Projects taking over [closed]

Question

Maybe I just have missed some of the conversations, but, I sure see a lot of "distress" on Wikitree about the increasing "management role" of projects.  Specifically, the removal of people as profile managers and the lack of "collaboration" with those profile managers.   

Do we have a "simple" help page that describes the purpose and "powers" of a project as it relates to these profile management roles?

Comments

Yeah, I think a few of the projects are getting a little out of hand with locking out profiles and not responding to edit requests, etc. Personally, I'd like to see some justification or rationale for blocking a profile, especially if the project managers don't feel they have the time to respond to messages.

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See my comment here ...

This statement "The more control leaders and coordinators want to keep to themselves the less involvement you will see by volunteer members."  may instance seem true, but it creates a false picture of what actually might be transpiring.

A few observations:

* One has to ask one on what quantifiable indicators this statement is made, because ...

a) While the observation is in my experience also to a certain extent true, the actual reason though would be the steep learning curve that working within this WikiTree environment demands, and the restrictions WikiTree itself poses through it's own protocols ... (therefore not leaders, project coordinators or projects leaning towards or wanting to keep control - it is easy to interpret it that way and too easy to blame the projects, the leaders and the coordinators for this) ....

b) because one has to go to the situation that existed before many projects and project coordinators existed ... I joined WikiTree towards the end of 2013; after joining a project I co-initiated a project mid-2014, and before the situation was not that different - people were still either for all reasons above volunteering to join either WikiTree or a project and also ending up in either category ... people all over were leaving WikiTree in droves ... or became permanently dormant and inactive ...

c) Different strokes for different folks - even though we strive in WikiTree for clear (uni-clarified) protocols, diferent projects need at times different approaches. I for one still - after more than one hundred thousand contributions - do not understand how to edit US bio's (after merging for example), bacause of the unfamiliarity with US sources. When I do merge US profiles, I will merge those of which I do not have to integrate the bio's. This has nothing to do with laziness.

d) The continually changing protocols and boiler plates: example, two years ago the <references /> was supposed to go right to the bottom of a bio, now it has been ruled to go directly underneath the = = Sources = =  heading. So while we had to collate countless of pre-1700 duplicated profiles in order to untangle and / or validate them (situation caused by WikiTree policy itself - not the fault of the contributors or leaders or coordinators), and also added references behind those sources, now suddenly they do not show up, because we are supposed to magically transform 15000 + profiles and add them directly underneath that heading, defying the notion of "a project as a work in progress" .... Example: [[Jaubert-11]]

* The comment of Dave seems to me to be accurate: https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/522807/projects-and-their-members?show=522820#a522820

* What in my humle opinion is needed, is clear policy on adding to WikiTree or profiles with amongst the following:

- No GEDCOMPARE for profiles older than 1800

- Clear project policy, mission and objectives - this may vary from project to project depending the context, in order to be more inclusive ....

- This inclusiveness does not exclude less control if one needs to call it that, it demands though understanding the sense of community and the skills of the different members involved in a project; more communication is (as is evident in WikITree) not always effective as it does not necessarily lead to better clarity, even instruction films do not produce understanding ...

I propose a learning-how-to-edit program, designed to help increase the amount of volunteers who can actually improve profiles in a validatory fashion. This must be project geared (from within projects self).

Blaming the contribuants indirectly for trying to fit square pegs in round holes, is not something that leaderhip should be doing. And it is preposterous and unrealistic to suggest that projects should limit their watchlist to 5000 profiles. As if that would fix what that what is not broken but only perceived to be so.

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Philip,

Just need to correct one of your claims above.

The placement of <references /> immediate under == Sources == was included in the Style Guide four years ago this month. I know because I led the style committee back then. We wrapped up our work in December 2013. One of the things that came out of that work was the placement of the <references /> tag.

Has everyone followed those guidelines? No.

Have all profiles created prior to Dec 2013 been edited to align with the style committee conclusions? No.

Have others, since then, suggested changes to the style (and edited profiles the way they prefer)? Absolutely.

Should the style guide be revisited? I'm ambivalent about that. Others are less so. But that's a separate g2g...

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Hi Jillaine, even so. Make it 4 years instead of 2 years ago. Top down decisions were made that still disrupts the collation and validation of data. I still have to incorporate profiles made as far back as 2011. A project is a process.

Why it was made was never explained, though I can only surmise that it was after a lengthy G2G and outside of G2G deliberation on cosmetic features and what sources are and where they should be displayed.

Some times changes are good, necessary. And disruption is also part of the current development in technologies and lifestyles. The impact on projects of some decisions taken at top level can be massively overwhelming and far reaching though. As with boilerplate changes.

It is easy to blame though - goes both ways I know. It is much more difficult to work collaboratively towards a valid structured WikiTree. Not merely sourced.

I understand that being at the top leadership is not easy and big complex decisions have to be made; at times compromising is necessary.

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Also see my comment here.

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Actually the style guide work was very transparent and public and involved a committee of volunteers sought from the broader community. Lots of g2g discussions. A process broken down by topics of which Source display was one.

All that said, since that time, Wikitree has grown a great deal and there are many more people with their individual styles.

To what degree wikitree leadership wants to enforce the style guides — old or new— remains an open question.

My experience is that some things are more enforced than others. Especially since db_errors was launched.

And in all that mix, projects are trying to improve profiles and model good profile development and maintenance.

And we’re each and everyone individuals with preferences, expectations and feelings.

So whatever opinions we have about the structure of a profile and about the way projects work, I hope we can treat each other with patience and respect.

And yeah.  Sometimes that’s difficult.

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kind of sounds like what f-a-g  does.. If the profile person is important  they take over...... if THEY do not like what a "creator" has done  they take over or just delete the work... I did not think wikitree was like that.  I hope not.

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NO, it is not like FAG whatever that is. When the Project Protects a Profile, the validation of the LNAB and the parent connections are protected. And moreover, all the contribruants input are carefully and at times painstaikingly in forensic fashion edited into one collated & coherent whole, so that everyone can benefit from it by understanding the provenance and the validation process. Without this protection and collation by the project, it would all become an jumbled un-cared for mess. It is not a question of "liking" or "dis-liking" anything. It is a question of editing in a fashion that respects the input of others in a clarifying way. And it is precisely because of this latter aspect that it is such a pity that the work of projects is being put publicly in such a bad light by a few objectors. Without projects WikiTree will not survive.

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I am seeing this myself.  While I am removing myself as manager for profiles I have seen quite a few profiles where I have been removed from profiles I originally uploaded.  I never recieved notice about this at all.  So, are there some out there who think they are the only people worthy?  I also have need to remove some other people as managers, family members who are aware I am removing them as they have never contributed since asking permission to be added.  I cannot remove them.  Pretty sure they do not ansswer their friggin' email, I should know.  Have fun with it.

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Hi Betty, you might want to start another tread. This one has been closed with the note: Closing this question as things have changed in the past 18 months around project management

Answer 1

I've never had any collaboration (AFAICR) with a project initiated by them, even the one I joined reluctantly, either regarding taking over or for changing data. [I don't google, so anything on those groups is non-existent to me.]

I do recall your thread about Profile Managers where a common sentiment was that neither descendants or profile managers were as important or as good as projects.  But yet projects are composed of regular members without expertise as you can see from the frequent requests for people to join.

Comments

Mikey,

The only project that you belong to is Southern Colonies which Mags and I lead but the situation you are referring to I think is probably one I was involved with in an attempt to resolve differences over a profile. This is literally the only case in which I have not been successful in reaching concensus and we all worked together for a long time. I apologize to you if my efforts seemed heavy handed or controlling which I can understand they might have if you had never been through that process before. During the collaboration, I asked that all information and sources be placed in the message boxes instead of changing the bio because that reduces confusion overall. When everyone agrees then we add to the bio. I adopted this approach while working on a situation where so many changes were made that two profiles actually switched places because the data and bio  was changed so much but then of course they add the wrong connections.

The project was added by request of one of the PMs and when she posted that she regretted it, I removed the project. I am afraid that this is not a representative example of project management and I regret it is the one that you experienced.

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Paula, I just wanted to say what an outstanding attitude you showed here - I stand and applaud!

Answer 2

I think this is help page on Project-Managed Profiles contains some recent changes to how and when a project should manage profiles.

Answer 3

Unfortunately, the page doesn't mention what seems to be the most frequent complaint -- that projects take over profiles, and remove the profile manager, without any prior communication with the PM.  While it hasn't happened to me,  I don't see how that supports the WikiTree principle of collaboration.

Comments

Correct, the help page talks about collaboration between profile managers and the project, but, nothing about the other direction.

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Projects are simply a necessity, for proper overall tree health.

Whereas individuals, who tend to care only about their own personal tiny little part of the tree that they would like to personally control, they come and they go.

And they often conflict with each other. Hence, projects.

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I wasn't questioning the existence of projects, or the need for them to manage at least some profiles.   Just the apparently-frequent (going by what I see on G2G) failure to communicate with profile managers before taking over management of a profile.

Answer 4

The link given by John leads to https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Project_Protecting_and_Merging

It mentions not having too many managers for a profile and reasons for protecting older and frequently merged profiles and says

"No profile should have more than a half-dozen managers. One or two is usually enough"

But when I looked at the individual project pages,practice varies.  From some that  don't mention removing project managers to one which appears to have an aim of protecting all profiles within it's remit,once LNAB is sourced and then taking over sole management.

Being removed can, as said above cause distress, also people who have created sourced profiles have a 'stake' in the profile.and being removed without good reason seems to be counter productive.

I do feel the overall  policy at the moment is not clear.

It ought to be discussed openly and implemented in the same way across the tree.

Answer 5

When a project starts managing a profile, I don't understand the idea of moving the managers to the trusted list.  The manager gets the requests as soon as it is posted.  On the trusted list, it's only once a week.  A lot of changes can happen during that period... very frustrating for someone who created or worked on a profile !

The Help page on Project Managed Profiles that John indicates says to join the project if you want to collaborate on such a profile...

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Project-Managed_Profiles#How_do_you_collaborate_on_a_profile_that_is_managed_by_a_project.3F

So... if the project is managing hundreds of profiles and I am interested in only 10 of them, as a member of the project, I will receive ALL the resquest that ALL the Project Managed Profiles will get.  

 

Comments

So... if the project is managing hundreds of profiles and I am interested in only 10 of them, as a member of the project, I will receive ALL the resquest that ALL the Project Managed Profiles will get.  

I'm also concerned about this issue, Guy.

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I'm also concerned. I have a lot of experience being on the Trusted List, but not profile manager. I check my watchlist activity feed regularly, so I see edits and profile messages on watchlisted profiles on a reasonably current basis, but I find that I've missed some merge requests until it was "too late" because there was no message posted on the profile I was on the TL for.

It makes eminent sense not to send TL requests to a long list of profile managers when there's one manager (the project) that can be counted on to reply, but other messages should not be similarly restricted. I wonder if the notification function could be divided to separate TL requests from other types of notifications.

Answer 6

Have there been cases of projects removing members as PM, or removing members from the TL, without permission from the member? That would be very problematic (except for clear cases of misconduct by the member).

Why is it even technically possible for a PM to remove another PM?

Finally, when another PM removes you as PM, or removes you from the TL, do you at least receive an email notification?

Comments

I can answer the one question.  You do not receive an email when you are added or removed as manager or the trusted list.  I have brought this up in G2G before because I feel it is vitally important that we receive notifications instead of surprises when we go to edit a profile and find we are no longer a part of it.

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Yes, there are very many specific examples of projects removing managers to the trusted list. This happens all the time with the COGH (Cape of Good Hope Project), which appoints itself sole manager of PPP profiles and removes existing mangers to trusted list without the original manager's consent. On occasion, managers that object, have been told to put up with it or go find another genealogy site. As you asked for specifics: here is the typical wording:  The project profile has been added to the trusted list of this profile and then also '''activated''' as '''active manager''' All remaining active managers have been moved to the trusted list. Appreciatively thanks, xxxx

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Yes Anton. You should also add the whole context.

This profile of one of you ancestors Bergh-58 has 5 active managers and as many as 7/8 gedcom imports two of which were your own. Only this recent week was the bio fully integrated. In all the past years you did nothing to maintain or create coherence of data. Even now the baptism has to be added (Source can be found here; citing instructions can be found here; an example within WikiTree can be found here: [[Berck-14]]).

In the past you happily agreed to this practice and was very happy to have your profiles and all of the good data that you personally added to your progenitor profile (https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Bergh-143), secured and responsibly integrated. See your own comments on that profile. You are also part of this project. You yourself added (in personal communication) that you did not have the time. Which is ok. Many of us also have to work and have families. If you do not have the time to integrate the bio's of still to be validated profiles, in a fashion that facilitates collation (example: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Bergh-36 or https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Tauken-2), we understand.

To be fair - I remember you also asking which possible best practice there was for you to edit bio's within the bounds of this project, and contribute to the validation process. At that stage we were still collating GEDCOM data. And we were also still editing the data in a fashion that we could easily discern the GEDCOM input from the different contribuants. I had no clear answer. Only now that that situation now has been passed (that fase of collation). We are now at stage - though not less complex or time consuming - we are editing bio's (or rather the GEDCOM-debris) differently. Remains the as yet unanswered question (I believe this is being worked on) what to do with the new GECOMPARE data. Which is even less clear and more messy than the old debris.

And sometimes poject members also make mistakes. I remember that I apologised to you because another very active project member completely and misguidedly removed all of you added data to a particular profile (I can't find or remember that exact profile now).

There are thousands of profiles such as these, that our project alone is taking care of.  The reason - as has been explained ad infinitum before - for posting a general message to the comment box, is to avoid swamping contribuants with even more emails. Most managers understand this; it is not an issue. In the past managers have removed the project profile from the communal profiles al together. Though this is not the reason for making the project sole manager of a protected profile as you know well by now.

The reason is that managers are moved to trusted lists in Project Protected Profiles, is so that disconnection of the parent profiles will not be possible (it has happened before, even with images proving the parentage). Having co-managers alongside the project profile still allows for this to happen.

A second reason is that if we keep active managers alongside the project as manager (on Project Protected Profiles), there is no way of keeping tab (except outside of WikITree - spreadsheets for example) - on which profiles how many extra active managers. And on merging (in case of duplication) - anyone can be added with bad data and all.

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Let’s take a break from this discussion for the Christmas season and then resume when we’re all rested and ready. The other G2G forums that are also discussing the issue of managers being removed and projects being sole manager have also agreed to a Christmas season break. Have a good Christmas season.

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Lovely idea Anton.

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Yeah let's do that Anton. I'm well aware that because of Christmas that it was agreed to put the discussion on hold in other G2G threads; it did not stop you from adding this comment 5 days before Xmas though.

After the festive season my posting will still be the same; here waiting for you.

This will also give you the time to work on some of those profiles from 2010 that I give as an example to show just how disingenous this project management bashing really is. Because you've had 8 years to work on them. Those that the project did some edting of, you did not.

Wishing all a genuinely wonderful festive season and a productive 2018.

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Yes, that has happened to me. I requested a merge be done of my relative (original profile) and the newly created one as part of the project. Once the merge was completed and I edited the profile, I was taken out and can no longer edit the profile or even add her father.

I created a category and that was taken over as well so I can edit it. I have tried to join the England project but I need to follow as series of activities before I can join. I had trouble with the group on Google was I could never access it.

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Hi Julie, we are now one year and three months later and some changes have been made. Projects are no longer moving managers to the trusted list after Project Profile Protection. I saw that you posted a comment on a non-person profile: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/WikiTree-89 … It seems to be a project (with Google-group) named "Genealogy in the Media Project WikiTree" (created March 18 last year). This is a non-person profile which only serves as a communication tool for the Google groups. No one except the Project Research Coordinator and Leader may be admitted to the trusted list. As a living person, the profile of Patsy Kensit (https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Kensit-76) cannot be part of this project because of privacy reasons, among which the GDPR (there has been no Brexit as yet). If she is a relative and if you have her permission, you can create a profile for her. But the settings will have to be on strictly private.

I see that you already are part of the England project (you have a badge!). Why that is not working for you is a question that cannot be answered in this feed. I suspect technical issues with Google gmail settings and tags.

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Frustration. I created my own tree with my own family, private. Then someone else created duplicate profiles and made then part of the project. When I requested they be merged, they were public at the time, they took over the profiles.

I have now sorted it out but it is very frustrating.

Answer 7

Collaboration means multiple people involved in improving a profile.  I think most of us agree with that.  So adding a project to a profile shouldn't cause heartburn.

And all of us have seen profiles with multiple managers who never seem to do anything, sometimes leading to the thought, "why are these people cluttering up the profile?"  So reducing the number of profile managers, as a concept, is not radical.

The heartburn comes from NON-COLLABORATIVE removal of profile managers.  When you see 15 profile managers on a page, yes, some of them are probably surplus, but you don't know what emotional investment each one has, or what contribution each one hopes yet to make.  Blindly removing people has no benefit to WikiTree other than cleaning up what may appear to be a little bit of clutter, but it can cause significant damage to the emotional connection people have with WikiTree, and the energy they give this site as a result of it.  When you remove someone as a profile manager without their consent, you simply do not know how much damage you are doing to that person's impulse to spend time on WikiTree.  So I would consider non-collaborative profile manager removal a form of vandalism.  Really.

We already have an automatic expression of this.  Imagine that I create a profile LNAB-246 and spend a lot of time documenting it.  Then I discover it really is a duplicate of LNAB-111 which was created 3 years ago by GEDCOM but it is PPP'd.  I dutifully arrange to have the two profiles merged.  Any profile managers on LNAB-246 are automatically converted to trusted list, but the profile managers on LNAB-111 who basically haven't done anything for 3 years are still profile managers.  That happened to me once.  I was graciously offered the chance to be upgraded to profile manager again, which was only right, but the damage is done.  It's been at least a year, and I remember this with continued irritation.  I won't work on that profile again.

Wikitree:  Where Genealogists Collaborate.  Remember that!.

Comments

Jack,

The conversion from PM to TL when a profile is merged into a PPP-ed profile is done not by a human, but by the system. I would encourage you or anyone who is subject to that tech, to request to be upgraded to PM after the merge is complete. You have a very good case for being made so.

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Jillaine, I do appreciate your affirmation, and I know it's done by the system, but the system was programmed to do that, and the thought behind the programming reflects the same disregard for collaboration that is in evidence here.  

I've personally promoted taking inactive profile managers out of the system, but always in a format where PMs are given both notice and an option, "We notice you haven't been active on this profile for two years.  If you would like to continue as a PM, please respond to this email, or click yes, or something."  That type of approach would leave the PM feeling affirmed and respected.

The issue here is really not at all about who is appropriate to manage profiles, but is about how we treat other human beings who have been encouraged to spend a significant amount of time developing this genealogy site.

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Jack,

My understanding of the intent behind the programming in question (I remember when this changed occurred) was to prevent people from coming along and intentionally creating a duplicate then merging because they didn’t want to collaborate on a project-protected or pre 1700 profile but wanted control. The result was that early profiles that had had a lot of work done on them were significantly compromised, frustrating the efforts of a large number of people.

Yes it has the unfortunate side effect that you experienced, but my experience is that your example is more the exception than the more frequent action that led to this change.

I’m sorry it had the effect it did on you.

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I do agree Jack that PM's should be told, or given the options, before being removed.

I am a PM on most of the leaders of the Irish Uprising, and most are managed by the Irish Roots project now as well and I am happy with that, in fact requested it. I would, as a card carrying Sinn Fein member - the political party just to to clarify, have been more than a little upset if I had been summarily removed. Fortunately I was not.

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I don't think WikiTree has a Neutral Point Of View policy.  But if it did, that would obviously suggest a different type of case for removal of PMs.

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What would such a policy look like and how would that effect removal of PMs? Clearly not obvious to this reader. :-)

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I'd guess he means any removal would need to be by someone not directly involved, especially not their own ancestor.

One case where I do support PMs removing other PMs is after a merge where the merged away profile was a gedcom import of no value and a duplicate that should not have even been created.  A user who does that should not automatically become a PM of a well done profile.  If on the other hand the merge was into a lower numbered gedcom import of poor quality should the original PM get to stay then? (I've never removed those.)

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I agree 100%. The emotional turmoil of having my categories and profiles taken over with no regard for my feelings  is really upsetting.

Answer 8

I greatly support the project approach to profile protection and management. The project approach allows for people to collaborate, but in a way that is governed by certain methods and reasoned (and tested) structures. The main reasoning for the benefits of project collaboration and ownership of profiles are:

1. The recognition that no single person owns his ancestral legacy. We share our ancestry, and we develop these profiles with the intent to ensure that our descendants can access and interpret the information correctly, without MASSES of duplication spread all over. Most importantly, the project approach enforces levels of validation that is critical for the establishment of trusted data (and Wikitree as a trusted environment).
2. We know that archival systems national and internationally do not accommodate for information interchange in the semantic web era, hence the masses of unconnected data. Projects on Wikitree (and elsewhere) allow firstly for the creation of a system that is continually developed towards Web compliance, and secondly that the information is structured (identified, listed, cited etc.) in compliance for information interchange and sharing in a linked data environment.

In my opinion, the problems with the project approach to profile management is due to:

1. Friction caused by individuals who do not understand (might not be of their own doing) the intent of these projects. This can be rectified by effective communication.
2. Friction caused by individuals who are intent on NOT wanting to collaborate. Well, not sure how to deal with this.
3. Friction caused by project managers that are completely inundated by the workload, and as such are not able to communicate timeously with wikitreers. Maybe if more members can participate with agreement to adhere to protocols established?
4. A decision to be made by Wikitree Management as to whether they would either want to produce a platform that is equal (or even worse) in quality (or lack thereof) than all of the other numerous platforms available, or alternatively be viewed as a trusted and advanced platform for genealogical knowledge creation and dissemination.

Answer 9

Leaders are unpaid volunteers who work very hard to assist members, individually and collectively which on this site also means watching out for the accuracy of genealogy.  This is easiest on the helping members directly level. Once you get to profiles where many members are the descendants, it becomes almost impossible to manage without a project because the leader alone cannot keep an eye on so many important profiles.

There is another thing that leaders are responsible for and that is understanding and implementing the policies and guidelines of WikiTree.  These change for the better as we grow.

Right now leaders are trying to understand and adapt to policies concerning  projects and project account management. Not all of this is new but we have new leaders and we have had leadership changes within projects.

One thing that is relatively new is that we have stickers to use instead of project boxes unless a profile is under a project account as PM.

So these situations, stickers, which lead to clarification of using project accounts as PMs, some leadership changes within projects and the instructions to update our projects to meet standards resulted in an increase in activity which I can understand would be upsetting, although it was not intended to be.

I want to make sure that everyone understands that as leaders, we are not doing any of this for our own purposes. Change is a lot of time consuming work and we like to be sure that it is for the better.

Robin’s question gives you the opportunity to express how you feel about all of this. As a leader, she has a concern that members on an individual level are not upset. G2G is an excellent place to discuss issues like this.

If you start with the benefit of the doubt that leaders are working to help members, the team is trying to make changes for improvement, and all of this is part of that framework, then the question is whether or not this is an improvement.

Comments

I hope I have accurately described what is going on among leaders. Please feel free to correct me!

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Thanks Paula for the explanation. I'm not a leader, but a project coordinator. Which can be in similar fashion very demanding as we are at times caught in the middle. Project Profile Protective management is a huge improvement. It has proven itself to be so, especially concerning the protection of the parent connections. If it is a question of rights, in my opinion I as a trusted member of a PPP-profile has as much right to have that profile protected in custodial fashion by a project, as that one person in a 100 that would like to see himself or herself still as active manager alongside the project as active manager (which disables the protection of the parent connections).

Another feature that will determine wether I personally continue my work as a research coordinator, is the future allowance (as it is now) of GEDCOMPARE input into pre-1800 protected profiles. It makes no sense to allow for that when it concerns the same junk that we have to deal with when we had GEDCOM. It has no place within serious project work, because apart from having to still then edit everyting manually into place, it is mostly user generated data from elsewhere that is being GEDCOMPARED. It is seriously undermining the validity of WikiTree.

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Thanks for your work as project coordinator!

I have to agree that it is a valuable way to protect profiles. Members who have not experienced vandalism may not realize that is something we have to protect against as well.

I was here before project accounts and I spent a lot of time, as did many of us, fixing mistakes and changes to profiles that were pretty much completed with the exception of new research findings.  Also, I spent a lot of time undoing bad mergers for profiles of different people with the same names and close dates in the same early Southern Colonies.  

Whenever a member asks me to help them with problems like these, I suggest profile protection and project management which is the best option and let them participate in the decision.

It is not true that collaboration ends when project account becomes PM. Collaboration is still needed and encouraged. Many members are experts on certain family lines and I rely heavily on them for managing those profiles.

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Thanks Paula; it is great to know that there are leaders out there who understand, acknowledge and appreciate the work we do, not only coordindators but also the active contribuants. Likewise without leadership that WikiTree will strand and sink. Leaders have huge responsibilities, having to take and make decisions that impact on us all. And we all are fallibible as humans. Mistakes will be made where a human hand is at work. As you I have seen the before and after situation. WikiTree is in a much healthier state now than ever before. I wish everyone an abundant & healthy 2018. Off to the festivities now ...

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Fortunately, I don't cross paths with Van der Walts.  I have a few ancestors in PGM but I don't get emotionally involved with those.  And I barely bump into the Euros. But Paula you manage at least 3 projects that affect all my lines.  How can one person manage everything Southern?

Genealogy is done by people/users/decendants.  This site is built on user-generated content.  You will alienate more and more of us with the "users are not good enough" attitude.  I quit adding but still fix profiles, but even that is feeling like a waste of time.

I know most of the users here are not doing real old-fashioned genealogy research, but neither are a lot of the leaders.  I did most of my research offline, although I did enjoy interaction with cousins on Rootsweb.  This site doesn't come close to what we had there.  I can't even get a reply from most PMs.  And I have yet to get any help from a Project or a leader or whatever else y'all have.  If I could ever see how projects work well, especially with regards to improving profiles through collaboration with the PM and TL members, then maybe I could be persuaded.  But what I see so far is projects are not working, they won't save the world.  I think the whole system needs to be redesigned from scratch.  Internet genealogy is a giant mess and WikiTree is not helping correct that.

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One person doesn’t manage everything Southern.  If you had been with us while we put up the Southern Colonies Project, you would be amazed at how many active members there are that help to manage that project. Now it is not as obvious but it is stil true. First of all, there are two leaders to the Southern Colonies project and many project coordinators. Each sub has one and we have many subs.  We also have researchers that will help with specific topics and family lines.

As one of the leaders, I have to watch the feed for the tags, changes to all project managed accounts, add badges and assist members.  It is in my own best interest to encourage members to be active on these profiles plus it’s the right thing to do. I am not an expert genealogist and I don’t make a distinction between members who are and who are not. It is the evidence that has to meet standards. As a leader, I encourage members to use sources that meet guidelines, especially for pre-1700 profiles. To resolve differences you probably recall I look for imagines of original documents and records when they can be found.

To answer your question directly, I don’t manage them alone. I have a lot of others that are involved including other leaders. The second part of that answer is that I devote a great deal of time to doing it. I work in the areas I have the most experience. Also, I work where I am needed when a project is in need of a leader.  I have led many projects to get them going and later help newer leaders take over if they have an interest.

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Mikey, projects exist today and have expanded in breadth precisely for the reason that they were needed.

I was on the site trying to clear up absurdly uploaded branches and utterly bogus profile data before projects came along, and I can assure you that WikiTree was a total mess in the shared deep ancestry, when it was simply left up to individuals of all kinds to just sort of work it out on their own, without any project structure.

Answer 10

I completely agree with this.  I have had a category I set up with about 30 subcategories taken over and I cannot edit it or add new sub categories.

I have also had my relative profile I created and all her relatives taken over as part of a celebrity profile even though she is private. I requested a merge with a new profile that was created, then when the merge was complete I was taken out.

There was NO consultation with either of these.

Comments

Julie, 

It sounds like you have a specific issue about a specific profile or set of profiles that may deserve a topic of their own (with specific examples) or if you're not comfortable writing the specifics in g2g, see and follow the advice on the Help page about Problems with Members. 

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

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Jillaine is correct. See my response elsewhere in this feed here ...