Profiles not Permanent

Question

I am a senior with decades of genealogy experience and a compact, extensively sourced tree. I support the goal of one world family tree and am interested in contributing especially as a way to combat the clutter of all of the online trees of questionable value. However, I am hesitating before diving in and committing many hours to WikiTree over the fact that all of my contributions could be deleted on my death. I have no way of knowing at this point if there will be anyone on the Trusted List for the profiles I contribute. How does it help the goal of one world tree if there are suddenly holes where before there were well documented profiles? All family historians want their work to live on after them. Can you offer any assurance that WikiTree is a good way to accomplish this?

Comments

It's a big deal to delete a profile on Wikitree, and is highly discouraged.  If you're no longer around to manage the profiles you created, they will be orphaned and adopted.  There are lots of orphaned profiles in Wikitree.  When I run across one, I try to improve it a little, either by adding a source, or adding to the biography.  Occasionally, I adopt one and hang on to it for awhile before I set it free.  So when you die, your profiles won't be deleted.  They'll be here for someone else to work on.  Since we're all ultimately related, someone will care.

Answer 1

Welcome to WikiTree, Russ. Your concern about what will happen to your work after your demise is an indication of the seriousness of your commitment.

When a member dies, profiles that were created with the Privacy levels of "Open" and "Public" are typicaly made available for another member to "adopt." The only profiles that are potentially subject to deletion are those that had a Privacy level of some type of "Private." See https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Privacy for information about WikiTree Privacy Levels.

To ensure that your contributions will remain intact and in good hands after you are no longer able to maintain them, you can post instructions on this website to tell staff how to handle your content, particularly your private contributions. (For example, you might want to designate a family memer to become responsible -- ideally a family member who is also a member of WikiTree.) A number of members have done this and can point you examples.

And if another family member is interested, you could make them co-manager of your Private profiles -- sort of like establishing a joint bank account with right of survivorship.

Comments

I am not concerned about profiles that are private - I don't intend to create any. I had overlooked that the Advance Directive is about private profiles. Thanks, Ellen, I think you addressed my concern.

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Because the profiles of living people are required to be private, you will have at least one private profile -- your own. Therefore, you still might want to create an Advance Directive.

Answer 2

Hello Russ

Perhaps this will answer your concerns,

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Advance_Directive

Comments

Thank you for your response, Patricia. I had read the Advance Directive before posting - my concern is that I have no idea whether other people will step up at the appropriate time. I do not have children, for example.

Answer 3

Welcome to WikiTree, Russ!

Answer 4

It's a wiki, not an archiving service.  You don't own your profiles, as it's very fond of saying (though many people think they own theirs, and theirs may include some of your ancestors, so everything cuts both ways).

It's very confused and confusing on the subject and many people are turning a blind eye to the implications.  But you can work it out for yourself.

Archive.org is that way.  The Wayback Machine doesn't archive WikiTree.

Comments

You can manually backup wikitree profiles to the wayback machine.

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Probably my experiment would have worked better if I hadn't mistyped it :(