Clarification on Help:Communication Before Editing

Question

Possible Help Page Change.

I feel too many folks read this page  Help:Communication Before Editing and stop reading at This is why, just like at Wikipedia, WikiTree encourages members to be bold. I feel a little clarification here would help our members from making changes without a complete understanding of how WikiTree is not totally like Wikipedia.

1. Change the heading from Be Bold or Be Polite to Be Bold and Be Polite. This shouldn't be an either or proposition.  It should be mutually inclusive.  There are times when it is totally acceptable to Be Bold alone such as Orphaned Profiles or where there is an Inactive Manager, but when it is better to be Polite seems to fall by the wayside at times.
2. Place a caveat at the end of this sentence: This is why, just like at Wikipedia, WikiTree encourages members to be bold. Such as "Just remember existing Profiles on WikiTree are viewed on a more personal level than pages on Wikipedia and may require more diligence before making changes"
3. Add Bullets to the following 5 data points below to make them stand out as being important to review as well regarding why being Polite is crucial in a shared environment such as WikiTree.
4. Change point #2 from "That said, WikiTree collaborations..." to "As said, WikiTree collaborations..."  Grammar change if above #2 is accepted.
5. Under the heading Your Confidence Level add this data point.  While changes are easy to fix if made in error,it is better to look before you leap and contact the Profile Manager beforehand.  If the Profile Manger has to fix an error, this is considered an inconvenience to their time and efforts. Make sure you understand the latest WikiTree Guidelines before making that change.
6. Add this heading: Try to Follow Profile Style or Format.  Respect the Profile Style or Format as it is and try to follow the Profile Mangers lead if it falls within WikiTree Style Guidelines.  It may not be a style you like or use, but it is theirs and while we do not own our Profiles, many are protective of the way they create their Profiles.  Would you like someone to go to your Profiles and completely change the way you made it. Remember, the two big "C's" Collaboration and Courtesy go hand in hand.

I bring this up as someone made a change to one of my Profiles and removed all of the sources I had that were attributed to Ancestry com. and removed all associated notes as well. While I admit they are not the best, they are also not forbidden. Plus another error that caused a Suggestion to pop up in my weekly Suggestions.   The basic reply was"well, that's easy to fix." Not exactly the answer I was hoping for. ;)

So please look at this and please have a say.  This is just an open question and look forward to any rights or wrongs on this.  Remember, this is just my opinion for a Rule Change and opinions are really like ears, most of us have two.  LOL

Comments

There is a real problem with addressing an issue like this, because no matter how carefully you word it, people tend to go with what they think anyway.

I am far more likely to get upset upon learning that somebody had information relating to a profile I'm working on and held it back for fear of annoying me by adding it than I am upon learning that somebody has edited a profile I manage. (I mean, I do check to see the changes they made, and whether they're justified [by sources, or grammatically ], but most of the time I just end up clicking on the "Thank so-and-so for doing this" link.) So that probably means that I'm towards the "bull in a china shop" end of the spectrum, so I apologise to LJ and anybody else whose toes I have trampled upon in my eagerness to get more information onto WikiTree. (I am an information junkie. You can keep your tobacco and your booze and your drugs. Just let me mainline data. Oh, yeah, baby.)

But just because I'm unbalanced doesn't mean I'm totally wrong. Having people so scared to offend anybody that they're afraid to do anything is a problem on WikiTree. Because I've done so much connecting, I've seen any number of cases where somebody has put up a tree (some of them really respectably large, too), but never managed to connect to the main tree. And then, after a few months of activity, adding, sourcing, editing, and so on, they disappear. Now, some of them (sadly), may have medical reasons for their inactivity. Some of them (sadly) may have died. But I can't help but think that, at least in some cases, they get frustrated at being unable to connect their branch to the main tree, and just give up. I have to admit that, before I finally found the first connection for my own branch, I was sorely tempted to give up myself. It's just so frustrating seeing everybody else happy and celebrating being related to one another (or so it seemed at the time) and me being left out. 

So that, I think, is why my hackles rise every time somebody makes some kind of comment as if even thinking about the quantity of profiles on WikiTree, or the speed at which new profiles are being added. It may not be their intent (and probably isn't), but it feels like they're being exclusive: "I'm connected to the main tree, and I have my perfect little family tree, and I don't want those riff-raff coming in here and tracking their muddy feet everywhere."

I spend all this time, not to say that the "bull in the china shop" model is good and the "slow and steady wins the race" model is bad, but to try to explain the other side of things, so that we can all see that going to the extreme in either direction is bad for WikiTree:

• If we prize speed and quantity above all, and especially at the expense of accuracy, then, as has been said repeatedly, we lose credibility. After all, the biggest family tree in the world means nothing if you know that huge chunks of it are bogus.
• But if we prize accuracy and detail above all, and especially at the expense of quantity, then we lose relevance (at least for anybody who isn't already in the "in crowd") and enthusiasm. 

We have set ourselves an absurdly large task: documenting and connecting, not just everybody in the world, but everybody who has been born in the last 2018 years (or at least, those we can document).  That's not going to be accomplished by a few dozen, or even a few hundred, perfectionists. To make it happen, we need to attract millions of people, convince them of the worth of the effort, train them how to go about them, and enthuse them to put in countless hours of researching and entering data, and all without paying any of them a cent. That is not going to happen without relevance (convincing them that it matters, not in some abstract terms, but specifically to them) and enthusiasm (convincing them to care whether it ever happens).

We need both quality and quantity. Not "quality above all, and only as much quantity as absolutely necessary", nor the other way around. (And whichever one you want to say is "really" the most important is probably a good sign that you are not taking the other one seriously enough.)

All of which is to say that it's really tough (possibly not even possible) to strike the perfect balance, but the current wording strikes me as pretty close. I might change it slightly to say, "If a profile has a manager, we strongly recommend contacting that Profile Manager before making changes to a profile they manage. If they don't respond within two weeks, and you had documented sources to back up the change you want to make, then go ahead." I would also want to put in something about "While you wait for a response, remember that there are millions of orphaned profiles on WikiTree, most of which need multiple fixes. Remember, you can work on any of them without stepping on anybody's else's toes."

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Two further comments:

First, I am sorry for what was done to the profiles you manage. I found that deeply offensive: not because somebody was changing what you wrote, but because they were deleting data. (Remember: information junkie.) But, in my opinion, that's not a help page issue, it should be a policy issue. We should make it very clear, wherever we need to, that:

• If you find another source which documents the same event (birth, census, marriage, death, etc.) as a source which is already on a profile, feel free to add the other source that you have found, but do not delete the existing source unless it is broken. Even then, see if you can repair or redirect the existing source (for example, by pointing to an archived copy of that page at the Internet Archive), rather than deleting it outright.

 Second, I'm sorry, but I just can't go along with your suggested point 6. The help pages clearly recommend (although they do not require) using a narrative biography and inline sources. Many people have other preferences, but there would be an inconsistency in telling people, "We really want you to do it this way, but if somebody has built a profile in a different way, you should do it their way instead."

Granted, I think it would be pretty intrusive to completely rework a profile somebody else put together without even consulting them (although I have had people convert narrative bios into lists of events on profiles I manage, and then had to revert the changes), but it seem to me that adding in a paragraph in narrative form (with inline citations) to describe a particular event should be acceptable, even on a profile done in a different style, where wholesale rewriting would not be. If the profile manager is so stuck on their own way of doing things that they insist on rewriting what I add into their own style, that's their choice. But asking people to learn and use a raft of different styles to suit the personal preferences of every different profile manager on WikiTree (especially when the documentation recommends one style) strikes me as overly demanding.

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If I have sources to add, I'm not going to keep them on file (because I would either lose them, or forget I had them) while waiting six months for someone to decide to respond.  (I already have a list of things I'd rather not lose, or forget, but cannot add due to green locked profiles.)

If it appears there is a "style" already on a profile (except the gedcom stuff), then I will TRY to add my source/s in the same "style".  Otherwise I do the best I can with "dry facts".

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So who hid my comment .. and why?

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Probably a leader, otherwise it takes two.  Probably just trying to scroll on a touchscreen.

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Thank you for that comment, Melanie. In the past, I have found myself in a frenzy of impatience when another profile manager doesn't respond to a question or a request right now!¹ And then, in my calmer moments, I realise that my impatience is entirely unjustified. It's not like my ancestors are going anywhere, or like the documents are suddenly going to disappear. I was talking it over with my wife a while ago, and I realised that what was going on was that I wanted to make sure that what I had discovered was recorded somewhere before I forgot about it. (After all, I'm getting old and senile, and I forget things all the time.) Then, too, when I've spent weeks, months, or years trying to connect an unconnected branch or notable², and I finally find the final connection, having to wait even a few hours for a response is hard. 

So now, recognising that that's what's going on, I try to be a little less annoying about it:

• If I'm not sure that the source I've found actually applies to that person, I send the profile manager a private message, giving the source, and asking if they think it's a match. That  way, they get the source (and I get a copy back, too, so I'm not going to forget it), but I'm not hassling them to act right now on an issue that almost certainly isn't as urgent to them as it feels to me.
• If I am sure the source applies, and the profile is open, I'll add it, but I try to restrain myself from messing with other things on the profile (except for issues that are going to produce DBE suggestions, or cause material not to display on the profile, or spelling errors, or things like that). Adding a source is one thing, completely rewriting a profile without consultation is something else entirely.
• If I am sure the source applies, but the profile is set to Public or higher, I post the source as a message. That way, the profile manager (and everybody else) can see the information, but I don't have to get all worked up over making sure that it actually gets integrated into the profile right now.

So it is kind of reassuring to know that other people have the same issue with impatience for similar reasons. That doesn't mean that I'm not crazy, but at least it's comforting to have company.

1. I'm not talking here about profile managers who haven't been active on WikiTree for months or years, never opened up the profiles they managed so other people could work on them, and never answer their mail. That is a problem, and the Unresponsive Profile Manager procedure is in place to deal with it. In this case, I'm talking about profile managers who are active, and do respond in a reasonable time, but just don't spend every waking minute on WikiTree. Profile managers have lives, just like everybody else, and I apologise to those profile managers whom I have pestered in the past, just because I wanted something done right away, even though it wasn't actually urgent.
2. Yes, I'm looking at you, James, William, and Thomas. Don't you go playing all innocent and asking, "who, me?" You know how much I suffered over you.

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I just remembered one other case where I mess with profiles: I have, upon occasion, gone to change a category on a profile (because the existing category is going to be deleted), only to find that the category I deleted was still there after I save my changes, because it was in the list of categories twice. (Sometimes, I've even seen a given category added to the same profile three times. Can anybody top that?)

Usually, that happens because there are lots of categories on that profile, and they're not in any sort of order. (Or, probably, they're just in the order that people think to add them.) Sometimes, it's because people have added categories in places other than above the == Biography == header. Sometimes it's because one category is applied by a template or sticker, and people either didn't know that they don't need to add the category with a separate [[Category:Whatever]] entry, or just don't notice the template or sticker. (And, probably, sometimes it's a combination of multiple factors.)

In any case, in cases like that, I will sort all the categories into alphabetical order, not because there's any kind of rule about that, but just to make it easier to see what's there and spot duplicates.

Answer 1

Actually I think this bullet is what people ignore.

Before the decision consider these primary factors.

[edit]Their activity level

First check the Profile Manager's contributions. If the member has been making contributions recently it's more likely that they would appreciate a message from you and will respond well to it.

Comments

Perhaps that language should be made a bit more forceful, such as "we recommend that you contact them with an explanation of your planned changes before you implement the changes".

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I disagree, Joan. Being polite and communicating is important, but if people fail to respond, then sourced changes need to be made. Recently I contacted someone who had made a recent contribution. My proposed link connected his whole family to the main tree. It was a nice email - no reply. I made the connection and sourced a number of his family members as they were easy to do. Nothing. No email. No thank you clicked. I’ll continue to be bold and source things I can. I’ll communicate if I’m doing anything in the least controversial, but if there’s no answer, I’ll just carry on.

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I don't think anyone is saying don't do it if there's no response.  Just that  it's important to try to communicate first.

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that  it's important to try to communicate first.

commented by Nan Lambert

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How does that fit with challenges and sprints? 

(I seriously want to know, because you can't avoid doing the "wrong" thing unless you know.  And this place can be rather unforgiving if you err, because frequently nobody tells you that you did err. or how.)

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We're talking (at least, I am) about communicating before major  changes.  Not fixing a typo, taking USA out of a location for a 17th century event, adding a clearly applicable source, etc.

And sprint or not, if I found something that would upend a profile -- different parents, etc. -- I would communicate with the PM first.

Answer 2

This will probably come across as insensitive. However, this caught my attention:

"I bring this up as someone made a change to one of my Profiles and removed all of the sources I had that were attributed to Ancestry com. and removed all associated notes as well. While I admit they are not the best, they are also not forbidden."

This is a wiki, which means that every change is tracked. If you don't like what someone did, like remove Ancestry sources and notes, then go to the Changes tab, and revert the changes. It's that simple. I've had to do it from time to time.

After you revert the changes, then since you admit they are not the best sources, then work on changing them. Then it's less likely to happen again.

If more time is spent on working on profiles, and less on a forum post admonishing others' behaviors and pointing out the rules, then these problems will probably occur less.

I've worked on many Open Source projects before. WikiTree is very similar in its collaboration. Sometimes unfortunate things happen. But we have the tools here to be able to deal with it in a relatively easy way: that is, the ability to see every change on the Changes tab, and the ability to easily revert any change. My advice is to go use the tool.

And yes, Ancestry sources are allowed, but they're not the best because they're behind a pay wall. If you can find better sources, such as from FamilySearch.org, where they are free, then do that.

My advice to the other person who made the changes on these profiles: don't remove a source, unless you can replace it with something better.

Comments

''If more time is spent on working on profiles, and less on a forum post admonishing others' behaviors and pointing out the rules, then these problems will probably occur less.'' 

Er, sorry Eric, but G2G forum is here to resolve apparent problems also.  If someone perceives a problem, they come here and discuss it with the community.  Not stew in their own juice about how things should be.  And I see you here, don't I?  

Ancestry sources are deemed not the best sources not because they are behind a pay-wall, but because some of them are a collection somebody created, like the ''Passenger and immigrations list index compiled by (I forget who)'' found on many profiles.  Those so-called indexes would need to be searched through thoroughly to the applicable original documents to really be considered valid.  Else, they are verging on the ''grandma's family tree'' sort of source.

Even a family tree link should be left on the profile, out of simple courtesy, although it would be moved from being a source to being a further item below source (take those reference tags off pls), so whoever has access to Ancestry can go look if they so choose.

Answer 3

I want to thank everyone who replied to my question.  I would just like to make it clear that I am not angry with the person who made the change, in fact I feel we have a nice relationship now.

My problem was their answer to my query of why they removed the Sources form the Profile.  Basically "It's easy to fix".  I felt this reply, which I have received by others who have made major changes to my Profiles, is due to the ambiguity of this Communication Before Editing Page.  This is why I posted this question.

To clarify my post, I have gone over the page in question and made changes I feel will more clearly define when and when not to Be Bold.  I feel too many folks see that Be Bold and quit reading as the When to Be Polite portion is down below the normal view on most screens. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them scroll....or something like that. ;)

And though it may be a little late in doing so for this question, please take a look at my re-write free space page and see if this is more clearly defined.

Be Bold and Be Polite

Please note I did not include the internal links from the existing  Help:Communication Before Editing page because I got lazy.  LOL

Again, thanks to all.