It’s hard to believe how long it is since we last did a project update but we have had a tumultuous year, like no other, first the fires and now the Coronavirus pandemic. I hope you and your families are all keeping well during these troubling times. It’s a great time to be focussing on family history with so many companies providing free webinars and other activities to keep us busy in isolation - so much so, that I’m finding my days filling up even though I’m not leaving the house!
This update is just a brief snapshot of some of the things that have been happening in the Australia Project.
- Meet Our Members - It was great to see David Urquart profiled recently on Meet the Members, David is the Team Leader for our Queensland CST Team (Colony, State and Territories) Team. If you missed it you can find it here https://www.wikitree.com/blog/meet-our-members-david-urquhart/
- Team Leader Changes - Les Cooper has kindly agreed to take on the Team Leader role for our Victorian CST Team, welcome Les. Kylie Haese has been joined by Steve Thomas as a co-leader of the Prussian Settlement in Australia Team, thanks Steve! Ken Evans has also agreed to take over Damian Larcombes role as the Australia Contact for the ANZAC project, thanks Ken and Damian. As most of you would know the ANZAC project is now managed by the Military and War Project.
- Clean a Thon 2020 - The recent Clean-a-thon was a great success and the ‘Wizards of Aus’ team ended up coming 9th overall. Thanks to everyone who contributed to improving our One World Tree. Special thanks to Kathleen Cobcroft, our Profile Improvement Team Leader for leading the team and to Porter Marsh for completing a remarkable 4532 errors coming in at #1 for overall contributions! Well done Porter! The full report is here https://wikitree.sdms.si/Challenges/CleanAThon/TeamUser.htm
- Categories - As many of you already know, an incredible amount of work has been undertaken in implementing the recent agreed changes to our ship voyages categories. Did you know if you are unsure about how to correctly categorise your ships voyage, or any Australian category for that matter you can add a request for a category to be created on this page? https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Categories_Waiting_to_be_Added_or_Renamed. If you are interested in more about ship categories, you can access the Help Page here - https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Adding_a_New_Category_for_Voyages_to_Australia. The Categories Team, led by Margaret Haining has done a fantastic job in an impressively quick timeframe, thanks for these great innovations!
- Indigenous Australians Project - The Indigenous Australians project has been consulting with their members about naming guidelines for Indigenous Australians, especially the preferred Last Name at Birth. We plan to post draft guidelines for review by the Australia and Indigenous Australians Projects in the near future. The Australia Project manages a number of profiles of significant Indigenous Australians. We are currently working to expand the profiles managed through the project to include other historically significant and/or notable Indigenous Australians.
- Project Managed Profiles - Profiles considered suitable for being managed by the Australia Project can be nominated using this form, https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc3r3hy6mzd0AZHPG6h5yVdXZOR2SdcY46DCA7ZKQkrxJR5MA/viewform Usually the criteria includes historically significant, notable or contentious profiles. See the help topics for more information - https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Project-Managed_Profiles and https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Project_Protecting_and_Merging
- Pre Federation Locations - Discussions have recently commenced about the need to develop location guidelines for pre 1901 Australian locations. If you are keen to be involved in developing these, please join our ‘Born in the Colony Team’ who will be developing the options to be considered. Here’s our team page for more information - https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Australia_-_Born_in_the_Colony_1788_-_1900
- Team Project Guidelines - Work on developing and improving these guidelines is continuing. We anticipate having guidelines available for all our location and topic teams in the long term. The guidelines are aimed at improving Australia content on Wikitree and assisting WIkitreers to action profiles in accordance with Australia Project and Wikitree Guidelines. They also include source, citation and category guidelines, so please take a look! You can find them here - https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Australia%2C_Project_Guidelines If there is an area you feel needs to be covered in these guidelines that’s currently missing, or you can help to progress some of the action items, please contact Veronica.
- DNA Confirmations - There are quite a number of errors in the DNA Confirmations on our Australian Project Profiles and on Australian profiles in general. Veronica is continuing to work through these errors and will be contacting relevant profile managers to correct and improve them. Please ensure that you follow the guidelines in the Help Index if adding DNA sources and amending the ‘Confirmed with DNA’ indicators - https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Confirmed_with_DNA
- Membership Check ins - We conduct check ins with our members on an annual basis about their ongoing involvement with the project. Our next check in is due to be undertaken in August (which will be here before we know it), so don’t be surprised to hear from us then!
For more information about the project or to join us, please visit our project page - https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Project:Australia
We welcome feedback on aspects of Australian content on Wikitree that need improvement. If you have suggestions please send an email to our project google group - wikitree-australia-projects@googlegroups.com
Veronica Williams and Gillian Thomas
Australia Project Leaders
