Help:WikiTree Team

Categories: About WikiTree | WikiTree Help | WikiTree Team

The success of WikiTree is based on its community of volunteer genealogists (see the member gallery for a few) but there is a small team that supports the community. Team members are not full-time employees. They are free-lancers who work part-time hours to support and empower WikiTree's volunteers.

Contact the WikiTree team at info@wikitree.com or use this Private Message form. Please note that this is not for "customer service." As a free, volunteer-based website, we don't have a customer service team to answer questions. If you have a question ask it in our community's Genealogist-to-Genealogist (G2G) Forum. For more personal one-on-one assistance, a volunteer mentor may be able to help you.

WikiTree Team and Community Members at RootsTech 2023

Contents 1 Paul Bech, Project Assistant 2 Abby Glann, Wood Owl 3 Eowyn Langholf, Forest Elf 4 Steve Harris, Special Projects Coordinator 5 Betsy Ko, Nightingale 6 Jamie Nelson, Community Technology Assistant 7 Julie Ricketts, Community Assistant 8 Azure Robinson, Social Butterfly 9 Aleš Trtnik, Independent Project Developer 10 Chris Whitten, Founder and President 11 Brian Casey, Chief Technical Guy 12 Contacting Us

Paul Bech, Project Assistant

Paul was one of the earliest active volunteers on WikiTree, starting in 2010. He helped pioneer the usage of free-space profiles and categories, created the Genealogy Help section, founded the Australian Convicts and First Settlers project, and took it upon himself to create this video introduction to using WikiTree.

He joined the team way back in 2013. Ever since then, if you're dealing with an Unresponsive Profile Manager or a 150-year-old profile that isn't being openly shared, Paul has been the man who helps you.

Paul has been tracing his genealogy for almost 50 years. He focuses on his Oxley and Standen lines (both from Kent, England; came to Australia in 1839 and 1841), and his Hayes, Wall, and Bech families (from Korsor, Denmark).

His wide range of other interests include photography, astronomy, "bushwalking" (that's Aussie-speak for hiking), cycling, bowling, and science fiction.

Abby Glann, Wood Owl

Abby is a wise WikiTreer with many years of experience in our community and on the team. You may not see her, but she is always working to help members with account problems and advanced community issues.

When not on WikiTree, Abby works as a small-town librarian. Her family maintains a small hobby farm and homeschools their children.

Abby is a big sci-fi/fantasy fan. So much so that she gives the farm animals names like Chewbacca, Thorn, and Princess Pi, and came close to naming her daughter Eowyn, for the Lord of the Rings character. (It's a good thing she didn't. Can you imagine a poor girl growing up with that name?!)

Eowyn Langholf, Forest Elf

Eowyn Langholf, whose parents named her for the Lord of the Rings character, is our "Forest Elf."

Calling Eowyn our Forest Elf enables us to be vague about her responsibilities. This is important because she does so ... darn ... much ... including an overall responsibility to make sure that things that need to get done by the team get done. If we wanted to be more professional-sounding we could call her a team manager or general manager.

Eowyn has many years of genealogy experience, starting at a young age when she was tagging along with her mother who was volunteering at a family history library, and including three years as a professional genealogist.

Steve Harris, Special Projects Coordinator

Steve became a WikiTreer in 2012. As a volunteer, he helped lead a number of key projects, including the Categorization, Cemeteries, and Templates projects. He could often be found answering tough, technical questions to support other members in the G2G forum.

As a team member, he uses his technical and organizational abilities to make our behind-the-scenes processes more efficient, helps to prioritize and implement new features, and aids in team resiliency.

Outside of WikiTree, he is a registered member of the Guild of One-Name Studies, a member of his local historical society, and contributes to his town's historical museum.

Betsy Ko, Nightingale

Betsy established herself as a leading community member by hosting monthly New Member Q&As on Zoom, co-hosting the Saturday Roundup Livecast, creating a Newts Challenge Team, co-leading the Events Committee, and more.

Betsy's role on the team is to support the leaders of functional projects, including Arborists, Greeters, Mentors, Mediators, Moderators, and Rangers. When not on WikiTree, she is a flutist and music teacher. As a nod to her musicality, and because this bird's powerful song can welcome you to the forest and alert you to threats, we are calling her our Nightingale.

Jamie Nelson, Community Technology Assistant

As a volunteer, Jamie created two pioneering apps: the brick wall finder and the missing link finder (accessible from links on Special:Unconnected). She also established herself as a super star community member by leading projects and helping others. She exemplifies the WikiTree spirit.

As a team member her main responsibility is to lead the WikiTree Apps Project and encourage the creation of more independent apps that use our API. She is also in charge of tracking and prioritizing improvements and bug fixes, and helps with pre-release testing.

Julie Ricketts, Community Assistant

Julie has been heavily involved in essential WikiTree projects such as the Greeters and Mentors for many years.

Now in "semi-retirement," Julie enjoys being part of the WikiTree team, where her dedication and curiosity help her search out interesting corners of the forest that need some extra TLC from a Team member.

If you run into her in one of the many rabbit holes on WikiTree, please be sure to say "hello" ... and bring snacks. :-)

Azure Robinson, Social Butterfly

Azure is our Monarch of Social Media — our social butterfly. She reps our community on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube, leads Zoom video chats, coordinates volunteer Ambassadors, and spreads the word about the WikiTree Challenge. If you love WikiTree and want to tell others about it, Azure can help.

Azure joined WikiTree in 2018 and made innumerable contributions to One Name Studies, One Place Studies, the Greeters, Mentors, Rangers, Cemeterists and more. She became a team member in November 2023.

For more about Azure, see her old "Meet Our Members" interview.

Aleš Trtnik, Independent Project Developer

Aleš's contributions to WikiTree have been immense, and he's opening up new possibilities for the community every day.

Aleš has leveraged his background in big data to analyze WikiTree's public database in creative ways. The center of his work here is WikiTree+ and the Data Doctors Project. Although the project is based entirely on Aleš's work, it's not just his exceptional technical abilities that make the project special. He listens to other members and attempts to give them what they need to improve our shared tree.

Aleš started the Data Doctors Project as a volunteer with no official connection to WikiTree, and is continuing to run it independently.

As a team member, he's ranging across the entire landscape of our operations. He's finding innumerable ways to contribute, including with GEDCOM processing and search. We don't know where his work will lead, but we expect that when the history of WikiTree is written, Aleš will be described as a transformational figure.

Chris Whitten, Founder and President

Chris has been leading online communities for 30 years. In 1994 he founded a non-profit organization for connecting libertarians and free-market conservatives online. The central community website was called Free-Market.Net: The Freedom Network. In 2002 he started a collaborative Q&A website called FAQ Farm. This later became a wiki and changed its name to WikiAnswers, and then later became Answers.com. When he left it in 2007 it was one of the top 20 websites in the world.

In 2008 Chris dedicated himself to the ideal of a free collaborative family tree — something to connect the human family and to make learning about your genealogy completely free and accessible to everyone. This is a lofty ideal, but it's not just puffy fluffy rhetoric. The WikiTree community is now making it a reality, and Chris has pledged to keep WikiTree free. He works hard alongside all the WikiTreers who share the mission.

Chris's own ancestors are from New England, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland — before that, all around Northwestern Europe. He grew up in Massachusetts and has lived in Vermont, New York, Chicago, and London. He now lives with his family in the far northern suburbs of New York City.

Brian Casey, Chief Technical Guy

Brian and Chris have been working together since 1995.

He is WikiTree's system administrator. Our lead developer. Our hacker-in-chief.

Brian's programming experience goes way back to his Commodore 64. He can proudly boast that programs he wrote for that system were published in COMPUTE!'s Gazette. Literally, published. This 1980s print magazine published programs in their machine-readable form.

If you only read human languages you may be more familiar with Brian's other published works, such as "The Spectroscopic Orbit and Subsynchronous Rotation of the Herbig Ae/Be Star TY CrA." Not human-readable enough? Then you've certainly seen his bestselling novel, Eclipsing Spectroscopic Binary Systems in Love. (Just kidding.)

Brian has a Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of Wisconsin. Lest you think this genius never gets outside, he's also an avid soccer player. And he enjoys time with his family researching their Irish roots.

Jamie, Aleš, and Brian

Contacting Us

Contact the WikiTree team at info@wikitree.com.

For a personal message to one of us you can use abby@, ales@, azure@, etc. Please do not send the same message to more than one of us. If your message isn't for just one team member, use info@.

If your message doesn't have to be private use G2G instead. G2G, our genealogist-to-genealogist community forum, is where most questions are answered. Since we're such a small team — and we have to keep it this way to be a 100% free website — members generally answer each others' questions.

This page was last modified 20:26, 22 August 2024. This page has been accessed 70,468 times.