WikiTree

Great layout but the staff and mods are awful. If you don't do exactly what they want, you get banned.

I was a member for several years. I tried to join a group regarding the Revolutionary War. I was basically told that I didn't have to know how.
I asked the administrators a simple question about accessing a page to view my ancestors back 25 generations. I received a nasty response to go to the G2G page.
I asked a question about how to delete my account and have my personal information removed.
These idiots deleted my account and blocked me but didn't remove my profile.
Shut these idiots down!

Avoid this site like the plague! It's very corrupt and their management team conceals their names! (Don't let them fool you. There is absolutely a management team, but they hide behind "the community"). If one of the "leaders" decides to block or remove your account (which they do often), there is no appeals process, and no names of anyone to even appeal to. You'd have to complain or appeal to the same people who unfairly took your account over. Shady organization that will takeover your account, your personal information, and even your DNA information. They should really be shut down.

I have just been blocked by Wikitree after 3 years and over 2000 profiles created. Their reason was because I was 'the subject of too many conflicts'. However the ONLY conflicts I had was with the elites who didn't like that I put my females with their birth name as their 'current' name rather than their married name. All my ancestors are Scottish and even an assigned 'mentor' agreed Scottish women kept their birth names. My ancestors were married, gave birth and buried with their birth names. Married names were only used in census records. This is also consistent with Family Search where I also contribute a lot of work.

This demonstrates the American-centric, sexist and bullying behavior of Wikitree Admin. I was continually assigned numerous 'mentors' who did nothing but spy on me. I did nothing 'wrong' but was blocked every time I mentioned my using female birth names in Facebook comments. Too many times some random person would change their names and I would change them back. This is what a shared tree is about!

I never learned anything new on that site, never made a friend (most members were entitled bullies), or thanked for all my work apart from stupid badges that mean nothing.

It is a cult with a hidden agenda where you will experience a lot of grief & frustration. Don't waste your time!

I find any genealogy site where one can't remove information troubling. As lovely as it is to think of one large world wide tree, many would view it as a dangerous invasion of privacy, that might be making someone vulnerable. In an age where none of us have enough privacy, I find this site, Find A Grave and Family Search's tree function alarming.

I signed up for WikiTree November on Nov. 4,2018. By its own count, I made more than 6,000 contributions & earned dozens of badges. Then, after a spat on their G2G forum, in which I was accused of fraud and spamming for posting links to tartan background images I created, based on the official threadcounts for the Swedish & Norwegian Tartans, I found my replies in my defense hidden; then I was unable to answer questions on the forum, or send Private Messages, or edit my own Profile, or Profiles I'd created for my relatives.

Run by people with no life and full of petty squabbles and more rules than any legal system. They kick you out for no reason, demand you undergo "mentorship" if you put a toe wrong and point you towards the endless pages of rules and procedures, none of which make an erroneous entry right. Seems there are a few people on the site who want to "own" all the entries related to particular names for one name studies and will find any reason to kick someone belonging to that family off the site. OK if you love reading endless pages of rules and procedures instead of actually tracing your family tree, but stay away otherwise, will only give you migraines.

For a free wiki style site I have not seen anything that comes close to the ease of use, peer reviewed entries and dedication to accuracy as WikiTree.

WikiTree is a horrible site. A lot of the profiles are "managed" by societies, such as the Great Migration, Puritan Project, Presidents Project, etc (not sure if I have all of the societies names correct).

My experience is that WikiTree could careless about information being accurate. And if you reach out to any of the societies who manage the profiles or at the very least, help to oversee them, expect to be ignored. It appears to be a very "clicky" platform where you are either in or out - no outsiders will be accepted or acknowledged, bit egos run this platform and if you do not agree with the folks who are "in" the club then you will find yourself out in the cold.

I would NOT recommend WikiTree, paid membership or otherwise.

LJ

Wikitree is great if you want to find leads and compare DNA, but if you are serious about building an accurate tree, this is not the place to do it. Also, when you post a question or report a situation and G2G boards, if is just like any social media site. You get flamed. So, use the tools that are helpful, and avoid otherwise.

WikiTree is a global family tree built by enthusiastic supportive volunteers. It's fun and free! Once you have connected your own tree to the global tree you can extend your family tree and discover how you are linked to notables and celebrities from around the world. My experience is that the vast majority of users of WikiTree are keen to help and support others who contribute to the site.

Let's be clear, 99% of the top contributors on the site are white. There is absolutely no diversity on the site and if you call them out on that. Expect a ban. It would not be so bad if the response was not to simply ban someone for wanting more diversity. At that point it transitions into racism. This is also a growing trend in most English information sites. Where people of colour are rejected. This then contributes to some interesting racist leanings of AI that draws its information from knowledge sites. I do not think they are even able to correct this issue. Diversity just does not exist in English internet.

In theory, Wikitree is a grand idea. People voluntarily add new ancestors to the one world tree and enhance existing profiles.

In practice this leads to a tree which, despite some excellent well-researched entries, is cluttered with an immensity of unsourced rubbish put up by contributors with minimal genealogical skills.

While those who just want to input a few generations of their immediate ancestors may not worry about the overall low standard, those who have done any serious research will face the insurmountable hurdle of The Management. If you depart from whatever is the current Party Line in any area, you are hassled or summarily expelled. Of course there must be rules, but what members do not know until they infringe them are the arbitrary unwritten rules (shared by The Management in secret discussion groups).

From personal experience, having once been a major contributor, and from published testimony of other respected ex-members I can assure you that these statements are not personal pique or paranoia and, if challenged, can produce evidence.

If you have ever been a member of Wikitree and have since left or have been banned, unless you actually ask them to delete you email address off their data base they will keep it.

There are many wonderful things to be said about WikiTree and many of the persons involved are great. Unfortunately, too many of the leaders are control freaks who do not follow their own policies but do get upset if you don't or, as is too often the case, you don't follow their perception of the policy even when you can demonstrate that there was no conflict with the written policy.

They will often close accounts without following their own policy for account closures. My wife's account, was closed even though she was only lightly active, never violated any rules or policies, and was not even notified that her account was being removed. Their claim to have six levels of escalation before removing an account might be true in some cases, but certainly not all... and at times when it is utilized, it is used merely to project the illusion of a just process.

I would love to overlook these mean-spirited folks and recommend the site, but there have been so many others who have fallen victim to these folks that I can only recommend that one stay away.

I had a horrible experience with WikiTree and got nowhere in learning about my family. The website is run by people who control your every move. My entries were merged with others' without my permission and some were removed for capricious reasons. I honestly felt harassed. After a couple of years, I gave up completely after receiving a really nasty message from another user. I then tried to delete my account--and they wouldn't let me! Some mystery person who apparently was one of the site controllers/admins kept messaging me about how I'd "made too may contributions" to leave. I was told that the only thing I could do was request anonymization of my data, but I couldn't leave. That completely freaked me out. I was unsuccessful in getting my account deleted. WikiTree is both a cult and a scam; they build their site on the backs of contributors and then refuse to do what the contributors want._____________

Update 5/19/2023: Now that a year and a half has passed since I wrote this, I'd like to make a comment about the five-star reviews that have appeared since. Interesting, isn't it, that they sound like some sort of ads that reassure people that WikiTree is helpful and not abusive and creepy. Also interesting is that two of them were written one week apart in October 2022. Clearly someone is behind a campaign to "rescue" this horrible website from the (very accurate) 1-star reviews. Take that into consideration as you read.

Misinformation. Screwing with my child profiles, orphaning files with my name, sick sick, misinformation. Vandilising, more correct info, i will not allow wiki tree to merge profiles that weren't gonna be finnished until I knew It was a legible sight, will not be threatened, abused by any one! It did not stop, its habitual wiki blocked my sign in number and will not allow me to sign in my 400 names have been vandilised and stolen, orphaned, While I have no way of deleting, hacked by those people, Emails and threats dont stop, I can not block them from my email address, dirty comments written to offend. Shame Shame Shame, dont delete connection children! LIes LIes LIes, This sight is an illegitimate made up mixed up crap! Never will I use, never put your precious names in to wiki tree spying on children will be reported, I reported this, I was cut off and disconnected, the admin cut the profile manager out and fudged it up - misinformation, mistakes in names / marriages, wiki stole my info and wont stop blocking up my email address with threats. This sight will never be respected again, wrong wrong wrong. I want the watch dog to shash those weak pathetic souls!- below 0 get wiki tree off line please

After using WikiTree for a few months, I attempted to join the Data Doctors group and was contacted via email by a woman insisting that I needed to participate in a 2-to-3 hour Zoom video conference with her. When I politely declined the Zoom meeting, she became more insistant and even wrote that I was being "dismissive" of her by declining the meeting. When I checked Zoom, I learned that it would cost me $149 to use their video conferencing software, and I once again declined the Zoom meeting. After that, she rejected my request to join the Data Doctors group, stating that I "need to learn more about primary sources for [my] managed profiles, especially those that are Pre-1700."

Immediately following her rejection of me in Data Doctors, I was contacted my a mentor who stated that I had been flagged for "help with Pre-1700 sourcing" - the exact same thing that I was rejected from Data Doctors for. That same mentor then wrote that he had already seen my genealogy work and "thought it excellent," and he praised me as being "clearly a super-experienced genealogist." He also wrote that he will "close the MIR after a week or so and nothing more needs to be done."

Well, that mentor never closed the MIR and I was blocked from logging into my account back in December of 2022. According to WikiTree, my account was locked for failure to communicate with the mentor though I had email proof that I did communicate with him. WikiTree also wrote that I was flagged for mentoring because "someone was concerned about my use of 'not recommended' HTML tags when editing profiles" even though I don't use HTML tags. This reason is entirely different from the one that the mentor gave me.

It took 9 days of bouncing emails back and forth to WikiTree before they assigned another mentor to me, writing that I only had to respond to her to get the block lifted from my account. I did respond to her and the block was lifted.

I was under the impression that all that needed to be done had been done since the first mentor wrote that "nothing more needs to be done" in regards to the reason my account was flagged for mentoring. However, a month later I am locked out of my account once again. This time, WikiTree wrote that I was locked out because I failed to write to the new mentor every 7 days!

They just lock you out of your account for absolutely no real or good reason.

As far as the information on the WikiTree site, I have seen dozens of profiles in my direct line where the information on WikiTree conflicts with information in historic records. There are even pages where the birth-marriage-death information in the header section conflicts with what is written in the bio and tagged with sources. I certainly wouldn't trust about half of what I have found on WikiTree to be close to accurate.

I've been an active member since April 2018. Following the honor code (Special:Honor_Code) (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".) by giving others the benefit of the doubt has been the best way when dealing with such a large community of different personalities. When an issue arises there is a Problems with Members process to follow which is very helpful and is staffed by volunteer members (Help:Problems_with_Members).
The community has been encouraging and helpful when requesting assistance in the forum. Collaborating on shared ancestors was a new experience for me, but made perfect sense and I've enjoyed getting to know members from all over the world and learning about research in different countries.
The benefits of adding your tree and joining in a challenge and/or a project can't be beaten anywhere else.
~ Robinson-******* on WikiTree

Wikitree is an excellent free platform to collaborate with relatives near and far on a global family tree. The vision for having one profile per person who has ever lived means that budding family historians do not need to reinvent the wheel when researching their family history, and get the benefit of work done by others across the globe. It is exciting to be able to join in projects and collaborate further. I have particularly enjoyed participating in the Appalachia Project and the England Project. People are willing to give their time and talents to work together to meet the global goal. I have found standards to be very high indeed and it has been an absolute joy to be a member of this site.

Great site to find connections and consolidate sources found in Genealogy sites.
The goal of Wikitree is to have a single tree rather than multiple trees for the same family. Plus it's free!
Genealogy without good sources is mythology. I prefer good documention and souces. Once I found Wikitree, it became my preferred site for creating profiles and adding references.