when i first started on wikitree last year i didn't need an invite, so why do it now?

Question

i heard about wikitree on a forum and searched for it, entered my details and was away.

surely you'd get more uses and therefore more profiles if it still didn't need an invite.

Answer 1

WikiTree was made invitation-only in January, basically to temporarily slow its growth a little bit. Here's a quote from Chris Whitten on why the change was made (from the press release):

“The problem is that we’ve had users abusing our wide range of free services and treating the site like their personal back-up service. Not only does this drain our limited resources, it hurts other community members and what we’re trying to accomplish. By making membership strictly invitation-only, we can give our community some breathing room to clean up the genealogical messes that irresponsible users have left behind, and we can be more careful about making sure that future members embrace our vision and understand our Wiki Genealogist Honor Code.”

Basically, the change to invitation-only was meant to decrease the number of users who just signed up, uploaded a GEDCOM, and then never responded to messages from other users, refused to merge profiles, etc.

~Lianne

Comments

thanks, now I know the reason and it makes sense. I didn't realise there were so many people who would take advantage of this site, which is just as good if not better than alot of the fee paying ones.

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... and if I may add to this. There are a lot of volunteers around the world that have signed up to be "Wiki Greeters", people who can accept invitations and do so at any time, day or night (I know I have ;-).
So no one need wait very long until they can start.