Wednesday, May 3, 2023

Really Brief Bite-Sized Bios From WikiTree Connect-A-Thon


During the weekend of April 21-24, I was one of 749 people who participated in the WikiTree Connect-A-Thon. The goal was to add as many ancestors as possible to WikiTree's free shared family tree, with a minimum of one source and a bit of biographical content. The camaraderie was wonderful and I enjoyed the opportunity to really concentrate on documenting ancestors during a defined time period. This is part of my plan to share family history across multiple platforms.

An amazing 76,995 ancestors total were added to WikiTree during the weekend. I added 107 ancestors, mostly from the paternal side of my family--especially in-laws of in-laws who were not represented at all on WikiTree but now are there.

Given the limited time I could spend on each profile, the bios were brief, more like a teeny nibble than bite-sized ;). It helps that WikiTree automatically weaves together a few facts into a narrative biography, based on what the user inputs on each profile.

The bio in the image above is representative of what I had time to write during a busy weekend of genealogy: This man was born in ___, son of ___ and ___, WWII military service, occupation, name of wife, number of children with her, death. Plus two specific sources, including one with a link to this ancestor's Find a Grave memorial page. WikiTree shows, at a glance, the names of his parents and his wife and sibling.

In the coming weeks, I'll be revisiting the new profiles to flesh them out with better bios and additional sources/links. And of course I'm continuing my bite-sized family history bio projects with posts on other genealogy websites. 

No comments:

Post a Comment