How to stop radical changes to the tree by new members?

Question

I am not wanting to call anybody out right now, but I feel like I am wasting my time when I build a tree here, because increasingly, new members join, and then they immediately start shifting old profiles around to new parents, with little care, no discussion, and no relevant sources.

To make it worse, there is no easy tracking of such changes. I really have to search the massive amounts of new change alerts resulting from all the error prompts that people are intent on making better on every profile they do not manage, hunt down the Changes tab where I occasionally see in all of that list that a parent was added, and then dig deep to find the unclickable old original parents, who may or may not have been merged into the new parents at some much earlier time.

It's immensely time-consuming, and if I orphan any profiles, of course such damage will not even cross my radar for those orphans.

WikiTree has thrived on obscurity, with long time quality members. But if it is just going to become as random as every other shared genealogy site, then why are we bothering?

Maybe there is no fix for this. But I notice that a welcome change within recent months or years was to avoid this problem by locking parent relationships with PPP status.

In the particular case that triggered this rant today, the new parents also got immediately marked "confident," just because, I guess.

So somebody please tell me this is not all just a huge waste of time. I can either spend hours politely calling out the offenders, and either being ignored by them, or waiting for a half fix by them, or fixing it myself. Or waste my time trying to train new members in the rules of conduct, and all that. I just want to build a good tree, with proper tools in place to prevent the mess caused by many exuberant new people.

I am probably out of line with this rude rant. But, well, I will go back to working on DNA off site now. I really don't spend much time actually building in WikiTree anymore lately, sorry to say, because of issues like this.

Comments

Your question is neither rude nor a rant. I'm new and think what you describe is a valid point. Consensus is required before merges happen. Maybe consensus should be required before changes can be made. If consensus cannot be reached, perhaps a review panel or group. When I connect to the tree I use extra precautions to insure that sources support the connection. Seldom have I changed relationships, in WikiTree, when I find conflation or inappropriate connections. Until I get enough to prove my findings, I will wait. I have several files that I have connected to that I have concerns on for various reasons.

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I wonder if it was related to one of the contests/badges/etc. that encourage people to do as much as possible as fast as possible.

Answer 1

Its not a waste of time.  Well sourced connections on the tree should not be changed willy nilly, and its so annoying too.  Perhaps an extra special suspicion flag could be automatically set when someone changes child/parent relationships for a profile with a threshold number of sources, say 6.  Is there something in place that already does that?

Answer 2

You can follow the problems with members process https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Problems_with_Members

Comments

Part of it is that people mean well but damage can be done before you notice.

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You're right Kay, and I would go a step further and plead that people should use this process. It's there to help us all, for the benefit of this tree that we love and pour our hearts and efforts into. Please don't go away, and don't go away mad, help us protect our tree. Collaboration can be stressful and frustrating, but going back to the anarchy we see on some other websites is not the way to go!

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The problem with this reporting tool is that it is just as cumbersome.

I already went through the step of commenting on the newly attached profile, and now I am in the being ignored stage, so I have to endure the waiting period of being ignored.

When this happens with numerous different new members, well, that's the problem. It's a structural problem in WikiTree, that the engineers should solve, but they won't solve it structurally, because that's not the ethos of the site.

Members, especially new members, should not be able to change relationships of profiles that they do not manage, with just a simple click. That's a system design problem, not a member problem.

Answer 3

Steven, for what it's worth there is a site policy regarding communication before editing, and changing parent-child relationships or spousal relationships is one of the edits specifically listed that should be discussed with the profile manager.  You are certainly within your rights to call out somebody for not following the policy:

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Communication_Before_Editing

I agree with you that we have a worsening problem with editing, and this policy could probably stand to be updated.

Comments

Thanks for the star Eileen.

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Thanks for that policy link, Dennis.

On my dream wishlist is a one-click button option on the profile, which might simply flag on the profile and to the community at large, something like, "controversial relationship change has been made."

It would only be utilized when people like me encounter such frustration, without us having to personally engage with the member who made the change.

Theoretically, it could populate into one of the error lists, which curators could then follow up on to assess and repair, as needed.

Unfortunately, good ideas like this take a long time to get built into the system. :)

Answer 4

This is a problem, Steven. I'm sorry that you had to experience these issues.

I concur what everyone has posted. Report it immediately if it happens again.

Answer 5

In my experience, what new members do is to build their own seperate tree, instead of attatching to existing profiles. Getting those merged is time consuming.

Answer 6

When I was newbie here a couple a years ago, my well-meaning enthusiasm caused some grief.   But that being said, as I gained experience, I have fixed profile problems, added sources, improved and updated 100's and 100's of profiles.  

I understand the pain you are feeling as when I created a free space page to collect stories passed down that I found here and on Find A Grave, I left the privacy setting to open so family members could add stories.  

Then recently when I went to add more content, pictures were deleted or shifted to other stories and some content damaged!  It's almost like "mom stepped away from the computer and the kid started goofing around.  Or I made an enemy here who paid me back!    It took 3 hours to repair.  The privacy settings were changed!  

So, I am pretty sure that seasoned members here have done the same repair and improvement on thousands and thousands of profiles to balance out the harm caused.by a few newbies!

Educating newbies is difficult as this place is overwhelming to a new member!  There is so much to read and figure out.  If they have been on Ancestry or other sites, everything here just looks weird! They are easily confused.   The language here is more "British English" and some of the thought process in the instructions reflect that causing confusion to some of us!  

Long after we are gone, WikiTree will continue.  Profiles will be tampered with and then fixed by others.  I don't take it personal anymore.  S__T happens!

Answer 7

Based on past G2G traffic, I'm not sure the problem you describe is completely owned by new members.  I suspect some not-so-new members aren't paying all that much attention to the communication policy.

Right now when you click the link to replace or remove a parent-child relationship, you get a window that simply gives you three straightforward choices -- create new profile, connect existing profile, or remove without replacing.  Do you suppose it would help if some cautionary verbiage could be added to that window -- perhaps a big ugly yellow banner saying something like

"Caution!  Changing a parent-child relationship can alter the family trees of many living descendants.  You need to be sure there is adequate evidence to support the change, and display it, and if you are not the Profile Manager, you need to discuss the proposed change with the PM and any other affected members."

I wouldn't think it's a big project just to add a cautionary note to a prospective editor.

Comments

I like that "Caution!" warning idea, as a minimum quick patch that would be easy to deploy into the system. It seems to have helped reduce damage in the Pending Merges list, for example, with the "Warning! Not all merges should be completed." I made that suggestion years ago, and management listened.

But I just think the issue is more systemic. People will roll over the warning, because they simply want the tree to be what they want it to be. People get attached to the idea of "their" data, or "their" tree, and it's easy to overestimate one's own certainty. I know this from when I discovered that my long-presumed genealogy on a line was just wrong, and felt the irrational disappointment about it.

So I want something more robust, for a quality tree. WikiTree by design has an ethos that all contributors are equal in purpose, and so it will all wash out in the end, with mutual politeness and cooperation. But those are impossibly superhuman traits.

So, instead, there needs to be some roadblocks against radical changes. Such roadblocks need to engage the attention of the entire membership, in some kind of alert list. Ideally, I would like a major relationship change to only be possible after clearing such an alert list review process. But I would settle for the change to hit the alert list after the change has been made.

Just something needs to improve to guard for accuracy in radical changes, beyond this fantasy that the next member with competence or care will surely fix it later, or something. But I don't expect anything to improve much in this technical direction. Because the management of the site does not value such guardianship, over mentoring, as I have come to understand it.

So, for me, it just comes down to what I can control for quality, so whether I want to continue spending my time elsewhere instead, beyond being able to vent about it here, while waiting and hoping for valuable technical change that just does not seem to be of top awareness or interest to management.

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Steven: Maybe you want to make a proposal?

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Developing_New_Rules

Answer 8

Awesome question Steven which needs to be addressed so all WikiTreers need to see and understand. My motto is don't touch a profile unless you are adding something positive like a reliable source usually in the comment section, or add something in the category. Talk to the Profile Manager before you make any changes to keep them in the loop and not step on anyone's toes. I do however like help when it comes to improving a profile, so if you have something substantial to add, be my guest

We WikiTreers take pride in creating profiles that share as much information about the person we are working on and then find that same profile rearranged by another person who may think they are helping. DON'T touch without asking first and think before doing anything major to a profile.