part of a series, “Harmonizing Across Multiple Platforms“
When we last talked about harmonizing our research efforts using multiple online platforms, I said I would talk next about “why-to” use WikiTree. That was last summer, and since then, WikiTree and Family Tree DNA (ftdna.com) have partnered up so that users can connect their WikiTree accounts to their FTDNA accounts more easily, and I’ve been waiting to see how that works.
I’m still not sure what I have to say about the FTDNA-WikiTree partnership, but a few months have passed, so let’s take a look at some of the other ways WikiTree might fit into your overall strategy of guiding and preserving your family history research.
Why It Is Free
WikiTree is 100% free to sign up for and to use. As their internal Help pages explain, they use ads that display to non-members to support the costs of running the platform, and they rely on volunteers to develop data analysis apps, to mentor each other, or to run the various Projects that seek to improve the information on the platform.
Unlike other free services we’ve already talked about (Find-a-Grave and FamilySearch.org) WikiTree does not give you direct access to any records. What you do get is access to two halves of a single, collaborative family tree: the “wiki” and the “g2g” (short for “Genealogist to Genealogist”).
G2G is a forum for asking questions, finding help, volunteering to help, and coordinating on Projects. When you first sign up for a WikiTree account, you should receive emails with instructions for finding the introductory tutorials on using the forum and the wiki.
When you reach out for help with a question, or guidance on how to do something, just keep in mind that with an all-volunteer workforce, it can take some time to get a response – and sometimes the response will be “I don’t know that, either – let me help you figure it out.” In this case, the “cost” of a free platform is that you need to be a little more patient and be prepared to deal with Other People.
One World Tree
The “killer app” at the heart of WikiTree is the wiki – a single tree for all users, highly flexible, and editable by everyone. (We talked before about how scary “editable by everyone” can be in the first HAMP post.) Like the World Tree on FamilySearch, the goal is to have a single page (a “profile”) for every individual, instead of countless separate trees with conflicting or unsupported information. Privacy rules are in place to protect the profiles of living people and the recently deceased.
Some people find the wiki markup language and editing features easy; others, less so. This is where the G2G forum and various Projects can come in handy: that’s where you can ask questions and learn.
And there is a LOT to learn. But the cornerstone is the “Biography” section of each profile. That is where you should be putting your standard narrative paragraphs and source citations. When you sign up for your free account, you get your own profile, which is an ideal place to practice. Since you control your own privacy settings, no one has to see how many times you have to rewrite your own story, or how many tries it takes for you to learn how to format your citations!
Once you have the basics of editing a profile down, you can move on to either finding or creating profiles for your family. Building out “My Sixteen” was an early goal for me. That meant creating or linking to 31 profiles (me, my “Great 28,” plus “My Sixteen”), and usually, by the time you’ve done that, you should have at least one ancestor linked to an existing WikiTree profile – connecting you to that One World Tree.
Welcome to the Rabbit Hole
From there, you can really start to take advantage of some of the interesting data analysis apps developed by enthusiasts around the world.
This is probably the app most people have come in contact with – plug in your profile handle (mine is “Callin-50”) and any other profile on WikiTree, and the app will figure out how you are connected to each other. If you sign up for the weekly email from WikiTree, or for Watchlist notifications, they will include links based on a theme of the week (themes like “Famous TV stars” or “Founding Fathers’), but you can try this any time on the Connection Finder page.
I’m only 20 degrees from Kevin Bacon – but I’m no movie star!
Probably the most useful app – once installed into your web browser, you can use it to create an inline citation for (almost) any source record you care to put in a biography. For example, if you see a source in FamilySearch, follow the link to the record page, create the citation, and paste it into your biography. For most sources on free sites, it should create links to the record and, in most cases, to the image of the record, making your WikiTree page more useful.
Note: you always want to proofread the output of any app like this. You may have formatting preferences different from the app developers, or you may need to add details (like page numbers) that the app can miss.
- One Name Trees
This one is fun for the data analysis piece of your favorite One Name Study.
You can find it by clicking the pulldown menu from your name on your profile page, opening the Tree Apps page, and clicking the pulldown in the “Tree Apps” box – “ONE NAME TREES” is alphabetically sorted, about halfway down the list.
I needed a way to access all of the profiles for the surname variations in the Callan Name Study, and this app allowed me to export them to a spreadsheet (using the “Sheet” button).
The Magic of Harmonizing
As with all of these family history tools, your mileage may vary depending on what you are trying to accomplish. WikiTree has become, for me, an End Goal – once I have done what I can to pull together the evidence to support what the Biographies and Profile connections claim, WikiTree is where the “finished” work resides.
I see it as the anchor point for what I can do with all of the other sites and tools.
And, of course, for people like us, it can be a lot of fun!
Mightier Acorns 
Say hello, cousin!