contributor reluctant to source

Question

I received this on my private email after adding {{unsourced}} category to the profile: "regarding Lara Austin she was my husband's grandmother ... since this website is not my primary source(sic) for family tree building, I will not be devoting my time to adding sources on this location ... alternative sources (she suggests) are ancestry.com ..." etc I.e. we should source her work!. I have replied as politely and calmly as I could and hope this doesn't blow up.

Answer 1

I may be out of line considering you were "notified" by the PM that she does not care that the profile is unsourced BUT . . .

I think you should flag the profile as Unsourced in the Bio, because it is not sourced. Doing it that way will call attention to it and someone may add sources.

(I would add sources, but I have to milk the goats, maybe I can get back to it later).

Answer 2

If they don't have the time or interest in improving the profile, perhaps suggest either setting the privacy to Open so others can, or at least adding you to the trusted list.

Answer 3

Quite honestly, it's a recent family member and the PM probably has first hand knowledge, which by wikitree standards is acceptable for profiles of these sorts of dates. There are plenty of older unsourced profiles out there.

Down at the bottom https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Sources

Comments

Thank you Patricia :)

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Surely you all must realize that there are still several things wrong here.  The linked profile is managed by a member with a male given name.  He has not been particularly active in nearly 10 years here, but has signed the honor code saying "We cite sources."  Jeremy received a note from a female, apparently using the account, who stated an intention not to add sources here because this is not the primary site.  Presumably that applies to all work here, recent or not.

If the powers that be choose to let it slide, that's their call, but it certainly makes it more difficult for the rest of us to take the policies and the honor code seriously.  Milking one's goats is always going to take priority over cleaning up somebody else's genealogy work.

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Dennis, I would love to see every profile on WikiTree fully sourced with records proving the existence of the person, but this profile says that the source is "↑ First-hand information as remembered by Mark Gibson, Saturday, April 26, 2014."  and by WikiTree standards and the sourcing instructions linked above, in Gill's answer, that is considered good enough, so it does not seem appropriate to flag it as unsourced and complain about the PM on G2G.  It would be wonderful if WikiTree required more evidence be documented, but that is not the policy.