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WikiTree

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WikiTree is a genealogy website that allows users to research and to contribute to their own family trees while building and collaborating on a singular worldwide family tree within the same system.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7] WikiTree is free for the user and financed via advertisements displayed to unregistered users.[8][9][10] WikiTree is owned and hosted by founder's company Interesting.com, Inc.[11]

WikiTree
Screenshot
Screenshot of the WikiTree profile for Agnes Prowse with personal details and a biography.
Screenshot of a WikiTree profile
Type of businessPrivately-held company
Founded2008
Headquarters New York, New York, U.S.
Founder(s)Chris Whitten
PresidentChris Whitten
IndustryGenealogy, social media
URLwikitree.com

As of October 2023, the WikiTree website claimed that the site had more than 1 million registered members and contained more than 36 million profiles of people, with over 12 million profiles of people who should share a detectable amount of DNA with tested site members, their deceased relatives, or those whose remains have been tested posthumously.[12][13] As of July 2023, SimilarWeb ranked WikiTree as eighth in total worldwide web traffic among "Ancestry and Genealogy" websites.[14]

History

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Chris Whitten, the founder of WikiAnswers (originally FAQFarm), developed WikiTree in 2005,[15][8] inviting users personally to the site, starting in early 2008.[8] WikiTree.com officially opened to the public in November 2008.[2]

An "honor code" for members was introduced in 2011.[16] The nine points of the honor code cover: collaboration, accuracy, privacy, copyrights, credit, citing sources, shared mission of "keep information as free and open as possible", "assume that mistakes are unintentional", and "being courteous to everyone".[17][18]

In 2015, the since-defunct Global Family Reunion Project was established, a tie-in to a worldwide family genealogy event hosted by author A.J. Jacobs, at which WikiTree "relationship finder" tools were available to calculate genealogical connections.[19]

Features

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The site uses a wiki markup language (powered by a fork of the MediaWiki software) that enable users to create and edit personal profiles, categories and "free space" pages to document family history. The user interface is only available in English, while most of the help pages have been translated to Dutch, French and German.

The site's goal is to have one profile for every person, whether living or dead. Duplicate profiles are supposed to be merged and the information is consolidated, connecting different family branches in the process.[20] These policies support the concept of a shared family tree, which can also be found at My Heritage's geni.com, FamilySearch's FamilyTree, and WeRelate.

Creation of profiles based on data of uploaded GEDCOM files is one of the optional methods for contributing content, and since 2013 the site has allowed members to export site content by downloading GEDCOM files.[21]

WikiTree's privacy controls allow users to protect their personal information, and that of their more recent ancestors and descendants, while providing the ability to publicly share and collaborate on historical data related to their more distant forebears.[1][22][23] Since April 2017, all profiles of people who were born more than 150 years ago or died more than 100 years ago are publicly visible.[24][25]

DNA testing and confirmation

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Registered users can provide information about their autosomal DNA tests and to link their WikiTree profile pages to autosomal DNA data packages they have uploaded at the GEDmatch website. GEDmatch publishes links to the WikiTree family trees of individuals who use this feature.[26] Tools on the WikiTree website automatically display persons who took autosomal DNA tests and are within 3rd cousins of each other, allowing the display of several generations of ancestors and descendants who could have contributed to or inherited portions of a person's X chromosome(s), and allow Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA test results to be associated with the position of each father and mother in a person's family tree.[27]

Reception

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Researchers in the fields of social and genealogical sciences have made use of WikiTree's data repository. Dr. Michael Fire, Faculty of the Department of Software and Information Systems Engineering at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, utilized the genealogical data available on WikiTree to analyze historical lifespan patterns. Among other results, it was discovered that the average lifespan of females born in the United States and living beyond the age of ten increased significantly from 62.66 years in 1850 to 72.5 years in 1900.[28]

Further research by Dr. Fire, in a joint project with Thomas Chesney, the Nottingham University Business School, and Yuval Elovici ventured into the realm of computational genealogy. Capitalizing on WikiTree's family tree data for quantitative analysis, this study aimed to develop and scrutinize hypotheses related to various aspects of human ancestry. The research delved into a wide range of quantitative analyses, encompassing population sex ratios, marriage trends, fertility rates, lifespan patterns, the occurrence of twins and triplets, migration trends, demographic changes over time, and the intricate connections between historical events and familial relationships.[3]

GenealogyInTime Magazine listed WikiTree as the 15th most popular genealogy site (out of 100) in January 2016 (the most recent time the magazine produced such a list).[29] As of July 2023, SimilarWeb ranked WikiTree as eighth in total worldwide web traffic among "Ancestry and Genealogy" websites, with visitor statistics including an average visit duration of more than 10 minutes and an average of 10.5 page views per visit.[14]

References

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  1. ^ a b Jacobs, A. J. (2017). It's all relative : adventures up and down the world's family tree. New York: Simon & Schuster. pp. 6, 132, 157. ISBN 978-1-4767-3449-1. Retrieved August 11, 2023.
  2. ^ a b Paton, Chris (2021). Sharing Your Family History Online: A Guide for Family Historians. Pen and Sword Family History. ISBN 9781526780300.
  3. ^ a b Fire, Michael; Chesney, Thomas; Elovici, Yuval; et al. (September 2, 2014). "Quantitative Analysis of Genealogy Using Digitised Family Trees". arXiv:1408.5571 [cs.SI].
  4. ^ Rifkin, Jesse (June 7, 2015). "Massive Genealogy Project Shows We Are Family—Literally". The Daily Beast.
  5. ^ Woods, Dan; Thoeny, Peter (2007). Wikis For Dummies. John Wiley & Sons. p. 300. ISBN 978-1118050668. Retrieved August 4, 2023.
  6. ^ Engler, Sarah (September 10, 2013). "Finding your roots". Real Simple. CNN. Retrieved August 4, 2023.
  7. ^ "OKC-area events, news: Christmas in the Park; Broadway comes to OKC and more". Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The Oklahoman. August 4, 2022. Retrieved August 4, 2023.
  8. ^ a b c Cooke, Lisa (January 2013). "101 Best Websites: WikiTree.com" (Podcast). FamilyTree Magazine. Retrieved August 4, 2023.
  9. ^ Cooke, Lisa (March 22, 2023). "What is WikiTree with Founder Chris Whitten" (Blog). Genealogy Gems. Retrieved August 4, 2023.
  10. ^ Kennett, Debbie; Pomery, Chris (2011). "DNA and Social Networking: A Guide to Genealogy in the Twenty-First Century". Cheltenham, United Kingdom: The History Press. p. 175-176. ISBN 9780752472706.
  11. ^ Valenzuela, Robyn (July 12, 2012). "WikiTree App Review". AppAppeal. Archived from the original on September 23, 2014. Retrieved August 15, 2014.
  12. ^ Buch, Tommy (July 15, 2023). "WikiTree surpasses 35 million profiles!". WikiTree. Retrieved August 4, 2023.
  13. ^ Sheppard, Pip (May 5, 2023). "1,000,000 members passed at 8:57 a.m. Eastern US!". WikiTree. Retrieved August 4, 2023.
  14. ^ a b "Top Websites Ranking - Most Visited Ancestry and Genealogy Websites". Similarweb.com. Retrieved August 4, 2023.
  15. ^ Finkelstein, Seth (February 11, 2009). "What's in a name? Everything, when you're talking wiki value". Kings Place, London. The Guardian.
  16. ^ Whitten, Chris. "Have you signed the Honor Code?". www.wikitree.com/g2g/. Retrieved August 23, 2024.
  17. ^ WikiTree Contributors. "Wiki Genealogist Honor Code", database (https://www.wikitree.com/ : accessed 4 Aug 2023)
  18. ^ Meece, Mickey (May 18, 2011). "Finding Family History Online". New York Times. Retrieved July 24, 2015.
  19. ^ Lambert, David Allen (June 5, 2015). "Twenty-four degrees of separation". Vita Brevis (blog). New England Historic Genealogical Society. Retrieved August 4, 2023.
  20. ^ "Duplicates". WikiTree. Retrieved March 31, 2015.
  21. ^ Whitten, Chris. "Did you see that you can now export a GEDCOM for an individual tree?", database (https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/ : accessed 4 Aug 2023) Posted Friday, June 7, 2013
  22. ^ Komando, Kim (June 3, 2011). "New Ways to Complete Your Family Tree". USA Today. Retrieved July 24, 2015.
  23. ^ Beidler, James M. (June 24, 2012). "Roots and Branches: New genealogical mantra - 'Collaboration'". Lebanon Daily News. Lebanon, Pennsylvania.
  24. ^ Whitten, Chris. "Should all profiles of people born 150+ or died 100+ years ago be Open?", database (https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/ : accessed 4 Aug 2023) Posted Tuesday, March 21, 2017
  25. ^ Whitten, Chris. "Did you see that all profiles of people who were born 150 years ago or who died 100 years ago must now be Open?", database (https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/ : accessed 4 Aug 2023) Posted Friday, April 14, 2017
  26. ^ "Help:GEDMatch". WikiTree. Retrieved August 17, 2019.
  27. ^ "WikiTree". International Society of Genetic Genealogy Wiki. International Society of Genetic Genealogy. September 5, 2019. Retrieved August 4, 2023.
  28. ^ Fire, Michael; Elovici, Yuval (March 2015). "Data Mining of Online Genealogy Datasets for Revealing Lifespan Patterns in Human Population". ACM Transactions on Intelligent Systems and Technology. 6 (2). Association for Computing Machinery: 1–22. arXiv:1311.4276. doi:10.1145/2700464. S2CID 2742636. Retrieved August 4, 2023.
  29. ^ "Top 100 Genealogy Websites for 2016". GenealogyInTime.com. Retrieved February 1, 2017.
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