What is your genealogical research focus?
Oh boy, what a loaded question! My focus has switched from working on my tree to creating a One Place Study. This rippled into creating and becoming a coordinator for the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria Project. I finished creating categories for about 95% of the villages in Galicia a few weeks ago and have been tidying up profiles (general housekeeping.) Now that the Galicia Project is “set up”, it guides members on what they can do to contribute or make improvements on its behalf.
Another thing that has become important to me is making sure our friends in Poland are better served on WikiTree. I continue to improve and work on parallel categories in Polish where necessary. Until I can put together a “team” to translate help pages into Polish, I created an informational page for them: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Witamy_w_WikiTree%21. I do not speak Polish, but will do whatever I can to bridge that language barrier.
I’ve recently become a coordinator for the Poland Project/Polish Roots Project. For now, I have been working on reorganizing categories to become more “find friendly” to WikiTree users. I’ve just submitted a category proposal structure for villages in Poland, which I think is easy to learn so anyone can participate in creating a village category for their ancestors. Why categorize? It places many people in one place, and more importantly, it's how WikiTree users can find others researching in the same area (and collaborate.) Also, Polish surnames vary. You may have anglicized spelling and Polish spelling, you would never find each other on the search engines.
Taking on projects equates to fine-tuning a skill. One must be open to taking on new challenges in order to find resolve within their own ancestry. Volunteering to help others with their DNA, and taking on projects to learn more about a region contribute not only to the greater good of the genealogy community but advances your knowledge in those areas.
Do you have a brick-wall breakthrough story?
YES! My Polish branch was untouched until last year! Twenty-five years of genealogy researching and I only had my Polish great-great-grandparents. They were not originally from Cieplice, where I conducted the One Place Study. I would sift through my Polish DNA matches, and none of it made sense until I did two things: 1) I started identifying common locations instead of surnames, and 2) I created a Sączawa One Name Study. I found and created as many profiles as I could from the Subcarpathian Voivodeship of Poland.
One day I received an email from a man named Tomasz Sączawa in Poland. He was excited to see I had listed some of his ancestors on WikiTree and immediately became interested in what I was doing. He asked what I knew of my family, and unfortunately, I was still looking for that missing link. From studying locations, I only had a few villages where they could have lived. Last Christmas, Tomasz took it upon himself to visit a village and found the marriage record of my great-great-grandparents, which also indicated their parents’ and grandparents’ names. He then researched 3 to 4 generations deep of my great-great-grandparents! One has to imagine, 25 years untouched and he gave me the greatest gift I could have ever received! He continues to help me with Polish grammar and other miscellaneous genealogy inquiries. He also helps others searching in his area and contributes to Geneteka (Polish transcribing webpage). Kindness is contagious!
What feature would you most like to see added or improved?
Stop allowing GEDCOM uploads. I did it, and of course, uploaded some inaccurate information. It took a very long time of correcting and reformatting these profiles. I like to advise people to “start over”. Take your time, enter your direct ancestor’s profiles manually, and transcribe your data to WikiTree. Forcing you to relook at your documentation may help you reexamine where new information could be found or if you had inaccuracies. I still run across what I call “dump and run” profiles, where it looks like someone uploaded a GEDCOM and then abandoned the profile.
I have the worst time navigating the G2G forum. At the very least add a tab for “my questions” and “my comments”.
Another feature I would really like is the ability to add alternative language for first and last names. My great-grandmother’s ancestry was Ukrainian. Of course, I have the Polish transliteration of her ancestors' names in WikiTree, but would like a place to add the Cyrillic first and last name (with it also being tied to a name search engine.)
I would like to see the ability to create a “group” forum. Not everyone uses other social media. Perhaps anyone who adds a member badge to their profile would be automatically added to this group. It can be a great way to communicate with others who are focusing on the same project. I think this is a potential way to increase membership on WikiTree. Groups should never be private, but only available to view if you are WikiTree member.
Don’t be afraid to be a “mover and shaker” on WikiTree. Ideas are always a welcome topic in the G2G. The kindness you give to others, somehow finds its way back to you. There are so many people on WikiTree willing to help!
