Now I'm really confused. This page
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Recruiting_New_Project_Members
says "Topical Projects should be open to anyone who would like to join."
For pre-1700 projects, that seems essential, because on this page
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Pre-1700_Profiles
it says "The project is the forum for collaborating on the big decisions."
But some projects attach conditions to membership. They might want you to commit to a certain level of activity. They might want you to contribute to project busywork, as well as just editing profiles.
So on the face of it, if you don't want to jump through the hoops, you're excluded from the "forum for collaborating".
And the whole project check-in thing seems to be designed to weed out members who might have some knowledge of the territory, but aren't doing anything in particular.
Of course their ability to help answer genealogical issues that might be raised isn't going to be affected by whatever else they might or might not be doing.
But project check-in seems to say, oh we don't care about that. We don't want deadwood cluttering up the membership list just because they might know stuff.
It all seems very anti-collaborative. In some cases only a fraction of the people with interests in an area have joined the project. So the pool of potential collaborators that you can tap into through the project channel is much smaller than it might be. How is this good?
