I've been reading the posts and letting the comments sort of gel in my brain this afternoon and decided that it might help to take a closer look at the Wikitree project structure and where we Louisianians fit in it. After doing that, I have come to the conclusion that we have been using Project: Louisiana Families for multiple purposes which are sometimes conflicting and definitely confusing.
Here is what I found:
Wikitree Top Level Project
Project: United States History - A project to gather many of the US-related sub projects together, spanning from before the USA was a nation to its current state. (This is really an administrative level project)
Second Level
Project: Louisiana - most states have one of these state name projects to gather subprojects together which are related to that particular state's history.
-The mission of Project:Louisiana is to help people find their Louisiana roots and to recreate in WikiTree a bit of the rich history and culture that make Louisiana what it is today. (from the Name Studies in Louisiana page. (This fits well with its place under Project: United States History
-Comment: somewhere along the line, we either never started using Project: Louisiana for its stated gathering purpose or we conflated this project with the subproject Project: Louisiana Families where most of the real work gets done. It looks like we started using Project: Louisiana Families as the gathering project too and that made it spread out bigger than intended
Third Level Projects and their deeper level subprojects
1. Project: Louisiana Families
- The mission of the Louisiana Families project is to develop profiles and family groups in Louisiana from 1700 to 1900 (end date is under discussion and will likely change). Our primary goal is to encourage everyone on WikiTree to find and connect with their cousins in Louisiana and by reviewing the profiles learn a little about Louisiana history.
- focus on family with Louisiana connections
1a. Name Studies in Louisiana (a free space subproject where the focus is on people with the same surname which is also a subproject of Project: One Name Studies)
1b. Irish in Louisiana (a free space subproject where the focus is on people and families of Irish descent in Louisiana including areas like the Irish Channel area of New Orleans)
2. Project: Louisiana Categories
- focus on on Louisiana notables - individuals noteworthy because they belong to other groups
- most places it says that Project: Louisiana Categories is a subproject of Project: Louisiana, but in the mission section of the Project: Louisiana Categories page, it says it is a subproject of Project: Louisiana Families. I think this is a mistake and correcting it would correct a lot of the confusion about which projects are subprojects of which other projects.
-Later the page for Project: Louisiana Categories says:
Because Louisiana Categories Project and Louisiana Families overlap, with a common mission and shared goals, they also share the same badge and G2G tag (see the Louisiana Families project page). While work under the main project focuses on families and early settlers, the Louisiana Categories Project focuses on coordinating category work for Louisiana categories throughout WikiTree as well as seeking out and improving profiles of Louisiana notables.
If these two projects are going to share the same badge and not get too confused, maybe the badge should be for Project: Louisiana (the real umbrella category) rather than for either Louisiana Families or Louisiana Categories.
3. Place Studies in Louisiana (a free space project that says it is a subproject of Project: Louisiana created to gather together one place studies where the place is in Louisiana)
- there are several pages which say that together Project: Louisiana Families and Project: Louisiana Categories make up Project: Louisiana. If Place Studies in Louisiana is also a subproject of Project: Louisiana, it needs to be added to that statement everywhere. But if it is a subproject of one of those subprojects, it needs to be put in the right place on its own page description.
Another part of the confusion arises from a failure to keep the concepts of projects and categories separate in our thinking. Categories are used to gather together profiles and need to be limited to a reasonable number of profiles to work properly. Projects are used to organize and group volunteers and tasks. Administratively, there is probably and upper limit to what a project can accomplish with one leader and maybe one coordinator. But theoretically with enough leaders and coordinators to share the workload, a project can be very large, like Project: United States History.
The following are currently categories which are related to Louisiana, but they do not appear to be separate subprojects. They can be used, however, to focus the work of particular volunteers.
*Category: Louisiana First Families
-This category is for the earliest known heads of families, male and female, in Louisiana. The individual needs to have been in the 1900 US Census or earlier, and have a place of birth outside of Louisiana or be the earliest known member of the family in Louisiana.
- Currently, for purposes of this project (sic - probably should be category rather than project), "Louisiana" in the following criteria for adding [[Category: Louisiana First Families]] to a profile is defined as the area covered by the modern borders of Louisiana.
- Criteria which must be met for adding this category to a profile
::Head of family
:::head: includes both husband and wife if other criteria is met
:::family: the person stayed and raised a family in Louisiana
::Born outside of Louisiana or earliest known member of the family in Louisiana
::Arrived no later than 1900 (in time to be in the 1900 US Census for Louisiana, or earlier)
*Category: Louisiana Warriors
*Category: Louisiana Schools
*Category: Louisiana Politicians (this one has subcategories for Governors, Legislators, U.S. Representatives from Louisiana, and U.S. Senators from Louisiana)
*Category: Louisiana Musicians
*Louisiana Musical Groups