About adoptees views

Question

disscussions and group views, in general

Comments

Hi Anonymous,

Alan answered your question assuming you're asking about "adopting" "orphans" on WikiTree, i.e. becoming the Profile Manager of a WikiTree profile that nobody is taking care of.

Are you actually asking about real adoptions? If so, this probably isn't the right forum, unless you're wondering about adoptees' feelings on their biological or adopted family history (which would be an interesting question).

Chris

Answer 1

I adopted a profile and got the whole tree.  Adopting and cleaning up profiles one at a time is preferable. I will wind up orphaning those not in my direct line.  Most orphan profiles are from large gedcoms people have loaded on Wikitree without caution then abandoned.  These Gedcoms become unmanageable.  I tried sifting trough, and found most of it was ok but, there was a lot of miscellaneous and unrelated facts about who as well.  Of the 3000+ names my tree had but a little over 40.  By loading large gedcoms onto Wikitree we are creating a monster we may never grow into.  This type of loading is unmanagable by the person bringing it on board.

Single profile adoptions would be better.  I'm happy to clean one at a time.  It has taken me 33 yrs to put 25000+ names in my tree.  There are 1237 I have certain proof.  17000+ are at the probable stage.  The rest are possibles.  I enjoy researching, and I'm willing to do research for others.  I will clean up others messes one at a time as time permits.  At that rate it will take several hundred of us the next ten years to work up an accurate Wikitree.  People will join and stay if we can get it clean.  As it is now, they join upload a gedcom, find it to be too much work and orphan it.

Comments

Hi Alan,

We do a lot to prevent what you're talking about with abandoned GEDCOMs. Many of the problems you see were caused by people who uploaded a long time ago, before things like needing to volunteer, be confirmed, sign the Honor Code, use GEDMatches, etc., etc.

Regarding adopting a profile (becoming the Profile Manager) and getting the whole tree, I'm not sure what you mean. Every profile is managed independently. Maybe ask a separate question in the WikiTree Tech section about this, giving details.

Chris