Genealogy Chat

LOL

Here we go again.

I think that anyone coming onto a site called Genesreunited might be forgiven for assuming that the majority of members are there to be reunited with distant relations and are perhaps prepared to share information.

No one is forced to put a complete tree full of personal details on site (or any tree at all) and even if you have added all and sundry to your online tree, no-one forces anyone to open that tree to anyone else.

Terms and Conditions of the site state a warning that, if you do so, the new contact will be able to see the tree and may take any information from it.

I make two sorts of related contacts I think. There are those who are very distantly connected and with whom it is easier to share a bit of information using PMs or e-mails, then there are closer people who share quite a lot of ancestors. When I've checked they are related I usually open my tree because it is easier for them to see it than for me to send lots of branches to them.

Only a very few people get sent copies of certificates or photos or get told personal stories. All that is safely offline.........mountains of it.

This family history hobby is different for everyone. What we find depends on luck as well as our own hard work and the money we may spend. We don't all end up with the same results and most of us have some branches which are much longer than others.

How you choose to do your hobby is your own business and what form your tree takes is up to you. If you keep what is on GR basic then, if you choose to open the tree, that means no harm is done. Keep living people off any website because you can't be certain how far any information may spread.

Oh and having 9000 ancestors is not a sign that anyone is doing anything sinister! Many of us have a lot more known ancestors than that without needing to go sideways and taking anyone else's!

Have fun and remember we are all doing this for pleasure.

Sue
x

Hi meercat,

Errrrrrr, mmm, I think I might give that one a miss, but thanks for the 'offer'.

Cheers, feralcat

;-)

Hey Meercat,

Where did you see mention of 'women' in my post?
The definition of 'catfight' :-
"a dispute carried out with intense hostility and bitterness." -no mention of gender there!

And certainly no 'slight' intended.

feralcat

To all the monkey's on the tree

Share your bananas, life's too short to argue about inconsequentials. To all the very nice people out there who have helped me find out the name of my past relations, I say a VERY BIG THANK YOU, and if sharing my tree makes the world a better place, then everyone can look at it.

Be nice people
Barbara

Just as well we all do not live in a forest together, not shareing our twigs .Eileen was giving her point of veiw . I help people and people help me ,we are all related in some way but we do not want everybody in the world on our tree.Life,s to short lets be nice to one and all

I tend not to open my tree unless I'm fairly sure there is a match, but then it's up to the person I open it to what they do with the info. If asked, I would never guarantee that the info in my tree is 100% accurate - simply it is how I believe it to be at the time, and I may change or update things later. When someone is kind enough to give me access to their tree, I do not copy it religiously into my tree, but try to check out and prove information for myself first.
But that's just me!

Oh well each to their own as they say I am most grateful to all the kind people on GR who go out of their way to look up for other people and its is entirely up to the individual whether or not they choose to open their tree or not I certainly don't mind at all but I will still try and do so until perhaps I too have a bad experience fingers crossed all good so far

Hi Marilyn

No you are not being naive

What i was saying is, that just because i choose not to open my tree people in an around about way people are telling me i shouldn't be on this site.

Julie

Now the thing i find funny is that 2 people that also agree with me are the ones that tend to do alot of look ups for others .(& that includes me)...& im only talking about people that have posted on here

Hi Island,
Yes you are right - in theory,
but I dont have my complete family tree on GR.

So in theory I am right also - I am in control of my tree.

The irony is no one is even interested in seeing the tree in my family

Ho with the exception of my not so little Black Wizzard
who pussy foots around and sit on my chair when I leave the computer,

And who sujested we women are katty and through hissy fits,
I thought this thread was ppppppuuuuurrrriiinng along very nicely, thank you. each to there own views, I dont have a problem with that.

What was the name of this thread again - shared views?

....................Lois from OZ

I am delighted when I find Hot Matches that are relevant to my tree and have never experienced any rude people I have contacted or have contacted me in fact I like to think that if I can help someone then I will and have found that anyone who I have contacted if we are related in someway have been very helpful to me in fact a couple of those people and myself are still in contact when we find anything new about that part of the family we like to share the info. Correct me if I am wrong I thought that was what all these sites were about that you could help each other maybe I am just naive.

Nope?

Thought not! lol

feralcat

PS. How offensive — I'm a cat!

feralcat:

Good lord, how offensive. I'm a woman, I've contributed to this discussion as have numerous other women, and I am not interested in hearing it described as a "catfight" by some man wandering in and gratuitously tossing misogynist language, and nothing else, into it.

This, like many subjects, is an issue on which people disagree. I am interested in what others think about it. If you arent, well, the cat flap is that way.

Some catfight this is,,, can't you just agree to disagree?

feralcat

Probably the kiss of death -- but I'll go with Julie.

My tree is a work in progress -- as anyone who has seen any of my posts here about my Hill/Monck and Coke/McCock clans knows. ;)

It has had mistakes in it, it has had speculative entries in it, it has unfinished business in it. And it has had completely false info in it that I got from someone else at GR and then discovered was nothing more than a stupid guess, and had to pressure the person I got it from to remove it from her own tree, she being so distantly related, only by marriage, to the people in question that it didn't matter to *her* that she had my grx2 grfather married to someone he'd probably never met.

If I turn it over to somebody else, it is crystallized. Any changes I make in future won't affect what's in someone else's tree. So incorrect info about my family, unfortunately originating from me, could be sitting in the tree of someone to whom I'm not really related anyhow, and polluting the genealogy pool forever. ;)

Conversely, someone could take what I have and run with it in some completely wrong direction. This is how we end up with things like the stuff in the great big universal tree of the whole world showing one of my ancestors as having a grandfather 200 years younger than him, born on a different continent. This doesn't matter to a person to whom my ancestor is just the gr-grfather of the aunt by marriage of the brother-in-law of the grandmother of the tree owner, but it matters to me.

And yes, it's true; I have put not just a fair bit of money, but one big hell of a lot of work into getting the info I have, and I do feel rather proprietary about it. It isn't just information, it's *work*. It's "intellectual property", very much so, in my case, because it hasn't just been a matter of finding stuff, it's been a matter of analyzing and theorizing and testing theories and difficult, slogging work. And that's the sort of thing that people actually do copyright! And I'm doing it for my immediate family, not for anybody who happens to want to get 100 free names for their tree.

If some one wants to copy my tree they are welcome to it. They don't have the certificates I have purchased, the proof that it isn't a work of fiction. They don't have the newspaper articles, the Wills and all the peripherals I have collected over the years. They don't have the family tales including the tall ones and they can't make my ancestors come alive without these snippets. By copying my tree they have a list of names, nothing more, nothing less. (Though if they are related I will give them everything I know about our common link)

I don't have my full tree on here (GR is too awkward) but it is available (well most of it) on Tribal pages and I am always willing to share it with distant relations.

I have come across two people with enormous trees. One is a name collector, the other, just a lifetimes obsession.

Perhaps it's cos I'm an only child that I don't have a problem with it.

I do wonder what sort of people copy trees wholesale though when they don't actually know if they are truly related. I cannot see the point in putting on a few people who are nothing to do with you.
Puzzling.

I cant remember how started this thread as I have read through the last 3 pages, but-

My first contact was a 3rd cousin, she had a comprehensive tree - then the rellies moved to Australia, myself being a decendant, I had the Ausy side but had difficulty in obtaining the UK information.
this was a fabulous conecting for us both.

Across different countries this is a fantastic site,
you get to find the dead ones and a few still alive and kicking,

Swapping information and maintaining contact is very important, this is a once in a life time that would not have happened any other way. except in this time of computers and internet.

However when it comes to the tree raiders, - well it is like house invaders, they come in, they take and they are gone.

After some discusion on a similar subject same time last week and the concusion I felt about the topic I decided this-

I am in control of my tree,
"I choose who gets to see it"
and if in dought about opening my tree, ask for more information to verify how your ancestors fits into the other members tree.

If you have any concerns after that then you can send them the relevent information by PM or Email or choose to not reply at all - it all comes down to -

"you choose what you want to do"," after all wasn't that the attraction to GR in the first place, a PRIVATE TREE and you deside who see's it?

.......................Lois from OZ

I have had so much help from such nice people on this site and found a lot of relatives, i think a whole tree is a bit much ,tell him to start with the Bible.I hate to think what he would get if you sent him out for a bunch of flowers.

Kathlyn................I think the same way as you do.

I have found 3 first cousins on here that I would otherwise probably never have met again since we were children....................priceless:)

As for anyone "taking" my whole tree, I give access to people with a definite link and by doing so show that I am happy for them to share all of it.

I don't check their trees to see if they have copied anything though.

I may agree with some and disagree with others BUT.....I do not have my tree on any site, all my info is a "hard copy", it I make contact with someone who thinks we have a connection, I ask a few relevant questions and if the answers connect then they can have access to anything I have found. That includes photo`s, certs etc.

I have made contact through GR with several rellies, some as far away as Australia. I have given them info they did not have and vice versa....and that includes photos etc. He gave me a photo of my great grandmothers brother, and I gave him one of my great grandmother.......result....two very happy people for without each other we would never have known/seen them.

The money spent on belonging to this site is worth every single penny, so there.

Kathlyn