Essentials and current status

I’ve been transferring our ancestors to WikiTree since January 2025. The family tree in my WikiTree profile…

…can serve as a starting point.

The following graphic shows the status of the transfer as of the date this article was updated. „Yellow“ means „in progress,“ „green“ means „completed.“ A person marked „green“ at the edge of the fan chart means that all earlier generations of that person’s ancestors have also been processed.

All profiles are provided with verifiable source information. For church records (Archion, Matricula, FamilySearch, etc.) and many other archival materials, the links in the source information lead directly to the source page in the original document.

The places of birth, marriage, and death describe the historical location and regional affiliation. Current regional affiliation can be found in the categories.

For family members who simply want to read and are bothered by the (minimal) advertising, I recommend registering for free with an ad-free guest account and, perhaps, becoming a family member.

Anyone who wants to participate or „dock“ their own ancestors onto the global family tree should sign the honor code, which automatically makes them a Wiki genealogist.

Despite all the care taken, the profiles can contain errors. I am happy to receive any information about it. Wiki genealogists can also correct them themselves. Please don’t forget to include appropriate source information if necessary.

Background and further explanations

In search of a additional possibility to keep my research results available even if I were no longer able or willing to manage my own website at some point, I researched suitable solutions at the end of 2024/ beginning of 2025. However, it had to be one that was independent of commercial providers.

In January 2025, I decided to transfer my research results to WikiTree in addition to storing the data in GEDBAS.

What I particularly like about WikiTree:

that it’s free for everyone, forever, and always (at least that’s what they credibly promise),
that it’s ad-free (unregistered visitors do see some – in my opinion acceptable – ads but these disappear after free registration),
the idea of collaboratively maintaining only one single, shared global family tree for everyone (FamilySearch and Geni also offer this, but it’s nowhere near as attractive),
the consistent commitment to providing verifiable sources,
that it’s a wiki, so you’re not limited to traditional database entries, but can write biographies that are very appealing and, depending on the person, can be short or very extensive,
that the wiki markup language used for formatting is very simple
and that anything imaginable can be described on free-space pages, so you can essentially transfer your entire website to WikiTree.

Some things take some getting used to:

the somewhat cumbersome entry of data, especially location information, which should be entered according to a template,
the lack of differentiation between birth and baptism, as well as death and burial (although this is probably not so important for family members and an interesting biography is often more exciting than precisely differentiated data entries),
the „Denglish“ language mix (although the „mask“ is in English, I write the majority of the biographies in German; when I find connections to non-German-speaking countries, I create the relevant profiles bilingually in German and English; this language mix may be a bit confusing at first, but it is not uncommon in WikiTree).

Schedule

Transferring research to WikiTree profiles takes time. You can work with imported GEDCOM files, but all profiles must be reviewed individually. In my experience, it’s easier to create new profiles manually.

I work gradually but not continuously, because I have other responsibilities in my free time. I also take the opportunity to recheck all sources.

First, I limit my profiles to our ancestors. Siblings are only mentioned in the research notes. Where appropriate and possible, I try to link our ancestors to the global tree, which has already been successful in several cases.

Since a four-digit number of profiles need to be created, the complete transfer will likely take many months, possibly even years.