How should WikiTree as a whole deal with new members who are not documenting profiles? [closed]

Question

Today I saw a question posed on G2G by a relatively new member, and when I looked at several of his newly-created profiles, every one of them listed only himself or an Ancestry link as sources.  Obviously that is not ideal, and I could send him a message as I did the last time I saw that happening.  The last time, I did not get a response.  Should I then keep a list, and file MIRs on these people?  Or is what they're doing considered OK?  Or do we have anyone who takes on that responsibility so that individual members do not have to make these uncomfortable contacts?

Update:  After several hours and many thoughtful answers, I picked Eddie's as best.  Now someone has removed it.  Please respect my choice.  (Also, there is a flag that makes no sense.  I hope it will be removed.)

Update (another):  Thank you to Jillaine for pointing out that yes, WikiTree does already have a structure that deals with the problem I specifically asked about, which was new members getting off to a less than ideal start. And thank you to Karen Butler, who is one of the most gracious people I've met on WikiTree, for taking on the task of encouraging the new member to do better documentation. 

Comments

Of interest : none of the responses to your query included anything about the greeters project. (Maybe you could add that tag.)

There is a greeters project that welcomes new members and hopefully gets on the right track. Perhaps someone from that project could explain their process/steps.

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Good point!  Done.

Answer 1

Being scolded by a stranger or, worse, being ordered by a stranger, to do things, will frequently engender hostility. And some may feel they're being harassed and mistreated. Your intentions may be to foster the improvement of Wikitree but newcomers may not perceive that. Filing an MIR is a last resort when all other methods have failed and a good deal of time has passed.

When I notice a new member has a number of unsourced profiles, I do the research and send him the sources. I do NOT edit his profiles. I encourage him to learn and do. I am frequently rewarded for this thoughtfulness with Eddie is a wonderful wikitreer posts.

No one likes to be "pounced" on. It's better to make a friend instead of an enemy.

Take a few minutes to be kind and encouraging.

Comments

Good point, Eddie.  I wish I had time to research everyone else's ancestors but I haven't even finished my own.  (P.S.  Would you like a link to the person I was complaining about? )

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Sure. Send via email/private message. I will probably have time in early October. I'm currently doing Holocaust research but I take breaks from that. It is so heartbreaking and exhausting,  documenting the murders of entire families

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If you get sources and don't want to put them in the profile yourself, I would put them in a public comment on the profile rather than sending them as a private message. That way, even if the person doesn't act on them, they will be there on the profile for someone else to use.

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Excellent point, Eddie. Catch it early enough, and they’ll know what’s expected. And, I try to make my comment as kind as possible.

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I often put sources I find in Research Notes, so the PM can decide whether to use them.

In another question like this, someone pointed out that not everyone adds sources immediately and it might pay to hold off a few weeks at least.

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Thank you for the offer, Eddie.  I think for now I will alert the person's greeter, which I had not thought of before I posted the question, or until Jillaine pointed out their possible role.

Answer 2

I would have another look in a few days or so. Some people add a series of profiles from Ancestry and then go back and source them using their Ancestry sources - which may be good primary ones. Did you look at the Ancestry links ?

Comments

When I went back to take another look, I couldn't even find the one I'd found before with the Ancestry source--only profiles with himself as the source.  He has been a member for about three weeks.  He apparently even added the "Unsourced" banner to one of his own profiles!

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Joe you just reminded me to attach sources to a section of the family I added the other day.  I had a limited amount of time to do it so I just used the ancestry.com link to my tree for each person.

Now is the time to attach the sources.

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Or add an Unsourced Template and do them in the Source-a-Thon ! 

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I'll admit that when I first set up profiles, I sometimes added limited sources, and sometime wrote such thing as "1940 census," obviously not ideal.  I hope I've corrected most of those now, and I also put a note on my own profile that I was still working on my ancestor profiles and I would answer questions upon request.  But I knew from the start I shouldn't just say myself or Ancestry.

Answer 3

As long as the profile creator isn't preventing anyone else from improving the profiles and isn't creating duplicate profiles, I would leave them alone. Adding an unsourced non-duplicate profile doesn't interfere with anyone else's work and doesn't reduce the value of wikitree to others; it just doesn't add value.

Comments

Interesting point.  Maybe I should adjust my thinking.  But I can't help feeling the person is deliberately circumventing WikiTree policy.

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I have posted public comments on a Wikitreer's profile asking them to source LNAB-XXXX in hopes it would spur them to do some research.

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I agree we should give them time to add sources.   But in a way it does interfere with the work of others.    When I come across an unsourced profile  (several years old)..... I must coordinate with the profile manager when I might have just been able to add to the profile.   This can take weeks  (months???) to coordinate and often the PM will just say they don't have a source.   (For example,  it's a family tree from one of their relatives without sources.)  In the mean time,  these profiles are being viewed by the public as an example of WikiTree profiles.

The good news is, while these profiles are unsourced,  most of the time I find them to be viable profiles.

I realize this is part of being a WikiTree member, but it's beneficial to have new members start with good habits.

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Yes, Peggy, I agree about starting with good habits.  And having thought a little longer after my last comment, I think it's one thing to add parents and grandparents from memory, but we should draw the line somewhere.  I would say at great grandparents.

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Peggy - Adding sourced information to an empty profile, and adding sources to an unsourced profile, are classic examples of when you DON'T normally need to communicate with the PM. See "Be Bold Act Now" in https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Communication_Before_Editing 

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@Jessica: Me, too. I have left messages on new members’ profiles when he/she was using a book as his/her sole source, when the only source was F-A-G, or when the sole source was “Unsourced family tree.” But only if this was on multiple profiles.

Answer 4

Julie,

It seems that we need to do something. I was thinking about this today, maybe something like the pre 1700 self certification but applied to the Honor Code...as long as it doesn't scare folks away. It's not just sourcing but also the concept of a shared collaborative tree.

I follow a number of surnames. About once a week I see a group created with the type of "sources" you note. I will typically send an email which is usually ignored but sometimes starts a conversation with great results.

I do typically look at the contributions. I can see people going back in a few days or weeks. Others have been untouched for months or years, while new profiles are added.

Answer 5

Julie, I agree with the others that it would be a good idea to give it a bit more time and not pounce on a newcomer too harshly.  I wonder, however, if the new member participates at all in the G2G forum, and if you can see any evidence of that?  I suspect that anyone who has spent more than 10 or 15 minutes of his/her life reading this forum is probably up to speed on the prevailing sentiments about source citations, GEDCOM imports, and ancestry trees.  A possible back-door approach would be to suggest to the new member that he/she ought to follow the forum to gain some insight into the community standards for documenting profiles.

Comments

Dennis, I found the person from a G2G question.  But I remember my own experience.  My first couple of G2G questions were beginner's issues, and I did not participate more fully in G2G for months.  Yes, I could suggest that, and maybe I will, but it is a lot to expect of a newcomer.

And for the record, I wasn't particularly happy with the answers to some of my early questions.  (Please don't try and look it up, because this is just a general comment!)  I felt that the people answering were invested in the way things were, and not very helpful.  Speaking again from experience, it takes a while to get over the impression that WikiTree is a big club where all the old-timers are friends.

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Yes, I agree with you, and my experience was similar.  But I still support and suggest the forum because over time I learned a great deal about genealogy just from observing the questions and answers of others, both more and less experienced than me.  In some cases I learned that I was not adhering to what many consider to be good practice, and I learned it without being subjected to a personal critique by anyone.  Like everyone, I suppose, I began to get a feel for my own weaknesses, and after a while I began to recognize names and associate them with areas of expertise.  I still find myself reading some questions and answers I would otherwise pass over just because I see the name of someone who always has valuable insight or whose opinion I usually respect.  I just think it's a great learning tool for both newcomers and old-timers, and it doesn't take that long to be able to separate the "wheat from the chaff" so to speak.

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I agree with everything you've said. (Except to add that maybe I should warn them about G2G addiction and the time it takes. )

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Julie,

My experiences with G-2-G are very similar to yours.   I barely used  G-2-G for the first three years of my membership..... was just plugging along making family profiles.  (I didn't upload my very messy Ged.com  because of the phrase   "Garbage In, Garbage Out").

I gravitated to WikiTree because of the  "source" requirements..... so I was pretty good about sourcing what I posted.   But probably not perfect!!!

So I cut newbies a lot of slack....

While I learn a lot from G-2-G,   it took time for me to give up my  "loaner" habits.

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I was petrified when I first started on Wiki. I had barely signed up, and barely understood what this was going to be, when several greeters sent me messages that seemed cold and weird. I actually wondered if it was a robot contacting me. It wasn't until somebody sent me a friendly email that I felt more reassured. Never over estimate the savvy of a beginner.

It took me AGES to go from here to there on WikiTree. I never found those people who first wrote to me, it seemed like they vanished. As for asking a question in G2G help, lordy. I didn't even know how to say what I didn't know, how to talk WikiTree.

In the end some people come here but don't stay and never update or source their profiles, and others end up liking it here. I'd say conviviality, good manners and overall friendliness count.

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C, I chuckled at your comments and thought back to my own first months on WikiTree.  When I look at some of my early work I realize how ignorant I was.  First impressions of WikiTree, and how they were right or wrong, might be worth a thread of its own some time.

Answer 6

I learned that what I was doing wrong with the profiles I was creating (about three months into my membership) because two members cared enough to send very kind messages with pointers. One of these members actually did some formatting on one of my profiles, and sent me a message so that I would  see how it was done.

Not every member will respond the way I did (thrilled that someone would take the time to point me in the right direction), and some get fed up with the learning curve (I’ve seen this on G2G). So, as much as we’d like it to be, WikiTree is not for everyone. 

That said, I think a kindly worded message is all we can expect of members who see someone whose sourcing is not up to par. And if a kind message is sent, then the responsibility for the response is on the recipient. I hate that this sounds so harsh. However, in seeing such problems, we must also do our part to fulfill the Honor Code by our courtesy.

There are members who have responsibilities in this area.

Answer 7

Hi Julie, I share your concern, but I have to remind myself often, that although we all have signed the Honor Code about citing our sources, we will often have very different views about what constitutes a source and how that should be cited.

I work as a librarian at a university and have a very academic view about sourcing but that's obviously not going to be the same experience for everyone.

Added to that, although WikiTree has guidelines for what is an acceptable source for pre-1700 profiles (and even stricter guidelines for pre-1500), I'm not aware of any minimum sourcing guidelines for post-1700 profiles.

Perhaps we need to see someone just citing Ancestry.com as a step in the right direction, and as others have stated helping them along the way by suggesting better sources they could use.

Answer 8

Thank you for making me aware of this Julie, I shall send him a message regarding sources, offering to help him with adding them and where to look for them xxx

Comments

Thank you!