They are "Public" in that they are viewable by all Ancestry members: a member does not have to ask the "owner" of the tree for permission to view it. On 03/22/2016 05:49 PM, Bill Webster via wrote: > I am not an Ancestry subscriber, although I have been and it allows me to > login. > > I have been prompted to look at a couple of "Public Trees". I can bring up > the links to these trees, but can't find a way to look at them beyond the > Subscribe page. > > Is there a way to do this? Or if not, in what way are these trees "public"?

Public as opposed to the Private Trees. Though I have never been able to figure out why people would bother putting their trees onto Ancesty if they are not prepared to share AND the possibility of other people being able to help. And having to 'ask nicely' do we need to be reminded to 'ask nicely'!! I don't think so. -----Original Message----- From: GenealogyFreak via Sent: Wednesday, March 23, 2016 9:55 AM To: Bill Webster ; aus-sagen-L@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [AUS-SAGEN] Ancestry Public Trees They are "Public" in that they are viewable by all Ancestry members: a member does not have to ask the "owner" of the tree for permission to view it. On 03/22/2016 05:49 PM, Bill Webster via wrote: > I am not an Ancestry subscriber, although I have been and it allows me to > login. > > I have been prompted to look at a couple of "Public Trees". I can bring > up > the links to these trees, but can't find a way to look at them beyond the > Subscribe page. > > Is there a way to do this? Or if not, in what way are these trees > "public"? AUS-SAGEN Archives are here: http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/index/AUS-SAGEN/ Websites of Interest on our Blog: http://aus-sagen-genealogy-websites.blogspot.com/ ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to AUS-SAGEN-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message

Hi Stephanie, I'm not a fan of Ancestry trees but Private ones are often a way of sharing with family members but not the general public - a very good reason for making them private. And being reminded to 'ask nicely' ... all I can say that you are very fortunate to have not come across people who don't ask nicely. I run a very large website with a free searchable database of more than 1.7 million entries. Many of the entries provide full details, many require people to follow up records or entries on TROVE or the Public Record Office, and many entries require a request to a local society for a copy of the full record. Sometimes there is a small fee for copies if people aren't able to visit personally. You would not believe the amount of abuse I get if I don't accede to demands that I provide a full copy of the record for free immediately! You would think if someone wanted something for nothing they would at least ask politely. But no - revolting abuse to the point I have considered removing the database and closing down the web site. Fortunately there are some people [not as many as the abusers] who email me to say thank you for information they have found that has helped with their research. Those emails cancel out the numerous abusive people! So yes, people do need to be reminded to 'ask nicely'! Regards ... Susie Zada -----Original Message----- From: aus-sagen-bounces@rootsweb.com [mailto:aus-sagen-bounces@rootsweb.com] On Behalf Of Stephanie Cocks via Sent: Wednesday, 23 March 2016 10:55 AM To: GenealogyFreak <GenealogyFreak@charter.net>; Bill Webster <wbwebster@internode.on.net>; aus-sagen-L@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [AUS-SAGEN] Ancestry Public Trees Public as opposed to the Private Trees. Though I have never been able to figure out why people would bother putting their trees onto Ancesty if they are not prepared to share AND the possibility of other people being able to help. And having to 'ask nicely' do we need to be reminded to 'ask nicely'!! I don't think so.

There are many reasons not to make Ancestry trees public. Serious researchers know how much rubbish appears on public Ancestry trees. This is because people copy anything from other trees without any evidence that it is correct, and often obviously incorrect. e.g. parents 5 years older than their children .. I could go on and on. Before we knew better, my cousin and I had a public tree where we posted what we had researched on Ancestry, from many other sources and from a professional genealogist. A VERY unpleasant person copied the entire tree, of many thousands of people , none of whom were related to him or to anyone on his tree. He is an aggregator, interested only in the number of people on his tree, whether the connections or the “facts” are correct or not. When we asked how he was connected to our family, he sent a most impolite response. When we asked him to remove some information about living people, he sent a deliberately crude and insulting response. … and you think we should SHARE with people like him! Sharing is two-way. My cousin and I share whatever we find about our family, between ourselves. It has taken us years of serious effort and lots of money to find what we know. We are not willing to allow everyone in the known universe to take our research and misuse it online. We have made the tree private now, but, alas, the horse had already bolted. I have a number of private Ancestry trees which I use for families other than my own, to take advantage of the “hints” Ancestry provides. and for somewhere to store what I have found (from other sources as well as those found on Ancestry). Some people related to one of these trees sent me a very polite and reasonable message through Ancestry, enabling us both to benefit from sharing information in which we all have a legitimate interest. They now have access to my private tree, and I to theirs. They chose to make contact with me, because they could see from the limited information about me tree that I was serious about sources, and about the particular branch of the family they were connected to. I hope you can appreciate that not everyone using Ancestry trees operates in the same way! Lyn