Project: Profile Improvement

Categories: Profile Improvement Project | DD Suggestions Help

Mission: This project exists to bring together WikiTreers who love to make profiles beautiful! We clean up messy biography sections and sources, and try to set standards for attractive, useful, and well-written biographies, starting with those we manage. See the example profiles from project members.

How to Join

Are you interested in the Profile Improvement Project?profiles.gif

In addition:

  1. Complete the PIP Voyage. After completion, members are strongly encouraged to continue reviewing the profiles on their own watchlist with a goal of continuous improvement.
  2. Add [[Category:Profile Improvement Project]] to your profile page to be included on the Project Category page.
  3. If you need guidance on improving profiles, please contact Debi Hoag or your Voyage Guide
  4. For a full list of participants, see the badge report.

Contents

Goal

Profiles which are:
  • well-sourced: All facts presented in the profile should be accompanied by reliable sources.
  • well-written: The text portion of the profile should be genealogical in nature and enjoyable to read.
  • well-structured: The text portion of the profile should be structured in a way that makes it easy to read and easy to find information, as well as visually appealing. Large amounts of text about a place, event, etc. should be split off into a free-space page.

Steps toward Improved Profiles

There are steps or stages to improving Profiles. It is possible to do several in one go, but it is also possible to do a step at a time. Each step produces something better than before. If you are not comfortable with working on a particular step, collaborate with someone who enjoys that aspect. Begin with the profiles on your own Watchlist to become comfortable with doing these steps:
  1. Rearrange the Bio into a logical order, remove the GEDCOM crud after import, or tidy the sections after merging. Even manually entered profiles can benefit from some organization. This should be done by everyone who adds or merges profiles as a matter of course.
  2. Help implement the style guidelines for what makes a good narrative. For example, see Biographies and the Examples gallery. See this G2G answer from our WikiTreer-in-Chief for an explanation as to why this is important.
  3. Check that all facts have one or more sources, preferably a verifiable primary source. Add sources according to the Sources Style Guide using the examples from the Sources FAQ. Profiles with only vague online and unsourced family trees should have the Unsourced template added.
  4. Add a ==Research Notes== section to identify and highlight disputed information and/or common mixups for a person.
  5. Layout a preliminary narrative and/or timeline of the person's life, getting the key facts in order will help later. The Biography Generator app and the spreadsheet to Wiki table app can help with that. New apps are developed all the time, so check to see if there are others to help.
  6. Search for copyright-free photographs, pictures, maps, or other visual items for addition to the profile following the aesthetics guidelines.
  7. Add categories and succession boxes if appropriate.
  8. Fill out the narrative with appropriate background stories and links to other related profiles and information like Wikipedia, online newspapers archives, or family websites
  9. Add, where possible, an estimated birth year to profiles with empty birth dates. Set the before, after, or uncertain status; the {{Estimated Date}} template is also recommended.
  10. Add, where possible, a potential country or continent of birth or death to profiles with all empty locations. Set the Uncertain status.
  11. Add maintenance categories for profiles that need help beyond the limits of your time or expertise.
  12. Where copyrighted work, or even public-domain text, has been pasted in a biography, cleanup efforts are appreciated. Best practice is to summarize the key points and LINK to the source where you can. Short quotes are okay. Quotes should always have quotation marks " " and a source.
Use G2G conversations to discuss topics related to the Profile Improvement Project. When you do, be sure to add "profile_improvement" as a tag.
Another part of Profile Improvement is educating other members to do the same improvements on their own Profiles. One way to do this is by showcasing good profiles in G2G and by helping new members who ask for help. For those who have completed the PIP Voyage, consider becoming a Voyager Guide.

Examples of nice profiles

Great profiles created by project members. Open an interesting profile in edit mode (use the Edit tab) to see how things were done.
Other great profiles:

Personal Goals & Challenges

If you enjoy having a goal or a little friendly competition, consider joining one of the Challenge series. The challenges aren't under the direction of the Profile Improvements Project, but each results in improved profiles. Read more about the challenges and follow the joining instructions if something interests you.

Teams, Sub-Projects, and Related Projects

Profile Improvement Teams

Sub-Projects

Related Projects

Maintenance Categories and Templates

Maintenance Categories

  • Maintenance Categories - Categories created to group profiles in need of specific improvements. Some can be done in a short amount of time, others require more time. Many of these maintenance categories have associated (multiple pages) with How-To cleanup biographies videos.
There's something for everyone at Profile Improvement.
Click on the links to see what the template looks like in use.

Templates that don't add a profile to a category

  • Citation Needed {{Citation Needed}} - use sparingly and only if you are participating in the research on the profile.

Using Templates to Add Maintenance Categories to Profiles

These Categories don't have templates. To add a profile to these categories, copy the code and paste it above the ==Biography== heading:
  • [[Category:Gedcom cleanup required]]
  • [[Category:Needs Merging]]
  • [[Category:Needs Biography]]
  • [[Category:Profile style review requested]]
  • [[Category:Serious Data Problems]]

G2G Tag & Useful pages

Some discussions of interest:


This page was last modified 00:03, 11 March 2023. This page has been accessed 26,908 times.