"Profile Manager" who never confirmed her email?!?!

Question

This evening, after checking my list of Trusted List requests that had received no response, in order to move toward the next step of the Unresponsive Profile Manager process I initiated a Private Message to a Profile Manager who I had tried to contact 3 weeks ago. When I opened the PM window, I saw the warning: "Please note that the recipient has not confirmed their e-mail address. We have no way to know if this message will be received."

This is a Family Member of WikiTree who was here for 1-1/2 hours in 2011, created a bunch of profiles, and hasn't returned since, but has held the title of Profile Manager for nearly 6 years in spite of never confirming her email. Seeing that she never bothered to confirm her email, I am feeling rather silly for going through the process of politely requesting the favor of being "trusted" to watchlist the unsourced profile she created for a person born in 1725. (OK, it's sourced now because I added a source last month, but that's not the issue...)

Shouldn't there be some sort of statute of limitations on accounts like this one? For example, "Accounts whose registrations are not confirmed within 90 days will be closed."

Comments

I agree!

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Ellen --

Have you filed an Unresponsive Profile Manager request or an MIR for this situation?

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Julie, I am not eligible to do an Unresponsive Profile Manager yet because I haven't gone through all of the necessary prerequisite steps yet. I had politely waited 3 weeks after the Trusted List request before sending her a PM (as one of the prerequisites to an Unresponsive Profile Manager request), which is when I discovered that she had never confirmed her email.

I wasn't particularly concerned when she didn't respond to profile messages or merge requests. In my experience, the majority of my profile messages and merge requests never get a response, but merges get completed after they go to default approval. (It's faster and easier to get default approval on a merge than it is to do an Unresponsive Profile Manager request.)  I submitted the Trusted List request only because I concluded she was totally inactive and I decided an Unresponsive Profile Manager request was needed in order to get her name off the profiles she created.

Answer 1

Ellen I fully agree with you. As an arborist I sometimes just need a merge to be completed and I do not want to be added to the trusted list of all these profiles.

I feel that it is a step that could be eliminated or as you say there should be a statute of limitations. It is very clear that these persons are not going to return to Wikitree and it is dragging out the process of keeping the tree in shape.

Answer 2

Years ago, I posted the problem with the Family Member membership, as anyone with that membership can not only edit profiles, but can create, merge and adopt as well.  Just noticed one recently who adopted 1500+ orphaned profiles some of whom I am on the trusted list of (did not know they were orphaned) but who is not a Volunteer or signed the Honor Code.  With the recent "issue" of the Public privacy setting, I feel there is more a "membership" problem on WikiTree that needs to be addressed and could start with either eliminating the Family Member or at least restricting from creating or adopting.

Comments

As I understand it, a Family Member cannot exist unless that person was invited/sponsored by a WikiTree Genealogist. In principle, that should mean that the Family Member is working under some amount of oversight by the person who invited/sponsored them. But because a Family Member's profile is private (often red private, meaning there's not clue to their family tree) and there are no profile messages documenting how they joined, the rest of us (outside of the Team) can't contact their "sponsor" because we can't see who that person is.

It this membership level continues to exist, every Family Member profile should have a public notation indicating who created the profile and invited the person. I'm going to go add that to the profiles for those people I invited who did not go on to become WikiTree Genealogists.

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Shortly after I joined, someone asked for TL on profiles I created of his family saying that he had contacted the site and received no reply - he seemed upset about it.  On his profile, it said "Lauren you can confirm. . . " and fearing an unresponsive manager mark against me (I was a newbie) I wrote to a Leader for advice.  I received no reply from her, so I sponsored him as I thought I was supposed to.  It was difficult from that time on - duplicates, no sourcing, data entry errors (despite my constant attempts to help and begging him to sign the Honor Code), that I swore I would never "sponsor" another person again.  That was when I was surprised to see he could do everything I could do without even becoming a Volunteer.  I got no help through the g2g on this issue.  I thought a Family Member could only "edit" by Trusted List on existing profiles, but that is not the case at all.

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That sounds awful, Lauren. Is that still going on?

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@Ellen

No, he has not been active for a while.  Most who have asked me for trusted list access haven't stuck around long.  :-/

Answer 3

Hello, ladies!

First of all, thanks for the link, Lauren. :-)

Secondly, we just tested this out, and here's what we found. People with the Family Member (active) badge can:

• Create profiles
• Merge profiles where they're on the Trusted List or if it has gone to default approval
• Adopt single profiles

They cannot:

• Edit a profile where they're not on the Trusted List
• Adopt profiles using any of the "bulk adoption" methods

Both of those above actions trigger messages explaining that their current membership status doesn't allow them to perform those actions.

 

In Ellen's case, it sounds like there may have been some changes since 2011. 

 

Lauren, in the case of the mass adoption you're talking about, could it be that the family member who invited them used the Bulk Trusted List tool to add them to many profiles?? This, of course, would be shown on the Changes tab of one of the adopted profiles.

 

Finally, I know some of this took place some time ago, but if you run across activity that doesn't seem right, it would be really helpful if you could use the Problems with Members process to let us know what's going on so that we can look into it.

 

Thanks!!

Comments

Hi again Julie :-)

I don't know who invited her but she is a Family Member since 2011 I believe.  The adoption activity began late 2016 and occurred over several months as they all came up in my feed (I am/was on the trusted list of a quite a few of them).  All her contributions are adoptions.  I contacted Eowyn to look into the situation and have left it that.  My own sleuthing shows she is an active person on FindAGrave.com so is maybe using WikiTree to enhance her work on that site.  Still, being a PM on WikiTree has some obligations and should go along with being a Volunteer and the Honor Code, not someone using WikiTree for their own purposes.  Your description of Family Member and Volunteer are the same except for the bulk tool, so what's the point of the Honor Code?

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The Honor Code gives the Family Member WikiTree Genealogy status, and then they have full editing abilities -- i.e., they can then edit any Open profile.

If the person who adopted the profiles isn't responding to people who want to collaborate with her, an Unresponsive Profile Manager request would work on her just like anyone else.

It's unfortunate that she's not improving the profiles, but that happens with WikiTree Genealogists who aren't very active, too.

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All right, then I will just mind my own business unless there's a problem.  Thank you for your attention, Julie.  :-)

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The woman I described doesn't seem to have done anything in 2011 that isn't currently in scope for a Family Member. All she did in her 1-1/2 hours of activity was create profiles. Since then, her main "activity" has been to ignore profile comments and merge requests.

Are Family Members now required to confirm their email addresses before they can start doing the things you list, Julie?

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Ellen --

I feel pretty certain that the lack of email confirmation doesn't affect the abilities of Family Members. The resolution to something like this is to use Problems with Members to let the Leaders and Team know about the problem so we can address it.