Help:Free-Space Projects

Categories: Project Leader Help | WikiTree Help

A free-space project is an easy way to organize just about any genealogy project.

While top-level projects and sub-projects have formal requirements and take a little time to set up (see the Project FAQ), free-space projects can be whatever you want them to be and you can start one right now. It can later become a more formal project.

See Starting a Project for more about creating one.

How do they work?

The center of a free-space project is a project page, which is a free-space profile.

Members of the project should be added to the project page's Trusted List. This way the profile is on their Watchlist and they'll see updates and announcements in their Activity Feeds.

Some projects use comments on the profile's bulletin board as their primary means of communication with project members. In these cases, you may want to set every project member as a manager of the page. This way they'll get e-mail when a new comment is posted instead of just seeing it in their feeds.

Other projects use G2G for their conversations. To do this, choose a project tag and put it on the project page. You can choose whatever you want but you should consider how other tags are named so that it's easier for others to remember and use your tag consistently.

All free-space projects should be categorized. This way others can find them. You can use Category:Projects but it is more important to use the regional category or other more-specific category hierarchy where others are likely to be looking for it.

Examples

All the individual one name studies and one place studies for particular surnames or local areas are free-space projects. For example:

• Andrus Name Study
• Derenk, Hungary
• New Haven Colony

Many cemeteries have free-space projects for them under the banner of the Global Cemeteries project. For example:

• Sterling-White Cemetery, Highlands, Texas
• Whitney Cemetery, Campton Hills, Illinois

Some members organize descendant groups for those who share a particular ancestor. It's a great way to work together on the lineages that evolve from that person, find hidden sources, and solve mysteries together. For example:

• Michel Richard Interest Group
• Descendants of Philip Kirtland

Genetic genealogists sometimes use them when trying to find the identity of their shared ancestor(s). Often a DNA test will reveal that you match a significant segment of DNA with other test-takers but you don't know who your common ancestor or ancestors were. A free-space project can be a great forum for coordinating to piece things together the puzzle.

• Y-DNA E-M35.1 (formerly E3b) Subclades found in WikiTree
• WIGHT Surname DNA Project
• Jackson Clan DNA I-Y8950

There are broader DNA studies as well, such as:

• Acadian DNA
• Brittons of Ireland DNA Group Project

Sometimes members want to collaborate when they had ancestors in a particular military unit. For example:

• AIF-2nd Regiment, 2nd Battalion
• Second First Australian Infantry Battalion

Free-space projects are often used for pending or future projects, i.e. topics that might later become top-level projects or sub-projects if there's enough interest. The free-space project is a great way to start to organize. For example:

• The Classic Disney Project
• British Carolina

Some genealogy societies and clubs that have a "real life" presence use a free-space project as their online presence, e.g.:

• Townsend Society

This page was last modified 16:31, 17 February 2023. This page has been accessed 15,098 times.