What is WikiTree?
WikiTree is a community-based genealogy website that offers users a platform to build and share their family trees. Its primary focus is on collaborative genealogy, encouraging users to work together to create accurate and comprehensive family histories.
Key features of WikiTree include:
- Free Access: WikiTree is free to use, making it accessible to a broad audience interested in genealogy.
- Collaboration: It emphasizes collaborative efforts to create a single family tree, rather than individual trees for each user. This approach aims to reduce duplication and improve accuracy through shared research and knowledge.
- Privacy Controls: WikiTree has privacy settings that allow users to control how much of their family information is visible to others. This is particularly important for living individuals’ data.
- DNA Integration: The site supports the integration of DNA test results, which can help in verifying family connections and expanding genealogical research.
- Community and Support: WikiTree has a strong community aspect, with forums and resources where users can help each other, share tips, and discuss genealogical topics.
- Global Tree Concept: The idea is to create a single, worldwide family tree, connecting all profiles in a way that accurately represents historical and familial connections.
- Sourcing and Reliability: The site encourages the use of reliable sources and documentation to verify the information, improving the overall accuracy of the genealogical data.
WikiTree can be a valuable resource for anyone interested in tracing their family history, working with others to uncover ancestral connections, and ensuring the accuracy of their genealogical data.
One Big Family Tree
The Power of Collaboration
Sharing Ancestral Legacies
- Beyond Immediate Kin: Our ancestors’ lineage extends to distant cousins, often holders of unique family stories, photographs, and information.
- The Joy of Discovery: Engaging in a collaborative family tree not only enriches our understanding of our heritage but also fosters a sense of community through shared knowledge.
Ensuring Perpetuity
- A Collective Repository: Platforms like WikiTree aim to safeguard the life stories of ancestors, ensuring their availability to future generations, long after individual contributors have passed.
What’s a Big Family Tree?
- Think of a giant family tree where everyone is connected. It’s like finding out that people from all over the world might be your very distant cousins!
Why Share Our Family Stories?
- Finding Cousins: You might have relatives you’ve never met. They could have old photos or cool stories about your family.
- Fun Sharing: It’s exciting to share what you know and learn new things about your family together.
Keeping Stories Safe
- For Everyone, Forever: Websites like WikiTree keep our family stories safe, so even our great-great-grandkids can read them.
Different Family Tree Websites
- FamilySearch Tree and Geni are two big websites where people make family trees.
- It’s good to have different websites because they can share information and help each other.
How Everyone Helps
- Working Together: People help each other find out more about their families.
- Solving Disagreements: Sometimes people disagree about family details, but they talk and figure it out together.
- Making it Better: The more people help, the better and bigger the family tree gets.
Why WikiTree is Special?
- Friendly and Helpful: People on WikiTree really like working together and have been doing it since 2008.
- Everyone Follows Rules: There are special rules to make sure everyone is nice and helpful.
- WikiTree big family tree is like a puzzle everyone helps to build. It’s fun to find out how we’re all connected and keep our family stories safe for the future.
US Black Heritage Project
How To Use WikiTree Video Series Hosted by the US Black Heritage Project: Editing Profiles – Emma MacBeath
Watch this video to learn the basics of editing a WikiTree profile.
