Talk:Wikifamily
Add topicMaybe this project should rather be a collection of tools/front-ends for Wikidata: Per d:Wikidata:Notability an item is a allowed if "It refers to an instance of a clearly identifiable conceptual or material entity that can be described using serious and publicly available references." People in a family tree imho easily fit this criterion. --Flominator (talk) 12:20, 8 July 2025 (UTC) Reply
- Another great advantage of Wikidata is that it can also be used to store all the source metadata for referenced works, databases, etc. Sam Wilson 12:51, 8 July 2025 (UTC) Reply
- And not having to redundantly maintain data and/or decide, if you put them to Wikidata or Wikifamily. Flominator (talk) 18:52, 8 July 2025 (UTC) Reply
- @Flominator: Do you know if non-notable but verifiable people (other perhaps than those only backed by the peerage import) have been deleted from Wikidata? It seems like everyone's worried about adding lots of family history there, but actually it's not clear that there's really a problem with doing that (in the realms of thousands rather than millions of people, anyway). For example: Ernest Albert Donegan (Q63610065). (By problem I mean social/community; there are definitely various problems with the unbounded growth of Wikidata.) Sam Wilson 08:39, 9 July 2025 (UTC) Reply
- No, I don't know about such thing. I also probably wouldn't, though. Flominator (talk) 08:56, 9 July 2025 (UTC) Reply
- @Flominator: Do you know if non-notable but verifiable people (other perhaps than those only backed by the peerage import) have been deleted from Wikidata? It seems like everyone's worried about adding lots of family history there, but actually it's not clear that there's really a problem with doing that (in the realms of thousands rather than millions of people, anyway). For example: Ernest Albert Donegan (Q63610065). (By problem I mean social/community; there are definitely various problems with the unbounded growth of Wikidata.) Sam Wilson 08:39, 9 July 2025 (UTC) Reply
- And not having to redundantly maintain data and/or decide, if you put them to Wikidata or Wikifamily. Flominator (talk) 18:52, 8 July 2025 (UTC) Reply
I like this idea, but I'd like to better understand how it would be different from existing projects like Wikitree, FamilySearch, etc. Apart from it being hosted by WMF, is there a benefit to creating a new project? --Jimmyjrg (talk) 15:43, 8 July 2025 (UTC) Reply
- One thing would be having it under community rule and hopefully with our other standards, like sources etc. --Flominator (talk) 19:13, 8 July 2025 (UTC) Reply
- I think the biggest difference would be licensing. If WikiTree was open-licensed (both content and software), I'm not sure there would be any point in this proposal. The other unified family tree sites, like FamilySearch and Geni, don't really aim to be collaborative as far as I know (they're run as side-projects of other things). WikiTree feels like a similar community to Wikimedia in lots of ways, and people do actually work together. I don't really understand why WikiTree isn't a non-profit org; they just pledge to never sell the data. Sam Wilson 22:29, 8 July 2025 (UTC) Reply
I imagine this will be the biggest issue and should be tackled within the proposal. See previous discussion here (2014), and WMF Biographies of living people resolution.
Has anyone here had experience running a genealogy project using MediaWiki?
I see WikiTree have a policy around adding living people, but they run their tree by having people manage profiles. Would this proposal do the same thing, or would it be more like Wikipedia and Wikidata so anyone could add or edit a page? A bit more information or ideas on how this could work would be great.--Jimmyjrg (talk) 15:57, 8 July 2025 (UTC) Reply
- WikiTree has a policy for living notables and allows having "your own" profiles of relatives (with their "permission"). Flominator (talk) 18:51, 8 July 2025 (UTC) Reply
- I think that's a fairly good policy to copy here: As long as a person meets Wikipedia's notability requirements, then they can be included on Wikifamily.
- My only concern is how the extended family of that person would be shown on the tree. For example, if Person A is notable but their parents (Person B and Person C) are not, but their grandparents aren't living (Person D, Person E, Person F, Person G), then how are they displayed?
- Would there be a blank pages for Person B and Person C? Or would their name be listed, but the page is locked until an obituary or 120 years have passed since their birth? Or would Person A's page link directly to the grandparents and leave the parents unlinked?
- Maybe Familypedia do it best with an infobox listing parents and children, and then a tree listing hyperlinked and un-hyperlinked people. But if the idea is to make this project like Wikidata so you can run reports, then that data would only be good for 120+ years ago if living people are excluded. Jimmyjrg (talk) 07:48, 9 July 2025 (UTC) Reply
(Feel free to add to this, I'm just trying to understand how Wikifamily would be different - Based on this but with updated stats. I haven't included Wikidata or WikiSpore.) --Jimmyjrg (talk) 17:29, 8 July 2025 (UTC) Reply
| Name | Since | URL | Record counts | Registered users | Licence | Software | Living people | Features | Example |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wikifamily (this proposal) | TBC | n/a | n/a | n/a | CC0 / CC BY-SA 4.0 (?) | TBC | TBC | TBC | n/a |
| Familypedia | 2004 | https://familypedia.fandom.com | 317,553 | 2,204 (in 2020) | CC-BY-SA | MediaWiki 1.43.1 and Semantic MediaWiki | Allowed | Example | |
| Rodovid | 2005 | http://rodovid.org/ | 191,576 (total pages in the database) | 12,860 | CC BY 2.5 | MediaWiki 1.9.3 | Unclear | Example | |
| WeRelate | 2005 | http://werelate.org/ | 3,150,000 people | 146,604 | CC-BY-SA | MediaWiki: 1.7.1 | No, with exceptions. | Supports GEDCOM upload, | Example |
| WikiTree | 2005 | https://www.wikitree.com/ | 42,269,054 | 1,232,452 | © Interesting.com, Inc / Content may be copyrighted by WikiTree community members. | MediaWiki (forked from 1.11) | No, with exceptions | Supports GEDCOM upload, | Example |
| ArchivesWiki | 2014 | https://archives.org.au/ | 1,422 pages | 28 | Unclear | MediaWiki 1.43.0 + Genealogy extension | Unclear | Example | |
| FactGrid | 2018 | https://database.factgrid.de/ | 100,665 (2022) | Unclear | CC0 | MediaWiki 1.39.10 | Unclear | Example |
Would Wikifamily aim to use the existing software systems of Wikimedia, or add genealogy-specific structures? Most genealogy sites have lots of purpose-built software, which sort of runs counter to how Wikimedia sites work, and I think would be quite a large amount of work (not that there isn't already a bunch of tools etc. for working with genealogical data here). It seems that a Wikidata-backed genealogy wiki could probably at least initially work a bit like Commons categories do these days, with an infobox being wholly built from Wikidata. Sam Wilson 22:53, 8 July 2025 (UTC) Reply
- @Samwilson what type of purpose-built software do you think would be needed outside of a standard MediaWiki install? For example, I saw WikiTree, and WeRelate, both allow users to import people from GEDCOM files, and I imagine this isn't standard? What else is missing in your opinion to get a basic family tree software running within MediaWiki? Jimmyjrg (talk) 12:15, 11 July 2025 (UTC) Reply
- @Jimmyjrg: Import and export of Gedcom could be useful, but I think most projects suffer more than they gain when it's too easy to import large amounts of data, so it's not crucial. I think the most useful features are systems to store and query the basic names, dates, and places that get used to identify people in genealogical research, and the connections between people. Beyond that I don't think there's any particularly special about genealogy as distinct from most other forms of historical research! But certainly, linking pages together by relationship is crucial (and being able to browse them in a graphical tree, and query the connected graph). The Genealogy extension so far only handles the connecting, it still needs search features and geographic place data (the latter can mostly be a matter of linking to Wikidata). Sam Wilson 01:37, 12 July 2025 (UTC) Reply
There’s been several similar proposals before. Has there been any collected feedback on why those failed or stalled? Perhaps that would help make this one succeed. Jimmyjrg (talk) 08:55, 9 July 2025 (UTC) Reply
- Replying to myself. The below chart shows there is support for a project like this, but it's still unclear why the projects fail. Perhaps some discussion happened off-Wiki, but it looks like the proposers lost interest, or they created the website and moved on from trying to have it incorporated within WMF.
Name Proposed by Proposed Proposal closed Reason given Supporters Opposers Comments Wikipeople Joeljkp~metawiki 2004 Unclear none Unclear Unclear A mockup was created here. GlobalFamilyTree 216.54.125.241 2004 2014 none Unclear Unclear Wikigree Manuel Strehl 2005 2005 none none none Proposal never developed beyond idea Wikigene Reverend Distopia~metawiki 2005 2006 none none none Proposal never developed beyond idea Rodovid Baya 2006 2023 Rejected. No interest. 111 Unclear Project was inactive since 2019 before being marked as closed. Exists seperate from WMF at http://en.rodovid.org/ WeRelate SolveigQuass 2007 2023 Rejected. No interest. 52 5 Project was inactive since 2017 before being marked as closed. Exists seperate from WMF at https://www.werelate.org/ Nouveau projet Base de données généalogique (en) 82.226.89.154 2009 Unclear none none none Proposal never developed beyond idea WikiTree MyAdler 2010 2023 Wikimedia genealogy project is far more active 4 5 This proposal became WikiTree.org (since closed). Unrelated to WikiTree.com which existed prior to proposal. Wikimedia genealogy project Another Believer 2014 120 31 Centralised discussion for a potential Wikimedia genealogy project. Talk page and Mailing list both inactive.
- Given the issues around Privacy laws, and how they vary across countries it would be a legal nightmare for the WMF.
- Living people would be a no go, really even deceased should have passed 50-70 years ago.
I just cant see how this could be a viable project for the WMF to offer, and the community gnomes, admins, crats etc would have a nightmare of cleaning up issues and writing policies to enable data management. Ok we do BLP on Wikipedia, Wikidata, et el for "public" figures but we limit family links to notable people with in a generation or two skipping people between who arent notable. Gnangarra (talk) 13:53, 14 July 2025 (UTC) Reply
@User01938 are you still maintaining this proposal? It would be great if you could answer some of the comments above.
As I mentioned here, I think a roundtable on Wiki genealogy projects would be great for Wikimania 2026. This would allow more people to share their thoughts on why or why not such a project could work. It could help this project move forward or put the nail in the coffin once and for all. Jimmyjrg (talk) 11:30, 25 September 2025 (UTC) Reply