 It's me or WikiTree Forest Elf and I'm here and we are trying a new way to do our member of the week feature. Normally we do them in written posts in G to G but we thought it might be fun to try and do a video interview so you can actually see the person and get to know them a little better that way. So this week I'm very excited because we have one of our team members Mindy Silva. I'm sure most of you have seen her around because she's literally pretty much everywhere. She is our challenge coordinator so she leads our WikiTree challenge and our sourceathons and connectathons. She leads more projects than I could probably name but I know there's quite a few and we'll talk about that in a bit here but we're just excited to share a little bit about her with all of you and so I'm excited to be here. Yay so we'll just jump in and we can find out all about Mindy. So when and how did you get interested in genealogy? I got interested when I was a freshman in high school and we had an assignment to fill out just a basic family tree and I was really excited you know they taught us how to look at microfilm and everything and then that's when I found out that I really didn't have any family members that like to talk about the family and yeah they either couldn't or wouldn't answer questions and for you know a lot of the other of my classmates they could look at the microfilm well we were all military families and moved around a lot. My ancestors weren't from that state and so yeah my teacher wound up having to grade me on effort and not what I could not produce but it really inspired me you know to look further at who I descended from. That's really cool it's neat to hear all the different ways that people get inspired to get into their family history for sure. What are some of your interests outside of genealogy? You mean there's non-genealogy interest? I know it's shocking. I know it's shocking there's time away from wiki tree. I know. For those five minutes a day what do you do? Yes for those five minutes in all my free time of five minutes. In the winter I like to crochet baby things so I do have some blankets and booties for the Ronald McDonald house and in the warmer months I do gardening and canning and cooking and my biggest non-wiki tree interest which is still wiki tree related though are my daughters and my 12 beautiful grandchildren and they are my joy so. 12 grandchildren? Yes. Your newest one was born this year or last year? Yes yeah just a few months ago. That's fun. I think there were four COVID babies so I bet there were five COVID babies. It might be five. Oh wait yeah it was five so during the yeah during the last two years and when people were locked down yeah them grand babies started popping out. One good thing about COVID right? Yes gotta look at the positive. So what is your genealogy research focus? My focus is pretty much split and really you know I do spend a lot of time anybody that knows me knows I spend a lot of time on wiki tree and you know usually I spend so much time with things like the wiki tree challenge which is just so much fun and helping others which I really like to do and I get all caught up and I don't really get to my own genealogy very often so you know when I was new on wiki tree I was working really hard to just expand my ancestors and move everything from another site over to this one and no I still haven't done that yet I have people that I haven't moved over so. I feel that yeah I always think I'm going to get mine over and someday it's gonna happen. Do you think that your focus has changed over the years obviously like with stuff you do for wiki tree? It really has and you know once again I mean I really was focused on my own family to begin with but you know I've just fallen in love with all the different projects and activities that you can do and once again I'm somebody that likes to teach and likes to help and that comes out of my background and you know and there's so many opportunities to do that on wiki tree you can just wiki all day. It's very easy to do. So true. Many rabbit holes. I'm sorry there's certain surnames or locations like they are interested in like your family or yeah well Portugal is still my greatest passion right now. I love the records I love the culture that's not something I grew up around and you know as far as looking through the baptism registers and whatnot I can literally sit and do that for just hours. I really like it I find it relaxing and I love looking for ancestors that way. Do you have a favorite ancestor? This one's hard I can never pick just one I do have one that kind of has stayed a favorite of mine and her actually I don't know what her name is and I had come across a photo on you know one of those lost sites where they have the family photographs and yeah and there was a girl that a young lady that had had her picture taken and she never went back and picked the pictures up and the photographer had made notes that he thought it was a little odd because she gave a maiden name and a married name like you know she was married or you know newly married but he said she was really just school girl age and whimsical is what he had called her and the name she had put on that was Isabella Bland Levitt which is the name of my 10th ninth great grandmother one of my ninth great-grandmothers so I think she was fancying herself you know as her much-loved grandmother or great-grandmother because she was the only one that had had that name and you know gone in and had these photographs taken which obviously daddy didn't know about because they never got paid for and picked up and you know I just really I love the thought of that that she was so you know in love with with her grandmother or great-grandmother and the family she came from that she used that name when she had her photograph taken so that was really cool yeah and the ninth great-grandmother by the way was born in 1602 and those those cards from this photography studio weren't available till the mid-1800s so you know it definitely had to have been yeah had to have been a really really far away one yeah very cool I like that she was described as whimsical yes um do you have a favorite genealogy of discovery or break like a brick wall breakthrough story yes one of my first ones on wiki tree and I was so excited because of course you know I didn't know that much about the site yet and I was so stuck on my Paul line which went back into England so there was you know no language barriers but the records were very hard to find and you know if you don't know the geography there it can be tricky and I had gone out into the g2g finally one day I'm like I'm just going to try this and I went out in the g2g and I said help you know everything I've looked at I cannot figure out who her parents are and several people just jumped right in they all started looking for records one of the people found one of the marriage documents and it turns out that her brother had signed as a witness to the marriage and since her father wasn't available and through the brother's records they were able to help me track down who the parents were and it just it was so exciting you know and once again I was very new so I was like really super impressed but you know um five years later I'm still impressed by what wiki tree collaboration can accomplish it's just amazing we really do have the best community I'm not biased but we do at all so what is your toughest brick wall right now I have several but I think we all have those several we know we're not going to get through my two hardest are on opposite sides of my branches so on my father's side I have a great grandfather that was born in South Korea so the language barrier there is obviously yeah big permanent um that's a big block for me one of my descendants is you know the great grandkids or something is going to have to learn Korean and do some research on that because um I think I'm a little bit long in the tooth to do that and then on my mother's side I have a third-grade grandmother and she was born in Ireland and right before the potato famine happened she was shipped over to the US to find a suitable husband that could care for you know and even though the potato famine hadn't happened there were a lot of really poor areas and you know it was common for people to starve and so you know her parents sent her on hoping to give her a better life but you know then on top of it she had this super common name and none of her United States documents listed where she came from but Ireland not quite helpful yeah DNA one day maybe you know could be so how long have you been on my ki tree I joined in July I had to look this and look at this earlier I joined in July of 2017 but it really feels like I've been on here forever now a lot longer than that I was I was looking for ways to collaborate with two cousins of mine and we were working on that Portuguese ancestry you know and when you work on sites like ancestry there's a lot of really great records and things that are helpful but you can't collaborate with somebody on a tree you know and we were trying all these different methods of saving our documents in the same place and starting a database system which was really just really time consuming and you know doing group phone calls and I kind of looked around and that's when I found wiki tree you know so not only did I bring those cousins over and we've gotten immense amount of work done since then but I found a lot of cousins on the site since I've been here you know and it's it's exciting when somebody just reaches out and goes hey how are you related to so-and-so that's my great grandma and you're like no that's my great grandma yeah other cousins yeah and and that's another thing on the other site you know you reach out to somebody and you're like oh I see you're working on this person how are they related and you hear nothing you know nothing and here people come find you or when you do message them they're like oh you know that's my so-and-so or oh I was helping you know a friend work on that line here's the friend yeah and you get responses for sure yeah and they're as excited as we are I know which is great I'm like cousin they're like cousin hi and that's cool because that's I mean that's essentially how wiki tree got started is Chris had all this family history that he was looking to figure out how can I share this with my family and have them that's tough and I mean that was how wiki tree was bored basically so here's the question that may take you a while to answer what do you spend the most time doing on wiki tree and why are you doing that yeah why what do I spend the most time doing on wiki tree I wiki I know my signature used to be so much to wiki so little time but right now I think the challenge is still probably my biggest focus and you know I love the fact that we can give this knowledge of people's ancestral lines and their ancestors to them and you know their cousins and whatever descendants come along and you know and that we can bring this this these people back to life and watching the researchers collaborate is amazing you know we had last year that we we broke down brick walls that professional genealogists hadn't broken down and you know it was crazy yeah crazy impressive just crazy impressive it was so much more successful than I even thought it would be and you know this year even though we're doing the more generalized focus we're doing the celebrity focus it's no less impressive you see these guys get together and work in groups and you know tear apart records and analyze everything and make sure it's done and you know and we get anybody from the new new wiki tree or two super super experienced ones and so it's just really a lot of fun to watch and then you know just the other projects I'd say overall if I had to generalize it would be projects because yeah I like the projects it's cool because especially with the challenge you really get to be in like the heart of everything that wiki she's really about like every day you get to see the benefits of the collaboration and working together and like what can be done with all of that and we get to talk to projects that you know some of us normally wouldn't have worked with and you know that's another great thing so not only are we learning from these other projects because they share their experience you know but there's people we talk to now that we would have never known otherwise if it weren't for the challenge so we're like oh yeah I love those people from another love project or you know oh I love yeah it's great that we can work and I learn new stuff about Sweden oh you know and we know we start recognizing these names as they come in and talk with us in discord and it's really great yeah that was a great way to include some of those international projects that we don't always get to come across for sure mm-hmm so you speaking of projects which ones are you the most involved with well I've already covered a lot on the wiki tree challenge so I'd have to say that you know right now a lot of time is also spent with a new Appalachian project and helping get that off the ground so the members in that are really excited it's fun and they're really eager and things are moving along pretty quickly you know we just really have a blast in there and then also had recent renewed interest in the Latin American project and so that one I would really like to cover in November when we do our wiki tree symposium or anniversary event and you know just get the word out there and and bring even more people in and you know to to help them with those ancestors and teach them about wiki tree that would be really great we can use all the help we can get yes so speaking of that how can others help with those projects and what do the projects need help with well you know the projects always have once again the different levels of experience so you don't have to be worried that you know we've had people come to us with a the new Appalachian project and go well I don't know if I can qualify but you know my family's from there can I do this well yes very definitely 100% and we don't turn anyone away you know and people can come in and add their their ancestors in or you know they can learn how to do stickers and add stickers to the the various profiles we've done a little mini tutorials and whatnot and chats where we teach people tools that they can use elsewhere on wiki tree I mean we just really have a lot of fun with it so any you know any experience level there's always something you can do some people don't like to create the new profiles at all that's great they can go around and you know improve some of the other ones somebody did go through and create for sure very cool so what inspires you to contribute so much of yourself to the wiki tradition I think it's really just you know comes down to the basics of documenting our ancestors and bring that bringing them back to life because it really is so important and you know especially not knowing a lot when I grew up I think you know now that I've gotten older I really understand how important it is that we do know where we came from and you know that we do know about these ancestors and in this way of us documenting and going through those records and sharing our experience by you know telling their stories it's allowing them to carry on for generations and generations now and you know I mean it's some pretty powerful stuff you start looking through your branches and you're like wow you know those are those are my ancestors that's really cool and so you know it is I think an important legacy that I leave from not only my grandchildren but cousins and you know other descendants well and you know you've done so much work on so many things outside your family that you'll you'll touch a lot of lives with the work that you've done I certainly hope so yeah uh what's your favorite feature one lucky tree and life that's one I can't pick this one either but one of my favorite things that I always start with is the biographies I love that we have that big what I call white space you know to me it's just like a free big empty whiteboard and you can get in there and you can tell the the ancestor story and you can talk about their kids and their life and their occupations and their tragedies and you can go in and add pictures you know and make it even more interesting and eye catching so other people will come read about them you know but I also couldn't do any more daily without all of the amazing tools that we have on hand anything from you know citation helpers to sourcing help to category selection and now we have this great cc7 you know it shows our connections within the seven degrees seven degrees of us so it's just one more kind of fun things as genealogy nerds really like yeah and it makes it even more fun to be on wiki tree doing what we love for sure is there a feature or function that you would like to see added I wish that we had I had to think about this um I was thinking about this earlier but I wish that we had a sticker selection like we do the category selection you know because when I joined wiki tree you had to go find the category and then you had to copy it and then you go back to the profile and you and now you can just there's a drop down thing you can start typing it in and it'll tell you I would like to see that for stickers where you can say like revolution or civil war and it'll show you what you can pull in as as a sticker because stickers can be really confusing if you don't know how to use them yeah and I think yeah I think more people would use them if it were a little bit easier or you know I still hear all the time people are like oh I didn't know there was a sticker for that wait let me copy that yeah that in my notes yeah you know so I think there's a lot of of underused stickers that can really help highlight specific events in somebody's life definitely I would use them a lot more if there is a sticker drop down for sure yeah definitely that's a good one um do you have a story about how someone has helped you through wiki tree has helped me yeah or that I helped um let's start with has helped you has helped me well I covered the awesome brick wall so I would have to say I think the biggest help was just really a collection of people because when I was doing on wiki tree and it seems so overwhelming at first you know there's so many things you don't know how to do and you look at people's profiles and you're like I don't even know how they're doing that you know um and so what I did is I read through the g2g every day like every day I followed the g2g and I would see what people were working on or you know what they did to find when they jump in and do that collaboration and somebody says oh look at this for this record and fix the profile this way you know but I'd also look for stuff that was broken because I'm like I don't want to break something you know and I'd go somebody go I think I broke it and somebody else would go no you just do this and I'd be like wait let me put that let me put that my notes so when I break that later I know how to fix it and you know between doing and then when I couldn't figure out just from the post man I was like fearless I'd email I don't care who you are at email hey how did you do that you know that's I saw you yeah I saw you help this person um how did you fix that sticker though and you know I never had anybody like ignore me or you know get frustrated everybody just seemed really super happy to help me understand um what they had done and that was you know looking back on it really incredible that's how many people were were like that yeah it would be great if new members could be that brave and just or even longtime members that aren't sure like just email somebody and ask and like chances are good you'll get a helpful answer yeah so and never think your questions are stupid um you know that's what I always told myself the only stupid question is when you don't ask so just ask it and the most somebody's gonna do is go you know I don't know let me check on that and they'll probably come back with the answer or someone who can't help you yeah so there's probably hundreds and thousands of stories about you helping other people on wiki tree but do you have a favorite uh I'm gonna go ahead and talk about one only because I just heard from him again this morning and you know back when I was co-leading the greeters and the mentors and mediators I had somebody that was new to wiki tree and he was really struggling you know with the learning curve and an elder gentleman and you know once I started helping him he finally told me he goes I'm just adopting you you're my permanent mentor on wiki tree and years later I still hear from him so you know he'll come and say hey I need a second set of eyes on this or you know this morning it was hey I'm trying to find this baptism and um you know I'm not sure that this taking this path is right but sometimes it's just oh you know tell me how his dog is doing or you know how the job is and I get little chitter chatter and it's just really fun to see that and know that you know that connection was made through wiki tree and you know and I have others like that so that's really fun that was really cool shout out to our greeters and mentors yes um let's see so do you have any tips for someone I mean you kind of talked a little bit about how you got started in wiki tree and what you did with gdg and asking questions do you have any other tips um you know I definitely use the g2g a lot don't be afraid to ask questions but join projects too uh you know don't worry that you're not going to be good enough because that when you go and you join a project that's what it should be doing is helping you increase those skills and learn how to do new things and you know and now we also have live chat on the wiki tree discord server and that I love love love so you know instead of just doing emails back and forth we can actually chat live and hash out a problem and you know talk about it and we get to see even more people in there that you might not see otherwise and it's just really a fun way you know and you go in and you say hey how does anybody happen to know about this obscure you know virginia law and there's usually someone why do you ask yeah oh wait I yeah I just looked at that for one of my relatives what do you need and you know people are just so friendly and helpful and you know and it's around the clock or or a global site so there's there's always someone chatting somewhere yeah there's an astounding pool of knowledge to pull from in our community yeah so don't be shy shy and then what do you think that we could do to inspire more people to participate in our mission well I like to think some of the ways we're already doing it with things like the wiki tree challenge because we are reaching out you know and there's so many people out there that don't know how good the site is and if we don't reach out somehow they're never gonna find out yeah I really wish that people would share more with their social media and you know and it doesn't have to be like oh I made this big brick wall breakdown discovery you know it can just be like huh this was interesting who knew my third great-grandfather was a carpenter you know I never knew that just the little things like that to garner interest because you never know who's reading your posts that might go oh wow I didn't know that about great grandpa so and so you know they might be really interested in hearing that information so that you know I'd really like to see more people reaching out like that and sharing what they found that's a good one that would be great yeah any little tidbit I see you know we have the facebook group for the wiki tree for wiki tree and I'm always happy when I see someone post just like even even without a tidbit just like here's my third great-grandfather yeah play cool you know because you never know that you know who might maybe it's their third great-grandfather that person they were looking for they just think it's a cool profile and get interested in wiki tree I know I got into my widgets the other day and I shared one of the images of my tree that it made on facebook and lens like that's really odd because you never share that kind of stuff like your tree yeah and I was like you know what honestly I just don't think about it yeah it's terrible you know we just we all need to think more in the mindset that we're not the only ones that are nerdy enough to like the genealogy stuff there's probably yeah there's probably other people out there that are interested also yeah definitely well cool well Mindy it's been nice to get to know a little bit more about you I'm sure people who watch this will also enjoy learning little things about you and thanks for doing this thank you this was a lot of fun back in the tree yes