Talk:WikiTree

This article was nominated for deletion on 4 August 2023. The result of the discussion was keep.

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Genealogy Software

Why not included in Genealogy_software page? Fbax (talk) 04:19, 12 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Done: Wikitree has been included on the Genealogy Software page. AnnaZZZ (talk) 02:51, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

WikiTree's funding model

WikiTree is 100% Free https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:The_Free_Family_Tree

How Is It Free? "Expenses can then be covered by modest advertisements on public pages." To understand this better, WikiTree posts advertisements which can only be seen by visitors or members not logged in to the site. These advertisements are primarily to other paid Genealogy sites and appear on profile pages. To get the visitor to click on the advertisement (and make money for WikiTree) there needs to be as little information as possible on the profile page except the most basic information to get the right person on the paid genealogy site. Basically, WikiTree just wants to be an index and that index needs to be correct or the person clicking on the advertisement won't be happy with the click through. When there is too much good information on the profile the visitor will stay and join WikiTree.

The above situation is reflected in the way WikiTree operates and is the source of most of the bans of people who criticize WikiTree Management. Lets first look at membership. WikiTree has more than 1 million signup members now https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/1572820/the-one-million-member-pool-when-will-cross-million-members?show=1572820#q1572820 But only about 220 000 signed the honor code to move forward to become a full member https://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Special:Badges&b=genealogist When we look at the reward badges https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Badges_and_Points We can se that there are only about 3000 active members counting more than a 100 contributions per month by looking at the 1000 and 100 contributors. This will indicate that WikiTree has a low retention rate of members.

The main drive on WikiTree is to create profiles with as few sources as possible, but to reflect an accurate index. All the thons are geared towards this and members are rewarded for the number of profiles created in for example thons, whether this is the Source-a-Thon (not really sourcing but adding profiles), Connect-a-thon Not really connecting unconnected profiles, but creating more profiles with as few sources as possible because members are rewarded for the number of profiles they create. I can say that is not how those Thons started out but that is what they became.

The reason why so many members actually gets booted of WikiTree is when they start complaining about the state of profiles with little or no sources and management does not like that because this dissents from their aim of being an index to get clicks on their adverts. NoNoddy (talk) 14:24, 9 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Source-a-Thon only aims at adding sources to profiles that only have no sources. Adding profiles during Source-a-Thon doesn't generate points. --Flominator (talk) 11:32, 23 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

That was the old days before the current implementation. Do join the next Souce-a-Thon and find out for yourself NoNoddy (talk) 16:09, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Gamification

How about a few sentences about the employment of gamification in the article? Everything is counted and ranked: the forum posts, the contributions, the number of thank you's received, the connection level of your profile etc. Then you receive badges if you do 100 or 1000 contributions a month. Together with Connect-a-Thon, where you're supposed to add as many profiles as possible within 48 hours, this is a huge difference compared to geni or the FamilySearch tree. I'm fully aware that this reddit thread is no usable source, but I would still like to see this aspect mentioned somehow, also because it's not entirely positive one. Any ideas on how to go on? --Flominator (talk) 06:37, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

My knee-jerk reaction: Most of the stuff under "Features" is WP:ABOUTSELF as it is, and adding more of it is not obvious improvement from the WP-perspective. So as I see it, independent RS who bothered to notice is the key. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:48, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

If I get WP:ABOUTSELF right, it states that it's ok to use self-published sources if [bulleted list of five requirements]. Are you considering some of those bullets not fulfilled or do you consider describing features simply irrelevant? --Flominator (talk) 10:52, 26 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

IMO point 5 is problematic since so much in the article is wikitree sourced already. Adding more of it, in "Features" or where you may be thinking of, seems a bad idea to me. If people want to read about wikitree inner workings, they can go to the website. We're not here to repeat their views/descriptions of themselves. On "huge difference compared to geni or the FamilySearch tree", this sounds to me like approaching WP:FANCRUFT territory. It may be quite interesting for users of these websites, but less obviously so for general WP-readers. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 11:23, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Gråbergs Gråa Sång: Thanks for your reply. Currently almost 2/3 of the references are external sources, so I'm not completely convinced about point 5. Thanks for linking WP:FANCRUFT. I'm not even sure if what I want to put in the article is going to be that positive in general, so FANCRUFT might not be the right term. I wanted to underline that there's a huge focus on numbers on the site, with many things being counted and turned into a contest, such as user contributions in total and per month, sent and received thank-yous, posts in the forum and people connected to your profile within a range of seven steps. This extreme I didn't observe it at the competition. --Flominator (talk) 05:20, 28 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Reliance on primary sources as at September 2025

The article is tagged as relying excessively on references to primary sources. There are currently 29 inline citations. Of these eight reference the wikitree site.

On 13 August an anonymous editor removed the template with the comment "removed template from Aug 2023. There appears to be plenty of secondary sources used for this article since it was place in 2023"

His edit was reverted by user Gråbergs Gråa Sång with the comment "but it's still correct there are too many refs to the website itself (and its people)".

I do not regard 8 of 29 refs to the website as too many. Can we please discuss removal of the tag Matilda ^talk 00:16, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Tag removed as no further comments. The majority of sources cited are not to the Wikitree site Matilda ^talk 22:35, 22 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In the current article, I make wikitree 10/31, and that's not counting refs like What is WikiTree with Founder Chris Whitten which are obviously also primary/not independent. IMO, that's too many, we are not here to repeat what Wikitree has to say about itself. Template:Primary sources fits. It's not easy to spot any WP:GNG sources in this article. @Drmies, @AndyTheGrump, do you have an opinion? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 05:29, 23 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. Sourcing is poor, and the article is far too promotional. I've just removed text describing something WikiTree did as 'groundbreaking' which was not only a blatant copyright violation (copy-pasted), but ultimately derived from a WikiTree press release. AndyTheGrump (talk) 10:33, 23 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]