Advice from a Mentor

Date: [unknown] [unknown]
Location: [unknown]

This page is a summary of emails I have sent people at various times in my role as a mentor. This is not official WikiTree advice. If you find anything here that conflicts with WikiTree rules, standards, etc., please let me know, and I will edit the information accordingly.

Contents 1 For Absolute Beginners 2 WikiTree's Privacy Settings 2.1 Unlisted - Black 2.2 Private - Red 2.3 Private with Public Tree, Public Biography, or Both - Yellow and Orange 2.4 Public - Green 2.5 Open - White 3 Collaboration 4 GEDCOMs 4.1 Steps Involved in the GEDCOM Import Process 4.1.1 Editing GEDCOM-Created Profiles 4.1.2 Peculiarities/Frustrations of GEDCOM-Created WikiTree Profiles 4.1.3 GEDCOM Recommendations 5 Sources 5.1 Formatting 5.1.1 Absolute basics 5.1.2 Add outside links 5.1.3 Link to a Wikitree profile 5.2 Unsourced Profiles 5.2.1 First, look for sources yourself 5.2.2 If there are no acceptable sources to be found 6 How Cool is This? 6.1 Brick Walls 6.2 African American History

For Absolute Beginners

I love Family Search. Here are some great pages:

• Family History for Beginners - all links
• Principles of Family History Resarch
• Research Process
• Document As You Go!
• Rookie Mistakes

WikiTree's Privacy Settings

WikiTree's goal is to make information about our ancestors as easily accessible as possible, while protecting the privacy and safety of living people. Who can see and edit information is one of the best things about WikiTree. Read about trusted lists and privacy levels here.

You’ll want to decide on the privacy setting for each profile you manage, starting with your own. Here's an overview, and what people can see if they are not on the trusted list:

Unlisted - Black

This setting is reserved for children under 13, and other people who will never interact on WikiTree. Active WikiTreers may not be unlisted, because it provides complete anonymity.

Private - Red

This setting used to be the default for living adults. People can see the preferred name, middle initial, decade of birth, and a thumbnail photo if one has been uploaded. The family tree is NOT visible with the red setting, and people cannot calculate their relationship to the person in the profile.

With the red setting, the proper (formal or official) first name is not visible, and neither is gender, birth location, etc. "Anonymous", initials, and nicknames are all perfectly acceptable "preferred names" for people who don't choose to use their proper first names. For several reasons, you should NOT try to anonymize your surname. In addition to helping WikiTree work better, having a real surname gives you credibility in interactions on our forum and with prospective cousins.

Private with Public Tree, Public Biography, or Both - Yellow and Orange

For yourself, consider choosing "private with a public tree". That makes your preferred name and the decade in which you were born visible. The structure of your family tree and links to non-private profiles are accessible, so that other members can see if/how they are related to you, etc. Names and profiles of family members who have red or black privacy settings cannot be accessed from anyone's family tree, unless the person looking for access is already on the trusted list of the person with the red or black profile.

Public - Green

Anyone can see all of the data, but only those on the trusted list can edit or connect to the profile.

Open - White

Any WikiTree member who has signed the honor code may edit an open profile (white privacy setting). If you would like to edit or connect to a profile with any other privacy setting, like green, yellow or red, click the trusted list request link on a profile from the most recent generation you would like to edit, explain how you are related, and consider also asking the manager to add you to trusted lists of ancestors and siblings of this index person.

Collaboration

Here’s a good discussion of collaboration on profiles.

GEDCOMs

Steps Involved in the GEDCOM Import Process

1. Member/guest uploads GEDCOM file to WikiTree*
2. WikiTree generates a GEDMatches Report*(list of potential matches to existing WikiTree profiles) and sends link to report page. Member options:
   1. Stop there and save report
   2. Examine report profile-by-profile, comparing potential matches. Where a match exists or may exist, the member marks that profile to be skipped (not imported), thus severing family connections and removing links between that profile and other profiles in the GEDCOM. Non-duplicate profiles should also be skipped if they are missing names, dates, etc.
3. The member can approve the import*, once satisfied that all profiles have been adequately screened. Approving it submits the GEDCOM to the WikiTree Team for evaluation.
4. A WikiTree Team member reviews the GEDCOM* for appropriate match evaluations, and ensures that profiles meet criteria in terms of names, dates, sources, etc.
   1. If there are too many profiles that don't meet quality criteria, the member may be asked to do more screening from step #2.
   2. If there is too high a percentage of matches, the import may be rejected outright. This is to avoid creating too many single/disconnected profiles from the remaining small percentage of unmatched individuals.
   3. Once the Team member is satisfied with the GEDCOM file, they will approve it for import.
5. GEDCOM is imported into WikiTree
6. Member edits every imported profile to meet WikiTree styles and standards (see below)

* At any time before the import is completed, the member can delete the GEDCOM to prevent further processing. GEDCOMs are deleted if they have not been imported after a month.

Editing GEDCOM-Created Profiles

• Members are expected to edit every profile, even when profiles are generated by a GEDCOM import.
• Entering data yourself is the best way to add information to WikiTree regardless of whether you are creating a profile from scratch or fleshing out a GEDCOM. Think of a GEDCOM as one way to get a rough draft started.
• Here's a special page on editing GEDCOM created biographies.
• You can find recommended profile formats and tips on writing biographies here.
• Here is more information on WikiTree's Styles and Standards.
• I'm an arborist as well as a mentor, so I can lead you through the GEDCOM cleanup process. Let me know if you need help.
• I have about 300 profiles to edit after an unfortunate GEDCOM import in December 2014. More than half of them look like this.

Peculiarities/Frustrations of GEDCOM-Created WikiTree Profiles

• The better sourced your data, the worse the profile looks.
• When WikiTree already has a profile for someone, your profile for that person must be skipped even if you have more complete info, better sources, etc.
• When you skip a profile, you lose family connections between that profile and the rest of the profiles in your GEDCOM. The name of the individual is replaced with a special ID number (NOT the WikiTree ID) in the imported profiles.
• The profiles in your GEDCOM will not connect to any in WikiTree until you connect them yourself.
• Media attachments like photos are not transferred.

GEDCOM Recommendations

• On your home genealogy program, create a special copy of your tree just for WikiTree.
• Some programs anonymize living people by default when you prepare your GEDCOM file for uploading. Make sure that the option to anonymize living people is not selected!*
• UPLOAD (don't import!) the whole GEDCOM to WikiTree.
• You will receive an email with a link to your GEDCOM.
• Get your match report to find out which profiles are already on WikiTree, but DO NOT IMPORT the file. Save the match report, then delete your GEDCOM file from WikiTree.
• Look for branches of your tree that only match up with WikiTree in one or two places. Create a mini-GEDCOM out of a branch that contains only 10-20 profiles, and import the small file. Doing this will:
  • Minimize the links you will have to replace on profiles.
  • Allow you to see what the GEDCOM output looks like for your particular profiles, so that each time you import a branch, you can progressively refine your own tree to produce profiles that are easier to edit once they have been imported.

* First, this is unnecessary because WikiTree automatically anonymizes profiles of living people during the import process. More importantly, if you select this option when creating the GEDCOM, your program will change the first name of every living person to "LIVING". WikiTree will then require you to skip those profiles, leaving you unable to import any of their data, including their names. I learned this the hard way.

Sources

The most important thing to remember is that adding anything is better than nothing, and if you lay a trail that someone else can follow, that’s what matters, regardless of whether it fits with someone else’s style. See the wiki on Sources.

Formatting

Absolute basics

* For the source list at the end of the narrative section of every profile, precede every source with an asterisk then a space, just like both of the entries for this section.

* For an inline citation you use this format: <ref>Blah, blah, blah.</ref> See below for the footnote created.^[1]

1. ↑ Blah, blah, blah.

Add outside links

Put single brackets around a url and a description or name, leaving one space to separate the url from the name, like so: [url name]

[http://ma-vitalrecords.org Early Vital Records of Massachusetts]

Becomes: Early Vital Records of Massachusetts.

Link to a Wikitree profile

[[Partridge-944|Carole Partridge]]

Becomes: Carole Partridge

Unsourced Profiles

Unsourced profiles may drive us nuts, but they don't have to stay unsourced.

First, look for sources yourself

• I tend to google just about everything - for example, if I suspect that Norbert Johnson married Sarah Baker between 1850 and 1858 in Connecticut, I would Google:

"Norbert Johnson” "Sarah Baker” 1850..1858 Connecticut genealogy

• Depending on the search results, try removing search terms or quotes, switch the order of the search terms to change their priority, etc.
• Do a search for books, preferably free ones on archive.org or google books.
• Look for a photo of a gravestone on Find A Grave.
• Check out institutional sources like state-run websites, cemetery listings, church records, etc.
• Look for newspaper announcements and obituaries that might have been published much later.

If there are no acceptable sources to be found

• Add code for the appropriate Unsourced Profile template to the top of the profile, above the biography:

{{Unsourced|United States }}

{{Unsourced|English }}

etc.

• Post a message on the profile's bulletin board, saying where your data came from and asking that better sources be added.

• Ask a question on G2G as to whether anyone has sources to recommend or that they can add. Make sure to include each profile ID to make it easier for people to find the profiles in question.

How Cool is This?

A few random but really great features of WikiTree

Brick Walls

If you have an ancestor you are stuck on, you can add the category "Family Brickwall" to their profile. That will make it so that other people will join in the search. To add the category, edit the narrative section of their profile page to put in as much as you know and what the remaining questions are. Then at the very top of that area, above the biography section, add: [[Category:Family_Brickwall]].

African American History

If you have an ancestor who was enslaved, or was a slave owner, check out this free space page overflowing with African American Slave Resources. Although it has links to almost 300 categories and outside resources about slavery itself, the page ranges even father afield with topics as diverse as the Gullah culture, Civil War African-American soldiers who were awarded the Medal of Honor, and free people of color in the 1800s. A project is also in the works to create a central record of names and details about enslaved people mentioned in wills and other legal documents, in hopes of providing a few more clues for their descendants.