Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/WikiTree (2nd nomination)

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Orlady (talk | contribs) at 19:19, 16 August 2023 (→‎WikiTree: note on changes tp article since my previous comment). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

WikiTree

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WikiTree (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)
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Insufficient outside sources Belle Fast (talk) 09:09, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  • Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Websites-related deletion discussions. Belle Fast (talk) 09:09, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Keep In reading the prior comments, it seems like the two primary arguments for deletion are 1) the page is not written to Wikipedia standards and 2) WikiTree itself does not live up to the standards of some individuals. I don't believe either should be grounds for deletion. Poorly written profiles should be rew-ritten and a company profile should not be deleted based on the complaints of disgruntled customers.
    WikiTree has more than one million registered users and it is quicky becoming a major player in the genealogical community. Family Tree Magazine recently declared it one of the 100 best genealogy websites of 2023. These factors alone should qualify it for a Wikipedia profile.
    Keep the page, fix it up so that it meets Wikipedia standards, and let the disgruntled members take their criticisms to Yelp! DMRand (talk) 03:30, 12 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Are you aware that of the "more than one million registered users," only 232,460 have signed the Honor Code as of just now (https://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Special:Badges&b=genealogist) and thus are fully enabled to edit profiles? And that management's own estimate is that only a few thousand are currently active contributors (https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/351001/how-many-genealogists-have-contributed-to-wikitree?show=351276#c351276)? 2600:1010:B181:CD66:45D3:2A9D:92DC:EC52 (talk) 19:17, 13 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete and SALT per first AfD, page serves no use, very little if any reliable second source coverage, seems to fail WP:GNG. Bunch of primary/self cites on the page now. May serve as a magnet for various WP:PROMO and WP:SOAP activities for and against the site but there is little meat here. SALT against creation for either positive or negative material and edit warring over that. —DIYeditor (talk) 09:27, 4 August 2023 (UTC) 02:26, 8 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Thank you very much for a prompt and balanced response Belle Fast (talk) 11:07, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    That previous AfD nomination and subsequent deletion are not relevant to the current situation. Apparently the earlier AfD was for an article about a different entity named "WikiTree." It appears from the Wayback Machine that the site called WikiTree in 2005 and 2006 had the same domain owner, but that site apparently was taken down. The WikiTree.com site covered by the current article asserts (at https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:About_WikiTree) that the site opened in 2008. Orlady (talk) 18:52, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    @Orlady: Thanks for looking into that. If it was a genealogy site (which archive.org shows) with the same domain owner, it does seem relevant to this discussion, no? Their first party assertions about the start date don't hold a lot of weight. —DIYeditor (talk) 04:28, 5 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    This is an article about a website, not a domain name. I haven't determined what the contents were of the article that was deleted 17 years ago, but archive.org images of wikitree.com back in 2005 (https://web.archive.org/web/20050209002555/http://www.wikitree.com/) and 2006 (https://web.archive.org/web/20061129183230/http://www.wikitree.com/) look more like a parked domain than they do a website. I can't see how the deletion of an article about whatever existed in 2006 should prejudice all future decisions about articles of the same name.
    The current "WikiTree" article was created in 2014, 8 years after the deletion of the previous article. On the Internet, 8 years is like a lifetime. Orlady (talk) 22:10, 5 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Correction: I have reviewed the history of the deleted article (which in fact was deleted several times between 2006 and 2008). The subject was not Wikitree.com, but rather was Wikitree.org, which apparently belonged to a man named Tomáš J. Fülöpp (not the current owner of wikitree.com). From archive.org, it appears that at some point the owner of Wikitree.com acquired the wikitree.org domain and redirected it to wikitree.com. Orlady (talk) 22:35, 5 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. There are relevant scholarly articles that have utilized data provided by WikiTree. Notably, the research papers titled 'Quantitative Analysis of Genealogy Using Digitised Family Trees' and 'Data Mining of Online Genealogy Datasets for Revealing Lifespan Patterns in Human Population' have relied on the data offered by WikiTree. These references demonstrate the value and importance of WikiTree as a resource for researchers and academics in the field of genealogy and population studies. While the absence of some outside sources may be a valid concern, it is crucial to recognize that Wikipedia itself is an ever-evolving platform, and the absence of cited external sources at a particular moment does not necessarily warrant deletion. As a community-driven encyclopedia, Wikipedia should strive to provide comprehensive coverage of notable subjects, and WikiTree undoubtedly falls within that category. 2601:2C5:4700:310:3A14:457E:FCB5:7AE2 (talk) 15:20, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    From the first of these learned papers, I quote: “The data we use were provided by WikiTree, a free, collaborative worldwide family tree project created by a community of amateur genealogists. Data are available on 6.67 million people in over 160 countries (but mainly the US, UK, Germany, Canada, New Zealand and Holland) going as far back as the 1st century …... Data were validated by WikiTree using their in-house procedures which include checking source materials and by making individuals' profiles editable only by a limited list of users, and we provided additional validation by comparing lifespans in the data with those reported by third party sources.”[1]
    The three authors betray a considerable degree of naivety. WikiTree members are indeed amateurs and most of their work shows it. Fiction plays a strong part in many of their trees, hence the ludicrous claim of descents from the 1st century. An example is the profile for “Tiberius Claudius Caesar Britannicus Born before 12 Feb 41 in Rome, Italy Son of father unknown and Valeria Messalina Brother of Claudia Octavia Died 11 Feb 55 after age 13 in Rome, Italy”[2] The only source cited for this rather distant ancestor is Wikipedia!
    As for the unbelievable claim that data for 6.67 million people was validated by WikiTree, one has only to look at random cases from the past twenty centuries or even just the last couple of centuries to find endless examples of people with no credible source at all. The whole set-up is flawed and shoddy. Restricting editing powers to certfied users may limit the amount of fake info being added, but will they ever be able to clean up millions of valueless profles already there?
    I'm sorry, but I do not believe that a survey like this can whitewash WikiTree and do not think it should count against deletion. Belle Fast (talk) 19:07, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    2601:2C5:4700:310:3A14:457E:FCB5:7AE2, it seems you might have forgotten to log in before commenting. Would you mind saying whether you have any connection to PureRedneck, or any relationship to WikiTree? Thanks, MundoMango (talk) 21:43, 5 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Internet-related deletion discussions. Orlady (talk) 19:35, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep There doesn't appear to be even an attempt by the nominator to address the reliable source coverage already used in the article? Difficult to claim non-notability when there's no discussion of existing sourcing in relation to said notability. I've done a brief search and found several more usable sources as well.
  • Patton-Imani, Sandra (2018). "Legitimacy and the Transfer of Children: Adoption, Belonging, and Online Genealogy". Genealogy. 2 (4). doi:10.3390/genealogy2040037. Retrieved August 5, 2023.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link)
  • Beidler, James M. (June 24, 2012). "Roots and Branches: New genealogical mantra - 'Collaboration'". Lebanon Daily News. Retrieved August 5, 2023.
  • McGyver, Diane (November 13, 2012). "What's a WikiTree?". Kings County Record. Retrieved August 5, 2023.
And it looks like this stemmed from an ANI thread about an editor who was behaving inappropriately? But that has nothing to do with the notability of this article and subject. Also, based off of the talk page of this article, there just seems to be several users with a personal WP:IDONTLIKEIT issue with the article subject. SilverserenC 18:56, 5 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Some sources have been added since this was nominated I think. Most of the cites on this page seemed to be to Wikitree itself, genealogy blogs, genealogy sites that on inspection could probably not be called WP:RS, etc. My google search (which perhaps was not exhaustive) found very little mention that wasn't fluff. If this site were getting substantial coverage I would've expected more than a few local news reports (for a national site?) and some genealogy blogs. I'll reconsider my !vote if I see significant in depth coverage. —DIYeditor (talk) 05:33, 6 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The latter two sources I gave above aren't local news reports, but syndicated articles that were in a ton of papers nationally. I just picked one of those papers to use, but they are very much not local content. SilverserenC 05:50, 6 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The newspapers are paywalled for me, did you get them through The Wikipedia Library? —DIYeditor (talk) 05:54, 6 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, it's the primary resource I use. SilverserenC 05:57, 6 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The first item is a very interesting and illuminating piece of academic research, for which the author found WikiTree a great help. That is however one individual's case, hardly enough on its own to establish notability for the whole site? As for the cited newspaper mentions, which date from over 11 years ago, are they anything more than PR puff? Belle Fast (talk) 10:18, 6 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
And since it has been suggested that I personally “do not like” WikiTree, that may be true but I will not demur at an article which cites adequate outside sources instead of being self-referential and includes critical comment as well as laudatory. Belle Fast (talk) 10:27, 6 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Also, no, Belle Fast did not to my recollection or knowledge make this because of an ANI report, but rather because of a dispute resolution request which I found confusing and malformed, and in my response to which I suggested that someone could nominate the article for deletion if they wanted, which I believe I had seen discussed on the article's talk page already. —DIYeditor (talk) 05:36, 6 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. While WikiTree does have many excellent pages which show links to reliable online sources, scans of proof documents, relevant images, and well-written biographies, these cannot outweigh the vast accumulation of user-contributed dross which, to my mind, renders the site as a whole (unless its supporters can prove otherwise) non-notable. Belle Fast (talk) 08:46, 6 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    FYI Belle Fast, I believe your !vote is already counted as the proponent. —DIYeditor (talk) 12:35, 6 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. The article lacks sufficient reliable sources to establish notability. I attempt to survey them here, to address the deficiency noted by Silver seren. As of the latest edit (5 August 2023 05:50 UTC) the article has 32 citations, of which 14 link to WikiTree.com content and seven are user review sites or favorable blog posts. Reference #20 (as numbered in the current version) is the website for the 2015 Global Family Reunion event, which mentioned WikiTree briefly as a “partner.” Of the two list entries, GenealogyInTime's 2016 “Top 100” chart (#6) did not describe its rating criteria, and Similarweb (#7) rated WikiTree eighth most visited, with no text description.
The ISOGG wiki entry (#31) describes DNA-related features using information obtainable on WikiTree.com, with no in-depth evaluation. The entry cites WikiTree.com, blog posts, and Wikipedia.
Five citations are media reports. The Daily Beast article (#2) is a report about the 2015 Global Family Reunion event, giving only brief mention to WikiTree. The New York Times (#8) published a general overview article about online genealogy sites. It mentions WikiTree in two paragraphs, presenting basic information available at WikiTree's Home and About pages. USA Today (#10) provided a similar summary of WikiTree-provided information. Familytree magazine (#29) offered one paragraph of information, again gleaned from WikiTree.com. None of these articles contains anything resembling in-depth coverage. The fifth media article, from the Lebanon Daily News (#11, also mentioned by Silver seren), is paywall protected from both my home computer and those at my local public library.
The remaining two sources (#1, #17) are academic journal articles having two authors (Fire and Elovici) in common. The first, quoted above by Belle Fast, was not a peer-reviewed publication. The second was peer reviewed, but the paywall only shows the abstract. The abstract describes “a large online genealogy dataset with over a million profiles and over 9 million connections, all of which were collected from the WikiTree website.” This language, from two of the same authors, suggests that both papers suffer from the same excess of credulity. I think it worth noting that WikiTree provides data to researchers, gratis.
In my opinion, the above sources (with the possible exception of the unviewable #11) fail to establish notability. If better sources do exist, the article's contributors have not been able to find them with nine years of effort. Moreover, the lack of independent, in-depth, balanced, coverage makes it unlikely the article can achieve NPOV. It seems that reliable sources of information critical of WikiTree are vanishingly rare. MundoMango (talk) 23:18, 6 August 2023 (UTC) (former member and frequent critic of WikiTree management).[reply]
Found LDN (#11) on ProQuest [1], here's the relevant text:
"One outfit that is marching into this breach is WikiTree.
With the slogan "Growing the World's Family Tree," this free system, as its name implies, uses the same manner of collaboration that Wikipedia has used to build that online encyclopedia into one of the marvels of the Internet.
On WikiTree, participants are able to choose their preferred levels of privacy and collaboration with other genealogists. Profiles of living people can be kept completely closed or shared with only the users that a participant selects.
The merging of the profiles of presumed common ancestors are handled by each user on a case-by-case basis.
"Although broad-based collaboration is challenging we believe the benefits we get as researchers and the legacy we're leaving behind make the effort well worth it," according to WikiTree's brochure.
WikiTree is found at WikiTree.com."
Partial GNG-point, I'd say. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:42, 7 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
To continue, with fifteen new citations added today as of 20:35 UTC:
  • One (#29) duplicates a previously cited blog post (#34 now, was #19).
  • Five are posts in the WikiTree members-only G2G discussion forum (read-only for non-members).
  • Two are YouTube videos produced by members on behalf of WikiTree.
  • Wikis for Dummies (#3) has incorrect publication information. Googlebooks preview pages show copyright 2007, cited text describes “wikitree.org” as “in its infancy.”
  • CNN (#4) is an overview of online genealogy, mentioning WikiTree twice as a site that includes social networking features.
  • The Oklahoman (#6) is titled incorrectly. The actual item was “What is WikiTree?” a public service announcement of an upcoming promotional talk by a member.
  • Guardian (#7) article about WikiAnswers; WP:INHERITWEB.
  • Family Tree Magazine (#9) links to podcast Ep. 56, January 2013, not 2023, promotional interview with the owner.
  • #11 is a blog post promotional interview with the owner.
  • Kennett and Pomery, 2011 (#12) has a brief description of WikiTree, more objective than most but outdated.
Plus eleven bulleted items that I didn't look at. MundoMango (talk) 22:50, 7 August 2023 (UTC) (former member and frequent critic of WikiTree management)[reply]
  • Keep Wikitree, like Geni and Familysearch is a work in progress. Its userbase is constantly striving to make the website the best it can be and even now sources are being added which verify its notability. It has been accredited by various well-known genealogists. I know that seems like a feather in the site's cap. However, it should count for something as users of that site worked hard on their family trees. To list them all would take some time. Videos, however, can be found on the site's Youtube channel.

Edits have already been made to the page, which, to be honest has improved its flow considerably. It has stopped being less like an advertisement and more like what it should be--A page outlining the functions of the website, its history, and its importance to the genealogical community. More changes are underway and more sources have been added by contributors to support its notability. Cferra (talk) 23:16, 11 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]


References

  1. ^ Quantitative Analysis of Genealogy Using Digitised Family Trees Michael Fire, Thomas Chesney & Yuval Elovici September 2, 2014 https://archive.org/details/arxiv-1408.5571 retrieved 4 August 2023
  2. ^ https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Brittanicus-1

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Not all !votes are currently valid, but amongst those that are, it's not currently clear enough to call
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Nosebagbear (talk) 12:05, 11 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delete Not the easiest call, but I think this is a case where footnotes exist but they don't add up to notability. XOR'easter (talk) 18:03, 11 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep The reality is, while this page definitely needs to be improved on, there is enough outside coverage in my opinion to warrant the page's existence. PunkAndromeda (talk) 23:01, 11 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Keep From a recent review of the current page version, there appears to be more than adequate references to outside sources that discuss everything from site functionality to the market share of the genealogy websites to data research done utilizing the site and professional papers using profile information found on WikiTree. A scan of similar sites (Ancestry, MyHeritage, Geni, FamilySearch, etc.) seems to reveal similar pages with a similar style of presentation, some with essentially the same external coverage, so this one does not seem any more or less suitable, and while we're not comparing these as a whole, it seems awkward to cite the removal of what appears to be a recognized site in the genealogical market without any indication of concern about the others. Dsfulker (talk) 00:51, 12 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep WikiTree is a well-recognised genealogical site. The page has now been improved, with better sourcing, but in any event the way to address sourcing concerns is to make sourcing better. While some comments can be found on the web about the accuracy of some information on WikiTree, the same applies to other genealogical sites for which there are Wikipedia articles, like Familysearch, and this is not a reason to delete the page. The quality of sourcing is not dissimilar to that in articles for sites like Familysearch, and so is the presentation. Mfcayley (talk) 08:57, 12 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    There's still a lot of primary refs, and sections like User privacy seems way too detailed. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:21, 12 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I must admit, I feel a bit lost here: This is my first deletion discussion in en.wp, after working over decades at de.wp. There deletion requests were often about proving notability or fulfillment of relevance criteria. When describing (and not advertising, which we should clearly avoid because of NPOV) a website, it's obvious that you will often use the website as source. I mean, who could describe features better, than the site itself? This is of course not the case when writing about public reception, criticism, comparison to others etc. When looking at WeRelate, geni.com and Rodovid, the composition of sources is roughly the same, I would say. I can understand, if you declare passages of the article to much advertising, too detailed, not neutral etc., I can't grasp, how exactly more "non-primary sources" would look like for this type of article. Can you please explain? --Flominator (talk) 18:53, 12 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    The website knows what it want to say about itself, but on en-WP, that is of limited interest, per WP:ABOUTSELF. If we're going WP:OTHERCONTENT, there are also websites like Wikipediocracy, Palmer Report and Dogsbite.org. However, if we're looking for role-models, it's probably better to look at GA/FA articles, WP has a lot of iffy content, and it's not unlikely many articles on websites (or anything, really) are significantly edited by "fans", and if the article is relatively unnoticed, that will show (there's the opposite too, of course [2]). Which is of course not necessarily bad, fans tend to know stuff, but they also tend to edit from the position that the whatever is great. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 19:37, 12 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep The argument of "insufficient outside sources" lacks objectivity and WikiTree in itself is notable enough to have a page. Surely the article can be improved rather than deleted. Violette Martin (talk) 19:32, 12 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep I am biased, as I am a volunteer leader on WikiTree. The site was a major focus of my lightning talk at WikiConference North America 2020, and I contributed to the 2016 property proposal discussion for the (accepted) property on Wikidata that provides links to the site.
    As others have stated, the presence of poor research on a significant portion of the 33 million ancestor profiles is not an indicator of notability, although it certainly must influence Wikipedia editors who diligently delete any source citations referencing the site. FamilySearch Family Tree, Geni.com, Ancestry member trees, and any sites with user-generated genealogy information are bound to be riddled with errors. It's why the collaborative global trees are peer-reviewed and contentious profiles are monitored and curated. KarenJoyce (talk) 22:01, 12 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    “.... collaborative global trees are peer-reviewed and contentious profiles are monitored and curated ….” Really? How frequently can a database with millions of names be checked? And who does the checking? If by other amateurs, how are they better equipped to judge? A WikiTree admin, whose acts are above challenge, officially changed the name of an English ancestor from James to Jacobus, unaware that the baptismal register on which she relied was in Latin. Please do not pretend that WikiTree, despite some excellent material, is overall a quality product. Which is why a Wikipedia article which conceals its faults and sings only its praises is not neutral. Belle Fast (talk) 07:41, 15 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I am a WikiTree member, so I should not be counted as "voting" here, but I do want to comment. The current WikiTree article is severely bloated, and it has become more bloated during the course of this AfD discussion. There is far too much nonencyclopedic content, much of which is sourced only to the WikiTree website and thus contributes to the perception that the article is almost entirely based on content from the article's subject. If the article is kept, editing of the article to resolve the bloat problem would also address the heavy reliance on "self"-reported content. That does not mean that all "self"-reported content must go away. In my experience editing Wikipedia content about entities such as companies and educational institutions, I have seen that it is seldom possible to adequately document these entities without including some content that is sourced only to the subject of the article, and this is also the case for WikiTree (as a privately held company that has never made business headlines for events like change of ownership, lay-offs, or scandal). It is hardly surprising that there are no independently authored full-length books or articles providing in-depth coverage of WikiTree, but I think the descriptive content about WikiTree that has appeared in articles about genealogy websites in reputable newspapers (such as The New York Times in 2011), in Family Tree magazine (https://familytreemagazine.com/uncategorized/best-social-media-websites-2014/), and in books like "DNA and Social Networking: A Guide to Genealogy in the Twenty-First Century" (and probably some other sources cited in the article) should be sufficient to establish notability of a website. Additionally, I think the very recent web traffic data from SimilarWeb (8th in website traffic among Genealogy&History websites, behind Ancestry.com, FamilySearch, MyHeritage, Geneanet, and 23andMe, but ahead of widely known sites including Findmypast, FamilyTreeDNA, and Rootsweb) and the 2016 "popularity" ranking of 15th (basis not reported) by GenealogyInTime Magazine indicate the importance of WikiTree within the context of genealogy websites. And I am aware of blog posts by unaffiliated professional genealogists that may (if cited selectively) help to further document the impact of WikiTree. Orlady (talk) 19:36, 13 August 2023 (UTC) Note: Much of the "bloat" I referred to in the above comment has now been addressed, thanks to Drmies and others. Orlady (talk) 19:19, 16 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Based on examining the content of the media sources cited (my vote, above), "the descriptive content about WikiTree that has appeared in articles about genealogy websites in reputable newspapers ... and in books" does not (in my opinion) rise to the level of WP:SIGCOV. Superficial coverage is no less so for appearing in reputable publications, or in lesser publications no matter how often repeated. I believe "address[ing] the topic directly and in detail" should go well beyond repeating information obtained from the website or its promotional material, and would include such questions as: How many of the one million members have been inactive for a year or more? How many members make more than a few contributions in a typical month? How many of the 35 million profiles are duplicates, fabrications, or completely unsupported by verifiable sources? And so on. Such coverage, if it exists, would go far to support claims of notability; included in the article, it would add greatly to NPOV. MundoMango (talk) 20:52, 13 August 2023 (UTC) (former member and frequent critic of WikiTree management).[reply]
    Slightly off-topic, but you reminded me of Numbeo. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:20, 14 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Appears to have barely adequate secondary references of the required independence and reliability. Edison (talk) 01:44, 14 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I'm wondering about outside canvassing given that we have about 5 keep votes from editors with 100 or less, most significantly less, contributions. Doug Weller talk 10:36, 15 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    @Doug Weller: seems endemic to everything that's been going on with this article. Hopefully the closer can sort through it. I'd probably go back and unstrike my "SALT" vote because if it's deleted I think the advocates of this commercial "Wiki" will just come back and make it again. —DIYeditor (talk) 00:31, 16 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
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