I’ve been doing a lot of research on the Guerins of Acadie for my next blog post. What started as a simple idea blossomed into something pretty major.
I use Wikitree as my tree storage area. It’s “one tree” focus allows genealogists, amateur and otherwise, to share information and get multiple eyes on one copy of information without having to search, or worse yet fix, multiple copies of data in multiple trees as is done on other sites (*cough* Ancestry *cough*). So I’ve been using the existing profiles on Wikitree as both a research source and a research destination.
Wikitree has multiple projects within its ecosystem. One such project is the Acadians Project, dedicated to doing research on the early settlers of Acadie. One tool that projects on Wikitree have is an ability to lock profiles from editing. This is done to protect them from mindless overcopying that was done whenever someone wanted to import their family tree from another site (*cough* Ancestry *cough*). With everyone having their own copies of family trees dating back into antiquity, often of dubious credibility, it became a significant problem on Wikitree that scholarship and profile biographies kept getting clobbered. So, some of the older profiles became protected under the stewardship of genealogist groups.
But, what happens if you find an error? Each profile has a comments box that allows collaboration. Questions can be asked and are answered in a timely fashion. If the profile is under the purview of a project, someone on the project will usually answer fairly quickly.
After asking quite a few questions and adding some of my own interpretations of history based on the research I was conducting, I was invited by the Acadians Project to join them. This means that I can now edit their profiles based on whatever research I find. I won’t do this willy-nilly; I will still ask questions and offer commentary, but I am quite honored to see that my own research efforts, such as they are, are being recognized as something valuable.