Help:Project Accounts
Categories: Project Leader Help
Project accounts are mainly used by topical projects for project-managed profiles. Here is more about how and why to use them.
For example, WikiTree-2 is the account for the Acadians Project. Here is the full list.
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Purpose
Projects on WikiTree were created so that groups of members could work collaboratively on massively-common ancestors, historically-significant people, and controversial profiles. This is now done through project accounts. The account is set as the Profile Manager of profiles covered by the project.
As the manager, the project email list gets the merge requests, Trusted List requests, alerts when comments are posted on profiles, and the weekly activity feed summary.
Benefits
- Project activity feed: Since the project account is managing the profiles they all appear on the project account's Watchlist. This means that the project account's Watchlist Activity Feed functions as a Project Activity Feed — it shows all the current activity on the project-managed profiles, e.g Acadian Project Activity Feed.
- Simpler contact from non-members: Project accounts make it easier for people who aren't project members to contact the group. They can post a note on the project account profile or on any profile it manages and all members on the project email list will see it.
- Encouraging activity by project members: The activity on the email list helps keep project members involved. The Activity Feed also creates a focus for member activity, e.g. members can share monitoring duties and discuss changes on the email list.
- Bot usage: Some projects may be able to run bots on their project Watchlist to apply templates or modify certain attributes.
- Unconnected Tool usage: A project account has a list of unconnected profiles just like normal account profiles. This means projects can focus on working on those profiles that need additional research.
- Following tags: The project account can follow tags that are important to the project, which will show up in the daily updates sent to the email group.
Usage Rules
WikiTree has a strict rule that profiles must represent real, individual human beings. Project account profiles represent one of the few exceptions to this rule. Therefore, we must be very careful with their usage.
Project-managed profiles must have the project box
When a profile is managed by a project account, it must have the project box.
Project-managed profiles are the only profiles that should have the project box. Project boxes and project management go together.
Project-protected profiles must be project-managed
All project-protected profiles (PPPs) must be project-managed profiles (PMPs).
However, not all project-managed profiles must be project-protected. Those extra protections are reserved for profiles that need them and meet the protection criteria.
Other managers are allowed
Profiles can have more than one manager. If a profile is project-managed, you may or may not wish to remove other managers. See Profile Manager. Others can also remain on the Trusted List.
Activity while logged into the account
Although the account will appear as the manager of profiles, it should not be used as an active account except where absolutely necessary. Activity should still be done by individual members under their individual accounts.
There are some situations where the account will have to be the one "making" the changes, like approving merges for private profiles or Trusted List requests.
One way some Leaders manage this without signing in-and-out constantly is to use different browsers. That is, they open their own account in their preferred browser and open the project account in a different one, e.g. one in Chrome and one in Firefox.
Tracking account usage
If multiple Leaders and Project Coordinators have access to the same account this can create problems if mistakes are made. It is the wiki way to track changes so that we know who did what.
Although WikiTree's internal logs record the IP address of the user logged-in to a project account, this is not publicly or easily accessible. Therefore, it is recommended that projects independently track who is logged-in to the project account. Some do this by posting a message in the project account's public comments section saying they're signed in.
Creating Project Accounts
Project accounts are created by the team. Contact the Project Manager.
Any top-level project or sub-project that manages profiles must have a project account.
A sub-project should use the top-level project's project account to manage profiles until they have at least two upper-level volunteers as part of the project (Leaders and Project Coordinators), have at least three other regular project members, and will end up actively managing at least 200 profiles.
Free-space projects cannot manage profiles so they cannot have project accounts. Project teams can only do so on behalf of their project so they don't need separate project accounts.
The email address for the project account should be the project's Google Group email list, which is also created by the team.
Project Leader(s) and Coordinator(s) should be set as Profile Managers of the project account.
This page was last modified 14:52, 28 August 2024. This page has been accessed 8,003 times.