Good By WikiTree you are losing yet another member.

Question

With regret I have decided to become inactive.  Why?  Ever since I have started some 3 months ago I have been subjected to Mentor Bullying, Threatening remarks and Dictated to.  Not only that, but also negative behavior on G2G with its unbelievable negative points scheme.  Quite frankly I have had enough. In my experience, this is not a friendly place.

I still have one Pre 1500 and two Pre 1200 all documented mostly with primary sources, to contribute. None of these families are on WikiTree. If I see a positive changes in the Culture and Style, I may return and add these lines.

Leaders you need to take a close look at your policies and make them more positive and inclusive. You have created a complex monster with so many instructions that the site has become unfriendly and heavily policed. This monster is out of control and needs taming.

I wonder how many negative points I receive for this and which list I will be monitored on?  Not a nice feeling.

Comments

Athol,

Please reconsider leaving.  The work done here by all of the volunteers will help future generations in their quest to find out more about their ancestors and history.  Don't let the few keep you from doing something you enjoy.

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Athol:

Totally agree. I left a long time ago and only check in once in awhile. I do NOT add anything anymore for the exact reasons you have noted.

Leaders; If this attitude problem doesn't get solved, you will one day have more people leaving WT than joining

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Been a member for 2 weeks. Jury still out for me. Experienced  a few negatives.

Adding this Question to Favorites Thanks one and all, Jack

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Answer 1

Hi Athol, I had a nice response all finished and then I checked something (You have 56 "Thank You".messages.) and lost my message on return.  Oh well, I will try again, but the second try never seems quite the same.

I hope you will reconsider and keep working with us.  I looked at your public bulletin board and some of your profiles, and I didn't see anything negative, but perhaps you received a private email that I can't see. Whatever the situation, we all sometimes get in a hurry or are curt in our messages.  It is easy to forget to be courteous in all our communications when we are feeling overwhelmed.

Your contributions are a huge asset particularly in the New Zealand and European surnames.  I appreciate all your hard work.  Perhaps you just need a different Mentor, . . . or no Mentor at all.  You are correct that there are lots of guidelines.  Most are for the proper functioning of the WikiTree program.  Items such as DNA information have propagation benefits that start with putting the test on the actual test participant's profile.  Others such as correct spelling of surnames or entering a woman's surname she was born with, help us search for those individuals with name searches.  Royalty and special titles have guidelines that help minimize the creation of duplicates now and in future years. . . . But the core of WikiTree is the Honor Code: http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Special:Honor_Code  If you stick to the Honor Code, you will have the essence of the guidelines.  In short, if you work to improve the profiles with accurate information, include sources and respect copyrights, you will be well on your way to more WikiTree thank yous.  Please don't give up on us!  Help us continue to the mission and thank you for sticking with us through our growing pains.

Comments

Kitty, I need to thank you for you answer.   It is very much appreciated and I will reflect on it.  Yes the comments have come via private emails thank goodness.  I am still leaving options open.  When I have finished the  Genealogy course with the University of Straith Clyde I will then consider what next.

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Athol, you would have a lot more than 56 Thank Yous if you didn't spend so much of your time cleaning up messes in the orphan profiles created years ago by contributors who walked away. (In my experience, edits to orphaned profiles don't often elicit Thank Yous, precisely because there are no trusted list members paying attention to those profiles.) You've been making valuable contributions here because you have been willing to roll up your sleeves and fix things that have been broken for a long time, and I hope you continue.

Answer 2

Hello Athol,

Could you tell us what rules or policies make problem ?

Knowing what makes you stop might help us understanding your point.

Thanks,

Guy

Comments

Guy, among other things, see http://www.wikitree.com/g2g/280698/fair-even-necessary-brand-publicly-person-yellow-referral?show=280698#q280698

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Thank you Eowyn.

Answer 3

Athol,  I would like to tell you my story on Wikitree. When I started, as a french quebecois I had to deal with the rule on the 'dit'names I did not agree with but I followed the rules as I signed the Honor Code and wanted to have a free space to have my family tree on Internet.

I then started to read the help pages, rules, and lots of informative pages. That changed my point of view of Wikitree. It's not MY family tree. It's OURS, all the volunteers.

As I have been president of an association on genealogy, I think I know how to do genealogy.  I can created websites and databases. But Wikitree is all of those in one. I continued working on my tree and making mistakes not knowing I was not following the rules. I then started to consider myself as a studient and the leaders and mentors as my teachers.  This is when I started to love Wikitree.  I think a good teacher makes good studients and we all have something to learn on Wikitree or in life. For myself, I learned some rules, policies and as a studient/teacher relation I have learned to love Wikitree so much that I invested myself for hours, days, weeks and months so intensively that I had to take a break of Wikitree. And this week, I am coming back to see my friends and hope to make Wikitree a little better everyday.

Now I hope that genealogists like you get the same feeling I got.

Sorry for my poor English

Guy

Comments

Thank you Guy for sharing your story. I believe it will help many who might relate, having had questions. Especially in this open and collaborative community, there is a need for basic structure and someone must make the final call on decisions of policy and recommended procedures. There are many factors to consider that help make WT a success. The Honor Code is unique among genealogy sites that I feel is a strong component which holds us all accountable and together. I fully agree with your assessment of the student - teacher relationship. We each have backgrounds of strength from which we can share and teach. We also learn so much from each other through this free, voluntary and welcoming society. Thanks again Guy and to everyone reading for your individual contributions.

Answer 4

I'm sorry your experience has no been positive. Mine had been nearly 100%, When I started out 8 months ago there was someone who didn't like how I did profiles and followed me around and started changing them while I was in the midst of working on them (I'm talking hours or minutes.)  I was ready to give up, 1400 or so new profile later I'm still here. I loved having a mentor. She helped me so often when I wasn't sure what to do,or how to handle someone. I'm glad I stayed. I hope you do too.   Susan

Comments

Nice, Susan, thanks for sharing this :)

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The freedom to make mistakes, learn, improve and move forward is a fantastic drawing card of WT. Even though you did not experience the same freedom as many of us, I applaud the tenacity you have shown Susan in your refusal to give up and creating a legacy for genealogists that follow us. For this I have chosen to make my first badge award to you; the Community Star. Thank you for your outstanding contributions to this global tree. I will also post this on your profile. Well done.

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That's awesome, Rod!

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Another major advantage of WikiTree is that it provides a platform to honor the remarkable, selfless service of its deserving volunteers. It was an easy decision. Susan Fitzmaurice earned this Community Star award. Thank you Eowyn, Chris and the leadership for having the foresight to build this capability into the site.

Answer 5

Athol is right.  Some people do have attitude problems.  There's too much policing, verging on Gestapo tactics.  Some people do think they're in charge, not appreciating that we're all volunteers.

Willing cooperation needs to be enlisted, because that's all there is.  Volunteers have no incentive to spend their time on stuff they don't see the value of.

A system has been created that is most sane and pleasant if you stick to your private zone.  No wonder there are far too many Green profiles.

Most users have left, and many more have restricted their activities and marked out their no-go areas.  That won't get the jungle tamed, but people seem more intent on reducing the number even trying, apparently thinking they could do it all themselves if only everybody else would go away.

If WikiTree acts like its users need it more than it needs them, it'll lose those who don't.

In fact it's become just a playground for the self-selected inner circle. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingroups_and_outgroups#See_also

 

 

Comments

I think Athol and RJH do have valid points, there are times when I have had similar experiences.

Curt, or sarcastic comments, whoever they are from, are no help at all. Critics are 'ten a penny', but unless they can offer something CONSTRUCTIVE, they have very little use.

Yes indeed, there are times when WT does feel very restrictive, as though we are all here just for the benefit of certain folks egos, those that are in an exclusive clique.

For example, We are all supposed to be working together for a common purpose, that's why it's called collaborative. So, when a profile is marked as a 'work in progress', then demands for sources, references, and proofs are not helpful, if we already knew all the answers we would not need to ask other members for their help. These messages on the profile are not constructive, just a manifestation of the 'police state'.

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The clue that I take from all of this is that Athol is working in the 1500s and 1200s, despite having only three months experience on the site. To me, that is a warning flag.

These ancient profiles are areas in which Projects are heavily depended upon to make sure that people are working in unison. These are profile areas which typically have millions of descendants. These profile areas involve many hundreds of *contributors* who all have different ideas and skills about how things should be. So in these ancient profile areas, there is a need for heavy policing. The policing was set up in these areas precisely because of the random chaos that had been occurring.

So the way to avoid such bad feelings is to simply spend time working in the more recent and private areas of the tree, where conflict and mentoring do not interfere. That gives a new contributor time and experience to learn the rules and standards and the personalities and interests of the many different contributors and their projects of interest. It is best to glide gently into those more massively shared ancient things, rather than to come in right away as the presumed new expert, and then get angry and frustrated when people have concerns or questions, and then bail out completely on it because of the bad experience..

An idea that I have floated periodically is to simply enforce a mandatory waiting period of some days, weeks and months on different functions. That would force all new people to learn how the whole WikiTree system works, and will test people for their degree of patience. That patience is a requirement in order to work effectively in the WikiTree system. And it would avoid some of the perceived heavy-handedness of mentoring.

We used to not have such things as mentoring, and profile era restrictions. The end result was random chaos, and unfortunate antagonism wen people would conflict. So consider the reason why these policing things have been implemented over time.

If WikiTree loses a few people who don't like policing, it will lose many more who don't like chaos. So which result is better?

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A waiting period based on time is not an answer to the problem. Rather, a waiting period based upon number of contributions is a far better gauge of an individuals grasp of the WikiTree system and goal.

Gedcom uploads should not count as contributions, no matter the size of the upload. Fixing all of the errors that the upload created obviously should count . . . even double count IMHO. G2G questions, answers and comments should not count as contributions towards the pre-1500 badge either.

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Let us not be too hasty jumping to conclusions, Athol may have been a member for a relatively short time, but you don't know how much experience he has. I have only been a member since April 2014, but I researched our family with my father most of my 66 years, He started the project when he was in his early 20's, and when he died I took over. I am also an active member of the Federation of Family History Societies.

Much of the chaos of which you speak can be attributed to geds downloaded from sites such as Ancestry.com.

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Tim, my point still stands. He is relatively new. How are mentors supposed to figure exactly who among the new people are to be treated as experts?

There are thousands of people who come into WikiTree on an ongoing basis. When some of those people jump right into the massively shared deep ancestor profile areas as the first things they want to do, and then right away have problems with mentors, and then make public statements about the mentors being a problem and that they are now turning right around and leaving because of it, I take that as a reason for why we have mentoring. And why we should also have a scalable mandatory waiting period for every single new person, regardless of who they are and what they think of their own expertise.

At the very least, new people should have voluntary patience with WikiTree as it is, after many years of development and compromise as a community, and not make a big deal right away about how it does not meet up to their personal expectations of what their own personal vision wants it to be in spite of all that has come before from all of the other contributors who have put a lot of work into it. And that includes the volunteer mentors.

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John - I like your idea of not counting gedcom uploads as contributions.  Or perhaps count the entire upload as 1 contribution?  The current points and badge for gedcoms seems to encourage these uploads - just my opinion.

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But the badges have been dished out to the same people who created the junk mountain in the first place, and are now standing guard over it.

The whole thing was motivated by newbie-phobia, but WikiTree needs newbies, and not only to replace the ones who leave.  Newbie-phobia is a very unhealthy symptom.

But they don't know the WikiTree way!  But in pre-1500 the WikiTree way can't exactly point to a successful track record or even a successful methodology.

The pre-1500 scheme addresses the issues of the control freaks who concocted it.  But it doesn't begin to understand or address the pre-1500 problem.  If anything it only preserves the status quo in aspic and removes the prospects of progress.

What the scheme should say but doesn't is

1 - pre-1500 is Europe

2 - the problem is all-American.

Anybody trying to do honest European genealogy is going to find piles of pasted uncomprehending sub-Burkean guff that people only ever wrote to impress their families.  And ancestors shamelessly mutilated beyond recognition in the process of cobbling together bogus lines from immigrants to princesses.

This isn't courteous.  Frankly, it's insulting and offensive behaviour.

Badges could safely be handed out to all European and Commonwealth users, because they don't have the American diseases.  They don't have the Disneyworld view of history, or the constitutional right to royal ancestry.  They recognize the Great Scoggins History books for the twaddle they mostly are, if they discover them at all, and they were never tempted to use US user-contrib sites as sources (the crap geography on view everywhere is an immediate red flag, if you happen to know that Cornwall isn't really in Norfolk).  All of which are worth more than the stated criteria.

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RJ, could you please tone down the anti-American rhetoric? To use your own words,"This isn't courteous.  Frankly, it's insulting and offensive behaviour."

Thank you.

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Good comments in all, but I would make one comment about generalizations; not all Americans are stupid and lazy. Some of us do not copy off websites such as ancestry. Some of us believe in real sources and have correctly documented our connection to the old country.

Answer 6

Gosh, Athol, I will miss all the messages from the other side of the world.   I understand what you have been through, but, at least in my case.....I was trying to help.

Answer 7

Athol,

You have been a member since March, and have made slightly over 2000 contributions. You are a member of two projects, and have recieved a Generous Genealogist award badge. You are a retired schoolteacher.

So, I don't get it. With your experience as a teacher you should understand better than most the need for a mentoring system on a site like WikiTree, where there are members of varying ability attempting to add their input to the tree. You should know better than most how some individuals react well as mentors or mentorees, and that some react less than well. You should know better than most that it is better to persevere rather than throwing in the towel after a mere five month period . . . all students AND teachers go through adaption phases as they begin new phases in their careers, it seems like this is what you are going through now.

I hope you change your mind about leaving. In addition to the achievements I mentioned above, you have alse earned the pre-1500 badge, which is not given lightly or by the common membership of WikiTree. You convinced at least some of the leadership membership that you can contribute to the most difficult area of this great and wonderful universal tree project. We need members like you, as students and teachers.

If you decide to stay, Thank You! We'll all benefit from your input as we progress.

If you decide to leave, Thank You! Your contributions are and will be appreciated as the tree continues to grow.

In either case, Good Luck as you move forward in your journey.