Revisiting the purpose of a Profile Manager

Question

I originally posted a question of this same nature in 2016. 

Recently I have talked to several members who have adopted a large number (over 50) of profiles.   I asked why they adopted the profile and they indicated, "because it is an ancestor of mine or it is a name/place I follow".  

Let's remember that The Profile Manager has primary responsibility for a WikiTree profile, and the manager is a leader for the genealogical collaboration on that profile.   This means you have the responsibility to take action when a question is asked, a merge is proposed, sources are needed or a problem/suggestion/error is identified.   This can result in a lot of work.   Just keep that in mind as you adopt profiles.

Comments

I have many profiles that I manage .. unwillingly. I have never found a way to get rid of profiles I do not want to manage. I tried it once, and lost access to important profiles to managers who have left.

The problem is if you mass unassign yourself to profiles you cannot mass reassign yourself to profiles that might be managed by someone else.

To resassign yourself to a profile you are still interested in, you need to go through a lot of steps with follow up if that profile manager is inactive.

It would be nice if wikitree did a sweep and cleared profile managers from profiles if the profile manager has not made a contribution to wikitree in two years.  It would also be nice if wikitree did not assign you as profile manager to every profile you create.

For now, I will just have to ignore the recommended limit of profiles managed. When someone asks me a question about one, or to do something on one and I realize it was just one of many I do not want to work on, I orphan it at that time.

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It does make you wonder. I've been working (on an unsourced sourcing spree) on a group of profiles that were created 6 years ago (with an active PM) with nothing done to them. One needs the LNAB changed so then we have to go through the rigmarole of trusted lists etc. It goes seem a bit pointless to keep hold of profiles if you're not going to research them, or expand their biographies. I even orphan some of my own distant family if I don't intend to do much with them. I expect my watch list of 555 profiles is way less than most people's and I still think that's too many!

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To Lance - you have a lot! of profiles in your watch list. As soon as you create a profile you can orphan it again. It's getting into the habit of doing that otherwise as you've found, they can soon mount up! the recommended limit for watch list profiles is 5000 - even that's too many in my opinion. The only profiles I don't orphan straight away ar those that I intend to do more work on.

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i know.  i never asked for them they were assigned to me.

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How were they assigned to you? The only way you become a profile manager is by adopting, creating or asking to be the profile manager.....

Sometimes when you ask to be added to a trusted list, the member can make a mistake and add you to a number of profiles....that is when you can use the the bulk change process......if you need help with that process because your watchlist is too large, just contact the WikiTree team.

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through creation. i didn’t realize there was a limiti u til i hit 5000 then it became to much of a pain to try and manage as described earlier. i am hoping at some point the bill change tool will allow you to select all then deselect ancestors but i am not holding my breath

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If I know a profile is one I'm not interested in keeping, I just orphan it at creation. It only takes a moment to go to the privacy tab & remove myself.  Otherwise my watchlist would be way out of control.

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I haven't taken much notice of my watchlist until this week when I discovered it was well over 5000.  I have only recently started to orphan cousins who passed as children or never married as that line of the tree goes no further and no more research is required.  I spent the past few days going back over my watchlist and orphaned several hundred cousins. Mind numbing excersise. hahaha

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A helpful feature would be a checkbox when creating a profile as to whether you want to be the manager or not ... many profiles I create I'm not going to revisit after creating.

Also would be really helpful to sort Watchlist by date (ideally date you adopted the profile, but date of profile creation would do).

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I agree. Last edit date is good for those that you create then never visit again.

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I asked to be added to the trusted list of a single profile one time. The profile manager added me to ALL his profiles - because they were all "related to each other." LOL! I do my best - and have orphaned some of them as I find them - but I have also worked on profiles when people ask a question - or send me information.

Answer 1

There is also a trusted list for collaboration and also you can have more than one PM. I agree it’s a lot of work but keep checking the watchlist for changes and collaborate with those participating. Keep up the good work! Wikitree is an amazing place 

Comments

Collaboration is fun, I would personally love to see more notables with two PMs that work together on profiles that interest them whether it's because of genealogy or an element of history that they are knowledgeable about.

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Collaboration can happen, and does happen, whether or not there is more than one PM. One does not have to be a PM to collaborate.

Answer 2

Yikes!  Being a profile manager is a serious responsibility, for sure, but there is G2G, where we can ask for help if the workload gets to be too much, right? 

When I came to WikiTree I had to create a whole bunch of profiles of relatives surrounding me because nobody else closely related was here.  As it has turned out, there have only been a handful of tasks that have resulted--mostly proposed mergers.

I'm kind of an informal one-name specialist in the surname Butzow, and the state of this surname here in WikiTree is pretty sad.  There are more orphaned profiles than managed ones.  Thirty of the current 47 people with this surname were dumped here in 2014 from a Gedcom file and just left hanging there.  (separate question - is that common practice here?  Is it ethical?).

These people are not blood relatives - turns out that there are two major known lines of Butzows in the US (and two more in Europe) that have no connection to one another at least in historical records (not sure about DNA).  But I have actually communicated with relatives of these orphan Butzow profiles on WikiTree and know a good deal about that family.

With just two clicks ('select all' ... then 'click to Adopt selected profiles'), I could be the manager of all thirty.  I had actually been thinking about taking that step.  Now I'm not so sure. *shrugs*

Comments

When Wikitree first began it was possible to "dump" profiles en masse through Gedcom imports with very few facts and no sources.  That's been rectified with the Gedcompare process, but you can still create a profile with just a name and an estimated date.

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Peter, I think you should adopt them.  I did the same with all the profiles that have Stuewe, also quite uncommon.  I have slowly been orphaning them once they have bios, sources, and categories.  Basically all the sources I can find on familysearch that are open to view.

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Wait ... you can 'resign' from being profile manager?  Thus 'orphaning' a profile?  That might make sense in my case.

The GEDCOM info on most of those Butzow profiles is pretty substantial.  They just need to be cleaned up to remove all the garbage, then I could send them back to the 'cloud'.  Not a bad idea.

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Yes, under the privacy tab. You can remove yourself.

Since I do data doctor work every day, I'm frequently find duplicate profiles.  It's easier to merge and clean up if I'm the manager.  I adopt, do the merge, clean up, and orphan.

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"(separate question - is that common practice here?  Is it ethical?)."

Common practice to dump GEDCOMs and leave? I'm not sure if it's common, but it happens often enough. But usually that's because the person had good intentions in the beginning of doing something with the data. Then people leave for a variety of reasons. 

Is this ethical? Absolutely yes. That doesn't make it any less annoying. WikiTree is a website dedicated to storage of genealogical information and has a focus on crowd-sourcing, collaboration and good sourcing (quality). Dumping data here can be a good starting point for all sorts of genealogy. It doesn't mean the data is of any good quality. It's disappointing that the person didn't continue to make the data any better. But everyone has to start somewhere on their "genealogy journey". Every piece of data can potentially help. It just offers more opportunities to make the data here better and more connected.

I prefer to take a positive view of things rather than get critical or exasperated. I would rather offer help and community than gatekeeping and bar-raising to those who just don't know any better.

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Exactly, Eric. So many of us have good intentions.  I, also, try to improve what others have done, which I'll hope someday someone will do for me.  Just as Peter was proposing.

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I do the same thing, Kathy. That's all anyone can ever ask to do. Keep up the good work! ;-)

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On the Privacy page, you can completely remove yourself from the Trusted List (there's a big button for that) or you can remove yourself as profile manager but stay on the Trusted List (there's a hyperlink for that, next to your photo and your name).

Answer 3

I view being a PM as a commitment to help with the profile as needed, with all the work that you listed. Yes, I'm aware that it could be a lot of work. But I take care of my commitments. I will remove myself as PM if I felt like I was not interested in committing myself.

Comments

I agree Eric, when I am finished researching someone who is only peripherally related to other family members my plan is to orphan them after they are as fully sourced as possible, have biographies, categories, and stickers if needed.

If there is some part of the profile I'm not happy with yet, I keep them.

Answer 4

There is one feature that I would love to have is a Follow button, the following feed will tell you changes to a profile (anyone with open privacy including notables) without being on the trusted list, perfect for when your not accepted to join the trusted like on open profiles or you have to many on your trusted list. Similar to the activity and family feeds

I would use this a lot, expressly if you follow and put them in a Follow group for example

Profiles follows Feed

03:06: Christine edited the marriage between Elizabeth (Roebuckle) Hunt (abt.1803-abt.1866) and Joseph Piggott (bef.1788-1853). [Thank Christine for this | 1 thank-you received])(Group : Dad's family)

I've spent thousands of hours creating over 4000 Braddock profiles and orphan them, only to be mass adopted by someone who's not related, glad there is family tags to keep an key on them. 

Comments

Hi Campbell
The WikiTree Browser Extension app has an Extra Watchlist function, that enables you "to follow a profile, but you're not on the Trusted List".  

I don't really know much about it, and haven't used it myself, so I'm not sure whether this adds to your watchlist numbers, I'm presuming it doesn't. 

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John, I've added a few to the Extra Watchlist, and it didn't add to my regular watchlist number.

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John/Nan, this works, but be careful as it relies on cookies. If you clear your cookies/get a new laptop/switch devices it will not retain that Extra Watchlist

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another caution about the Extra Watchlist is that it causes server load -- as I understand it, the extension will make a server query for each ID in the list. So if you had 4000 people in your Extra Watchlist the server's not going to be happy.

I believe there is a WT+ query that can track changes to profiles you created, even if you are no longer the PM?

Answer 5

I manage the Stanley ONS. There is one particular WT member who seems to like making countless Stanley profiles and only providing a Findagrave source and leaves the Bio mostly blank. This person doesn't take on the responsibility of being manager for the profiles and just goes on making more profiles. So as the manager of the Stanley ONS (and I'm within 20 degrees of many of them) I adopt them and provide as much info and detail as I can.

Comments

Perhaps I'm different in that I look at Find A Grave as a starting point, as long as it has photo of the grave as a good starting source. There is nothing wrong with having a bare bones profile. Sure, more work is required, but that's the work that we do as genealogists.

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I have nothing against Findagrave, I use it myself, to document, also to get information/sources and to leave a WT link regarding the departed person. But I don't see the sense in just making countless WT profiles, with one source and a bare bones profile. It just creates more work for other people. Whenever I add a ONS sticker to a profile, I hope that the manager of that profile will add that ONS sticker to the rest of the same surname profiles that they manage and that I don't have to go through them all. Many hands make light work.

Answer 6

When I work on profiles connected to me, I tend to add parents, spouse, and children, and then the parents, spouses, and children of them, and then I find myself down the rabbit hole, so to speak.

Eventually, I have to leave many of them with parents, spouses, and children that still have to be added for to be done at some later date. (I add specific categories to them to help me keep track of them.)

Occasionally, I find a connection to someone already on the WikiTree one world tree and give a sigh of relief. Someone else can manage that part. But then half the time the profile is orphaned and needs more work and I adopt it and other half of the time the profile manager is inactive and the profile still needs more work. Sigh.

Occasionally, someone contacts me about connection to a cousin on the tree, and I happily add them to the trusted list and make them profile manager of as many of my cousins or my cousin's spouse's lines as they want.

Occasionally, I have to orphan lines that are not directly blood related to me and I have no more work to do.

One day, I hope most of the profiles I enter will be in someone else's trusted lists and profile manager lists.

I do my work expecting that someone else will take over the work eventually.

Answer 7

First, thank you for this post, imI am happy to see the inquiry and various comments publicly written. I am bookmarking it (with your permission) so that I may (possibly) refer to the conversation at a later date. I agree with most of the statements made as there are numerous profiles with unresponsive managers or those who are simply unwilling to "open" a completely private profile for a shared ancestor who died over 100 years ago or close to it.

 I try to keep my Suggestions page empty and have a few Suggestions for months because I can't fix issues like connecting a correct set of parents to a child if the child's profile is locked after multiple polite attempts to email the p.m. and leave comments with the details on those profiles.

 Several appear to be managed by the same persons who either ignore my requests or they aren't active except for the one who "likes" my requests but refuses to reply or provide assistance.

 I don't want to manage their profiles and don't ask to be on any lists but do ask the sources to be reviewed and considered for addition. When someone keeps profiles private, especially profiles for persons who have long since departed, this increases the chances of duplicates being created, it prevents the sharing of family information to non-members looking for family clues etc.

 On one hand I find it VERY disrespectful if someone deletes an entire biography or disconnects all relatives on a profile I manage / created without trying to talk about it or even leaving a note as to why they did such a drastic thing (I mention because this happened to me twice near the end of last year). However, on the other hand, after reading the responses saying hundreds or thousands of profiles are uploaded at once blows my mind- Is that not odd to anyone else?? How can someone check for duplicates or give the required minimum source and note for each person if mass uploading a 500 or 5000 GEDcom? I didn't know this was possible and don't think it should be considering how many people have profiles on the site now. I always thought it was 1 at a time but figured there was a "glitch" somewhere since I often spend more time merging and cleaning profiles than making forward progress...but I choose to do it because I feel it's important to keep the structural integrity of the one connected large tree principal.

 Sorry to ramble but this question revealed so many facets from larger caveats to detailed minutia and I wanted to address a few; hopefully without backlash as I don't feel I've said anything disrespectful. I think most issues on here can be prevented or solved by referring to the guidelines and encouraging polite communication.

 Thanks for All everyone on here does every day!

   Cheers!

       Becky Elizabeth

       Simmons-11603

Comments

hi Becky, as someone mentioned before, WikiTree in its early days allowed massive GEDCom uploads without matching function.  We still find duplicate profiles from that era that we then merge.

As for unresponsive PM's, there's some data on what to do in Help pages.

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I have had a couple of experiences where, after creating a profile, I removed myself as profile manager but stayed on the trusted list, and later was horrified to see that someone had adopted the "orphaned profile" and converted it into a completely different person with the same name. Apparently we have (and continue to have) some members who think that an orphaned profile has been abandoned and is available to be recycled.

This experience is something that has made me cautious about orphaning profiles (and reluctant to do so)....

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This is the problem I have with the terminology that is used on WikiTree. There really is no such thing as an "orphaned profile". It's a profile without a current Profile Manager. People get in their head that an "orphan" is somehow "abandoned" and anyone can do anything they want with it. Which, of course, is not the case. The terminology should be changed, to help change the thinking.

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I agree that "orphaned" is a poor term to describe an unmanaged profile. Perhaps we should change the term to -  - "unmanaged profile."

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I have seen this and wish I weren't sick and could think of an example but I often make comments when I am asked to merge a profile with one that was created well before the one I made and when I check the changes page it shows everything from dates to parents have been added. In some cases there was nothing but a name and I don't see much harm if there are nobrelatives connected but when a profile without a designated manager is completely altered to "fit" set specs I feel the need to write something because 1, it looks as if I created the duplicate without checking and if so I want to know where I went wrong 2, It is a way to politely point out that the person may not have been intended for this family line and 3...everything you have said above and now below. I was more rambling about nuances of the work done but if I led anyone to believe that I feel altering a profile because no one is managing it is okay; that wasn't my intention. I was specifically referring to known relatives, great aunts, recently a grandfather, ummm...great granduncles etc or when working on a family subset with only 1 person missing and there is also a space marked "private" usually indicating living individual or someone set to private but said profile manager won't reply to requests about adding data or at least making the profile visible to hundreds or thousands of other descendants..

Answer 8

I agree with your statement that the profile manager has a primary responsibility for building the profile (managing). But is there any advantage to leave them orphans? I mean anyone could still work on the profile, and having a contact would be a possibility to collaborate with them on what they know.

I guess leaving it orphan may increase the chances of someone finding it who is ready to write a profile and do the work. Other than that, I don't see a reason to leave it an orphan.

Just asking, I don't think I fully understand the pros and cons.

Comments

Jimmy, my own watchlist is very close to 5K profiles.  It was way over that at one point due to an incorrect trusted list addition (asked to be added to 1 profile, got added to the PM's complete watchlist).  The program is simply not built to handle more than a 5K watchlist, so things can get missed then.  So, orphaning profiles is the only option left sometimes.  For example, adding all the children in a family, many such having died young, as long as the bio is there with sources etc, there's no reason to keep it in watchlist.

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@Jimmy: Leaving a profile "orphaned" (incorrect use of the term) does not increase any chance of someone finding it. Nor does it decrease the chance. It just means that there is no current Profile Manager for the profile. That's it.

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@Danielle: There are only some very specific functions in WT that are not designed to handle more than 5000 profiles, and that is the bulk management tool. Beyond that, it isn't a problem.

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Eric, the watchlist is specifically named as having a problem with over 5k.  And frankly, I can understand why.  It's extremely time consuming to monitor all of them and any changes made by someone else along the way.

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And the Watchlist page specifically says that the "Bulk Trusted List changes tool may not work for you" for over 10K.

Which is fine for me. And I don't have a problem monitoring all the changes. There are surprisingly not as many changes as one might think. But I can agree that everyone may have different experiences and desires to keep up with them.

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Ideally, a profile that is "orphaned" by its creator would be adopted by a member of the family (perhaps a relatively new member of WikiTree) who is eager to take responsibility for the profiles of their ancestors and relatives.

Under the tab that is labeled with the member ID, there is an "Orphaned Family" feature that lists our direct ancestors and their siblings and highlights profiles that have no profile manager (and thus can be adopted). That page also has a hyperlink for producing a list of orphaned profiles for the member's LNAB. That URL can be edited to create a list for any other surname we are interested in.

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Unfortunately, in the real world, there are so few people who are interested in genealogy, or their own family, who then join WikiTree, who then want to become a Profile Manager. Those of us who are obsessed more interested in genealogy end up doing the bulk of the work anyway. 

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I've created a few profiles that ended up being discovered and adopted by enthusiastic descendants.

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lol, Eric, that truly depends on which part of the world you are working on I believe.  The quantity of decendants on some of the profiles in my watchlist is extremely large for some.  And often, somebody comes along who descends from a person in my watchlist, whose profile I created due to their being sibs of an ancestor of mine.  Often, such people will ask to be added to TL.  I add them and make them manager too, and remove myself, leaving their ancestor to their care.

As for the ''bulk removal'' function, I have found it to be of limited use.  Good when I run into a case like the one I mentioned above, where I can look at an ancestral profile in a line and see they are totally unrelated, thus I can safely remove them and their descendants through that tool.  But it's not always that obvious.

Answer 9

I’m someone who will hit the limit of 5000 at some point probably… I adopt profiles because the are of some interest to me. I’ve found that the best way to find information on my relatives is by being interested in those who lived in their community. They may add some information about my direct ancestors but it may just add to the general picture of life back then. At the moment I have a month subscription to a newspaper so I’m creating profiles and linking obvious links but I’ll go back to the profiles after my subscription runs out. For now that’s priority…. If I took the time to fully source each profile I’d not get the maximum out of my limited subscription.

Answer 10

I wonder whether Profiles Managers are really needed. This is a collaborative tree and we are all allowed to edit profiles regardless of who manages them, so why have managers in the the first place?

Could something be flashed up when we create a profile, asking us if we want to manage it. I have created profiles of spouses of children in whom I have little interest and haven't orphaned them because it's too much hassle. I shall have a blitz on orphaning profiles when my list gets too much.

Comments

Removing yourself as PM is a 2 click and a 30 second process

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@M Ross -- I have about 6000 people on my watchlist currently, most of which were created during Thons etc. and I have no interest in -- removing 3000 of them at 30 seconds each is more than a whole day of useless time that could be better spent on research!   

Getting that time down to 2 seconds rather than 30 (e.g. a checkbox on creation, and improved bulk editing) would go a long way

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You could do 10 a day at 30 seconds per profile, that's 3 minutes

Answer 11

Profile managers are the people who help keep the WikiTree healthy. I manage a lot of profiles, and it doesn't seem like a lot of work. Most of my profiles are quiet most of the time. I respond to questions and I check changes and additions to be sure they follow good genealogical practice. I thank people who improve the profiles and I undo changes that are incorrect or unsupported. Merges are where I have to work the hardest, but I feel this is one of the most important things on a collaborative tree, to collaborate with someone and improve the tree. I encourage all of you to be willing to manage profiles of interest to you.

Comments

Hear Hear!  Altho a relative newbie to Wikitree I have adopted a small number of "orphans" that were same name/same location as known relatives in the hope that someone somewhere is extending their tree interests to the point where the orphan is a match ( all so far Post 1700) so we can negotiate improvements and ownership.

Two obs: Pre-1700 PMs are reluctant to correspond when a Post 1700 death has a Pre-1700 birth - its as if they don't want to contaminate their fiefdom with us plebs;

The other ob is the frustration of updates/new profiles for closed/living profiles being reported in the daily reports but no idea whether it might be relevant to work in hand - e.g. even just the country would help sift the dross, and a date of birth would refine that further. One can't ask every updater for access or even expect a response if one does.

There are a few Wikitreers who have been most helpful and made positive contributions  for which I have been most grateful - probably Sourcerers by nature and already renowned within the community - Thank you all.

Answer 12

I have seen a couple of posts here questioning the need for profile managers at all. I strongly support having Profile Managers for a number of reasons; one reason being we do not want to have our tree drift into the state of the FamilySearch tree where anyone can change anything with or without sources and can hold descendants of a profile person hostage "just because". There is no recourse for that situation. Here on WikiTree we have controls which keeps an order to things and the profile managers play a big part in that.

Comments

In defense of the FamilySearch model, my experience has been that WikiTree is not any more accurate than the FamilySearch tree, and that it is very often less accurate and much less complete. In the case of WikiTree profiles that were added as old gedcom dumps, often they are not very connected and the WikiTree information tends to be lacking or incorrect - even though the corresponding FamilySearch profiles are in good shape. Many of these dumped profiles on WikiTree still have managers, which can be more of an obstruction/annoyance than a help, especially when the LNABs need to be changed. To be honest, I started working on WikiTree mainly as damage control, because I saw so much incorrect information here. (Obviously this has colored my perspective.) I have come to appreciate many aspects of WikiTree, but I would never disparage other platforms.

Yes, you can have an unfortunate experience on FamilySearch when somebody makes an incorrect merge or adds incorrect relatives. I have learned some defensive strategies to try to prevent this, in addition to posting a warning note. A few bad things are going to happen with any type of collaborative tree, but in my opinion, gatekeepers obstructing other people's access is not necessarily the best solution. Having managers does seem to work fairly well for Find a Grave, although I have seen a a few examples of control abuse there, and many cases of people managing way too many profiles to do a good job on most of them. There are both advantages and disadvantages to having profile managers.

Anyway, it's not up to me. WikiTree is what it is, and I can choose to participate or not.

Answer 13

Thank you for a clear, concise definition of profile manager - especially the responsibilities involved.

Answer 14

Thanks for the wakeup call. Time to take a look at my watch list.