Project: Profile Improvement

Categories: Profile Improvement Project | DD Suggestions Help

Mission: This project exists to bring together WikiTreers who love to make profiles beautiful! We clean up messy biography sections and sources, and try to set standards for attractive, useful, and well-written biographies, starting with those we manage. See the example profiles from project members.

How to Join

Are you interested in the Profile Improvement Project?profiles.gif

In addition:

  1. Complete the PIP Voyage. After completion, members are strongly encouraged to continue reviewing the profiles on their own watchlist with a goal of continuous improvement.
  2. Add [[Category:Profile Improvement Project]] to your profile page to be included on the Project Category page.
  3. If you need guidance on improving profiles, please your Voyage Guide or ask in the profile-improvement channel on Discord
  4. For a full list of participants, see the badge report.

Contents

Goal

Profiles which are:
  • well-sourced: All facts presented in the profile should be accompanied by reliable sources.
  • well-written: The text portion of the profile should be genealogical in nature and enjoyable to read.
  • well-structured: The text portion of the profile should be structured in a way that makes it easy to read and easy to find information, as well as visually appealing. Large amounts of text about a place, event, etc. should be split off into a free-space page.

Steps toward Improved Profiles

There are steps or stages to improving Profiles. It is possible to do several in one go, but it is also possible to do a step at a time. Each step produces something better than before. If you are not comfortable with working on a particular step, collaborate with someone who enjoys that aspect. Begin with the profiles on your own Watchlist to become comfortable with doing these steps:
  1. Rearrange the Bio into a logical order, remove the GEDCOM crud after import, or tidy the sections after merging. Even manually entered profiles can benefit from some organization. This should be done by everyone who adds or merges profiles as a matter of course.
  2. Help implement the style guidelines for what makes a good narrative. For example, see Biographies and the Examples gallery. See this G2G answer from our WikiTreer-in-Chief for an explanation as to why this is important.
  3. Check that all facts have one or more sources, preferably a verifiable primary source. Add sources according to the Sources Style Guide using the Sources examples. The Sources FAQ describes sources that are vague or are unsourced family trees. Profiles with those type sources can have the Unsourced template added.
  4. Add a ==Research Notes== section to identify and highlight disputed information and/or common mixups for a person.
  5. Layout a preliminary narrative and/or timeline of the person's life, getting the key facts in order will help later. New apps are developed all the time, so check to see if there are others to help.
  6. Include copyright-free photographs, pictures, maps, or other visual items on the profile following the aesthetics guidelines.
  7. Add categories and succession boxes if appropriate.
  8. Fill out the narrative with appropriate background stories and links to other related profiles and information like Wikipedia, online newspapers archives, or family websites
  9. Add, where possible, an estimated birth year to profiles with empty birth dates. Set the before, after, or uncertain status; the {{Estimated Date}} template is also recommended.
  10. Add, where possible, a potential country or continent of birth or death to profiles with all empty locations. Set the Uncertain status.
  11. Add maintenance categories for profiles that need help beyond the limits of your time or expertise.
  12. Where copyrighted work, or even public-domain text, has been pasted in a biography, cleanup efforts are appreciated. Best practice is to summarize the key points and LINK to the source where you can. Short quotes are okay. Quotes should always have quotation marks " " and a source.
Use G2G conversations to discuss topics related to the Profile Improvement Project. When you do, be sure to add "profile_improvement" as a tag.
Another part of Profile Improvement is educating other members to do the same improvements on their own Profiles. One way to do this is by showcasing good profiles in G2G and by helping new members who ask for help.

Examples of nice profiles

Great profiles created by project members. Open an interesting profile in edit mode (use the Edit tab) to see how things were done.
Other great profiles:

Personal Goals & Challenges

For profiles on your Watchlist and in your family lines:
  • Check Suggestions weekly. Use the "Show suggestions in profiles related/managed by Wiki ID" link to toggle between your Watchlist profiles and profiles related to you
  • Use Bio Check to find profiles on your Watchlist or profiles related to you that could use improvements
If you enjoy having a goal or a little friendly competition, consider joining one of the Challenge series. The challenges aren't under the direction of the Profile Improvement Project, but each results in improved profiles. Read more about the challenges and follow the joining instructions if something interests you.

Teams, Sub-Projects, and Related Projects

Profile Improvement Teams

Sub-Projects

Related Projects

Maintenance Categories and Templates

Maintenance Categories

  • Maintenance Categories - Categories created to group profiles in need of specific improvements. Some can be done in a short amount of time, others require more time. Many of these maintenance categories have associated (multiple pages) with How-To cleanup biographies videos.
Look at these categories to find profiles that need improvement.

Using Templates to Add Maintenance Categories to Profiles

While working on a profile, if you can't find sources or need to estimate dates, please add the appropriate Research Note Boxes after any category and before any Project Box above the ==Biography== heading. See the linked pages for more details on what to include in the template.

Resources

Please find information about guidance on how to improve profiles on our Resources page

G2G Tag & Useful pages

To find G2G conversations about the project, click this G2G tag profile_improvement
Some discussions of interest:


This page was last modified 16:49, 27 February 2024. This page has been accessed 30,474 times.