What is more important to Genealogy than sources?!

Well, I guess something else important would be finding a long lost, multimillionaire uncle and finding you are his only relative…

In the perfect world all Genealogies would be well sourced, but unfortunately this isn’t the case. We have all run across online genealogies that are just repeats, copy and pastes, of what someone else had thrown up based on what aunt Mabel told them back in the 70’s. I am not saying Aunt Mabel’s memory is fallible, but Aunt Mabel’s tale is only a tale until it is proven with sources. Until it’s sourced, this kind of information can be used as a clue to where you might look.

What if there were a group of volunteers in the Genealogical community that worked continuously, tirelessly on sourcing a global family tree? And what if these Volunteers threw a party and invited you?

If you don’t already know about WikiTree and it’s Sourcers? Then you get an opportunity to know them and join in the fun at WikiTree’s Source-A-Thon, the weekend of Octber 1st, 2016. How can you help? You don’t have a tree on WikiTree? Hmm. There are no trees on WikiTree, just one tree. One Profile per person for anyone who lived from 0AD to now. Just one Tree.

You can start buy looking to see if you have an ancestor or living cousin on WikiTree. Your Grandma’s are there (Mags Gaulden / Marc Snelling). I stumbled on WikiTre, literally, while talking to a distant cousin about our shared ancestor, Esli Hunt, Sr. I was over the moon when I discovered Esli’s profile because other cousins – those living, breathing ones had already added all of his siblings – The Hunt 14 – to WikiTree. I had a great time adding my research to the research that was already posted.

About the Source-A-Thon from WikiTree’s G2G (Genealogist to Genealogist) Forum:

As a fun way to tackle the intimidating Unsourced Profiles category, we’re envisioning a “Source-a-Thon” weekend. A bunch of us would all work together to add sources over a two or three day period.

With Family History Month coming up in October, it could be the weekend of October 1-2.

We’re thinking we’ll make it a competition. Not a really competitive thing. I imagine most of us would just be participating for fun or as a challenge, like the way people participate in marathons. There could be a target for everyone, e.g. 100 profiles removed [from] the Unsourced category. – Chris Whitten

Why are there an intimidating number of unsourced profiles? WikiTree is for the serious genealogist as well as the family historian and the new family history keepers. Anyone and everyone can import a GEDCOM from another program and move it over to WikiTree. Because WikiTree is so open, it get uploads from other sites who do not require or work on making their numerous trees sourced. WikiTree is the only Global Family Tree with one of it’s main points of focus being that our big ole shared tree should be sourced.

Not a part of the World Family Tree – WikiTree – just join the family (it’s free) at www.WikiTree.com. You can put on your Sourcers hat and do some sourcin’.

The Stastistics

For Numbers on Unsourced as to sourced profiles? Wikitree currently includes 11,996,179 profiles edited by 353,768 genealogists from around the world. The majority of the profiles on WikiTree are sourced. Of the 240,786 unsourced profiles, 24,304 profiles have been sourced in the last year of the WikiTree Sourcerers challenge which leaves 216,482. If about 2/3’s of WikiTree’s profiles manager were to source one profile during the Source-A-Thon there would be 0 unsourced profiles on WikiTree…well until the next GEDCOM upload!