Input on plan for welcoming more genealogists and highlighting genealogical interests? [closed]

Question

Hi WikiTreers,

Back in November we talked here about making WikiTree more welcoming to all genealogists, even those who don't yet plan to help grow our tree. I believe we have something to offer all genealogists, and all genealogists have something to offer us. We want everyone to be able to comment on profiles, participate on G2G, and record their DNA tests. And maybe someday they'll sign the Honor Code and do more.

Currently, you have to jump through a lot of hoops to have an account. We intentionally try to scare off genealogists who aren't sure they want to do collaborative genealogy. At one point in our history we went so far as to require that new members be invited by current members. We pulled back from that, but never completely reversed the attitude.

So, we are planning to make a variety of pages more friendly and welcoming for new visitors. We're also planning these functional changes:

1. We'd create a new set of genealogist questions.
2. Your answers would be displayed at the top of your profile, along with tags and surname activity to highlight who you are as a genealogist.
3. Guests who answer the genealogist questions would get Family Member accounts without having to volunteer and be confirmed by a Greeter.

We would not be creating a new member type, as envisioned before. The Family Member account type and its permissions would not change, and no other rules of participation would change.

To summarize the permissions for Family Members: They can edit a post-1700 profile if they have created it or are added to the Trusted List. They can upload GEDCOMs for searching but not for adding or editing profiles. They cannot edit Category or Project pages. They can do almost anything else, but after 100 contributions the invitations to sign the Honor Code become more persistent and after 300 contributions they lose the ability to create new profiles and edit relationships until they sign. All this would remain as it is.

Here's a draft of a new page to describe the member levels: Help:Membership. This would replace Help:Member_Types and Help:Community_Membership.

Here's what we have in mind for the genealogist questions. This would replace the form that currently invites Guests to volunteer and follow tags.

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Use this space to tell your cousins and other genealogists about yourself.

1.)
o I am a professional genealogist.
o I am an amateur genealogist.
o I am new to genealogy.
o I am interested in family history.

2.)
o My most up-to-date family tree is on (select all that apply):
[ ] Ancestry
[ ] MyHeritage
[ ] Findmypast
[ ] FamilySearch
[ ] WikiTree
o I maintain my tree elsewhere (optional: you can use the space below to explain where).

3.)
o I have taken a DNA test (select all that apply; more details can be added later):
[ ] Family Tree DNA Family Finder
[ ] Family Tree DNA Y-Chromosome
[ ] Family Tree DNA Mitochondrial
[ ] Ancestry DNA
[ ] MyHeritage DNA
[ ] 23andMe
[ ] another autosomal test
o I have not taken a DNA test or prefer privacy.

4.) I am most interested in these surnames, locations or topics: (For example, van_dam, england, mayflower. You will get updates about these but can turn them off. You can add more or edit them later.)
[tag 1]
[tag 2]
[tag 3]

5.) What else would you like to tell your genealogist cousins? If you are not active on WikiTree you could use this space to explain if your ancestry here has mistakes or missing information.
[text box]

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A Guest who answered the first four questions would have their account confirmed automatically. Allowing Family Member accounts without a human being confirming the new member would be a significant change, but I don't think the risks are too great. Greeters, we hope, will still want to welcome new members, and Rangers will still be watching for spam and vandalism.

We're envisioning including members' answers in a new section at the top of profiles, perhaps something like this:

This would replace the Followed Tags section that we currently have on profiles, and as you can see, the badges are moved up as well. The idea is that everything that sets members' profiles apart from other profiles on our tree would be on top -- front and center to highlight who we are as genealogists.

You might be wondering about the "Most active in January 2020" section. This is something we've been working on for a little while. We will soon start listing the top contributors to each surname each month, and highlighting the top surnames to which each member contributed in previous months. This will be a more sophisticated way to acknowledge top contributors than our current Club 1,000 and Club 100 badges. We'll still be doing those badges as we do them now, based on the raw total number of contributions. For surname contributions we'll count the number of different profiles with a given surname to which we've contributed.

Do you have any thoughts on the above? Please answer here. Thanks!

Onward and upward,

Chris

Comments

Susan I did not mean intuitive when creating profiles. I was referring to making it easy to see what to do to become a Member of Wikitree. I consider the list of options to click created by Chris to be intuitive. Many websites choose an intuitive method of joining.

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"Intuitive" (as in 'interface' and 'instructions') should not be confused with "easier" and "more" (as in 'joining' and 'members').

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Although I do get that "user friendliness" is a concept that pertains to more aspects of online genealogy than one.

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Susan I am so sorry I may have offended you. I agree that the definition of the word "intuitive" is quite different from my usage. I meant "user friendly".

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Thank you Philip - yes I used the word intuitive whereas "user friendly" would have been more approrpiate. My bad!

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Yes I have utilized the videos for the suggestion list.  I must admit I am not current on the other videos available.  Perhaps we already have the videos for a new person to learn how to do all things involved with creating a profile etc.

Taylor

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Greeters Project questions in new answer

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"I need help finding sources." is a good idea.

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What's the status of this, please, Chris, given all the responses? Thanks.

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This discussion has now moved here: https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/1000360/what-do-you-think-of-these-new-member-questions

Answer 1

Question 2 needs an option like "None" or "I don't have one" or "I don't know" or "This is all new to me".

Also, are you planning on eliminating the greeter or welcomer comments?  That would be a bad idea.

Comments

Good point!

Answer 2

I believe we have something to offer all genealogists, and all genealogists have something to offer us.

It would be easier to comment if there was a clearer explanation of what the "somethings" on both sides of the equation are. Why are the numbers ("all") important? Why is "welcoming" the solution? What, really, is "welcoming"? The conclusion is being assumed. The answers and comments in this thread indicate users of this site - involved users bothering to reply to the G2G thread - are all over the map, and WT leadership hasn't really articulated the basis for their conclusions. 

I came to WT because I liked the OPOT collaboration (that, and the pledge to remain public and free).  Why is it necessary or desirable to appeal to people who aren't interested in collaborative genealogy? 

I'll be honest, the shift away from collaboration and  increased emphasis on speed genealogy events are leading me to re-think my use Wikitree. I really don't mean that as a criticism. Sites evolve. It just may be evolving away from me.

Comments

Ellen, for what it's worth, Chris' post says "We intentionally try to scare off genealogists who aren't sure they want to do collaborative genealogy."  I don't see any explicit statement saying that we're abandoning that philosophy and targeting people who aren't interested in collaboration, although it does seem that the "more welcoming" environment could attract such people, at least for a fairly brief trial period.  I don't know if that will turn out to be a good thing or not.  I guess we'll see.  I agree that the site has done a lot of evolving and probably will continue to do so.  Some of the evolution does rock the boat for those who are content with the status quo.

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Of course there'a lot of ambiguity in the whole TL business.

If it's the assumption that PMs are picky about who they add to their TLs, then on that basis Family Members can hardly get involved in general collaboration, even if they've identified themselves as genealogists.

On the other hand, in practice many PMs on Open profiles will automatically accept all TL (and PM) requests, and won't bother to get involved in what happens after that.  Which means the restrictions placed on Family Members can't be relied on to have any real effect.

Answer 3

As far as moving the ''followed tags'' from the right to below the name, I am averse to this myself, considering the number of tags I follow.

The whole part that reads ''I am an amateur genealogist...... my tree can be found on.... I have taken xyz DNA tests....'' belong in the bio.

The part about ''Most active in January (Name) ...'' seems unclear to me as to what it's about.  The contributions you made to a particular family name?  Eeeek.  Considering that I work on whole family groups sometimes who may not even be related to me, just part of the project, I definitely do not see the point of that.  Personally, contributions to a specific name are irrelevant.  I know, you like to keep statistics, but this is going overboard.  Use up more computer power for no real benefit.

Comments

oh, and you need to find another name for them than ''Family Member'' account.  I have family members who are on here, although they just look, not active as WikiTree members.  A new person getting a ''Family Member'' tag, whose family?

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Good points, Danielle.

Several people so far have commented that the term Family Member is confusing, and I agree.

For counting the number of contributions to a family name, it could make sense if we all had unique names but seems to me it would be totally meaningless if the name were Brown or Smith, for example.

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I also dislike "The contributions you made to a particular family name". I hop and skip all over my tree, and work on people unrelated to me - this would not be a useful stat, nor am I ever looking for this on anyone else's profile. If someone has a huge interest in a particular surname, I would expect that to be in their bio.

Answer 4

Hi all,

I agree that the initial entry into WikiTree can a little off-putting, and I appreciate Chris and his team's efforts, but let's not make it too easy to join.

I'm a member of the Greatest Greeter team. On a daily basis, we weed out underage children, spiteful/ignorant people who come to do deliberate damage, and spammers. If we let people in without vetting them, it becomes even riskier.

I do have three suggestions. Since I signed up over four years ago, some of them might be outdated. If so, my apologies.

Welcome Video - What if we made a little 30-second video explaining our goals and outlining the initial process? There are longer videos on Youtube done by WikiTree, but they are not official, and they are a little (forgive me) over complicated and/or verbose for seniors and newbies.

Combine Honor Code into Confirmation - If we're looking to steamline the guest's entry into WikiTree, how about combining the Honor Code into the Confirmation? 

Wait on GEDCOM/DNA - I would also suggest that we do not ask for DNA or GEDCOM information until AFTER the guest becomes a new member. That does seem like a pretty big stumbling block to cautious or confused people.

Thanks,

Claire

Comments

good comments, Claire.

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A Welcome video is probably fine for the native Anglophones here, but personally I have trouble understanding those videos. I've been reading and writing in English for fifty years, and can normally follow English or American movie dialogs, but Youtube amateur videos are mostly so flawed with bad sound and sloppy diction that I don't get half of what's being said.

In addition to the questionnaire all in English, it will set non-Anglophones even further apart as second-class members.

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This might help, Leif: Any such video should have complete closed captioning. Every word should appear in text, on the screen. This would be helpful to people, like me, who don't usually want to turn their sound on, and to people who might not understand English as well as they can read it.

Of course, ideally, over time, such videos would be reproduced in multiple languages. In the meantime however, complete captioning please.

Answer 5

Am I correct to think this PROPOSED checklist applies only to newcomers, and NOT to those already PM at Wikitree?

Comments

Well, presumably there would be a new profile template applied to everyone who's currently a member, regardless of whether they have answered the questions. But if someone weren't to answer the questions, there would be a default value applied, based on the data already available on your profile e.g. 

Susan Smith

I am an amateur genealogist. My most up-to-date family tree can be found here on WikiTree. I haven't listed any DNA tests.  

So that would probably be done for everyone. 

Personally, I could see some value in gathering more info about WikiTree's users, however the fill-in-the-blanks display bothers me since it shoehorns everyone into narrow categories in order to turn user profiles into a Facebook for Genealogists... about 10 years too late.  

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JN, it seems like you're presuming a lot, and I can't imagine that most of us current WikiTreers would enjoy having ourselves represented by your suggested default.

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Ah, well if that were the default, my name, I'm an amateur, most up to date family tree is at WT, no listed DNA tests, then I can live with it very nicely. [edited to complete the sentence]

Pointless as it seems to me, it's an okay default.  At least it is essentially factual. And my personal conceit isn't so unruly as to suggest I need more than bare facts.

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Julie, when there's an update to the site infrastructure (and that is what this would entail), it would affect all profiles of the same type. And currently there are only two major types: user profiles (mine and yours) and everything else (Henry VIII... to your great great grandmother). All user profiles would need to change. 

That's a fairly typical situation for every internet site, since it's more costly to maintain multiple versions, It's why despite many people protesting at every update to Facebook, the site still updated to the new look for everyone. So I'm not presuming anything, I'm merely describing what is typical. 

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OK, good point, and you clearly know more about that than I do.   But all the more reason to consider the effect on existing members.

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Julie

Everyone affected will adapt and adjust to the New Norm. Humans do that.

Humans who do not want the particular New Norm and who have an Alternative Norm they can employ and / or be comfortable with will migrate to where the Alternative Norm is located.

Newcomers who migrated in from some other place will not notice the difference. In time they too will also be compelled to adapt or adjust to a New Norm imposed and will either do do or they will if possible seek an Alternative Norm to migrate to.

Answer 6

When you asked this question, I didn't envisage that the link to the page with Top Names and Top Contributors would be scrapped with immediate effect, before anything came out to replace it.

For the last few years, near the beginning of each month I have gone to the homepage to look for the link to the top 100 surnames and top contributors for that month, to see where I come in the ranking, and if any of the surnames i've been working on made it into the List. This month it's not there. I found out here

https://www.wikitree.com/articles/features/

that "This page is not currently being updated. See the WikiTree home page for the daily Top 25 surnames."

This has badly disappointed me, as I really enjoyed looking at the full list of surnames and also knowing where I came, achievement wise and how many contributions I had racked up. I'm not interested in running a race, it just spurred me on when I was feeling like quitting and let me know the work I had done had a measure.

I'd like to see this reinstated. I don't care how it's dressed up or where it is, as long as I can find it easily and see the site's top 100 surnames each month and know my exact number of contributions/ranking.

Comments

Whatever we do, let us make it as difficult as possible for anybody to join and remain here.  I don't recall having to answer a full-length exam paper just to become a member.  All I had to do was sign the Honor Code.  Back thewn, the test to be certified for pre-1700 meant answering a few questions that had nothing to do with the topic; now we need to post to a research thread.  Wikitree has now been in existence for long enough to know what it wants to be;  changing the rules so often should be unnecessary.  I don't know of any other site that does it.  And you wonder why members get up and leave!  Some of us have a more varied existence, and don't spend 24/7 on genealogy.

Answer 7

I am concerned that in making things easier for one group of people to join, we are actually making it harder for the group we most need to attract.

In order for WikiTree to achieve its stated goal, we desperately need more non-English speaking members. However the first thing they will now be presented with is a questionnaire to complete in English. I don't see any mention that from the start the questionnaire will be available in a choice of languages (this should not be a later afterthought, it should be factored in from the beginning). The websites listed are also all the main English-speaking ones, but where are all the big non-English ones?

Since we are reviewing the first interaction that prospective members have with WikiTree, and attempting to make it "more welcoming to all genealogists", this seems like a missed opportunity to start making WikiTree a truly international site.

Comments

O.K.  Look at the people you want to attract, and go about attracting them, not sending everybody else away; that is Microsoft style.  I was born with inherited depression.  Dale Carnegie "didn't believe" in it; my father "didn't believe" in it; a Wikitree member set herself up to be a one-person editorial board, and deleted my question here about it before any other member could see and reply to it.  What was she afraid of?  Depression is now the No. 1 world illness according to the WHO.  But I have had a useful if interrupted working life;  I treated my condition as a disability, not an illness.

If Wikitree wants to keep its existing members and put off any new ones, you are going about it the right way.

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If Wikitree wants to attract serious genealogists, maybe they should start at the top, not at the bottom.  The criterion for a person being a "notable" is to be mentioned on Wikipedia, but apparently, that is as far as it goes.  Data Doctors wanted me to change a date of death supported by Wikipedia and by newspaper notices, and to use the inaccurate date on a statue; now they want me to abandon precise dates of birth and death I have quoted, and to use instead the dates on FAG, which are in whole years only.  All in the interests of accessibility; accuracy and the "best evidence" rule are seen as irrelevant.

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Doug, I don't think anyone wants you to defer to FAG.  We do get suggestions when our information differs from theirs.  We have the option of marking the suggestions as false.  In those cases, I think it's useful to put a note on the profile explaining why there is a difference.

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I can mark it as false, but it just sits there until I concede.  Outside Wikitree, there is only one person who believes "alternative facts."

I just noticed the following higher up in this thread, regarding the term "Genealogist":

"It is similar to saying that anyone taking photos - even with their phone - is a Photographer. "

In the USA, they call a TV weather girl a "meteorologist."

I agree with you about allowing other languages, but it is a hard nut to crack.  A similar issue is: allowing Web addresses in other languages.

I do my research elsewhere, and only record it on Wikitree.  Any other policy is simply unsafe.

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I don't know what you mean by "it just sits there."  You can mark a suggestion as "False suggestion (hide forever)" and it will disappear from your list (after some period for updating; overnight, I think).

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Overnight, or on the next weekly update?

Normally, I don't get involved with management issues.  I just get on with the work.  At the moment, I am busy with a whole list of FTM profiles that must be cleaned up.

Answer 8

Regarding ease of admittance and attracting new members:

At least in my case, I chose WikiTree as the best home for my tree data because it was more effort to join and start contributing (At the time I mistakenly thought that I could not add profiles until I was a full member, so completed the requirements immediately. I am in favor of this being the real process.)

I had previously tried more popular and more user-friendly sites only to eventually be driven away by the massive volume of un-sourced and erroneous information, and the constant tug-of-war with people changing profiles at a whim.

But my hesitance to join a collaborative tree was actually overcome by WikiTree's more stringent policies. My full tree had been built on my PC, but I am slowly migrating to WikiTree.

So, imo making this a relatively strict but fair and friendly site will attract more legitimate members.

Comments

Joe, I wasn't drawn (initially) to WikiTree for the same reason(s) as you, but I came to appreciate those very thing you mention: a more stringent policy on the quality of work here.

Answer 9

Regarding member profile page changes:

Has it been considered to keep member WikiTree profiles looking exactly like non-member profiles, except with a prominent button "Contributing Member" which brings one to the members G2G Profile page?

Perhaps the G2G Profile page is the proper place for most of this great member information (user answers, badges, followed tags), and not the WikiTree Profile page?

Answer 10

I agree with others' comments about the use of the term Genealogist. I have made over 31,000 contributions here since joining in 2014, and I still would not be comfortable with calling myself a Genealogist. I do genealogy, but that doesn't make me a genealogist, in my view.

It is similar to saying that anyone taking photos - even with their phone - is a Photographer. 

I greatly prefer the use of a range of experience for this sort of question: what level are you in terms of genealogy research: beginning, intermediate, advanced, professional, etc.

The answers to the questions appearing at the top of a  user's profile bother me. I'd rather write my own headline, whole-cloth, than use the answers to questions used to apply to join WikiTree. I hope existing users won't be forced into using this type of headline.

Personally, I don't see value in listing the top surnames each participant has worked on in the past month. To what end? As an Arborist, I work on a lot of profiles that have nothing to do with my family; what is the value in showcasing them at the beginning of my profile?

Also, speaking as an Arborist, I worry about someone being able to make 300 contributions without signing the honor code. I have seen people contribute a significant amount of incorrect/false/spurious information, and create relationship messes within the first 300 contributions.

Lastly, I do think that one of the nicer aspects of WikiTree is the Welcoming process. I would hate to see us get rid of that.

I have noticed a few true Professional Genealogists used to have accounts on WikiTree, but seem to have abandoned them; has there been any effort to learn why? 

Which brings me to another thought: What does WikiTree aspire to be in the future? Perhaps clearly stating that objective would help drive the on-boarding process. This statement from the help page on "How to use WikiTree"   "WikiTree is a community of genealogists dedicated to growing The Free Family Tree — a single tree that connects us all and is accessible to us all." seems very inclusive, which is good, but it is vague, and says nothing about the effort to ensure the tree is accurate and healthy. Where are we headed?  

Comments

It's a good question.  WikiTree doesn't sell itself as pro-bono work, like Wikipedia.  It calls us Users, not Contributors.  It sees itself as a Service Provider to people building their own trees for their own ends, in competition with the pay sites.  But they don't have sourcing policies and style guides.

Answer 11

I Like this!!!!! Its me ARORA [[G-499]] my laptop is broke for few more days cant get into my passwords and dont wanna change it..so just pokin in to say...this is qreat!

Answer 12

Generally supported. The number of times I have invited relatives to Wikitree and have had them decline the invitation is scary. Anything to be more welcoming would be nice.

Answer 13

I am fairly new to Wiki Tree... I've been on here less than a year. I really appreciated the information that was included in the responses I got from Greeters initially. The information helped me as I was learning to climb the branches. I can see that it will be much less time consuming for the greeters if membership is more intuitive but I hope that we could make still make the helpful information easily accessible to new members. That's my 2 cents on the subject. :)

Answer 14

Hi all!

Speaking for myself, I think this is a wonderful step forward for WikiTree. I can understand some of the hesitations that some of you have in regards to the honor code and them being auto-confirmed. 

We will still have the Greeters there greeting the new members, welcoming them, looking for any possible problems; and we will still have Rangers on the lookout for any possible vandalism or unintentional mistakes (which we can then help them fix). We definitely aren't going to let the members who haven't signed the honor code run wild without being monitored, it's not like they will have a different set of rules than the rest of us; we won't ever accept spam, vandalism, or just plain discourtesy.

We have to remember this member type already exists, people can already do limited profile creation and edits without signing the honor code - also people can ask and answer questions on G2G without even being logged in. Also, I want to point out our 'Terms of Service' and they need to agree with them before registering! It covers a very important part that I think that most of you are concerned about:

"General. Our goal is to maintain WikiTree as an inviting, useful, safe and well-functioning community for all users. We reserve the right to prohibit or remove, without prior notice, any content that, in our sole judgment and discretion, interferes with that goal."

I think this approach will give people a chance to explore WikiTree by letting people add their immediate ancestors, their DNA test, etc at first to just browse and my view is that then they will love WikiTree just like we do and want to sign the honor code and be full time contributors! I believe this will help WikiTree in the long term, as WikiTree grows bigger and better! Why not be more welcoming to all?

:)

Answer 15

There have been lots of good responses to this post! I have upvoted the ones I especially agree with, so I'll try not to repeat them again, but I do have a few thoughts.

I'm slightly concerned about allowing automatic confirmation without human intervention, but I feel our current safeguards with Rangers and Greeters are already good enough. Do we have any statistics currently on percentage of member requests that end up being denied or stopped because of spam or vandalism? Maybe it would be good to monitor if there are any changes in the statistics after this is implemented.

Regarding the Help:Membership page, under the Guests heading, I think there needs to be another sentence added that says something like "If a Guest decides they want to upgrade their membership to Family Member or Wiki Genealogist, they can do so by ..."

I like the idea someone else posted of having responses to the first question to be "beginner, intermediate, advanced, professional," which is more descriptive of a person's experience. I would much prefer this over most people being lumped into "amateur." Maybe we could add a definition of each of the four choices. For example, "professional" traditionally means "for pay," but in a genealogical context it could mean several other things.

Regarding question #2, I would modify it to something like "My most up-to-date family tree is maintained on" (a) this website: ____ [fill in the blank]; (b) genealogy software on my computer; (c) paper-based files; (d) none.  This change would accommodate international sites as well as people who have not maintained any work online.

Placement of question responses: I kind of like the responses being added at the top of the profile in a separate section, which could be informative. However I would not be opposed to inserting them at the top of the biography section if that becomes the consensus. Either way, people should be allowed to edit or remove it if they choose. I assume this new section would be of limited size, say 300 characters, and that the rest of us "legacy" WT-ers could manually add text to it on our existing profiles? Or will there be a handy app that would let people answer the questions and update it automatically? I would not be fond of a "default" being applied without my input.

Placement of followed tags: Instead of moving the list "as is" to be above the badges, taking up a lot of space, I would rather see a wrapped list of tags that shows the details in "mouseover" text. I would be in favor of that type of display even if it ends up staying at the right, where it is now. Maybe that would make allowing more than 20 to be more feasible in the future - but that is a separate topic!

And lastly but not least importantly, I feel that the questionnaire should be developed in multiple languages before implementing it at all. If we want to be welcoming and be considered as an international site, this must be done. Surely we have enough language talent among our membership to easily accomplish the translation of a few questions!

Answer 16

If you want to broaden the appeal of something, give it less personality.  Make it more neutral.  Any move in a minority direction will put off more people than it attracts.

Targetting a market will narrow the appeal.  Sometimes it even puts off the target market.  Some people cringe at having their buttons pressed.

So if I were doing genealogy on other sites, and I hadn't joined WikiTree, what would put me off?

The huge difference between WikiTree and other sites is that WikiTree has an army of unpaid untrained unprofessional volunteer Leaders and other badge-wavers, and their activities are far more intrusive than anything you get anywhere else.

Obviously there has to be an acceptable use policy, with some policing and banning.  That covers spam, abuse, copyright etc.

But on WikiTree, it's gone way beyond that.  Substandard contributions are now a disciplinary offence.

You can even be in trouble for what you haven't done.  You certainly don't get that anywhere else.

And then there's the relentless pedantry.  No other site tells you whether to say "Colony of" or "Province of", like it makes a difference.  If people want to be that picky in their own stuff, great.  If everybody did, even greater.  But some people might think it's not their top priority.

The Honor Code isn't the Acceptable Use Policy.

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Special:Honor_Code

https://www.wikitree.com/about/acceptable-use.html

The "Honor" should mean it's not a stick to beat your neighbours with.  It's down to them.

To broaden its appeal, WikiTree might need to rethink its attitudes.

PS On the other hand, there's clearly a market for OCDTree, so perhaps WikiTree should just go for the niche.

Comments

Wikitree is free so you have to pay the price.  

Do not complain, but give positive ideas and hope that the captain of this "democratic" ship will do something with it and steer it in the right direction.

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I think the rudder's stuck.  The userbase is a self-selected sample and will always vote for more of the same.

Answer 17

A "Recent Profile Comments" feed would be good.  People can't come here to read and answer comments if they can't find them.  The watchlist feed and the taglist feed don't cut it.

Answer 18

Hi Chris

I've taken a couple of days to respond to this in order to be sure that I understood the 'Big Picture' and could provide constructive feedback.

1. I think the overall concept has merit and when it is implemented carefully, it will improve WikiTree as a whole.
2. I am concerned about new members of any kind not being involved with a Greeter.  I am aware that further discussion on this issue is underway.  Hopefully that discussion will result in continued contact with a Greeter, for new members.
3. The questionnaire is an excellent idea.  I think it will help many of our more experienced members (Rangers, Mentors, Mediators, and Leaders) determine how to address any situations or concerns that may arise day-to-day.  I do think that the first question could be a little more informative.
   1. I am a Professional Genealogist
   2. I am an experienced Genealogist/Family Historian (20+yrs)
   3. I am a seasoned Genealogist/Family Historian (10-20 yrs)
   4. I am a Student Genealogist/Family Historian (5-10 yrs)
   5. I am new to genealogy/family history

Or something along those lines.  This doesn't effect the permissions a person has.  The Membership Type assigned to the member takes care of that.

Good luck!  I think this idea has wonderful potential!

Answer 19

I like the idea of updating our joining process. I admit, it's been quite a few years since I went through it and way back then I interacted directly with Chris W. That said, I like where this proposal is going.

One thing to note, nowhere does it say we're omitting the wonderful work the Greeters do. They won't be confirming new members but they'll absolutely be needed to welcome new potential members and guide them through their questions during the process. They are the first friendly face when people come to WikiTree and I think most, if not everyone, agrees an essential part of our community. They're that first taste of working with real people, real volunteers and not just automated processes. Their procedure may change a bit, but the need for the Greatest Greeters will not.

It sounds like a lot of the consternation so far (and I've read every answer and comment on this thread to date) comes from two places: a misunderstanding of the fact that we already have a family member or lower tier membership option and from the descriptions of the options for what kind of historian you are.

We already have many, many Family Members on WikiTree. Most end up joining, whether by invitation or just to look around, and add their parents, grandparents, maybe immediate family, and that's it. They are a major contributor to the living profiles on WikiTree, in part, because they are the primary sources of the knowledge of those people. If they leave those profiles get deleted. They aren't something that even qualify with the usual sources as few people are going to add current, living people's birth record to a profile. This membership level cannot contribute beyond that limited number of edits, and they can't go in to edit any profile they aren't on the trusted list for. Does that mean that there's a risk of duplicates? Yes. But, since that's already a membership level, it really isn't adding any more risk than we already have. Essentially, we're expanding the definition of "Family Member", as you all have mentioned, which should be maybe be renamed to something else so it's clear it isn't intended just for Family Members but for anyone wanting to contribute just a little, not a lot, whether a family member or Professional Genealogist.

Why the push for genealogists? For one, WikiTree's collaborative nature turns a lot of them off. It's not that we don't treasure all our members-WE DO. But, we love to have new ones, too! This is in part updating our networking. Even if those professionals do not ever become WikiGenealogists, having an account here helps them understand us better, and thus if someone asks a question about WikiTree, they are better equipped to explain, from firsthand experience, rather than write us off as another crowd-sourced collection of rubbish. Which we obviously aren't. If you've ever worked the booth at Rootstech, though, you know that it's easy for that to be a first impression of many. You really have to get into our community to better understand it. These changes are aimed at that-expanding understanding by making it a little easier to come in the doors. I answer many emails each week with people confused on needing to wait for a person to confirm them before they can proceed. Greeters to a great job staying on top of this process, but if all someone wants is to add a generation or two to get a taste for things, it makes sense to let them do that much. 100 contributions can tally much faster than you think when you are actually trying out all the tools available. I have seen accounts closed where 50 of those edits were on two profiles-their own and one parent's. The member was diligently playing with what we had to offer. That's what we want.

I think Joyce Rivette's suggestion to possibly tweak the some of the question options makes sense, if that's what much of the hold up is. Maybe a secondary question that can appear if someone chooses the top "experienced" choices to optionally indicated whether someone has associations they're certified through, special training, etc. I also think the fill in the box idea for other places trees are kept makes sense, as noted, so we don't have to come up with all the various trees out there. Maybe just a last fill-in-the-blank option after the big names if we want those pre-filled? And lastly, definitely like the idea of a hide/show button for that top section. Keep in mind, that would only show on active profiles, not on ancestors, obviously. Those pages are staying the same.

I like where this is going, and I think it will be beneficial to WikiTree.

Comments

Two questions.

(1) It hasn't been explained why we need both the Guest level and the Family Member level, if the questionnaire is the only thing that separates them

(2) Will it be possible to close a Family Member account, open another one, and get another 300 edits?

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Guests cannot edit anything but their own profiles. The family member account does have the option to create some profiles and add a little family history, up to that 300 edit limit.

In answer to the second question, not easily. Once an account is closed, it has to be manually unblocked. That person has to email info@ and start the process, if approved.

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But why not combine the questionnaire with the initial registration and go straight to Family Member without the Guest stage?

In the current system, Guest is the parking place while you wait for Greeter approval.  But in the new system, you'll only be a guest member for as long as it takes to think of 3 pithy comments for your tags.

Answer 20

As someone who joined fairly recently (last summer), I would agree that there are improvements to be made to the process. I wanted to start adding family here, because I had the impression that WikiTree had a higher standard than the junk that shows up on FS and Ancestry. I was hoping that it would be a good place to put my research that I could then share with family members who were interested. I'm a bit hesitant to post this, but I saw so many people saying "It's been years since I joined. It didn't seem difficult or unwelcoming," that I thought people might like to hear of a recent experience.

I found the process of joining difficult both because it was un-welcoming and because the user documentation is so terrible. The person (Greeter?) that was assigned to approve my membership kept telling me I was doing it wrong, pointing me to user documentation that I'd already read and refusing to add me because I hadn't done it "right," even though I was following the instructions exactly, and not providing any additional explanation. 

I would ask questions and it would be a day before she got back to me. She explained these extensive delays by saying she was "just a volunteer." If she wasn't available in real-time to help, why was she assigned the task? (Other community-sourced, cooperative projects that I've been involved with like this have a way to make sure that volunteers are active and available on the site at the time.)

I finally sent another email saying that I was giving up, that WikiTree clearly wasn't for me and I would close my account. At which point, she back-pedaled rapidly and approved me. Most people would have given up long before this.

Once I finally got approved, I looked for simple explanations of how to add things, templates, or how to add citations; they were difficult to find and confusing when I did find them. I work as an editor with complex technical subjects and my native language is English. I can't imagine what it must be like for other people to navigate this mess. (And no, videos would not be better or more helpful. They're worse. I hate it when I click on an explanation for something in the data doctors suggestions and all I get is a video. I just turn it off and realize that no one could be bothered to write proper documentation, so they tried to fake it with a video and I'll have to figure it out for myself.)

I realize that a lot of this sounds harsh. Maybe I could have put some of this more delicately, but these are the real thoughts and feelings I had as I was joining. The experience made me want to walk away before I got started.

If you want to make WikiTree more welcoming, it does need to be "easier" to join--and by easier I mean the process needs to be smoother, not that the standard needs to be lower--and it needs to be far more understandable through far better user documentation. It's not the standards that are off-putting or whether you call someone a genealogist, it's the gate-keeping and confusion. I'd strongly suggest spending the limited time and energy of volunteers to fix the underlying problems, rather than adding another layer on top of them.

Comments

You are absolutely right, the help pages are a maze with links everywhere and before you know you are lost.  I had the same experience 5 years ago.  It was extra hard for me to find out how things worked at Wikitree because English is not my native language.  Fortunately I got in touch with the Dutch-speaking leader of the Dutch Roots team who showed me the way. I would soon have stopped without her enthusiastic guidance. Afterwards, with the help of a number of Dutch Roots members, we made a manual in Dutch, called Nederlands Portaal. Dutch-speaking members can now start with the beginners section followed by the advanced section and find a lot of more information via the index.

Maybe it is an idea to also organize the help pages after the WikiTree Update.

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Some of the Data Doctors created a Biography Helper page.

https://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Space:Biography_Creation_Helper

The purpose was to have on one page the order of things in the Biography section, as well as links to many of the frequently searched for and used Help Pages. 

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I appreciate the hard work that has gone into that Data Doctors' Biography Helper. I do. But more brutal truth here: It's an excellent example of the kind of problems with user documentation that I'm talking about.

A) It says right up top that it is not for people who are new and it sends them somewhere else (so where do new people get instruction on how to make bios?); b) makes a lot of references to something called "Data Doctors" and things about Data Doctors suggestions and which new people might not understand and is actually irrelevant to the information the page is trying to convey; c) doesn't actually tell you how to create profiles--it's just a collection of links that send you somewhere else; and d) shouldn't even be necessary. 

If the basic user documentation was clear and comprehensive, secondary explanation pages like this one wouldn't be necessary. If these secondary explanation pages are necessary, they shouldn't be sending away the very people (new users) who need the information and they should provide the information right there on the page! 

If you want to make it "easy" for new people to join in the work here, you have to make it easy for them to understand how. 

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R. I completely agree with you!  The "Profile help" page is an excellent example of how you get lost in the jungle of well-intended help pages through all those links.  Some links of these pages link you to pages intended for leaders.  Obviously not for beginners and advanced users have great difficulty finding their way here.

This How to start climbing our Tree is I think the best there is but I doubt whether it really covers a beginner's need.  Greeters and mentors are valuable but depend on volunteers who can help you, through correspondence for a limited number of people. That is cumbersome and a well-structured help section for beginners in English, which teaches you step by step the basics of WikiTree with as few links as possible, would be a solution.

This discussion does not actually belong here, but should be conducted in a separate g2g, focused on this topic.

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R. Conley,

Your comments about the greeter seemed so different from everything I have heard, I checked your profile page. You were welcomed by one of the finest greeters WikiTree has on the 25th, and her only request to you was to amend you tags, so she was sure that you were interested in genealogy. One of the safeguards against spam. You amended your tags, and were confirmed as a member on the 26th. Nothing else was asked of you.  Another greeter commended you for adopting orphaned profiles, a different greeter checked in with you after 2 weeks to see how you were doing, and one other greeter, I believe confirmed you for Pre-1700.

From your profile page, it looks like things went pretty smooth for you, unless I am missing something, in which case, I am terribly sorry for this comment.

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I don't want to call out specific people here. That is not my intent. As for whether you're missing something, I'll refer you back to my original post. That was my experience.

You can choose to think that I made it up for some reason and that it's more important to defend the reputation of the Greeters. Or you can take it at face value, along with the steady stream of posts to G2G about people confused about the process, delays, the user documentation, and the answers they've already been given.

You can consider the criticisms I've made of the process in the spirit of trying to make things "easier" for people to join and see if there's some way to improve. Or you can decide that there's nothing wrong with the process, I'm just a whinger, and I'm attacking the Greeters for absolutely no reason. It's the internet. These things happen.

You'll have to decide for yourself which way to go.

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Probably not the place for the discussion on this particular situation.