General Chat

Hi All
Am I being unrealistic? I was recently contacted by a member enquiring about a possible match. It looked to me that it could be a match so I sent her basic info on the person and later received a message that they had opened their tree to me. I opened my tree to her and had a look at hers. Her tree was large with 4000+ people, but I was disappointed as all dates were just circa years (ie. c1850) and with no notes as to say where she had got the info about the people on the tree. At this point I closed my tree to her and later sent an explanation on why I had done so. Clearly with a tree so big the she was not a new member. To me it looked as if the only function of the tree on GR was to identify other members’ trees on the GR site that might be connected and then take but not give information. I am sure has her main tree saved elsewhere. In contrast my tree is a ged.com copy of my main tree with 1500+ names. I am working it put notes on each person taken from all the census that were taken during their life. Also I record were information has been found on other sites such as Free BMD and LDS, were info has been taken from other member’s trees I try to verify the information from other sources and say from whose tree the info came if I cannot verify it.

Hi Woodie, In your description of how you are managing your tree you have outlined what I would consider the correct and appropriate way of recording your family history. There are many different methods of keeping your information however the cardinal rule for any method is to ensure you have sources to prove your information.

Similar to the multitude of ways of retrieving, storing and proving your data there are also very many people all with different ideas of researching their family history. A cruise around these boards will indicate the many differently held views on the appropriateness of how others go about finding their data, what they do with it when they have it and how others feel about these varying methods of acquisition.

It comes down to how long is a piece of string.

Some are willing to share anything, some guard their data as the crown jewels and others find a happy medium.

My views are not neccessarily the general concensus. This topic is a subject which is frequently aired and debated.

Researchers have different ideas of what they want in their trees. Also, they may only be part-way through doing it, as I am. I've been doing mine on and off for years and still haven't started entering snippets of info into it, whilst others have no intention of doing that - they just want names and dates.

I used to open my tree to anyone who asked and they were welcome to whatever info they could get from it - until I found my own details on another site - and they were all wrong. It wasn't necessarily the ones who copied from me - but they allowed their trees to be copied, etc. etc...

After having a lot of trouble trying to have things corrected, I have since not opened my tree to anyone. If anyone wants info on any of my ancestors, I happily supply them with it - they just have to ask and I will give them the names of parents, siblings, spouse, and children; also anything special I know about THAT PERSON - but that's all.

I now open my tree to no-one, and previously I opened it only when I was convinced that there was indeed a big connection between us ........ if that involved the exchange of several emails, then that is what I did.


Now, I only have part of my tree on here, and if anyone does turn up who is closely related, I extract the part of the tree that is the connection and send the information in an email.




sylvia

Thanks for the replies. It appears you have had bad experences that have lead you to not sharing your trees. That is a place I do not want to find my self. In fact I realy want to share my tree and if it wasn't for others doing so I would not have got where I am. My gripe is when someone blatantly uses a limited tree just to get others to open theirs, take the information and give nothing, which leave you feeling as if you have been taken advantage of.

Woodie

Woodie

I don't think we're saying don't share


just be very careful who you share with, don't open your tree willy-nilly ..... check out very carefully whether the other person is really related to you, and how much they know. Then consider only sharing with them the branch of the tree that it mutual.


I have shared much information from my tree ............... to the extent that practically every Hot Match I now get is from someone to whom I originally supplied the information!




sylvia

I might add that I have only shared my tree with I think two people. One who started me off on this obsession and the other just recently for someone who was spending an 'orrible amount of her valuable time helping me.

Or maybe its three people there is one other I think. Oh heavens well I don't do it very often!!

I keep only very basic info on my tree on here. Mainly because it seems to take an age to input info and save it and then I cannot print it out in a useful format.

I keep all my info in an offline tree. When I open my tree to someone I tell them just that. If they want to copy everything from the tree on here willy-nilly then they won't have all the detail and I don't provide copy certs or other info.

I'd rather share proper info - with evidence - away from this site. By e-mail etc.

Jill

Howard you are a man after my own hart. I support every thing you say. And especially the bit about geneology being social history. If you just collect names and date you might as well collect anything. Sharing info is all part of it. Not to mention the interesting people you come into contact with who turn out to be relatives.

Woodie