Noting your relationship on someone else's profile - don't do it!

+60 votes
1.3k views

Do you descend from a Magna Carta Surety Baron?  Or perhaps a King or Queen?  Many of us descend from 'historically significant ancestors' (aka HSA).  We get quite excited when we make the connection (although proving it is quite another story!), and perhaps we'd like to tell others about it . . .  Perfect!  Information such as this belongs on your own personal profile page, not on the profile page of the ancestor, i.e. don't put "my 24th great-grandfather" as a comment on the profile of the ancestor.  Imagine how many comments and how long the profile page would be if every single descendant were to do that!  Instead feel free to note the relationship on your personal profile, providing a link to your ancestor's profile should you desire.

And since you're excited about the connection, why not get involved in the project that oversees these profiles.  The European Aristocrats Project is the largest and oldest project on Wikitree.  We are always in need of dedicated, thorough researchers to assist us with researching and fixing the large number of profiles on Wikitree.  The project is broken down in five sub-projects due to its size.  You can read about them and joining here:  https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Project:European_Aristocrats

Darlene - Leader, British Isles Royals and Aristocrats 742-1499 Project

in WikiTree Help by Darlene Athey-Hill G2G6 Pilot (530k points)
recategorized by Ellen Smith
Is it ok if I make a comment on a live person’s page that I am more than a 4th or 5th cousin? (With or without DNA confirmation?) Most people seem to get quite a kick out of it. I sure do!
Things like this are best left in the comment box in the right column - for regular folks, not for notables though.
Interesting! I have been using my iPhone and that does not appear. Thanx!
On a mobile device the right column will appear at the bottom of the page, imagine cutting your computer screen in half and putting the right side below the left.  You can find the comment box waaaaay down below.
Robin, I so agree. Seeing "So and so is the 6th cousin twice removed from Abraham Lincoln" and the like posted on his profile is like seeing grafitti on someone's hard work. Is there a maintenance category that could be added to Project Protected Profiles to alert the project so that such comments could be deleted?
I doubt most people who do this are going to come reading here it to find out everyone does not like this habit, so it means you can only warn people when it is too late, which is kind of heavy, because then they just did a "bad thing". So should can Wikitree not put a very short remark above the message box on profiles, or maybe one that appears when they click to edit?

For example "This box is for discussions about editing this profile. For other types of comments please consider G2G, or your personal profile."

(It might be argued that this type of warning is not appropriate for 20th and 21st century profiles. Maybe even 19th century ones. OTOH, all notable profiles probably should be considered.)
Good point, Andrew!
Well, I wonder if anyone actually changed anything about this subject? Because I still these pop up on Euroaristo profiles daily. Poor Queen Victoria.
Each Featured Profile gets a slew of these on the week when it's featured. And since these profiles are usually project-managed, those messages get broadcast to the whole google group each time. It feels a lot like spamming when that happens.
I have posted this G2G discussion on the profiles of people who comment on the US Presidents with their relationships.

10 Answers

+41 votes
 
Best answer
The perfect place to note all of your cool relationships is on your own profile. You can note the relationship and connect to the ancestor's profile.  That way you can list many relationships. You may have noticed others doing this. Some have all of the presidents that they are connected to. You can even create a table if you like.

That leaves the message boxes open for statements regarding collaboration, such as the need for a specific source or whether or not a relationship is documented. The older the profile, the more important this is and the more members who could list their relationship there if that were our practice.

We are happy for all of you that are finding these great connections on WikiTree!!
by Paula J G2G6 Pilot (276k points)
selected by Anthony McCabe
Definitely! People have come up with some cool ways to add connections/relationship links to their profiles!

Thank you Paula and Darlene.  You are quite correct, while WikiTree is all about "communication" and "collaboration" and finding unknown cousins - no matter what their distance degree - is important here, the Relationship Finder and posting a notice on your own profile is the appropriate way to do that.  It is estimated that several million people descend from the 1620 Mayflower passengers; imagine if all of them wanted to write personal notes on their ancestor's profile - we would be swamped - and other, perhaps important, comments about that ancestor would be lost in the pile. 

So, please do not be offended if, under the Magna Carta or Mayflower or US Presidents projects, a profile manager or Leader deletes your "I'm related" comment.  Add it to your profile with a link to your notable ancestor.  And please do not put personal "I'm related" notes in the "Biography" section either for the same reasons, especially for pre-1700 profiles.  Making a personal comment about one's grandmother etc. is OK but we all share these pre-1700 and pre-1500 profiles so a general biography is necessary. 

Absolutely, commenting these on your profile is the best way to go. I actually have a couple of free-space pages (one for Notable relations and one specifically for Nobility) for mine, because it turns out I have a lot of interesting relations, but I started mine on my profile.
+15 votes
Where on our own profiles would be the best place to put this information?
by Eloise Smith G2G6 Mach 1 (12.6k points)
Anywhere you want.  I consider my own personal profile to be my own personal playground.  I don't use it for a formal biography/genealogy.  I keep lists of useful links, useful sources, and personal interests.

Make a section called === Fun Connections === (or whatever) and add in all the connections that you find interesting.
In the biography, you can make a spot or a section and call it something like "Famous Connections".

Then just list the famous person, add the link to them, and note how far out your connection is.

Like:

[[Washington-11|George Washington]] is my 11th cousin 6 times removed!

There are many examples found on other member's pages.  Here are just a few....

From my own page:

Famous Ancestors

All relationships below are from the WikiTree Relationship Finder, and may be through either of my parents (who were 11th cousins) or possibly both. Because the recent changes to the WikiTree Relationship Finder only goes back 15 generations to start, and then to 30 generations if I choose to dig deeper. This will be updated periodically due to others making changes on WikiTree.

Relationship to Presidents

  • 1 George Washington are 8th cousins 6 times removed through my Father's line.
  • 2 John Adams are 16th cousins once removed through my Father's line.
  • 3 Thomas Jefferson are 12th cousins four times removed through my Father's line.
  • 4 James Madison are 7th cousins five times removed through my Mother's line.
  • 5 James Monroe are 14th cousins twice removed through my Father's line.
  • 6 John Quincy Adams are 11th cousins four times removed through my Father's line.
  • etc.....

From my cousin's page...

Cousins

Kelly and Daniel Boone are 8th cousins 9 times removed.

William Frederick (Bill) "Buffalo Bill" Cody is a 16th cousins five times removed. In 1883, Buffalo Bill started his own show,Buffalo Bill's Wild West, which was a touring circus. In 1893, Cody changed the title to "Buffalo Bill's Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World".

I'm also related to "Johnny Appleseed" as 15th cousins four times removed.

And from another page I found just now....


Some of my ancestors -

Descendant of Gruffydd ap Nicolas of Dinefawr, the 'Eagle of Caermarthen'.

Descendant of John Awbrey, Questionable Gateway Ancestor.

Descendant of Louis du Bois, Huguenot immigrant.

Descendant of Jan Joosten van Meteren, Immigrant Ancestor.

Descendant of John Stith, Virginia Colonist.

So the bottom line is that you can list famous people or those that you are proud to be related to pretty much any way you want... Just be sure to do it on your own profile.

Hi Eloise, I recently added a tribute section to my ancestors that are veterans:

== Veterans in my tree ==

you can check it out here to get some ideas:

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Baty-260
I haven't figured out how to do this yet. I took the advice about making a page to display the Magna Carta relationship on my profile and I can't find it. Didn't work to hard to consider it until seeing this. Did mine get removed. I thought I'd made it appropriate to my profile and it was separate from the actual Magna Carta profile.

So, how do you do what you've done above?
This is nice. I have been trying to figure out how to line the stamps either to the right, left or centered. How to do this? And where do you get all of the stamp link info. Someone recently gave me a link and I tried to do cymru, but could not figure out how. Nice response to the person above, helpful to me too!.

oh hey! I recognize that example :D

I'm flattered!

Way more stickers on my profile page... see https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Noland-165#stickers

Cheers, Liz

P.S. Note that WikiTree policy is no more than 5 stickers (no more than 3 is better) for profiles that aren't for an active WikiTree member, but you can have as many as you like on your own profile. See [[Help:Stickers]].

As far as I am aware, you cannot move stickers around.  The "right justified" is built into their coding.
Ros is correct, they stick right and there is no changing it.
+15 votes

For me personally, I make use of Free Space Profiles and then proceed to list everything in tables - I have one set up for the US Presidents (was shocked about the number of relations there), one for my countries Prime Ministers and another for notable individuals of interest to myself.

The only time I have posted on anyone's profile is if they specifically have stated as such in order to continue their own personal quest to find distant cousins.

by Richard Shelley G2G6 Pilot (243k points)

Ditto!  See: Immigrant ancestors of moi

If you click on the link in the "Rel" column it takes you to the Relationship finder for me and that person.

I do not expect that anyone other than me cares about all my relations, but I found it extremely helpful to be able to see all my PGM+immigrants in one place and easily re-locate their profiles!

+7 votes
I know I was excited and shocked about the connections I've discovered from Magna Carta to Napoléon Bonaparte. I would agree that many of us are related to person of VIP status and the comments section of the profile page will become unusually large. I can't recall writing this if I did make a comment myself. I think you have made a good point about this and thank you for bringing this to us to help us be mindful of the actual profile of a person. So many are incredibly fantastic, and I for one am very impressed by the work that has been done. It solidifies for me the separation I need to maintain and care about when working on Wikitree profiles, including my immediate family. I inquired about how to make note about my connections and was encourage to add this in my own profile, which I did.
by Living Trogstad G2G6 Mach 1 (15.2k points)
+5 votes
blogs are good for family tree finds too.

I put a post for each interesting find along with the link .

Also add some to my fb page.
by
+6 votes
You could use the descendant sticker on their profile not the ancestor’s profiles.  You can list up to 3 ancestors on one Sticker.  Then it will stand out.
by Deborah Talbot G2G6 Mach 6 (69.4k points)
I'd like the code for that. I have ancestors who could be trifecta-worthy.
+2 votes

In a similar vein, I have one virtually un-famous ancestor who is sitting in unmerged match mode.

I don't want to go into much detail, but I felt compelled to recapitulate my descent/pedigree on that profile, mainly because this person's parentage is in dispute. I have had to reserve judgment on further attempts to demonstrate parents, unless and until a breakthrough happens in the sourcing.

Might this rare usage of a pedigree be reasonable? In my career, I was a lay epidemiologist, and have been peer-reviewed in a number of publications, but beyond claiming the scientist moniker, I doubt I will be remembered in 100 years.

So there's that. Not on my profile, but on the ordinary ancestor's. 

FF

by Porter Fann G2G6 Mach 9 (90.8k points)
I'm not sure how your descent from a person helps on his/her parentage. What is best is to outline in Research Notes what has been investigated and where the conflicts are and any speculation. If you are a descendent then that is already there in the tree. Determining parentage doesn't usually go much more recent than children. Siblings give a better understanding and tracking down elusive sources is the best.
True, it's likely there, if one hits the descendants button; a "bottom level, terminal generation" such as myself, though, especially would not be immediately obvious without the pedigree insert; and, descendants often create a trigger from an onomastic perspective regarding who the higher order ancestors might have been.
I went ahead and undid it.
+3 votes
I might be interested in joining the British Isles one I did a lot of research about The Singletons of Broughton Tower and Chingle Hall - family legend says we are connected :/ - haven't found the connection but the legend does come down TWO lines from the early 1800s so the 'story' has been passed down orally from generation to generation I lost my Singletons in the 1700 so couldn't connect :(
by Heather Jenkinson G2G6 Pilot (121k points)
Did you go to the bottom most male, and check one by one the fathers to see if a break occurs? Then check if you have an older male of that surname... Often it will be a missed son or brother will show up doing ascents and descents. Looking for the unconnected ones can be hard, unless you can build them out in Ancestry where relationship to the base person is always shown. Good luck!

I'm pretty sure that you can join even if you don't have a direct ancestor, too.
my line ends 1700s think I could only get the Singletons down to 1500s so couldn't connect the two :( I'll check if they've got any further down
+5 votes
It would be interesting however to have the Wikitree techs add to all profiles, an auto-generated note that says "This profile currently has '''?''' directly descended active Wikitree members." Although of course, that would be cpu intensive, if it were to constantly keep all profiles up to date. Perhaps it could have an option for clicking to update the number, or slip in as an option for relationship search. Of course many profiles would be dull, seeing a 'zero', so perhaps, if zero, then not displayed. But it would be interesting to see how many descendants some of the notables had.
by Ben Molesworth G2G6 Pilot (160k points)
+2 votes
Falling into this category, a 7th cousin has posted their picture on the profile of famous actress Marilyn Monroe ...

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Mortensen-1099
by N Gauthier G2G6 Pilot (286k points)

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