Rant .. I am trying my best. [closed]

Question

I honestly do not know where to put this or where to even begin without upsetting a single person, which is not what I am after. I am new (obviously) and I am learning as I go, trial and error has always been my thing. I was plugging along fixing up my profiles on family members and all of a sudden I take a break and come back to different individuals have gone and re-worked everything I have done as far as Biography, Sourcing, etc. This makes me upset on more than one level. I am learning and not everyone is going to have the same exact way of doing something! If someone asks for help, I can understand going and helping that person. I didn't ask for help though! I am doing basic stuff first and going back through and adding what needs to be added. Some aspect, it makes me want to just remove everything, if that is even possible. I just am really upset. I don't work on something just for someone to come by and re-do it the way they want and the way they like.

Answer 1

Hi, Nancy.  We're glad you're here at WikiTree.

It looks to me like another member was trying to be helpful by adding sources to some of your profiles and pointing out discrepancies in the data. I suspect that all of us have mixed emotions about those kinds of edits. On the one hand, we appreciate it when someone else finds a mistake we made and helps us fix it, or provides sources we didn't know about. However, on the other hand, we take pride in our work and we don't like other people messing with it, even if they improve some aspects of it. Those kinds of feelings are an inherent part of collaboration at WikiTree.

It would be a good idea for you to send an introductory message to the Dutch Roots project members (either in G2G or in a project Google Group, if one exists) to let them know who you are, what you are working on (including whether it's new research or adding years of records you've compiled), and what research assistance (if any) you you are hoping to get from other project members. That kind of introductory message might reduce the amount of unwanted help you receive in the future.

Comments

I find it hard to object to anyone adding a source to my profiles, and I am always grateful when this happens, especially with those which are a couple of hundred years old or more.  I also appreciate when people point out data discrepancies in the profiles I manage, and while this may be embarrassing, it is more embarrassing to leave such discrepancies uncorrected.

      It is extremely aggravating to have someone merge profiles erroneously and clean out the sources that I already have in place.  That has happened before, and it is extremely damaging to the older profiles.

       When I see profiles that need to be merged, I simply leave a message on the profile page comments section pointing this out, and I let the profile manager take care of this him/herself.   That way, no sourcing gets lost, and the profile manager should be left to make whatever adjustments are needed in the biographies.

       One should always consult fellow co^managers  with messages before contemplating changing a profile one comanages.   They may have original source materials, such as family Bibles etc., which are more reliable than the sources upon which one wishes to base the revisions.

---

@Ellen

It would be a good idea for you to send an introductory message to the Dutch Roots project members 

That's exactly what Nancy did when she applied for membership of the Dutch Roots project on July 21, and that makes it even more unfortunate that other project members apparently did not communicate well enough to avoid Nancy getting so upset. But I am sure additions and rework was done by them with the best of intentions. 

Answer 2

You might try posting a message on the profile saying, "I am actively working on this profile and plan to work on it for the next ten days.  I am still a relatively new member, and I am disheartened when others take over while I am still trying to learn.  If you could give me a little time to learn the ropes, I would welcome your help and collaboration later on."  The whole collaboration aspect of Wikitree can be overwhelming.  I orphaned a lot of my older ancestors, the ones who had plenty of other descendants, because I thought, you know, I have other profiles to work on.  Let someone else putz around with these guys.  Even though I'm grateful that a lot of older profiles are now open to me, I still miss having a level of control on some profiles.  But in reality, most of the people I'm descended from are only important to me, so I suppose I concentrate on them.  Good luck.

Answer 3

Hi Nancy

I feel your frustration as the same thing happened to me just after I joined Wikitree. Working on profiles takes time and I had a plan for doing this as you do but found others reworking the profiles I had either just added or adopted. There are only so many hours in a day... I almost gave up but with the help of a great Wikitree mentor I am still here. The suggestions in the other answers here are good such introducing yourself and what your are doing, and putting a message on the profile to say that your are currently working on it.

However, I don't think that should be absolutely necessary. Firstly, I always contact a profile manager of families I am researching before adding to a profile. Doing that, apart from Wikitree guidelines, is common courtesy. Most of the time I have received a positive response and have moved on to some great collaboration on some families.

Now I am doing some data doctor edits and pre1500 cleanups I follow these simple steps. Before changing anything I check to see the change activity on the profile and the activity of the profile manager. If the profile manager is active I will put a message on the profile with suggested edits with sources of course. If the profile manager is inactive and has been for some time I make the changes with an explanation.

From Nancy's experiences and my own I think that giving new members who are active a chance to get their profiles in order would be very helpful to them and to Wikitree's future.

Answer 4

Oo Nancy, I'm really so sorry you are so upset by this now, but I'm sure this member was just trying to be friendly and help by perhaps making some example profiles for you or by adding some sources and info ? I'm certain no one wanted to upset you. I also noticed the tag Weessies you added where it says: My maiden name. Have been told that there is relatives in Netherlands still, as well as some have immigrated to Canada and the US. Would like to be able to get to know more of them if possible.   

So I think this and because you are new and one of our team members of course, is why this member just tried to help you and added some sources for them ? We also often create one or a few example profiles to help our new members get started a bit, this way they all will have an example where they can see how everything works around here a bit better and more clear, so the ref tags, inline sourcing, the archive(s), etc.

It's not always easy what to do or how to help, because what makes one member very happy, is perhaps upsetting the next. 

In the past people mostly were struggling on their own and had to learn everything about WikiTree pretty much by themselves, it took most of us quite some time (years) before we finally figured out things and learned how (almost) everything worked around here, but ... this also meant we were often running around in circles for years as well, after working on many many profiles we had more experience and figured things out, but by this time it also meant we had to return again to all our earliest profiles to redo or update them all, search for and add new and better sources with links to those sources that everyone one could access and so on. 

Many members like to have some examples because WikiTree is so different and there is so much they have to learn.. but it's hard for us if people do want some help or prefer to work on their own first. 

But the help we offer or the example profiles we create for our members is never meant to upset or hurt our members, or meant a critic, we always just are trying to help our members and prevent they just like us will be running around in circles or struggling alone... 

Helping each other and collaborating and sharing our ancestors, info and sources, watching over and working on them with many members, is something that takes some time to get used to and is what makes WikiTree so different from other genealogy sites, but when you are used to it this really is one of the things what makes Wikitree such a wonderful place ! 

Answer 5

Hello Nancy,

I was trying to help you on your profiles because you ask for help citing Sources. I send you, via the private system, an e-mail, introducing myself and advising you an Dutch Roots membership and promise some help. Found and add some sourches on a few profiles, Albert Weessies and Wilhelmus Weessies, with an explanation what I was doing.

 I have not received any response from you to my email or additions I've made in these profiles. If you had told me that you did not appreciate these additions, I immediately canceled these changes.

Because there were no reactions from you I stopped.

Answer 6

Hi Nancy!

I think we all have/had  our moments of frustration. So we understand your feelings very well. Happy you shared it here! Best way to get rid of it, I hope. For me it worked in the past. :)

I hope you understand how much we like you to feel home here as you make such great profiles and you re a great ADD to the Dutch_Roots_Project.

And thank you for reminding us to be careful with others profiles. We never do to upset. But you remind us help is not always what we want.

I hope you keep on the good work you do!

Happy Treeing again!

A.

Answer 7

Hi Nancy, I was just looking at your tree, to try to figure out where the issue is. Normally, I would simply say that it is because a person is working in a very public, ancient area of the tree, and so people come along and look for matches, etc., especially on brand new profiles in very old branches, before they get too much duplicated or propagated into false branches.

But I don't really see that is the case with you, unless they are not connected to your main tree yet.

In my case, I was an active member for a full two years, and nobody ever did anything on any of my profiles, because as a new member, I only worked on more modern profiles. You seem to also have been doing that.. So I don't know what really went wrong for you here and why.

I do know that Dutch Roots is extremely active. So if it a profile they are involved with, in the deep, old Netherlands, that would probably be why somebody stepped in.

Comments

When Nancy posted this, she included a link to a profile she was concerned about, but the link seems to have disappeared. The person in question was born in 1895.

---

These are the profiles where I add the Sources and an example of cite a source.

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Weessies-20 and https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Weessies-9

I did this because a message on G2G of Nancy that she had problems citing Sources.

Answer 8

Hi Nancy,

I would like to start with wishing you a warm Welcome to WikiTree. I hope you would find the same warm, always willing to help you family that I found here. I think there's just one thing to remember that's very important here at Wikitree and that's what's keeping us all together, the fact that we are trying to create one big family. And if I be totally honest in that big family that we are trying to create, you can't 'own' a profile like you can on your own database. This is a collaboration site where people are helping each other and where you can learn from each other. That's what happened today.

Personally I would have loved the fact that someone showed me how I could create a nice Bio and how I could create the references. I was not clever enough to just ask and I had to learn the hard way. But I'm more than happy that I've learned it and I'm more than happy with all those hardworking volunteers who are always willing to help. WikiTree is an addiction, you either love it or hate it.

Thanks again to all the volunteers here at Wikitree who are always trying to please everyone and to make them feel part of the 'family'