WikiTree

This is a **proposal for a new** Wikimedia sister project.
WikiTree
Status of the proposal
Status	procedurally closed
Reason	Wikimedia genealogy project is far more active
Technical requirements
Development wiki	http://www.wikitree.com/
	v; t; e;

There are many proposed genealogy projects. Please see the centralized discussion at Wikimedia genealogy project.

A place where individuals can submit their family trees and have them sewn into the whole. Ultimately creating a universal tree. In every family there is always that one genealogy buff who compiles the family tree for the whole family, it would be almost trivial to implement a project that would make all that valuable information public and easily accessible. Imagine the implications for disease research!

Proposed by

Shoshana Tabakman, Mordecai Adler

Alternative names

WikiFamily, WikiGenealogy

Related projects/proposals

Rodovid

Domain names

Mailing list links

Demos

http://wikitree.org/

http://www.WikiTree.com/

People interested

Discussion

Oppose There are already Ancestry.com, 23andMe, etc. for this. Plus, most users will not want to input family info so publicly onto a wiki. SelfieCity (talk) 17:17, 8 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose bc personal data protection. --BoldLuis (talk) 22:33, 1 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose Absolutely not... this is ridiculously unavailing. And i think that this project should not be an open proposal anymore, the content has not been updated since 2014 and the user seems to be uninterested Arep Ticous 06:42, 5 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose There is a problem with my personal information.--Tmv (talk) 05:33, 6 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose Same reasons as above. There's already plenty of websites doing that, and i don't believe it fits into a Wikimedia project. --Monirec (talk) 17:39, 24 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Conditionally support this idea. Yes, it would need restrictions around adding living or recently deceased people, and yes, it would have to have high expectations around reliability of information added, but beyond that, there exists nowhere on the internet a "popular" free, open, singular world-wide family tree. A wiki format would be the perfect way to maintain this. Supertrinko (talk) 00:58, 4 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support It is a great idea and a wonderful site. That it is not tied to the Mormons is a real plus. It is people working together (sound familiar?) towards a fine goal. They are at like 25 million entries now. Carptrash (talk) 20:13, 11 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Strongest possible support And now, my opinion on every oppose vote:
- @SelfieCity - WikiTree is fundamentally different in that there is only ONE tree. As in, it is built on the idea of one profile per person, always, and we are all related.
- @BoldLuis WikiTree already has stuff in place for this.
  Answer: it can be used for family trees in Wikidata, for notably people (i.e. people included in Wikipedia). And so, including it in Wikidata, can be used in any Wikimedia project. BoldLuis (talk) 13:14, 24 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- @Arepticous - What does "unavailing" mean in this context?
- @Tmv - Again, already handled - WikiTree does not allow you to create public profiles of living people who aren't users - all living people that aren't users are incredibly private. Casualdejekyll (talk) 01:28, 30 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support I think this is a great idea. Talking with friends, we actually discussed this idea and the name itself came up independent of finding this proposal which was a hoot to read - but open to the actual name itself.
- Applicability - I think reading the Wiki Foundation's about statement helps frame the need for this as an addition to opening up knowledge in a free and accessible way.
- Privacy - throughout the world birth certificates, death certificates, and marriage certificates are open to the public, so that data is already open to everyone - this project would merely put that outside of a paywall.
- Open and accessible - a lot of genealogy information is placed behind a paywall, where in fact the very family tree that people creates is not owned by them, but by the company that uses proprietary software. This project would help to untangle that and open it up to people unable to pay for that service/ able to easily edit their details that they might not know are put wrongly down.
- Ideas:
  Privacy - this project, as mentioned above, could allow only those that have died to be recorded. This would help ensure privacy to those that are living.
  
  Referencing and research - there would need to be a significant policy on referencing and research to be developed. Indeed, I think a significant template would need to be created that has specific fields (e.g. like name, Date of Birth, Date of Death, etc) that can only be populated if a corresponding reference source is attached. As well, I think some kind of community validation system would need to be developed (like how Wikisource verifies proofreading) for an uninterested user to validate the information from whatever source is used is correct within the fields.
  
  Software - Gramps, as a FOSS software, could be utilised to help with this project.
  
  Profiles and notability - I think this project would host basic genealogical information (again only if a reference to it can be provided). No profiles of great length are to be kept on it. That can be the place for Wikipedia, where rules on notability serve to weed out profiles that are unneeded. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jamzze (talk) 14:04, 26 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support As a genealogist, I strongly support this Smug uwu (talk)