Keystone Research Solutions, LLC
WikiTree for the Experienced Researcher
by Andrew Murphy, 26 January 2026
Who would visit a WikiTree person profile?
It may be a relative of this particular person, wondering about what they might learn from the WikiTree profile.
It may be a professional researcher, reconstructing a family tree for a client, or delving into a local history, or studying patterns of humanity.
It may be a mildly curious visitor, seeing for the first time what WikiTree has to offer.
It may be a child, listening to someone (or something) read about somebody interesting.
The audience for WikiTree is worldwide and widely varied. It is likely, then, that a profile visitor is not intimately familiar with genealogical jargon or academic formalism or the specifics of time and place and language nuance — but they know a good story when they hear one.
In turn, WikiTree provides a multilingual collaborative publishing platform striving to produce a single, global family tree of connected individual person profiles. Registered volunteer writers follow a set of rules and guidelines (including privacy controls) published on the website. There are how-to documents, and a question-and-answer forum. There are provisions for linking to genealogical DNA test results.
As varied as the audience, the writers have a wide range of skills and understanding. Writers also have assorted interests, limited time, and much to do. The WikiTree community welcomes these writers, knowingly accepting that doing so makes the entire endeavor a continuing work in progress.
The endeavor’s focal point is the WikiTree person profile. An individual profile is a database record having a data section and a text entry section. There are also facilities for attaching items such as images, tags, and comments to the profile record.
The profile data section helps to characterize the profile in time, location, connection to other profiles, and levels of confidence. This allows the WikiTree platform to produce, on demand, various family connection graphs, geographic map overlays, and generational timeline charts.
The profile text entry section allows free flow written content in various human language scripts, along with selected markup language components.
Markup components divide the text entry section with headers; present italicized, boldfaced, indented, or otherwise emphasized text; embed links to destinations both within WikiTree and across the Internet; tag the profile for inclusion in multiple categories; and place images and templates into the text body.
A community standard of practice divides profile text entry mainly into a biography narrative section, a research notes section, and a source references section. There is room, too, for an acknowledgements section, for a “see also” list, and for writer defined subsections.
A WikiTree profile’s central purpose is to tell a source based life story about one person. A writer’s goal is to tell a quality — even beautiful — story. The writer performs a set of tasks to achieve their goal and the profile purpose.
Since information sources form the basis of a WikiTree profile, it makes sense to develop source references, first. An information source reference should clearly lead a profile visitor to the specific source of that information, be that information in an official register line, on a certificate, on a book page, in a newspaper column, in a database record, at a media recording mark, or even told orally from memory. The source reference statement should be clearly understandable to a non-native and non-local speaker of the statement’s chosen language. A source reference statement should itself describe the information being referenced in enough detail to be found again, as a safety backup in case the current source repository changes or disappears. It is useful to link the source reference statement to multiple repositories, in order to provide alternatives to the profile visitor. It is also useful to add a note to the source reference when that note clarifies a relevant aspect of the source, or when that note adds to the value or understanding of the specific source.
Writing research notes is the next logical task while producing a WikiTree profile. A research note is appropriate for analyzing evidence, explaining or addressing unclear statements and obscure lines of reasoning, discussing work yet to be done, describing historical context, and so on. A research note might permanently reside in a profile; or it might change over time as new information develops; or it might be retired once its topic becomes settled elsewhere in the profile. Given WikiTree’s collaborative environment, it is helpful that each writer sign and date their own research notes in a profile.
Writing a narrative biography is the core task. This is where the art of storytelling takes place. This is where the events of a life story connect with their sources of information. This is the reason and the expectation for a visit to the profile. Sentences in the narrative should be complete; have correct grammar and spelling; and avoid abbreviations, acronyms, and vague terms. This reduces ambiguity for a profile visitor, and supports translation and assistive technology tools.
The next task is to update the values of the profile data section. The data section should reflect the current state of the text entry section, so it is appropriate to check the data section every time the text entry section changes. Some data section values (such as names, dates, and locations) can come from explicitly sourced statements in the narrative, or from explanations in the research notes. Other data section values (certainty and confidence ratings, for example) require ongoing judgment, and there are resources on the WikiTree platform to help form a judgment.
These are the main tasks. A writer can perform additional tasks based on their own desire or on encouragement from the WikiTree community.
Writing a profile can achieve three performance levels in the collaborative community of WikiTree.
In the required performance level, writing a profile meets the legal requirements and corporate mandates. These are the WikiTree terms of service, privacy policy, and acceptable use policy, and the WikiTree minimum requirements for creating a profile.
For the expected performance level, writing a profile conforms to the WikiTree Honor Code and agreed-upon styles and standards.
The desired performance level is more subjective than the other two levels. This is the artistic level of the storytelling, yet the writing must remain grounded in and bounded by the life story’s information sources, to be considered a quality performance in WikiTree. Two writers may individually prefer differing storytelling techniques, but those techniques should work together when collaborating on one profile.
As widely varied as the WikiTree community is, its common desire is to tell a visit-worthy, quality life story about an individual person and to connect that story to others.