What is ahead for WikiTree in 2024?

Question

Hi WikiTreers,

As we wrap up another year (our 15th!) we'd like to share some thoughts on what's in store for 2024.

This post is mainly about the core technology and operations of the website. Our community becomes more decentralized every year. Energy and leadership in projects and challenges comes from volunteers like you. Even our technology is becoming decentralized with the rapid growth of Tree Apps and the WikiTree Browser Extension. So, perhaps others will post here about exciting things being planned in their domains. Maybe you will.

The big item on the WikiTree Team's to-do list is a redesign. We start on this in earnest in two weeks. WikiTree's look and feel hasn't been updated since 2014. Ten years is a long time. We want WikiTree to be more accessible and responsive. The default font size will probably increase. Navigation menus will be improved. Page layouts will be wider. It's likely that profile pages will appear in a single column for everyone.

Redesigning a huge, 15-year-old, community-driven site is a major undertaking. It will be disruptive and contentious. It will consume most of the tech team's resources for early 2024. Just as the infrastructure upgrades in the latter part of 2023 made it difficult to get other things done, the redesign process will prevent us from improving and adding features and functions for months.

Before the redesign locks us down, in the next couple weeks, we are hoping to push these through:

• The pre-1700 quiz will become a questionnaire.
• A batch of minor search and matching improvements.
• Images on profiles will be displayed in a slideshow.
• Significant policy and technical changes to how we invite living family members to join us on WikiTree.

Looking out further, after the dust settles from the redesign, here is some of what is on our to-do list:

• Significant search improvements.
• Improve connections between the WikiTree core and Tree Apps.
• Devise some means for tracking the completeness of a profile or research, or facilitate this in apps.
• Enable creating profiles for close family members with a GEDCOM without using GEDCOMpare for everyone in the file.
• Allow for more direct editing of name variants.

Although it doesn't directly impact members, we are also doing a lot of work on the advertisements that non-members see. These pay all our bills and enable WikiTree to be free, so they're important. We want them to be genuinely helpful for visitors who might want to pay for a research subscription or buy a DNA test, and not be annoying or intrusive like most advertising on websites these days.

There is something else that we may be able to announce later in the year that we think is very exciting. It concerns the long-term security of our tree and the promise that it will always be free and accessible to everyone. But, it's premature to discuss details so we'll have to leave it there.

What about you? What are you and your WikiTree friends planning for 2024?

Post your news, questions, suggestions, etc., as an answer below. (Comments at the top will be hidden or moved once read.) You could also post them as an answer to the Question of the Week: "What improvements would you like to see on WikiTree in 2024?" 

Onward and upward,

Chris and the WikiTree Team

Answer 1

Will the redesign affect the functioning of the January Connect-A-Thon? Other WT events?

Comments

Hi Liza. Chris or Jamie will correct me if I am wrong, but this should have no affect on the January Connect-A-Thon. The redesign will be a long process. It will start with design discussions, progress to code changes in a development environment, etc.

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Thanks. I was just wondering.

Answer 2

I will be continuing on finding sources for Van Diemens Land/ Tasmania, Australia.

Thought I had finished - but now more recent (1900’s) without sources have popped up in the list.

Answer 3

As a recently joined member of WikiTree, the development team and all the volunteers on WikiTree are doing an incredible job! I look forward to the new redesign and wider page layouts.

I personally will continue to add my known family members to the tree that I have already identified over the last 15+ years of research before I found WikiTree.

Comments

This is an amazing team Kent.  Without their help I would still not be here.  I have found unknown cousins that take care of parts of my tree; properly.  WikiTree is the best.  Happy New Year!

Answer 4

This is exciting news, Chris.

Will the redesign initially come out as an optional beta release? This was a very successful approach when major changes were made regarding new profile creation, with beta versions 1, 2 and 3. It allowed problem identification, fixes and fine tuning before the new system went live for everyone. It could be worthwhile repeating this staged release method with the front-end redesign, and also for other major changes in future.

Answer 5

The default font size increase will be helpful for those of us with diminishing eyesight. Thank you for thinking about that one!

Comments

I too am glad to read about the increase in default font size. I do it myself (Ctrl-+ on my keyboard), but that affects every other website.

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Depending on the web browser that a person uses, the web browser, in the Edit -> Preferences (or Edit -> Settings) menu, should provide for a user to set font sizes, including the overall minimum font size, and, should have an option "Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of your selections above", which (in Firefox), I deselect, so that my chosen fonts and font sizes are applied.

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I have Chrome and use its zoom function. But as Teresa pointed out, that affects every site and I don't need it for every site, just those with tiny fonts. It can be a pain to toggle back and forth.

That said, I'm most interested in overall functionality and usability. Font size is a minor tweak compared to the rest.

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Thank you for font improvements.  It seems like diminishing eyesight goes along with retirement which gives lots of us time to work on genealogy.

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I, too, am happy about this improvement. I would like to add that it would help if the font within a message that is now lighter and thinner would be better to not be changed from the larger and darker font. While I can still read the normal messages, the center of the messages has become more difficult. I can send an example if needed.

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Hello Teresa.  I do the same and it is easy.  CTRL + nor CTRL - on the keyboard have power.  Yes, your other windows may not be clear at this moment; but it is easy to change back with one toggle on the keyboard.

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WOW!!! Thanks!!!

Answer 6

For the redesign, please consider to implement multiple languages for the user interface. Until this day this lack of internationalisation is still the main reason, why genealogists elsewhere choose other sites over WikiTree. As for an outsider the Website looks as it is "from Americans - for Americans - only".

Comments

Oh I love this comment!  I agree as Wikitree becomes attractive to people all over the world, but yet they have a difficult time even with the most simplest of functions (like the "save" button).  

In the very least, if the site is used on Chrome ... that one may select the "translate page" that appears by the bookmark/search icon.

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I think Skye's comment on Google Chrome translations is on target. There might also be work that could be done by independent developers in the WikiTree Browser Extension, when a developer is ready to tackle it.

Translation is a much larger project than most people expect. Even Ales, who aims to keep help pages translated, is often discouraged by the lack of consistent volunteer participation, which is necessary to keep pages updated every time the community agrees on a small change in policy or there is a new feature, minor adjustment to the UI, etc. Even massive organizations with huge budgets find maintaining a multi-lingual site challenging. The day we have to do it on WikiTree (which will be someday) will be remembered as a major turning point in the community.

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Norbert and Skye, let me elaborate on my final comment above.

Collaboration is based on communication. Communication is much easier when you speak the same language.

We don't just collaborate on genealogy here. Over the years, our community has worked together to figure out the best way to grow a single family tree. If you have been around for long, you know that our technology, rules, and culture have evolved through community decision-making, and we continue to grow in this way. We aren't done.

When the community doesn't have a common language, it will splinter. Sub-cultures in different languages will grow increasingly independent of each other. As time goes by, the non-English communities will become increasingly resentful that changes are discussed in English and then decisions are "forced" on them. We have already seen this happen.

So, when WikiTree becomes more multi-lingual, it will only work because the rules and systems don't change much. We will have to be much more bureaucratic and ossified.

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but Chris, I have had more than one person who I asked if they wanted to join us respond ''c'est tout en anglais'' (it's all in English).  Therefore not coming.  Not everybody speaks English, by a long shot.

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I also had a distant relative who tried out WikiTree, but went back to FamilySearch, because WT in English was too complicated for her.

But I support what Chris Whitten wrote:
1. I'm in the small team who translates the help pages into German, as we found at least those should be in German for members with mid level knowledge of English (many of the help pages are about technical things after all). It took 4-5 members over 1,5 years to translate all help pages. But now we are 3 members left and we can't keep up with all the changes that are made.
2. One of the best things at WikiTree is the collaboration. And you need a common language for that, otherwise it just won't work. We could make G2G multilanguage (like, everyone is writing in their primary language), but then everyone would need to use a translation tool. And while there are better tools than Google Translate by now, they are still not perfect in the details.

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I agree that the site should be accessible to all. I'm wondering though if our team needs to spend its time on developing tools for translations to other languages since Google Chrome, for example (and I have to believe other browsers too), has a built-in translation extension that is quite robust. Looks to me like it translates to and from 130+ languages right now. Wouldn't our team's time be better spent on other of the critical tasks they face, of which there are many? Just my two cents.

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It might be helpful to encourage people writing profiles to avoid abbreviations and other shorthand notation, which can be difficult for a non-native speaker to decipher.

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William, this is a good idea. Abbreviations are also difficult for translation tools.

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My understanding is that any web page can be translated from one language to another, using an option of "Google translate (?)".

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Yes, Bret. It's a standalone program but is also available as a Chrome extension which is much more convenient since it will instantaneously translate a whole page of text into any of the 130+ languages.

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WHOA!  Google Translate (GT) et al have some major faults.  For example, I don't know how often I have seen bios where it was used to translate a French bio, the name of the person involved was translated.  So a name like Jean Dubois became John Wood.  Entirely disrespectful in my view, and also inaccurate.  

Also, other examples of GT errors:  

''père et fils'' turns into ''father and wire''.  (it's father and son)

''Il est né'' turns into ''it is born'' (should be ''he was born'').  

Il (IL) as a pronoun can become either it or he, depending on context.  GT just can't tell the difference, and sticks it all as ''it''.

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Maybe Google Translate has improved since you tried it, Danielle. It does take account of context. At present for me

Jean Dubois était le fils de Pierre Dubois. Il est né en 1873. Père et fils sont nés à Paris.

is rendered as

Jean Dubois was the son of Pierre Dubois. He was born in 1873. Father and son were born in Paris. 

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lol Jim, I don't use it, I am just relating what I have found on profiles.  Good to know they're getting better.

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Jean Poirier fils était présent au mariage de son frère

gives me:

Jean Poirier fils was present at his brother's  wedding

So there is still work to be done, the word fils wasn't translated.

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Somehow, we need to figure out what a  functional genealogical level of language operation is for WT and head for that much multi-language relatively stable interfacing.  

The past few months, I've made huge progress on my one place study (primarily a Catholic area in what is now Germany but was heavily fought over by many cultures)  by collaborating with some distant cousins around the world with differing language abilities.  I'm not fluent in any language other than English, but I read genealogical level in several languages and I know the documents I'm looking for and what they should contain.  Another cousin is fluent in German but has no Latin and pretty limited in French. Those are my two best languages after English but my German is almost as bad as my Eastern languages which are totally nonexistent.  We could communicate on the side in a sort of common language in English, but nothing we were working on or researching was in English. And none of the search tools we used were really multilingual or bilingual. Once beyond the login stage, we had to operate in the native language of whatever tool could offer us the records we were interested in.

The biggest difference is that WT doesn't have that draw of having the records we have to find for our research.  It is almost solely a storage and delivery platform.  So we users don't have that incentive of the illusive record we want to find to make us buckle down and learn to use a system not based in our native language.

Despite my total lack of understanding of either the German language or script, my cousin in Germany taught me to effectively use Archion without any level of understanding of German. And I got her through the Latin and French in some of the records on Archion. None of what we need has any sort of online indexing.  We have to use the manual indexes put together by the original record creators if they did any or just browse.  Together, we managed to find, transcribe and translate many records including some on forms printed in German, with standardized info filled out in French, and the free flowing descriptive part in Latin.  That is the collaboration we all want to happen.  But it is never easy to do that on any platform.

I have to admit, we collected our research first on Family Search because it is easier to gather and attach sources there (even when the sources are not coming from Family Search) and to record alternative information in customizable fields and link the sources to which alternative they came from. It is also far easier to record comments, transcriptions  and translations directly on the sources records gathered under the sources tab there. There is no easy or standardized way to do that sort of collaboration on WT.  And FS facilitated our navigation between sources and platforms during our zoom discussions.  

WikiTree does not really facilitate that in process stage of collaborative research and records comparison.  WikiTree's focus is more on the presentation of the research product once it has reached the equivalent of preprint publication stage.  It is more like a huge interactive genealogy magazine or encyclopedia than a record research tool.

I know enough database design to understand it takes a lot more computing power and storage to do structure in a way that the structure itself conveys as much language independent meaning as the FS tree structure does.  And even there, a huge amount of the structure appears only in English unless Google translate can translate it for you.

The end goal for us cousins was to preserve our research on WikiTree because of its commitment to full sourcing and citation and preservation.  But I will be the one of us that does the most complex part of the WT work, because of the experience I've had with all the WikiTree stuff before apps and extensions and also the amount of experience I have with what we have now.  

None of us are young enough to be interested in learning more than a very few new systems and tools.  So we are each going to do the part that we have the most familiarity with.  We are not going to venture into new platforms and languages unless and until the direction of our research forces us to.  And we expect that all the rest of the world of humans is pretty much inclined the same way.  WT is not going to replace local country platforms in the users native languages.  It can be attractive to people once their trees become multilingual and especially once their trees start having people in them whose records are in English or cross with such people.

 In time, I'll teach one of the cousins to use the browser extension and apps to do basic WT profile creation and sourcing from the FS profiles, but I really do not see WT changing its structure enough for it to become easy for someone not steeped in its ways to transfer their research into WT's platform.  I do see it getting to the point where someone whose native language is not English to be comfortable using the apps and browser extensions and other tools if they have a reason to want to have their research preserved with WT type standards.

I don't see WT really becoming the place that draws casual researchers in to find relatives or that provides the original records and gathering tools that make FS (for some) and Ancestry (for others) so attractive for collaborative research,  research in progress, and research sharing.

I don't think that language AI has reached the point where it works well enough to solve the language issue.  And it will be a long time before a operation like WT with its commitment to being free will be to afford the necessary resources when AI does get to that point.  

So the current redesign has to pick its priorities carefully and not try to be all to everyone yet.

I like the idea of making as much of it as reasonably possible work with Google Translate.  

I would also do some analysis to rank some languages and pick a few and start to make the big wikitree apps and browser extension work in one or two languages other than English.

Pick a few discreet things and do them right.

Think about where language computing is going as you redesign WT so the redesign will allow multi-language to continue to grow without the underlying structure interfering, but prioritize carefully to get the biggest bang for the work that can reasonably be done in one bite.

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I'm absolutely with Danielle about translation tools. Yes, Google Translate has improved a lot. deepl.com is better than Google Translate, but it still can't (unless you have a subscription) differ between adressing formally or informally. Another example: After one year, I'm still not sure if my Facebook friend got a baby girl or baby boy, because the Facebook translation from Czech to German is so bad.

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Collaboration is based on communication. Communication is much easier when you speak the same language.

We don't just collaborate on genealogy here. Over the years, our community has worked together to figure out the best way to grow a single family tree. If you have been around for long, you know that our technology, rules, and culture have evolved through community decision-making, and we continue to grow in this way. We aren't done.

When the community doesn't have a common language, it will splinter. Sub-cultures in different languages will grow increasingly independent of each other. As time goes by, the non-English communities will become increasingly resentful that changes are discussed in English and then decisions are "forced" on them. We have already seen this happen.

Thank you for this comment, Chris. I have seen similar comments from you, but I couldn't make sense out of them. Because this comment was fuller, I think I get more of a sense of where you're coming from.

I agree that "Communication is much easier when you speak the same language.", but communication between languages isn't impossible, just more difficult.

For instance, there is no reason that people who don't read/write English (even as a second or other language) can't take part in decision-making. But it does mean that, when you and/or the team post questions for WikiTreers to vote on to decide the future direction of the site, those questions will need to be translated into other languages, and the responses need to be translated into English.

This gives me an idea for a possible way forward: open up WikiTree to have multiple language versions of the user interface, but instead of adding any language that people ask for, you only add a new language interface under certain conditions:

• There could be a set threshold of WikiTreers who can read and write that language.
• There could be a requirement for a minimum number of volunteers signed up to act as translators between English and the proposed language.
• There could be a requirement for those volunteers to have completed some minimum amount of translation (like translating a "core" set of required help pages, and/or replicating a minimum percentage of categories into that language).
• There could be a requirement that freely available language tools (Google translate, the translation tools in Chrome, Firefox, and other browsers, deepl, etc.) be able to render understandable translations between the proposed language and English*. (Over time, the tools should improve enough that proposed languages which fail to meet this requirement at first could meet it later on.)
• There could be a requirement that the volunteers translate all the official announcements (including calls for discussion or votes) from you or the team into the proposed language within a (reasonable) time limit.

And, of course, it would help if those of us who are native English speakers put a little more effort into learning (or brushing up on) other languages. I really should try to bring back more of my French and Croatian. (I'm not sure that I'll ever be conversant in Hausa or Tigrigna again, and my Cantonese is comically bad.) My wife is trying to learn several languages trhough DuoLingo. I should probably follow her example.

We don't have to go all-or-nothing. We could open the door to languages other than English, but only for languages where there are enough people who not only say that they will volunteer to help, but actually follow up by doing various translation tasks. That way, we can expand the community without splintering it.

* The members of the Dutch Roots Project have told me that my Dutch is excellent, but it's actually Google Translate. On the other hand, when I try to use either Google Translate or Firefox's internal translation tool to read the Chinese version of Wikipedia, the results are very garbled. (Either that, or the articles are in really bad Chinese.)

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lord love a duck Greg!  Unfortunately, the big problem is manpower.  There is a project to get the help pages translated into French, I have worked minimally on it.  I know others have stated they felt discouraged due to constant changes being made to English help pages, thus necessitating going back to existing translated pages to amend.  And with the number of help pages in existence, it's a massive job to start with.  Having people take on translation duties of the sort you describe is an additional workload.  I doubt if it's realistic.  

I spend a lot of time on deep ancestor profiles, doing bilingual bios for them, since they are shared by so many.  It takes a lot of time to do it properly, and I was brought up bilingual so it's not a question of not knowing the languages involved.  There's only so much a person can do.

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This are good ideas, Greg. But as Danielle said, the problem is manpower.

The Germany Project had about 5 members who really worked on translating the German help pages. And there were about 3 or more members that volunteered, but didn't translate anything or just a handful pages. We are now 3 members left and are way behind with all the updates. [Any German native speakers reading this, we could use your help! ]. France Project gave up before finishing the translations, which I really can understand.
When I started in the team for the translation of help pages, we set up a page with terms that turn up often at WikiTree, so we can translate them always the same. Because many English terms, but also many (of course, other) German terms can be translated with several words, meaning something else. That's why all those apps will never be perfect. Then, when translating something as an interface, it's even more complicated: do I translate a "button" as "button" (English, used in German as well), "Knopf" or something else? How about "sticker", do I also use the English word (used in German as well), or do I use Aufkleber, Schild, Schildchen, Label, Etikett? Every time, a new button or new function is implemented, the translation team would need to step in, and the earlier the better.

Doing proper translations really takes much time, even when working with an app.

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I wanted to make the same comment! please please please! this is the most important thing to implement to be a really global website. I've been saying it for a while now, and I know it's a massive amount of work, but a big redesign project is the perfect opportunity to implement this. I'll be happy to help with the French version of the website if volunteers are needed.

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Chris, I'm part of the volunteers for help pages and I'm part of the "not enough motivation" problem. The thing is, it feels useless. Because people who are proficient enough with English and/or online traduction tools can just get by with the standard help pages, and those who are just don't use to Wikitree at all because they can't. Translating those pages feel useless in that context and having a whole interface change would be very different.

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100% agreement with Léa about help pages. Let's face it, even among native English speakers here, who is really searching an answer in help pages when it's so much more easy to ask someone here on G2G or on Discord, or whatever private channel. We build our knowledge about WikiTree nuts and bolts through pervasive multi-channel, (and often, for the non-native speakers, multilingual) conversation. "Do your homework", or more bluntly "RTFD" (hoping I won't be banned for using this rude expression here) does not work. Hardware constructors have known that long ago, that's why you have no more documentation with your new phone or computer, let alone multilingual one.

Which leads to another point. I've written that already, but I take, as others have done, the opportunity of this constructive exchange to elaborate. There are translation tools. But beyond/behind/under the language issue there is the cultural issue. What Chris says about the need to keep a sense of community, but I would go further and say we need a common culture more than a common language, which is the culture of communication and conversation. We Europeans might have a better understanding of that, trying to build a union with in the current state of affairs, no less than 24 official languages.

The "non merci" I have had so many times from French genealogists I would so much like to have on board of WikiTree has an underlying "c'est trop Américain". Note they will not say it's British, for example. The US cultural model is very showy in WikiTree social interface, like the badges and all this social bling-bling making French people say "Americans are cute, but they never grow up", that kind of things.

People with interest in genealogy in France (and that is absolutely many many people) have also generally a parallel investment in local history, regional culture and regional languages (we have quite a few of them that the Rois de France and the République Française did not completely "eradicate", despite centuries of efforts in this direction. Those people intuitively and immediately feel WikiTree as being too much representative of (what they think is) the US way to see the world, in a nutshell, everything will be OK when the whole world will be American, live like Americans, buy American culture etc. They have a little smile seeing badges, cheerful greetings, challenges and other bling-bling-so-American things. Not to mention the cultural mould behind the data model, the focus on founding fathers etc etc. Seems to me that make those folks run away more efficiently that the English American language.

What can be done about that? Not much I'm afraid. I among others have taken for granted that it is the current state of affairs. Those are staying here nevertheless. Others have tiptoed backwards after just opening the door. Others have thought they could change things, have ranted a lot, and finally slammed the door or been gently pushed outside.

C'est comme ça la vie, (dixit ma tante Sidonie).

[edited for typos]

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I have done a sizeable part of the help pages in French. The problem is, I can't do that all the time (I have other duties and I want to do some genealogy too). It gets discouraging.

Sometimes when a page is finished, it goes back to unfinished because there was a minimal change in one sentence. We have to translate the same sentence all over again. Then two days later the same sentence is modified again, perhaps even changed back to what it used to be. Lather, rinse, repeat.

The final straw was when a lot of pages were changed because of the suppression of the help index. I just gave up. Then I noticed that when a page is changed, instead of the not-quite-up-to-date translated page staying up, now it is removed until the newest translation is available. I think we once were up to about 25-30% of help pages translated in French. Now there's only a handful left. It's discouraging. I don't think I'll ever go back to it.

On a funnier note - I'll never forget when one of those automatic translators translated "religieuse" into "chocolate éclair" when it should have been "nun".

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J'aimerais une douzaine de religieuses, s'il vous plaît.

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Yes, Danielle and I., what I'm suggesting would require a bunch of work from volunteers. But the alternative would be to expect Chris and the rest of the WikiTree team (which is tiny compared to the size of our community) to do all that translation work (presumably using translation software, since I think everybody except Aleš is Anglophone). It seems to me a little unfair to ask them to carry all that burden. (I'm not saying that it's too much work, and therefore that WikiTree should remain English-only. All I'm saying is that, if we want WikiTree to be multilingual -- and I really, really do -- then we should do our part to help make that happen.)

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Greg, many years ago there was a conversation on the subject of WikiTree being only in English, no idea where it is.  But one thing I do remember is asking why it wasn't already multilingual as one finds in many commercial genealogy sites.  The basic answer was that it wasn't thought of originally, and to change the software would be quite expensive.  I don't know if they've found a way to work around that or not, or if the improvements they are proposing go in other directions.  

I gave up working on the translation of help pages mostly because the program to do so is really not user friendly, found it highly confusing, to say the least.  And as Isabelle and others point out, with help pages constantly being changed / ''tweaked'' / or what have you, it's never ending.

So, since I don't actually know what plans there are on this subject, not going to commit myself.

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100% agreement with Léa about help pages. Let's face it, even among native English speakers here, who is really searching an answer in help pages when it's so much more easy to ask someone here on G2G or on Discord, or whatever private channel.

As somebody whose day job largely entails writing documentation which at least 80% of users will never even glance at, I understand the frustration of putting a lot of effort into creating something that most people never use. But what I tell my team is this: "If users mess something up because they didn't bother reading the documentation, then that's their fault. But if we didn't even write the instructions to tell them the right way to do things, then that's our fault."

I also wish that more people, when answering questions on G2G, would point people to the relevant help page. That way, the newbies know that the answer isn't just the way that the person answering the question prefers to do things, but is actually something recommended (or, in some cases, required) by WikiTree. I used to be better at doing that myself (and at making clear the distinction between what the WikiTree help pages say and my own personal preferences). Plus, referencing specific help pages may be the first time that some users even hear that there are help pages, and might motivate some people to read the help  pages themselves, intead of expecting other people to do their reading for them.

And I just have to slip in a couple of rants here:

I hate, Hate, HATE it when people keep moving discussions about WIkiTree to Discord (or any other form of communication) instead of here on G2G. All the discussions here are preserved, so the wisdom of the community is preserved within the community. But when discussions get siloed off into other communication tools, then the number of people who can access that stored wisdom drops dramatically. People may just not know about those other discussions, or where to find the tools or services they're on, or how to install or use them. Some tools are banned in certain countries. (Even tools that most people would consider completely harmless.) It all boils down to depriving some (or even most) WikiTreers access to certain information about WikiTree, and I really don't like seeing people deprived of information, especially information they need. (Apparently, my backbrain is from Beta Colony or someplace like that¹.)

I also don't trust Discord. Of the hordes of communication tools that I've used over the decades, Discord is the only one that crashed my computer. (I don't mean that Discord crashed. I mean the whole computer crashed, and I had to restart. It's been years since I've actually had a computer crash.)

I also have to say that I really don't understand the thinking that refuses to read the instructions, but expects other people to read the instructions, and then restate them in an email or other message. Why is reading the instructions so much harder than reading messages? (Not to mention that I personally prefer to go to the... [this is inevitable, really, since this is a genealogy web site, but, wait for it...] source.)

The "non merci" I have had so many times from French genealogists I would so much like to have on board of WikiTree has an underlying "c'est trop Américain".... The US cultural model is very showy in WikiTree social interface, like the badges and all this social bling-bling making French people say "Americans are cute, but they never grow up", that kind of things.

There's kind of a vicious circle there. If people think that the culture of WikiTree is "too American" (and I agree), then the solution is for more non-Americans to join WikiTree, because that will, inevitably, change the culture. It will probably never be truly European (although being more European than it is now would be progress), because eventually, it should (and needs to) become a reflection of the culture of the world as a whole: American, French, Brazilian, Japanese, Australian, Indian, and so on. (Then too, there are plenty of Americans who find the badges and bling... distracting at best. Personally, I figure that whatever motivates people is a good thing, so I just don't talk about those aspects that don't appeal to me. And if people put stickers that I consider frivolous on profiles that I manage, I just take them off and don't make a fuss about it.)

Staying away from WikiTree because it's too closely aligned with the culture of a specific country just means that we'd end up with 197 different versions of WikiTree: one for each country. That kind of splintering would make it awfully hard to achieve the goal of a single connected tree for everybody.

1. In Barrayar, by Lois McMaster Bujold, Cordelia tells Aral that the first article in the constitution of Beta Colony is, "Access to information shall not be infringed."

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All very good points, Greg. To illustrate the cultural gap, let me add a recent (and hopefully unfinished) story. I had the privilege to be invited to author a 12 pages article about WikiTree in the latest issue of "Kaier ar Poher", the excellent quarterly publication of the Centre Généalogique et Historique du Poher. CGH is the local genealogy society of the endogamic area of my paternal ancestors. "Poher" is its historical name, best known today as "Kreiz Breizh" (in Brezhoneg : "Heart of Bretagne"). The association is strong of over 1,000 members. They have done a tremendous work of indexing local registries of births, marriages and records, both état-civil since 1793 and church registries before, as well as other archives (military records, etc). This indexing is available to a searchable data base. In short, the best a local, serious, involved local genealogy society can offer.

I tried my best to both meet the high standards of the publication, and be understandable by the typical reader, a Brezhoneg baby-boomer, not speaking and barely reading English. Needless to say the article is in French :-)

I had a handful of proofreaders, some of them WikiTreers, some not. I was, and am still, eager to have feedback from the readers. I had two of them so far, that I give you as food for thought, without comments. For the context to be complete, I don't live, and have never lived, in this area, so I've never met most people from the CGH I'm in contact with, some of them my cousins more or less removed "à la mode de Bretagne"

The first feedback was the day after publication, two weeks ago, from my 2nd cousin Jeanne Le Vatant, aged 76, living in Paule. She phoned me : "A friend of mine told me you have written an article in the Kaier. She did not understand a word".

The second feedback was from a reader who found the article interesting and found the profile of his great-grandfather in WikiTree. So far, so good. He tried to contact me through the internal messaging system, but could not get through the anti-spam procedure (how do you spell the number 10) because he did not understand it. Somehow, fortunately, he managed to find my email and contacted me directly. His last message is that he is interested by WikiTree but has no bandwidth for it at the moment.

I'm still waiting for more ...

I will add that in the past years, a handful CGH members have registered to WikiTree, all very serious genealogists with generally their tree on Geneanet. But they have not gone beyond a few contributions.

[edited for clarity]

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Greg, I laughed when I read Bernard's earlier comment on American culture.  I live next to them really (Montréal), and there is indeed a cultural difference.  Wikitree wants to grow and be a true reference, I can understand that.  They use the tools they are familiar with, which in large part consist of contests and games to motivate people more.  Unfortunately, that piles on the quantity over quality very fast.  And the clean-up is always lagging behind.

I totally agree about Discord as a replacement for other pre-existing tools to communicate.  There were GoogleGroups set up for projects before that, and I see those groups falling by the wayside, for instance Categorization Project's GoogleGroup still exists, but the traffic on it has gone down to almost nil in recent months.  I don't do Discord, which was set up originally for gamers who played war games to communicate.  Tried it, no thanks, Discord spreads discord in my book.  All these little cliques going off in corners.

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Bernard, send it to me and I'll take a look, maybe give you some pointers for amendment.

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Danielle, you mean the article? Too late for admendment, it's published.

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Regardind Discord : I find it useful for daily conversation that deserves neither to go public nor to be archived. G2G is good for conversations of global interest as the one we have now (I believe). We need, like in real life, to be able to speak on public places, for the record, and private rooms of various sizes. This does not mean splitting the community in cliques or factions if we make a balanced use of both tools (and other ones like private messaging).

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Greg, when I wrote that we lack the manpower for translations, this also included the WikiTree team. Never would I expect the WT team to do those translations. Plus, usually professionals translate from another language to their first (or best) language, not the other way around.

I agree, that some Europeans would find WikiTree too American. I personally can live with that - either they could ignore the parts that they don't like (such as stickers or challenges) or they could try to change what they would find important. There are things on WikiTree that Europeans might find important, such as not using the middle name field, or having extra fields for religious dates or for Switzerland even a field for the place of origin. The more non Americans WikiTree will have, the more different ideas will follow. Not necessarily a bad thing, we just should consider it.
And it's also sort of a circle: English interface means, a lot of genealogists will not join WikiTree because of the language. But we would need exactly the manpower of new members who speak different languages to translate WikiTree.

As Isabelle mentioned, the translation tool for the help pages is not easy to understand. I can live with that. What makes the work disappointing, is that the whole translated paragraph gets deleted, when soemthing in the English version is edited. Even if it's just a typo, the whole translation is gone.
It would be better, if the translated help page is not published anymore (so no old information in the translated help page), but if the translated text in the tool would not be deleted. The paragraph could be shown as red, until it gets edited and saved. Then the translated help page would be published again. This would save a lot of work.

I had Discord already before WikiTree. I see it as additional tool, where fast questions and answers can happen. Often for more complex questions, members tell others to post on G2G as well.
True, that the help pages could be mentioned more often in G2G. Other than on Facebook, where a help page is posted on nearly any question about style or "how to".

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Hear, hear!

Answer 7

This sounds very promising. I do hope that the redesign will improve readability for those with deteriorating eyesight, such as diminutive fonts and low-contrast colour combinations, like the white on light green used in G2G tags and change log dates.

Also please replace the grey micro font in the automatic comment emails while you're at it.

Comments

As a low vision person with relatives who have different low vision issues, I cannot emphasize enough that low vision is highly variable.  What we need are options to change size, font, color, contrast and light levels.  And we need pages that scroll and move around easily when we have to magnify beyond what will appear on whatever size screen we are using.  Anything you can give us in that direction will help.

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I am in total agreement Mary. Many thanks from me for making this important contribution

Answer 8

Looking forward to the redesign!  You all work so hard to make sure this awesome site stays up-to-speed for so many of us and we are grateful to you for your hard work!!

I'd love to see editbot have the ability to scan profiles for the word "unsourced" and place the {{Unsourced}} line on it.  I come across this often where the bio will say "unsourced tree uploaded by XYZ", and then it falls off the radar.

I've also come across (as has Tina) in the Poland Project, in looking at profiles ... there are many who transcribe metryk or Polish archive records and then green-lock privacy the profile so no one can touch it.  There are so many profiles I wouldn't be able to list, but we are keeping note of those users to hopefully get in touch with someone about opening up those that are not connected to the user.  As a user, this only tells me this person does not want to share their work with others, which is not what this site is about.   So perhaps not allow privacy-locking a profile if it 1)not connected to the user & 2) not living. ??

These are the only two things I can think of as problematic as we create categories and batch categorize individuals. Thank you again! :)

Comments

''I'd love to see editbot have the ability to scan profiles for the word "unsourced" and place the {{Unsourced}} line on it.  I come across this often where the bio will say "unsourced tree uploaded by XYZ", and then it falls off the radar.''

This could be tricky or more complicated than it appears at first sight.  For a new profile this could work. But if a profile originating from an unsourced tree with this as a source at the bottom of the profile has new (say marriage) fact added with an inline source the {{unsourced}} template would be wrong but the "unsourced tree" could still be needed for other facts such as birth, death, etc.

Answer 9

This is quite exciting to hear, and I'm sure it's a massive undertaking. Thanks for this update.

Answer 10

Thinking outside the box of redesign, when will we move off of a "Wiki" and onto some other type of platform/app? Is there any type of improved platform out there for user-editable websites?

I'm no stranger to wikis, as I worked on the internal wiki for the US Department of Energy. So I've been working on wikis for more than 12 years. For the average user, wikis can be complicated and frustrating.

Is there anything that has been developed or being developed in the that might be a better platform than a wiki, for a user-editable site?

Comments

I have invited my brother, my cousins, and several friends (the friends do genealogy/family history). Most are happy to view but are afraid to edit, and/or find it difficult. None have become contributing members.

I offer to help. I recommend Betsy Ko's newcomer videos. But.... crickets. Or they told me they don't like the wiki.

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I do like Wikis and the two modes they usually have, and I also don't know a better way on how to do WikiTree.

But speaking of the language problem, it often comes with the not intuitive way of WikiTree. So it would be good to consider this during the redesign.
Other pages such as FamilySearch are very intuitive, and that way, it's also doable if one does not speak very good English or one is not very good with computers (which both fits to the stereotype of genealogist in my country). Maybe it would already help, if there would be more short and simple "official" tutorials on Youtube, that are explained in simple and standard English (no dialects etc.). Maybe it would help, if more functions would have a help button, similar to the ones at the edit page of a profile.

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There's no getting around the fact that WikiTree is hard work and has a steep learning curve.  If you were to simply wave a magic wand and somehow make it trivially simple to use, you'd end up with a bigger problem ... it would open the doors to lazy researchers who don't have the discipline WikiTree requires to maintain accuracy and sourcing standards.  it would gradually morph into something more like what you have in FamilySearch.

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Good Point! It has taken me about one year to feel comfortable on WT.  It is frustrating at first, but rewarding once learned. I avoid Family Search because of the inaccuracies.  We don't want that on WT!

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To me, the fact that WT uses wiki technology, which I was already familiar with from other sites when I joined, is a plus because it meant I didn't have to learn how to do things here. Obviously not everybody is in that situation, but it must be better that some are than that nobody is; if every site has its own system, users will need to learn a new system each time they join a site, which will be annoying and may lead to confusion when mixing up elements of different systems. If there is another system that is already in use on many other sites there might be a point in switching, but I don't think we should try to develop anything entirely new on our own.

Also, the combination of free text with < ref > links in the WT biography field makes it easy to add sources in non-standard ways and/or comment on the sources when the source situation calls for it, unlike (in my admittedly limited experience) more formally structured sites like Geni and FamilySearch, and needing to drop that would be a tragedy - not to mention likely a lot of work to convert the old profiles.

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Richard,

I have to respectfully disagree. Bad research can be done by anyone, whether they learn the Wiki or not. Conversely, there are competent genealogists and family historians who don't take to this wiki.

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Laura, I didn't mean to imply that anyone who joined up to a hypothetically super-usable WikiTree would de-facto be an incompetent genealogist, nor that any and all competent genealogists would be irresistably drawn to it.  But I do believe that the consequences I mentioned would be one likely outcome, and is a characteristic of WikiTree that needs to be properly understood and taken account of by those developing it.

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Chiming in to express enthusiastic agreement with the idea that editing needs to be easier. In 2024 you shouldn't have to know how to write in html (even worse - a specialized version of html) in order to create a text-based entry. Huge barrier to entry/participation. And the standardized citations method is crazy cumbersome.

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The responses are making my point, and these are from people staying here and actively posting to G2G! For every contributor who stays despite possible years of learning curve, many more competent people leave.

This is unfortunate and not amenable to continued growth (of active users). Anyone can sign up, over a million have... but keeping contributing WTers should be the goal and, in my opinion, it will not be possible with a wiki.

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The wiki aspect is part of why I have chosen to work on this platform. It might be possible to add a WYSIWYG editing capacity (for those concerned w/ ease of editing), but if you remove the wiki functionality, it loses a defining characteristic!

Answer 11

Thanks for planning to tackle such an enormous project. The larger font will be a big help and a focus on accessibility is something I've wanted to see for a long time. I hope the WCAG 2.2 standard will be one of the planning guidelines. A potential short term might be to have a small set of selectable stylesheets that would tweak the site. Not user defined stylesheet but some standard ones that could help increase fonts, change contrasts, color, etc.

Another usability enhancement would be to extend the editor to display refs like the way it is in the display mode but bring up a popup with the contents and edit it there. That would help avoid some errors beginners commonly hit. It would make the bio much easier to read while editing as well.

Answer 12

I would like to see a service where you or your family group can hire  professional geneologists to break through brick walls.

Comments

People usually go through their local historical or genealogical societies for professional services like that.

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Una and Judi, we do have a badge for "Professional Genealogist" for members who want to advertise their services, and categorization for this. I think. But we have never really promoted it.

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Thank for the reply, Chris, because I've never seen that badge before. I found this:

https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/992594/how-do-i-get-the-professional-genealogist-badge

Answer 13

I will concentrate on four family lines, Stephens, Vernon, Hampson and Coulter

Answer 14

Is there a possibility for a spelling/grammar check? Alternatively, allow Grammarly the ability to see text when it is being edited?

Comments

Hi Kathy. Are you using the Enhanced Editor? Grammarly will work if you turn the Enhanced Editor off, according to this thread.

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spelling according to which country?  English itself has variations, depending if you are used to the spelling in the US or in England.  Not identical.

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Grammarly recognizes country variants. I'm in Canada, and we use a combination of US and English spellings. Grammarly knows when a Canadian should use English spelling and when we should use American spelling. There's a very long list.

Answer 15

Looking forward to a number of these improvements, including the ability to suggest changes to name variants.

I admin the McCool name study. WikiTree shows lots of incorrect McCool name variants, but doesn't include the only verified one: McCoole.

Answer 16

I don't know if this is possible, but just continuing on from the multilingual conversation, would it be possible to add in things in another language that then translate to the language used by the reader? eg I only speak and write in English. But I have Norwegian ancestors. If any of my cousins were to put in a profile of a common ancestor, in Norwegian, is there a way that I can change it to English for me to read it? And obviously, can be turned back to Norwegian for them to read? Or even, if there was a profile of a Japanese hero written in Japanese, but I wanted to look at - could it be written in Japanese by the person making the profile, but translatable to the language of whomever was reading it? I'm guessing this is a long way down the track, but I thought I'd just put it out there.

Comments

If any of my cousins were to put in a profile of a common ancestor, in Norwegian, is there a way that I can change it to English for me to read it?

Most browsers can do this for you already:

• Change Chrome languages & translate webpages
• Translate the web with Firefox
• Activating Translation in Safari Settings 

Also see the discussion and Chris' comments here. 

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Nothing stops you from doing translated bios, it is entirely permissible to have such, I regularly create such in French and English, separate sections on the profile.  Granted, it's a lot of work, and you have to be conversant with both languages.

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Thank you so much Danielle for all the translating into French you did for my English Quebecois bios.  While I seem to keep adding to the languages I "read at a genealogical level,"  I have not managed to add even one additional language that I can compose well enough in to write even a simple bio.

Do you think maybe you could collaborate with the write of the autobiography app so that it would produce a usable basic French bio the way it does with English?  If we did that with one language, maybe we could get other volunteers to work with the app writer to do it in other languages too.

Answer 17

I'm sure this is a perennial problem, but is there anything we can do about people adding profiles without any sources? I was reading the comments about planned events for 2024 and there was talk about whether one source-a-thon was enough. I know I have been active with adding sources for unsourced profiles for NSW (Australia) and at times we have nearly cleared the unsourced profiles and then they build up again. Often it is the same people over and over again. I don't know what the intentions are - perhaps they always mean to come back and add sources - perhaps they rely on source-a-thons to add sources for them - perhaps they don't know how to add sources - there could be a myriad of reasons. I wouldn't want to see anyone ostracised or berated for adding unsourced profiles, but then again, we would have less need for source-a-thons if new profiles always had at least one source. Is it possible to tag repeat offenders and be more forthright with offering help for them to add their own sources? I'm sure there are other people who have put more thought into this than me, but I do think this will be an ongoing problem if we can't think of a way to  address it. I have no tech abilities, other than as a user, so I don't even know what is possible and what isn't, but is there anything that might help address this in the new design plans?

Comments

Often it is the same people over and over again. ... I wouldn't want to see anyone ostracised or berated for adding unsourced profiles ... Is it possible to tag repeat offenders and be more forthright with offering help for them to add their own sources?

Please see Help:Problems with Members. 

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Most of my tree on my home-run phpgedview is well sourced. I will not upload that tree because WikiTree makes no attempt to convert properly structured  SOUR statement into a meaningful form and you have to destroy the structure and paraphrase manually. This would be time consuming whereas software could do this much better.

I have recently come across a tree on Ancestry that I am transcribing into my system. It has at least three 'tops' with the same surname and their families inter-marry. WikiTree would probably help make sense of this but it is all unsourced. So I can't upload that either.

Answer 18

I think technologically this would be a small thing, but in making WikiTree a world-tree it would be a big thing:

Without changing the structure where everything is keyed to an LNAB, without changing the edit screen where an LNAB is entered, without changing the default where an LNAB displays as a "last name", create an option for the display screen so that the LNAB/surname could appear last, as in European/American names (default) , first, as in East Asian names, or in the middle, as in some Latin American names.

Comments

This would solve a little problem with latin/spanish names where we use paternal and maternal surnames.

Some functions of apps are based on LNAB, but they read latin names as one name, not 2 separate ones.

Answer 19

Can you please revert to using women's birth surnames rather than their married names. This is the default in most countries.

Comments

Jean, can you expand on what you mean by this? Profiles are built around the Last Name at Birth (LNAB) field and all name display variations use the LNAB.

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Steven, I think Jean is referring to the way that women appear in things like the search results. For example, when I would appear there, I would be listed as Darlene (Wolff) Harbick, making my birth surname parenthetical. While that's concerning to me as an American who uses her husband's surname, it's definitely not ideal for those women who do not take their husband's surname, which is not the norm everywhere.

While we're on the subject, the way we handle names in general is very US-this century-centric. My ancestors often had three or sometimes four given names, usually using the third but sometimes the second as their preferred name. Our profiles split those given names into a first and middle names, putting emphasis forever after on the first one, even though it's the one they were least likely to actually be known by. It sure would be nice to make the names more accurately reflect the people.

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Working on French profiles mainly, I'm used to this one.  There is no such thing as a ''middle name'' in French, the words translate but the meaning doesn't carry forward.  They are ALL given names.  So they all go in the first box.  Preferred name box takes the one used mostly by the person.  

Last name, also we don't do the ''married name'' bit except for a short period.  The LNAB is normally the current last name, the husband (s) ' s last name can go in other last name box if desired.

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Yes! This! I agree 100%, Jean.

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I see our usage of the Current Last Name as an extension of our style rule to "use their conventions instead of our own."

If a woman used her married name or another name, it should be entered as her Current Last Name. If she did not, it should be the same as her Last Name at Birth.

There are arguments for making it more convenient for genealogists by always using Last Names at Birth for everyone's last name, but that would be using a convention that is convenient for us, not the convention of the profiled person.

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Regarding having more last names, or no middle names, etc., compromises need to be made ... https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Name_Displays#They.27re_Compromises

It's difficult to be all things to all people everywhere throughout all time. :-)

Answer 20

Whoo hooo! Love it, everything sounds great! Kudos to the techies working behind the scenes for these changes.

My wish list is short. On a profile page, I'd love to see Siblings and Children list style, instead of paragraph style. To save space, maybe they could display side by side, 2 columns.

Thank you, and keep up the great work. Cheering you on!

Comments

Thank you, Becky! I may be wrong, but I think the child list is an option in the WikiTree Browser Extension.