exept that the 30-day default will not apply, which is exactly how it works on any Private merge proposal. An existing exception is that a sysop can complete the merge.
Another benefit is that that merge proposal will allow a comparison view, just as it does now. So people will be able to clean up and match and merge descendants, just like always. But the Proof Profiles does not need to be poluuted in the process.
The only extra technical requirement would be to prevent any disconnects of any existing children, in the event of a merge.of the children. We don't want children to be drawn away from a Proof Profile, and into a new attachment as child of the non-Proof parent.
In this scheme, we could stack up a dozen duplicates on a profile, and then only have to clear them all in a single shot on the Proof Profile every year or so. Openi it up once a year through G2 to the ad-hoc team, for one day. Merge the dupes all at once, without changing any data. All duplicate bios and such would just get wiped. And then the children would be all neatly lined up for merge, or would be already merged.
Trusted List would continue to grow, which would be no problem at atl. And then people could follow their own Trusted List Proof ancestors in G2G, and so be aware when anything is up for debate. If they want to participate in the agreed change, then they are free to join the ad-hoc Proof Manager team for the day.
People would be free to contribute and participate as always, on everything. The only difference is that any direct change on a Proof Proifle would be impossible, in the absence of full consensus beforehand in G2G. If they cannot reach consensus there, then they would simply need to do a better job of presenting their case to the community, as to why the change would be proper.
To lessen arguments and such, researchers need to build related free-space pages, which would explain why certain popular widely accepted myths are disproven. Sources would be clear. It would be easy to repeatedly reference the free-space page section, which can also be linked directly in the profile bio. This would be collaboration at its best.
