Cab we try to be a little more polite and kinder to one another?

Question

I'm sure some who have been on the site for years get fed up with us newbies not doing things right, but please can people be less forthright and a little politer ? There is a lot of intolerance and an awful lot of impoliteness, abruptness and plain rudeness from a few. It makes me want to close my account which I'm not ready to do. There is really no need!

Answer 1

I agree that experienced WikiTreers should be patient with newts; there's a lot to learn here, and even many of us old-timers make mistakes.

That said, there's nothing inherently rude about being blunt or forthright. Yes, in some regions, like the one I grew up in bluntness may equate to rudeness. In others bluntness is baseline good manners or even a mark of respect. Even in the United States there's massive variation on what level of directness is polite, and WikiTree is an international site.

You shouldn't put up with abuse; if someone calls you stupid or uses foul language, absolutely report that. But if someone simply says "You did this wrong; here's the link to the page that says how to fix it", and you did indeed do it wrong and the link tells you how to fix it, they aren't insulting you.

Comments

I agree fully with this answer, and believe in a forthright and direct communication style, that is to keep it short and to the point, whereas I find excessive wordiness or eating around the bush to be time wasting and can lead to misunderstanding, especially when trying to figure out what someone actually means.
 However that should also be mannerly and not nasty.
 Whether directness is rude is cultural, and can vary across sectors in any society.
 We are a multicultural lot so tolerance is important, so is respect for those you communicate with.

Answer 2

Deborah,

Have you reviewed the help on Don't WikiTree While Angry? (Just click the link)

You can find that from the help on Courtesy. Note that states when someone sounds rude, assume they don't intend to be.

So as an example, using all uppercase can be considered to be SHOUTING. But it might not be. Consider the case of LNAB, the commonly used abbreviation for Last Name At Brith, which might be said as LAST NAME AT BIRTH to convey that. This is described in the help for Name Fields. You will find more about the LNAB on the Data Doctor Suggestions for this field. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:DBE_774

Comments

Deborah has made a good point.  Regardless of whether the recipient of some of the rudeness that is displayed here chooses to ignore it (or chooses to "assume" the message they received from another user is meant to be helpful, not condescending, or just plain rude.) I took it as she is hoping to remind others on here that we are a team, and we are all volunteers in this.  For some people, this is a valid reminder to them that perhaps they should show some grace and helpfulness, not just criticism and unhelpful antagonization.  I too have reached a point that I don't feel comfortable responding to some G2G forum questions, because of it.  It is a problem, whether we choose to ignore it and/or assume the other person is just not very good at communicating their point without belittling or offending their audience.

Answer 3

Don't let anyone put you off! I'm sure I may come across as abrupt at times, because I'm working quickly , so I may comment e.g.: this a source, please can you change the LNAB etc., in a business like way. There's a difference between that sort of abruptness and rudeness, and if someone is rude then you should take the matter further.

Many of us remember what a learning curve wikitree was at the start and are totally sympathetic, and a wilingness to learn and be corrected is a big part of getting to grips with wikitree. I agree though, it should always be done with politeness!

Answer 4

I, too, received a private message from someone who had been on this site longer than me. (I had been on the site for less than 6 months at the time) I considered the message to be rude (and I still do consider it to be rude, especially the way it was worded). It upset me and I stopped working on WikiTree for a while. Then, I realized I wasn't gonna let one person take away something that I love to do. I decided to take their comment as a lesson learned.  Then, I joined Discord and many different projects and met many wonderful and helpful people (especially the Appalachia Project). I'm SO glad I didn't give up on WikiTree. Just remember, the vast majority of the people on here are wonderful!

Answer 5

I have been quite lucky in that most of the people who pointed out my newbie errors were very gentle and kind about it. And then when somebody changed the parentage of one of my several-greats grandfathers (for whose identity I had plenty of sources) I simply pointed out the established sources and requested any possible other sources besides a single (unsourced) Findagrave memorial that would back up the change. (There were none.) I think I also pointed out that Findagrave, while it can sometimes offer some clues, is not considered a valid or reliable source in general. What I didn't do was say "You're wrong, you screwed this up and now I have to fix it." (Although I will admit I was thinking it. Just don't tell anybody I said so.) I changed everything back to the correct ancestor and heard no more about it from that person. I did also put a message in the Research Notes for the spouse that there was no evidence other than the Findagrave to indicate that that man was ever married to her, and if someone could come up with anything resembling a reliable source, please contact the profile manager before making any changes. It's been a couple of years since that happened, and I've heard nothing more from anyone on the topic.

Comments

It is a very good idea to include information in Research Notes that says this person is not that person and provide the information that supports this statement.

There is also a banner or perhaps a navigation box  I think that says something like:

This person is easily confused with that person they are not the same person.

I have 3 people with the same name and close birth dates who are first cousins, adding a statement that says they are different people and have different sources has worked very well to reduce the number of merges proposed.

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Agreed. :)  Your close cousins situation reminds me that I more or less gave up on my maternal grandfather's ancestry because there are about a gazillion people named George [Surname], William [Surname], John [Surname] and Thomas [Surname] all living in the same part of Warwickshire in the same time frame. Oh, and let's not forget the Anns, Elizabeths and Sarahs that married the Georges, Williams, Johns and Thomases.... The records are sparse. I have a list on a Free-space page for when I run across anything I can't associate with a profile or create one for. At last count I had 14 Georges either unaccounted for or not provable.

Ain't this fun?  :)

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Yes! I think the problem is worse in more densely populated areas. And I think more likely to happen in England than in many areas of the New World.

My matching cousins are all members of the same South Staffordshire family, who are all descended from one William Richards born abt 1625 in Wellington, Shropshire who moved to Wednesbury, Staffordshire before 1668 when a child was baptised at Saint Bartholomew, Wednesbury, his older children were all baptised in Wellington.

Many family members still live in Wednesbury. The records for Saint Bartholomew, Wednesbury, are intact for baptisms from 1569 and burials from 1562. I have all the records.

Many of their marriages happened at Wolverhampton, St Peter.

Where in Warwickshire are your ancestors from?

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My great-grandfather, Thomas Bicknell-105, born in Bedworth, emigrated from Nuneaton to Canada in the 1860s when he was about 12 years old. Going back from there, some of the towns where the unidentified Bicknell gaggles lived were Bishops Itchington, Southam, Long Itchington, Stockton. My grandfather was born in Ontario, as were his 3 children. (His wife, my grandmother, was born in Belfast and sailed to Canada when she was 12, which was 3 years before the Titanic, so bullet dodged there.) They all emigrated to California when my mother was about 6 years old. This stuff is all so fascinating!

Edited to add... here is the link to the Free-Space profile where I've stashed stray Bicknells when I've run across them. If anyone feels ambitious enough to dissect that hot mess, be my guest!  :)

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Bicknell_-_people_to_create_profiles_for