Question

I would like my tree to be private

Comments

Who do you include in 'your tree?'  I think that's a serious question every Wikitreer needs to consider. Something I read a few weeks ago on first joining, that brought the issue home for me:  https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:How_to_Join_in_the_Community

---

One of the main concepts of Wikitree is that it is a shared tree, so you do not have a personal tree on here that can be made private. Other people will share the same ancestors as you do and you will need to collaborate with them to develop the profiles for the individuals that you share.

---

Hi Anne,

You can mark your own profile, those of living people, and ones immediately related to living people as "private".  This does not help make connections or find cousins but it ensures your information is guarded.

Older profiles should be "open".  This is because there is only one tree.  Your branches and those of others will connect and share ancestors and profiles of interest.  The tree belongs to all of us.

Here we work together :)

Nice to meet you.... have a great day!

Answer 1

Hi Anne,

Welcome to wikitree, there will be people who can give you much better answers than this but in completely simple terms;

You can mark living people, and any profiles living people may still have a common relationship with as private when you edit them.

I had a quick look at the age of the profiles you've added so far (quick work by the way!), profiles over 100 years old we would recommend you keep as public.

No-one will edit your profiles without your permission as an active profile manager.

The reason profiles of this age are public is because the mission of wikitree is to connect everyone on 1 family tree!! We are all connected somehow!

I've merged some of my X x great grandparents because I've connected to others trees. Only one profile can exist for one person, if that makes sense?

Hope that helps, Lizzie

Comments

No-one will edit your profiles without your permission as an active profile manager.
 

One caveat. :-)

Because this is a "wiki," it's OK for people to edit any Open profile. In doing so, they should leave a source for their change, except if they're correcting an obvious typo or spelling error something like that. 

If they want to work on a profile that has already had considerable work done on it, the polite thing to do is to talk with the Profile Manager(s) first. You can read more about how this works here: Communication Before Editing.

Make sure to let us know if you have any more questions, Anne. We have a very active community here. :-)

---

Thanks Julie, good point! Its not permission but communication!

Answer 2

If you want your tree to be private, then maybe WikiTree is not the best choice.