 Welcome everybody. Thank you for joining us for this introductory to the wiki tree challenge. First, I just want to briefly cover what the wiki tree challenge is. Really wiki tree's biggest ongoing community event and we take seven bull ancestors and we grow their family tree out within seven degrees. That's kind of where we're focused on and that means that we are adding profiles to any profiles that are connected within seven degrees. So that includes step children, second wives, you know just way out. You want to go, we're focused on going wide so not necessarily back really far or down really far. We want to go as wide as we can so that we can find as many connections to the global tree as possible and have as many places out there so that other people when they come to wiki tree they then can find their family maybe that are already here. So that's the focus and it was started really to help us spread the word about wiki tree. Last year we started doing genealogical societies and we're continuing that trend this year. So I just want to say if anybody has a suggestion or if you are part of a genealogical society and would like to take part just send an email to aowyn at wiki tree.com. I'll add that to the description of the video so that everybody has that but we're definitely interested in hearing from anybody who has a suggestion for that. So today we're just going to talk through, we're going to focus on this first challenge of 2024 as our example so we'll walk through what that looks like. So this first challenge is taking place. We're doing seven notable profiles from New Mexico and this is the what we call the join post on the G2G which is genealogist to genealogist forum where we collaborate and communicate and the links for all of the Zoom chats is also on this post here. The space page for the challenge is linked to this post and the answers for the ancestors will be showing and when you want to claim a bounty you'll be answering there for those but you'll want to maybe bookmark this and keep an eye on it. You can also collaborate with other members, ancestor answer, you can say I'm working on this line and on this family. That's just a way to communicate with the other members of the challenge. Another way to communicate and collaborate is the current challenge channel on our Discord server. So Discord is a real-time chat application. The link for the challenge channel is in the Zoom chat and also the Discord help page so that if you aren't already on Discord you can go to that help page and learn more about it and the directions for getting started on Discord are there as well. So those are ways to communicate. Another place that you want to kind of bookmark and you'll be wanting to add to is the space page, the free space page for the challenge. So you can see right here at the top on the right hand side the G2G posts are linked here so the original post for joining the challenge and then this the post about this Zoom call today are linked here. So you scroll down a little bit you can see at the top there's a button back to the main WikiTree challenge help page there's a link to the G2G post for the challenge and then right here we have the score sheet. I'm not going to go there now it's not available until the challenge starts. We have a team member, Alash, who gets that get started for us so that it's tracking tracking that information. So once you've registered for the challenge you get a badge on your profile and that's what we key off of to track your contributions during the the challenge week. The next part of this space page is showing us our starting profiles the seven starting profiles for the challenge and we'll get back to this little notation here about how to find missing connections and as soon as I've gone over the profiles in the space page. So this space page is another way we collaborate and communicate with other team members. We have a section here where you can note down that something needs to work so if there's something that you need help with or you want to hand it off to somebody else who maybe can work on it to get further all you have to do is edit this page and go in here here's the section we were just talking about needs work and all you have to do is you can make a note that you need help with something or something needs to work and then what you'll want to do is add four tildes and that's what that looks like when once you do that and you hit the save it signs your profile ID and the time date and time that you added the note so that the person who maybe can then take that what you've put down and take that further and do that work that you're requesting help with they know who to contact they know who to talk to about it or if they have any questions so I'll just show you what that looks like I'm going to save the changes and go back to the free space page here so now down in the needs work section you can see this test note and it left the profile ID and the time date and time stamp here so that just gives you an idea of what that how that works so that four tildes is a you want to kind of keep that in mind it's because of the different sections now you'll want to use that little markup whenever you need help with anything or you want to add anything to this page so the next next section is about photographs if you have any questions about images being protected by copyright leave the image link here and sign it with the four tildes so that we can get back to you about it there is a help page for images if you just go to the help menu here and you go to photos well let's see it's just down here if I'd go to P and we go to photo FAQ there's actually a really good section on this about copyright and how you know whether or not it's okay right here how do you know if you have permission to upload a photo so kind of take a look at this first before asking for more help on that of course we're always everybody's always well you know happy to help with any questions you have but try to try working through that first we have different wiki tree members Karen Lowe as one of them that is near a family search center so she's able to do direct lookups on those sometimes the family search records aren't available because of copyright issues they aren't available online for everybody you have to actually be at a family search center for the lookup the digital lookup so if you leave there's a place here to start a list so if you want help with the lookup all you have to do is just leave the link there and again sign with the four tildes and the wiki tree members that have volunteered for that they keep an eye on this and they'll they'll get back to you about it that's why it's important to leave the four tildes so they know who to contact about about that line the next section is just really great to share and collaborate more about where we're working you can list out which we've already got started here you can see any countries that we are moving to so the the profiles we're starting with are from new mexico but you can see the family lines have already gone into these different countries and all these different states within the us already so if you come across different ones then the ones listed here please add them because we like to know that information when we're working with the society they love to hear that information too to see how far out we go all right so the next section is where you share what you found interesting finds in your work the research work that you've done so that for returning members of the wiki tree challenge they'll notice that it's a little bit different of a layout we've added each of the starting profiles and then the interesting finds and information under each profile so just as an example we've got the section first section here is the first profile for john denver and there's a section for interesting finds so if you come across a really interesting story and when you're adding profiles to john denver's family please let us know about it we love to hear that and there will be a survey about towards the end of the challenge that we send out a survey and it's a chance to win bounty points if your interesting find gets picked by the other members of the challenge there's a section here also for letting us know about military profiles and then we've got it broken down by the wars the different wars and again this as before I keep repeating myself but it's a good point to always sign your entry with the foretell this especially with the interesting finds because that's that's how we'll know who award the bounty points for if you've won the survey so there's a section for each of the seven ancestors for all that all of those items for the interesting finds to share so further down here then too is a section for free space pages so a free space page if somebody is not familiar is just a page that can be really for anything it can be for if there's a family bible or if there's letters or if there's a photo album you can have a free space page for that subject or item and you can add images to it and then refer back to it from the profile from the ancestors profile another really good use of free space pages are for wills to transcribe if there's a long will you can use that free space page to get it transcribed out and then you can link to it from the ancestor profile instead of having that whole long will on the ancestor profile you can just refer to it so it it keeps the ancestor profile biography really nice so the next section here so there's a place then here for you to make a note if you create a free space profile let us know because we like to hear about that I do have a link here for resource and just for notation the new mexico genealogical society one of the ancestors was mentioned in one of their journals and so we're we're using one of those ancestors so we just want to make a note note of that other places we use free space profiles is for cemeteries and I've got some listed out here because further down here we have place studies is another one two of the profiles are from the return new mexico one place study so these are some examples and since these three are in return already there might be family that you're adding that you'll want to add to the cemetery category for that for that cemetery one of them also is in Dawson new mexico which is near return there was a two mining disasters there so there's quite a few that were in this area return that also lived there's some crossover with Dawson there's actually also a Dawson new mexico one place study if you go into this link here it takes you to all of the new mexico place studies so you may come across some profiles that you could add the place study sticker to so they're part of that study if you're interested in starting on one place study there is information about that this link here that takes you to the project page I have to say though warning they are very addictive and you'll want to keep starting for a new one place studies once you get started okay and then we have a section on the space page like we have on the g2g post for the challenge for the schedule of chat and the links for those zoom chats the next section of the space page part of what we're doing I mentioned before is what the wiki tree challenges about is spreading the word about wiki tree out there and so this is linked here we share out on the wiki tree official social media accounts about the challenge and so if you're on social media and you'd like to help spread the word all you have to do then is click on the link for each of these if you're on twitter if you click on this link it takes you to that post and you can retweet it or if you're on facebook you can share it so this just gives you that option so you'll see down here a little bit further you can see I've got on my personal social media that I've shared these images that are attached to this space page I've shared on my social media that the images if you'd like to use them they're right here there's one here for just sharing that you're a challenge participant and you can just go right into this image and if you right click on it you can save it to your desktop and then you can upload that to your facebook or instagram whatever you use for social media there's one here also for if you've maybe made a discovery or you found something really interesting an interesting story in the newspaper you can share this image out on your social media to show that you've found an interesting story so those are some ways to help us spread the word about halfway through the challenge we post out on the gtg post and here on the space page what the brick walls are and the brick walls are an opportunity another opportunity to earn bounty points and so you'll get that information here and if you are able to break down the brick wall then you just claim it out on g2g that you've broken that brick wall down and we'll get you those points all right and the final section here is all about the resources so there are links to general wiki tree resources resources that you can check out and then if there are african-american profiles that you're adding to wiki tree there are different things here that you'll want to check out before going too too much further we have an african-american sticker that we ask that people add to the profile and this is the wiki markup for that it goes right below the biography line on the profile there's a link here that describes how to use it too so just check that out and then we have specific resources um you can if you have some you found that will be helpful go ahead and add those here um for united states you have links to the new mexico source records and then within the source library there's a space page that has resources or sources for new mexico and it's broken down by the first section is for kind of the general state resources that are available out there and these are free resources and then it's broken down by the counties so you'll see um i'm in colfax county and so uh these are the ones i have found for the county i'm in feel free if you have some for your county go ahead and or even for the state of new mexico feel free to add that um that's what wiki tree is all about is about collaboration so we love we love having more information and some of the profiles are into new york so i've added the same information here for new york um in the source library just want to take you to that briefly uh let's see in the source library on wiki tree there is um a link to let's see i think i thought it was linked to go to go back there but let me take us there real quick here yeah so the the source library has not only um space pages for each of the states of the us but it also has for different countries and there's even a section in the library for family genealogies so books that are for free on the internet um maybe on hathi trust or google books or the internet archive they've got each got a space in the library so if you haven't used that before definitely check that out it's a great resource so here is one of the ancestor profiles that we'll be focusing on for this first challenge um all the profiles are notables so you'll see here at the top that it's a notable connection um and john denver has already has 305 connections so you can see that right away so that's where we'll start the challenge so what i wanted to show next it yeah is um on this tab of the profile the tree apps tab if you open that up you have um this view all the different views of this person this ancestor's family tree or family ancestral information so um right now i'm showing the fan chart for john denver so here he is and that's this is his his family fan chart so hopefully when the challenge is over maybe this will be filled in a little bit more another app that's on wiki is the six degrees app and so this kind of gives you an idea what it looks like right now before the challenge is starting this is john denver six degrees actually it's showing seven degrees out um and how that that looks by the end of the challenge of course this will probably be a lot bigger a lot more dots on the on the pic on the image here so that's going to be the fun part of that so the next item i want to show which is kind of what this is all about is how you can uh participate how you can find where to work or how to add those connections so if you go to the tree apps again the tab in the tree apps one of the options if you click on this down drop down menu is this item called cc seven views and what this does is it takes you to this listing of um profiles connected within seven degrees and like i said you can drill down to just one level so you can go out to like degree four so to give you an idea of what the degrees are john denver is degree zero his parents and siblings spouse and children would all be degree one degree two would be um his grandparents his siblings spouses and children so it just grows out from there so right away here you can see that this person doesn't have um parents so you can see right here you could go from there and start working on trying to find the parents for this person so if you look here at the top column listed here if you just click on i just clicked on the parent column so you can see zero parents are on these profiles i'm sorting by this so this this is an opportunity if you think okay this is russia 1874 i can i feel comfortable working there then you could work there if you don't feel comfortable you can check on another profile let's see uh 1924 in minnesota this person doesn't have any parents okay i'm comfortable working in minnesota in 1920s era and trying to find this person's parents so then you can just go right into that profile and start working there so it kind of gives you an idea of where where you can work you can maybe say oh i want to see people that don't have any siblings then you can sort by that and it'll show you all the it'll sort those to the top so you'll see all people who don't have any any siblings added so matilda martha matilda berry doesn't have any siblings i want to see if i can find some siblings for so it just gives you an idea of how where you want to work if you want to work on adding spouses click on that that header right there and that'll show you all the profiles that don't have any spouses so that just kind of gives you an idea on where and how to get started definitely check out the video it kind of goes more into depth on how you can do that if you go to henry's profile so on on henry's profile also what you can do is if you click on this 305 connections it takes you to this page it's a different view of the same type of information so it shows you how many profiles are or what profiles are connected to them at each degree so if you want to kind of start further away so you're away from the main activity of the challenge you can go out here to the degree four and say oh this looks this guy looks interesting he doesn't have any parents or anything so let me see if i can work on this and try to find some people for him so you know you're starting at degree four you have three degrees out from this profile that you can add to and be earning points for the wiki tree challenge so that kind of gives you an idea of how to participate and the different ways to get to the information so if you are on a profile that doesn't have that nifty little link at the top that i just went to to find that page all you have to do is go to your connections page and you can see here it has a place for you to add in a wiki tree id of somebody else so if i were to add like this profile for instance i think i just closed out of there oh yeah here we go so that other ancestor profile if i just type that in there and i already know how far that person is away from the main profile then i can see okay here i want to i want to work two degrees out from that person and add one more degree to them so kind of gives you an idea of how you can view the different information so there were no questions asked in the g2g post specifically about how to participate so i'm going to just open it up to any questions from you all that are here on the call with me so does anybody have any questions about participating and how how to how to take part yeah no this was super helpful and a great intro so it's much clearer now what we're supposed to know what how we generate the profiles and you know what information you're looking for so this was really great great i'm so glad to get it out thank you guys for tuning in