OBMFM

Yesterday I talked about my aboninable online family tree in response to Randy's post The Online Family Tree Conundrum. If you haven't read his post please do and come back.

Randy asks, "What do you think? Are WeRelate and New FamilySearch on the right track here? Will all of this lead to a One Big Monster Family Tree (OBMFT)? Who will be the first company or organization to "get it right" with the right combination of collaboration, arbitration, judgment, and presentation?"

Ancestry

I'll start with where I left off yesterday, and the trees at Ancestry.com. From submitted trees they have created OneWorldTree. The quality of the entries here is often questionable. It's a great place to look for hints but it will never "get it right." All of the information is presented, including conflicting information and it is up to the individual researcher to pick and choose what is right. I talked some yesterday about Ancestry's personal member trees and "shaky leaves." As long as it is easy to simply import individuals from other trees to your own, people will do so perpetuating errors. In another post Randy points out that Ancestry.com Source citations leave a lot to be desired. This is another reason why OBMFT will never work there. I do want to point out what Ancestry gets right. The trees there are very easy to work with. I can "attach" documents directly to an event line. For example if I find an obituary I can upload a copy and then have it show up up the death event line or add a photo of a tombstone to the burial line. There is also a section for weblinks where I can link to something on my blog that I have written or perhaps a their memorial at Find-a-grave. Another plus is that I can download a gedcom of my trees.

New Family Search

I am intrigued by the possibilities of of OBMFT at Family Search however I do not know a whole lot about it. Randy indicates that there might be some cross linking of documents between Family Search and Footnote.com person pages. I see this as a big draw back for two reasons, 1) working back and forth between two screens is a pain and 2) Footnote already has duplicate person pages so will they be creating a new one or how will they decided which is the one to use? The huge plus for Family Search is that they already have dedicated people on board who will be willing to work with whatever format they choose.


WeRelate

I have put a couple of small gedcoms up at WeRelate and I love that anyone can come along and add to them or revise them. The thing is that nobody ever has. The wiki platform is hard to use for a beginner, at least it was hard for me to figure out how to use the site and I still do not understand all of it. Randy stated that information for some of his earliest ancestors was semi-protected. I went and checked some of mine and didn't run across this. I can still make any edits that I would like. On the plus side if I make an edit others that are interested in the page will be notified and if they feel I was wrong they can change the information back. Because I uploaded my information as a gedcom the format I used for place names does not always agree with format the site uses and I've spent hours trying to clean up my information and could spend hours more. I also do not understand how to correctly add my sources. Overall the site has a clunky, uncomfortable feel for me. I would spend the time to learn how to use it if I could someone to work with me or if this was the platform that the majority of genealogists decided was "The One."

OBMFT

I love the idea of one giant tree that we can all connect to. It would be great to see if anyone else has already paid for ggreat-grandpa's death certificate and I would to love see a picture of him that somebody out there must have! Right now I have trees at Ancestry and WeRelate. A couple of cousins have online trees on their websites. Our information is scattered and duplicated all over the place. I have invited cousins to work with me at WeRelate without success. Many have accepted my invitations at Ancestry, however they look at what I have and maybe make suggestions or point me to information in their trees rather than work together on one tree.

For it to work it needs to be relatively easy to use. There would need to some type of arbitration where there are conflicts. And it would have to be a site where the majority are willing to join in. Pluses would be being able to add images of documents and photos directly to a person's page and a source citation template.

My question is, are we as a group ready for OBMFT? Are we ready to freely share all of the information that we've worked for years to gather? Will we share all of the pictures that we treasure, knowing that they will be there and free for the taking? Will we be willing to spend the time it will take to make all of the information consistent? What about putting in the hours to upload our documents and pictures? Or will we just dump our gedcoms and walk away, leaving to others to clean them up?

My Abominable Online Tree

Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings had a very interesting post, The Online Family Tree Conundrum. Go read what he had to say, along with the comments and then use your back button.

To start, I saw it as an article about the creation of "One Big Monster Family Tree." After reading the comments I see that what most people seem to be taking from is article is that there are family trees online with incorrect information, no sources and that it sucks when someone simply takes the information you worked hard to obtain and claims it as their own. So today I'll address that and save my thoughts on OBMFT for tomorrow.

I agree with all three points! I've said it before and I'll say it again, if you don't want anyone to take your work DO NOT put it online to begin with, either on your blog or an online tree.

Mistakes, I've Made a Few

Let's face it, for some people genealogy is merely a hobby and often one that they quickly lose interest in. I'm sure there are some people that know that taking your research and adding it to their own file without attribution is wrong but they are in the minority. Most people simply do not know any better. I know when I first started out online I didn't. I did have enough sense to record the name and location of where I found a tree but I honestly thought if they put the information online they wanted to share it. I also didn't know better than to import other trees into my own. The version of FTM that I started out with came with several CD's full of gedcoms that I could very simply down load to my tree with a couple of clicks of my mouse. I also have added unproven relationships as a working theory, along with a note that it is just a theory, but who reads notes? After adding thousands of names in this fashion my main file is a mess and probably always will be.


My Abominable Tree

After I had worked on my tree for a couple of years I got the urge to share it. I put it online at Rootsweb for all the world to see. I also didn't know much about the internet so back in 2002 I used an email account that was provided by my internet provider. I ended up having to cancel my cable service and go back to dial up and I lost the email account. Without access to the email account I cannot delete my abominable tree. When Ancestry.com took over hosting Rootsweb that tree became part of Ancestry's World Tree Project. If you find something interesting there and try to contact me you will never receive a reply.

So far I have not found any of my pictures or documents that I did not share freely elsewhere on the internet . Should I run across something of that nature I will simply assume the person didn't know better and contact them and ask them to correct their error. I can always look at pilfered pictures and documents as an additional form of back up ;~)


Shaky Leaves

One of the consistent complaints I read about is Ancestry's "Shaky Leaves." I love this feature! Often the suggestions that I get do not apply to the person that I am researching but I have found documents this way that I probably wouldn't have otherwise. And with new documents being added all of the time I do not have to keep repeating searches. I do know that I won't find all there is this way and I do spend time searching page by page, hunting through the catalog and doing creative searches.

The leaves do lead to other online trees. I look over a suggested tree and I do often "link" my tree to another. I do not automatically take and import any and all information that another tree has and often I have more information than they do. So why link, you ask? To take advantage of the Member Connect feature that will let me know when the owner of that other tree finds and adds a new record. I have previously written about Member Connect, why I like it and how to use it.


Public or Private

With so much of my incorrect information floating around cyberspace I am now more cautious about placing my trees online. I took my huge, corrupt master file and broke it down into much smaller and more manageable files that I now have as private trees at Ancestry. If you search for a person in my file they will show up in the search results but you'll have to contact me for the details. I ignore requests that start, "send me your gedcom" but I love ones that start "I think you have this wrong and this is why." It's rare that I do not share whatever I have and most of the time I'll send an invitation to the person to view the tree.


The Big Question

Randy says, "But the big question remains: What about ALL those millions of family trees on Ancestry.com, Rootsweb WorldConnect, MyHeritage, GeneaNet, Geni, etc. that stand alone, and are full of errors and inconsistencies?"

Abominable trees will always be out there. There will always be people that are just starting out or just want to see where they come from quickly. Most online tree platforms have a $bottom line$ and need to make it easy to keep the hobbyist interested. I'll point out also that there are plenty of published genealogies out there that have incorrect information and they will remain on library shelves for years to come. Faulty trees have been around as long as people have been recording their genealogy. Ignore them! We can not correct all of the errors out there but we can work to make our personal trees the best they can be. I expect to spend the rest of my life working at it.


Tomorrow my thoughts on One Big Monster Tree.