explanation of why I'm removing protection/project boxes from some profiles & adding project accounts to others

+31 votes
1.2k views

This post is to explain changes I'm making as I review profiles that are protected or have a project box (I found that I need more room than available in the "Explain your changes" box for the explanation).

The intention behind the use of PPP and project boxes was recently clarified, which revealed that many of the profiles on my watchlist, and in projects I'm involved with, were not in line with that intention.

From https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Project-Managed_Profiles

Project boxes and management by project account go together. Project boxes do not belong on profiles that are not managed by the project.

All project-protected profiles (PPPs) are project-managed profiles (PMPs), but not all project-managed profiles are protected.

So, if a profile has a project box, the corresponding project account must be a manager of the profile, whether or not the profile is protected. A profile must meet the following criteria to be protected (which preserves the last name at birth and restricts who can change profiles attached as parents):

  1. It must fit within a project.
  2. It must be for a notable person or a person born 200 or more years ago.
  3. It must have the lowest-numbered ID (see an explanation [here])
  4. It must be controversial or duplicated.

See more about project protection at https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Project_Protection and more about project management of profiles at https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Project-Managed_Profiles.

So, if a profile does not need to be protected, it should be unlocked ("PPP" removed). If it also does not need project management, the project box should be removed. Some projects are developing stickers for profiles that have ties to a project but do not require project management. See https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Stickers for a list of stickers and https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Stickers for more information about them. If a profile does display a project box, indicating that it is a project-managed profile, it must have the corresponding project account as a manager.

Cheers,
Liz

in Policy and Style by Liz Shifflett G2G6 Pilot (626k points)
Based on this information, it seems that PPP may be frequently misused. Am I correct?
Thanks for being so conscientious about this Liz.
hmm I must of been misled somehow to think that a profile like say " Gen. George Washington" would not stay in a certain project box list?
Never mind now I get it, It's a bit complex
Thanks Liz! This is inline with my disagreement on the application of one name study {{templates}} to our {{Dutch Cape Colony}} profiles. The fact that I'm not really keen on "One Name Study" for this research intensive project such as our COGH in the first place aside (if everyone should make their surnames into a one name study, the bio's would become extremely cluttered with categories [besides why research a name that is already researched]), the BOX is for the project and the category [ [...:...] ]is for the one name study.
Philip, my understanding is that the new clarifications do not apply to one name studies. Perhaps someone with more knowledge about that can clarify further.
Excellent, Liz! You always bring your calm logic with the new changes here at WikiTree.
Your comment, Maggie, brought this back up to the top, which is good because we are going through another round of adding/subtracting PPP due to a newly-released set of errors.

7 Answers

+27 votes
 
Best answer

Way to go "Liz", Thanks for explaining the use of PPP and project boxes!image

by Dorothy Barry G2G Astronaut (2.7m points)
selected by Sandra Davidson
+16 votes
This is now so clear to me, Liz. Thanks for posting it.
by Natalie Trott G2G Astronaut (1.3m points)
+15 votes
The huge overwhelming majority of Project Boxes are on profiles that aren't managed by the project username, or ever likely to be.

They belong to big projects like EuroAristo and United Kingdom and used to get slapped on any profile within the territory.

If this is the rule now, some drastic bot-type action is needed to remove the templates or replace them with stickers.

Not sure where this leaves Project Coordination, it doesn't seem to figure in the template scheme.
by Living Horace G2G6 Pilot (625k points)
I estimated some numbers

36k One Name Study
23k EuroAristo (5 templates)
22k United Kingdom
12k Scottish Clans
 9k Acadians
 7k 1776
 5k Southern Colonies
 3k US Civil War
Hi RJ,  just to confirm UK is "in the pipeline".   Just waiting on our project profiles to start reviewing our ppp's etc.  project boxes etc.   It's a huge project so it will take time but we are all singing from the same hymn sheet re the way forward.

Scottish Clans is a type of one name study - again a work in progress !!
Hey, RJ! :-)  Yes, you're right, it's taking a lot of data wrangling to get things in order. Aleš has been working with some of the larger projects to get things squared away and is making a lot of progress.

It's not going to happen overnight, but slow and steady progress is happening.
+8 votes
More confused than ever before.  I am purely talking about Name Studies.

First, we get told that Project Boxes should only be on the profiles which are the "central focus" of the Study (i.e. the ones you are working on right now; some would disagree, in that the whole point of a Name Study is that every bearer of the name is the "central focus").

But now you are saying that Project Boxes should only be on Project-managed profiles.

?
by Ros Haywood G2G Astronaut (1.9m points)
As far as I understand Name Studies are an exception. But I'm not clear on what that might mean.
The One name/place studies are Free space Projects and the templates probably all are going to be stickers.. I think it's ok to add the stickers to younger profiles and if you are the manager, or to others if the managers are ok with you placing them, but for the deeper ancestors that often will fall under Project management or protection, the one name/place category  probably is a better idea or option ?
+10 votes
@ George: Over the years, the purpose and use of PPP has changed. Today, yes, there are many profiles that are inappropriately "locked" (with the PPP/project-protected profile box checked) but it had not been a misuse of PPP at the time it was applied. That's why I'm starting a review of my watchlist profiles.

@ all: I posted this, as I said, so that I could point to a fairly comprehensive explanation as I made my way through my reviews. I am currently working on profiles in my own watchlist, to get a feel for how to conform to the clarified guidelines, before working on profiles in projects I lead/co-lead.

@ Eva, Ros & everyone:

Re: One Name Study/One Place Study projects: I had been involved earlier in discussions about options & had decided that I would skip changing the ONS template on profiles I managed for now, until the project announced what direction they were going to take. One of the options was to use stickers instead of project boxes, because profiles displaying stickers do not have the requirement that project boxes do (to add the corresponding project account as manager). I believe this is the option they're going with, but I also believe that logistics are still being worked out (since I haven't seen any announcement about it).

One of the Name Studies I founded was actually a family study & since the LNAB could be any number of styles/spellings based on available records (which included a wide variety even in a single document), many of them were protected... by the space-page Family Study Project that I began and which does not qualify for a project account. Many of the descendants in the study were already under the New Netherland Settlers Project. Many of the ancestors in the study are being placed under the Dutch Roots Project. As I go through my review, I'm finding a project with a project account for ONS profiles needing protection but otherwise leaving the ONS information/template alone.

@ Troy. I believe the profile for Gen. Washington meets the requirements for PPP and will remain protected and managed by a project (just to confirm what you apparently already figured out, based on your second comment).

@ RJ. Good questions & my apologies that I have no answers.

Hope that covered everything. RJ, I'll send a note to the Leaders Google Group with a link to your post to see if others may have an answer.

Cheers, Liz
by Liz Shifflett G2G6 Pilot (626k points)
edited by Liz Shifflett
I only thought, if anything needs doing it seems pointless tackling it manually, Ed the Bot can do it.
ah - that makes sense. I believe several projects have already started working with "Ed" on that.

You mean changing the Project Box to a Project Sticker ?

Stickers are not serving for advertising projects. Stickers are used for honoring a person or otherwise highlighting something that's deemed to be important about them.

Is it honoring the person if the sticker says... this person is part of XX Project ?  

How and Why a sticker will replace a Project Box ?

 

I don't know the details of what different projects are doing. I think I recall seeing something about what Quebecois project was doing?
Quebecois Project has over 5000 profiles with the Project Box. I asked Ales how many are PPP.

But before we do anything, we want to know how we will coordinate the project without a template on our profiles.

Guy - I'm not sure I quite understand your question. The conversion of project box to sticker is being discussed for the One Name Study and One Place Study projects, not all projects. I know that Bea was working closely with Aleš on Dutch Root profiles & I believe they were using the  bot at one point to make some changes (I think more along the lines of adding the project account to profiles with the project box than changing any templates).

Dutch Roots is one of the projects that has put in place a system of using project boxes for profiles the project manages and stickers for profiles that do not need project management. So... the project box when it was needed to identify the project to contact about the profile & the sticker when all that's wanted is to identify the person's roots. See these pages for examples:

Sorry Liz, it doesn't say in the question.
The Quebecois Project is ready to make the move from Project Box to a new Sticker.  We are getting things ready for this.  

I will post another thread on G2G when we make the transfert.
+6 votes
I think I am struggling with #2 and the US Presidents project.   In the past we added protection for 4 generations of ancestors of US Presidents mainly because they were NOT notable and yet important to the correct ancestry of US Presidents.   Needless to say, and many of them are not over 200 years old.
by Robin Lee G2G6 Pilot (852k points)
I don't think I'm using the term correctly, but I would think the "halo effect" could spread to justify PPP for 4 generations of US Presidents. In other words - notable is close & it's project policy, so it's allowed.
I hope you will limit your el-presidente ancestor protection umbrella to actual documented ancestors.  (I claim no relationship myself but have bumped into the claims.)
The US Presidents project follows the Honor Code of WikiTree.
+9 votes
Please go slow in this process of removing templates. Projects that are led by a Coordinator (not a WikiTree Leader) weren't notified of the new policy, so they haven't yet had an opportunity to adapt -- for example, to find a Leader to convert their project templates into stickers.
by Ellen Smith G2G Astronaut (1.5m points)
Thanks for the caution Ellen. I posted the explanation as something to point to as I work through my watchlist... I've done a whopping 5 now, I think, and have run into tons of questions. I'm checking first the profiles on my watchlist that are PPP. I found a couple that didn't need it, so I removed both the PPP and the project box (they're for folks not that far back with just me and a couple of other descendants as managers & no controversy or need for project management). What's taking me so long is with the others - the ones that need the PPP to preserve the LNAB spelling/style or protect the parent/child relationship (or lack thereof) but which are not currently connected to an appropriate project. Finding that project & figuring out the project box & e-mail to add it as a manager is slow going (for me at least).

Cheers, Liz
Liz, my concern is related to the fact that your message here is the first general notification of this new policy.
I am aware that it has been discussed at length in Leaders email, but it hasn't been officially announced to the rest of us.

Hi, Ellen!

I just wanted to make sure you know that this is not the implementation of a new rule. Liz's post is talking about how we're making a concerted effort to work toward consistently applying the existing rules for Project Accounts, Project Boxes, and Project Protection.

There are  a few help pages that have been the focus of the discussion:

... and a new one that Chris put together to help clarify some of the misunderstandings: 

Project-Managed Profiles

Leaders are now working to make sure that all these pieces are being used correctly on the profiles that are a focus of their projects.

I hope this helps ... let us know if you have anymore concerns or questions.

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