On Fri, 17 Jun 2011 17:24:01 +1200, Dave C wrote: > I am currently running an anchient version of Family Tree Maker (V7) > circa 1999. I have started to look at newer offerings and have initially > been put off the latest version of FTM which seems to be an annual > exercise in marketing rather than a step advancement. > > Having now decided to cast the net wider than an "upgrade" your opinions > and experiences would be appreciated. What do people think of > RootsMagic? > > I'm in New Zealand, but most current research is focussed in the UK. > > Running > Dual Core 2.7Ghz CPU > 4GHz Ram > Vista Business 32 > > Many Thanks > > Dave > > > --- Posted via news://freenews.netfront.net/ - Complaints to > [email protected] --- I really like Legacy. (They have a free version you can download and try & the paid version is reasonably priced.) Todd

Dave I use a number of Progs myself. My main one is Legacy 7.5, I also use RootsMagic 4 FTM 2010 and Family Historian 4. Rootsmagic is very good at searching your data and it will import from various file formats incl Legacy without using a GEDCOM, so you don't get any "missed" or unknown fields being reported. Also It has a programme with it called RootsMagic to Go which allows you to keep the Prog and your data on a memory stick and use it with any Computer. Family Historian on the other hand uses GEDCOM files as its file format and will import with no problem. It used to have a quite different layout but now has a more usual family one (ie Husband/Wife with children underneath and Parents above) I tend to use Legacy purely because I have quite a few of the "add on"s for it (ie Genelines) and I've used it for a number of years and got used to it. If I was starting again I think I would definitely use RootsMagic ....... Regards Bill ======================================================================== * This Mail was sent WITHOUT attachments* Bill Harrison's Genealogy Pages can be found online at http://www.harrisongenealogy.co.uk Also BMSGH Webmaster - URL = http://www.bmsgh.org Also Webmaster of The Staffordshire BMD which can be found at http://www.staffordshirebmd.org.uk and the West Midlands BMD at http://www.westmidlandsbmd.org.uk ======================================================================== -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Dave C Sent: 17 June 2011 06:24 To: [email protected] Subject: Advice on replacement Software Please I am currently running an anchient version of Family Tree Maker (V7) circa 1999. I have started to look at newer offerings and have initially been put off the latest version of FTM which seems to be an annual exercise in marketing rather than a step advancement. Having now decided to cast the net wider than an "upgrade" your opinions and experiences would be appreciated. What do people think of RootsMagic? I'm in New Zealand, but most current research is focussed in the UK. Running Dual Core 2.7Ghz CPU 4GHz Ram Vista Business 32 Many Thanks Dave --- Posted via news://freenews.netfront.net/ - Complaints to [email protected] --- ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message

On Fri, 17 Jun 2011 17:24:01 +1200, "Dave C" <[email protected]> wrote: >I am currently running an anchient version of Family Tree Maker (V7) circa >1999. I have started to look at newer offerings and have initially been put >off the latest version of FTM which seems to be an annual exercise in >marketing rather than a step advancement. > >Having now decided to cast the net wider than an "upgrade" your opinions and >experiences would be appreciated. What do people think of RootsMagic? > >I'm in New Zealand, but most current research is focussed in the UK. > >Running >Dual Core 2.7Ghz CPU >4GHz Ram >Vista Business 32 > >Many Thanks > >Dave > May I respectfully suggest that you look at The British Version of The Master Genealogist and accessory programs: Second Site and the Android version of Gedstar Pro. See http://www.whollygenes.com. TMG has an import agent that will accept your FTM database directly. It is event oriented and has a data field for about anything you might want to enter. It has a relational database with excellent search capability. Version 8 which is imminent can produce its reports in Word and Wordperfect format on the 64 bit version. Its charting capabilities using Visual Chart Form can do things that are difficult to describe. A full free 30 day trial is available for Version 7. 4 Excellent DVDs can guide your use. Second Site uses the database and produces html so you can crank out CD-ROMs of reports, charts, maps, indexes, all hyperlinked. If you have an iPad, you can view the info on your private or public website. Gedstar Pro puts a read-only version of the database on the Android and provides an AP to search and display results. Questions? Ed Feustel Plainfield, NH

On Fri, 17 Jun 2011 17:24:01 +1200, Dave C wrote: >I am currently running an anchient version of Family Tree Maker (V7) circa >1999. I have started to look at newer offerings and have initially been put >off the latest version of FTM which seems to be an annual exercise in >marketing rather than a step advancement. > >Having now decided to cast the net wider than an "upgrade" your opinions and >experiences would be appreciated. What do people think of RootsMagic? > >I'm in New Zealand, but most current research is focussed in >the UK. Dave, The only software that I know of that is designed in the UK around UK research is Family Historian http://www.family-historian.co.uk/ Cheers, Tom [Tom Perrett] <[email protected]>

On Thu, 16 Jun 2011 15:33:51 +0300, Renia <[email protected]> wrote: >As with the others, it wanted me to log in. As a subscriber to Ancestry, >I logged in with what I thought was my Ancestry login. But it was the >login for one particular tree which a correspondent had "invited" me to >ages ago. I can't get away from this particular tree or search for any >others. The only other option, is for me to start my own new family >tree, which I will not do. Very wise. They keep urging you to enter you own tree and invite your family, and I will do neither of those things because of the problems I see with their site, and also because of their terms and conditions (which say you should not put any content there unless you agree with them). But uou can, with much difficulty, get out of the place where they urge you to enter your tree, and do some searches on the site. I'm not sure if Ancestry.com users know if their data is being used in this way, but still. -- Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa Web: http://hayesfam.bravehost.com/stevesig.htm Blog: http://methodius.blogspot.com E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk

On Thu, 16 Jun 2011 17:36:05 +0100, "Geoff Pearson" <[email protected]> wrote: >> As with the others, it wanted me to log in. As a subscriber to Ancestry, I >> logged in with what I thought was my Ancestry login. But it was the login >> for one particular tree which a correspondent had "invited" me to ages >> ago. I can't get away from this particular tree or search for any others. >> The only other option, is for me to start my own new family tree, which I >> will not do. >> >> Useless. > >it says it is for connecting to living people - like Facebook - and it >contains nothing that isn't already on Ancestry proper. But, unlike Facebook, it makes if very difficult to communicate with people. Its aim is go get other peoples genealogical data free, and then copyright it themselves, and charge people to use it. But within the site, people are free to copy and paste whatever they like, with no reference to whose tree they take it from. The more I look at it, the worse it seems. -- Steve Hayes Web: http://hayesgreene.wordpress.com/ http://hayesgreene.blogspot.com http://groups.yahoo.com/group/afgen/

"Renia" <[email protected]> wrote in message news:[email protected] > On 16/06/2011 10:39, Steve Hayes wrote: >> I recently discovered "Mundia", a service of Ancestry.com. >> >> www.mundia.com >> >> It is in a beta testing stage, and while in beta testing it appears to >> give >> access to trees hosted on Ancestry.com but warns that this will probably >> be >> withdrawn in future when beta testing is complete. >> >> It has potential to be quite a useful service, but it also has the >> potential >> to do an immense amount of harm by encouraging bad genealogy practices, >> like >> copy and paste genealogy. >> >> For this reason I would like to encourage serious genealogists to visit >> the >> site and give them feedback during the bets-testing period, and also to >> discuss their findings here, so that suggestions we send to the >> developers can >> carry more weight. >> >> I posted something about it in soc.genealogy.computing, but there was >> little >> rersponse, and I got the impression that not many people had visited the >> site, >> or were interested in it. That would be a pity, because I think the site >> needs >> input from serious genealogists who know some of the pitfalls. >> >> It seems at first sight, to be similar to semi-scam sites like MyHeritage >> and >> Geni..com, where people are encouraged to goin (or coopted without >> consultation, in the case of MyHeritage, and then told that they must pay >> in >> order to be able to use their annexed data, >> >> A few people have given me access to their family trees on Ancestry,com >> and it >> seems a remarkably cumbersome way of organising one's family history. >> >> Some people seem to only keep their family history information on such >> sites, >> and when I ask if we can share and compare information, they offer access >> to >> their online tree, where there seems to be no possibility of sharing >> GEDCOM >> files. Is it really as bad as it looks, or am I missing something >> important? >> >> Here is a copy of my feedback to them - I would be interested in seeing >> what >> others have to say: >> >> Here's what I said: >> >> The whole experience of Mundia is a bit like feeling one's way in the >> dark, >> and very frustrating. >> >> You are directed (in the dark) to a group of objects. You can feel them, >> and >> chose one and turn on the light to look at it, but when you put it back >> on the >> shelf the light goes off again, and there is no way you can know whether >> you >> have picked up the same object, or one of the others. There is no way of >> comparing two objects to know which is the original or which is the copy. >> >> The objects are "trees". You enter a person to search for, and are shown >> a >> list of "trees" with that person. About five of them have exactly 10542 >> people >> in them. So which is the original and which are the copies? There's no >> point >> in contacting the owner if they have just copied everything from >> somewhere >> else. There is no identifying informatrion in the list to show which is >> which, >> so once you put a "tree" back on the shelf the light goes off, and you >> might >> pick up the same one five times. >> >> The "home" page for each user is singularly uninformative. There's >> nothing to >> say which families you are interested in and how you connect to them. >> There >> isn't even a list of links to web pages where the person can give more >> details. The whole thing seems to be designed to encourage bad "copy and >> paste" genealogy. >> >> As a bare minimum of improvements I suggest the following: >> >> 1. On the user profile, allow an explanation of the main familties being >> researched, or that the person links to, and a space for a link to the >> person's web page or blog. >> >> 2. When a list of "trees" is shown, provide enough identifying >> information so >> that you can know whether you have already looked at it -- even the >> owner's >> user name. >> >> 3. Provide an easy way of GEDCOM import and export, with the export >> clearly >> showing which "tree" the information came from in the source tag. > > > As with the others, it wanted me to log in. As a subscriber to Ancestry, I > logged in with what I thought was my Ancestry login. But it was the login > for one particular tree which a correspondent had "invited" me to ages > ago. I can't get away from this particular tree or search for any others. > The only other option, is for me to start my own new family tree, which I > will not do. > > Useless. it says it is for connecting to living people - like Facebook - and it contains nothing that isn't already on Ancestry proper.

On 16/06/2011 10:39, Steve Hayes wrote: > I recently discovered "Mundia", a service of Ancestry.com. > > www.mundia.com > > It is in a beta testing stage, and while in beta testing it appears to give > access to trees hosted on Ancestry.com but warns that this will probably be > withdrawn in future when beta testing is complete. > > It has potential to be quite a useful service, but it also has the potential > to do an immense amount of harm by encouraging bad genealogy practices, like > copy and paste genealogy. > > For this reason I would like to encourage serious genealogists to visit the > site and give them feedback during the bets-testing period, and also to > discuss their findings here, so that suggestions we send to the developers can > carry more weight. > > I posted something about it in soc.genealogy.computing, but there was little > rersponse, and I got the impression that not many people had visited the site, > or were interested in it. That would be a pity, because I think the site needs > input from serious genealogists who know some of the pitfalls. > > It seems at first sight, to be similar to semi-scam sites like MyHeritage and > Geni..com, where people are encouraged to goin (or coopted without > consultation, in the case of MyHeritage, and then told that they must pay in > order to be able to use their annexed data, > > A few people have given me access to their family trees on Ancestry,com and it > seems a remarkably cumbersome way of organising one's family history. > > Some people seem to only keep their family history information on such sites, > and when I ask if we can share and compare information, they offer access to > their online tree, where there seems to be no possibility of sharing GEDCOM > files. Is it really as bad as it looks, or am I missing something important? > > Here is a copy of my feedback to them - I would be interested in seeing what > others have to say: > > Here's what I said: > > The whole experience of Mundia is a bit like feeling one's way in the dark, > and very frustrating. > > You are directed (in the dark) to a group of objects. You can feel them, and > chose one and turn on the light to look at it, but when you put it back on the > shelf the light goes off again, and there is no way you can know whether you > have picked up the same object, or one of the others. There is no way of > comparing two objects to know which is the original or which is the copy. > > The objects are "trees". You enter a person to search for, and are shown a > list of "trees" with that person. About five of them have exactly 10542 people > in them. So which is the original and which are the copies? There's no point > in contacting the owner if they have just copied everything from somewhere > else. There is no identifying informatrion in the list to show which is which, > so once you put a "tree" back on the shelf the light goes off, and you might > pick up the same one five times. > > The "home" page for each user is singularly uninformative. There's nothing to > say which families you are interested in and how you connect to them. There > isn't even a list of links to web pages where the person can give more > details. The whole thing seems to be designed to encourage bad "copy and > paste" genealogy. > > As a bare minimum of improvements I suggest the following: > > 1. On the user profile, allow an explanation of the main familties being > researched, or that the person links to, and a space for a link to the > person's web page or blog. > > 2. When a list of "trees" is shown, provide enough identifying information so > that you can know whether you have already looked at it -- even the owner's > user name. > > 3. Provide an easy way of GEDCOM import and export, with the export clearly > showing which "tree" the information came from in the source tag. As with the others, it wanted me to log in. As a subscriber to Ancestry, I logged in with what I thought was my Ancestry login. But it was the login for one particular tree which a correspondent had "invited" me to ages ago. I can't get away from this particular tree or search for any others. The only other option, is for me to start my own new family tree, which I will not do. Useless.

Steve Hayes <[email protected]> wrote: >On Thu, 16 Jun 2011 15:33:51 +0300, Renia <[email protected]> wrote: > >>As with the others, it wanted me to log in. As a subscriber to Ancestry, >>I logged in with what I thought was my Ancestry login. But it was the >>login for one particular tree which a correspondent had "invited" me to >>ages ago. I can't get away from this particular tree or search for any >>others. The only other option, is for me to start my own new family >>tree, which I will not do. > >Very wise. > >They keep urging you to enter you own tree and invite your family, and I will >do neither of those things because of the problems I see with their site, and >also because of their terms and conditions (which say you should not put any >content there unless you agree with them). > >But uou can, with much difficulty, get out of the place where they urge you to >enter your tree, and do some searches on the site. > >I'm not sure if Ancestry.com users know if their data is being used in this >way, but still. I haven't used Mundia, but I just looked at the Mundia FAQs from the standpoint of being such an ancestry.com user. So far as I can tell, it looks like it is just a new interface to allow non-ancestry-subscribers free access to the "Ancestry Public Trees", that I think are only searchable for subscribers, and allows them to build or upload trees as a subscriber can (though the functionality is pretty limited if they don't have the ancestry subscription that allows linking the tree to ancestry records). The result of putting up such a tree, so far as I can tell, is functionally not significantly different from uploading a tree to Rootsweb, which is also owned by ancestry. Rootsweb trees are of course accessible to non-ancestry subscribers via the rootsweb interface, and Mundia would appear to be an attempt to create the same sort of functionality for the ancestry public trees, probably on the assumption that the more people who do genealogy, the bigger the market for ancestry's paid services. The description to "green leaf" hints makes it pretty clear that this will work more or less the same way as the current ancestry public tree "hints" service, which works the same way that they describe (but also gives hint links into the ancestry databases). I can't imagine why an ancestry.com user would not want expect their public tree data to be used this way. That is, after all, the whole point of making the tree "public" since Ancestry also has the option of making a tree private, in which case only invited people can see it (the Mundia FAQ indicates that this will be the case within Mundia as well). It is also presumably why someone would upload their tree to Rootsweb. What you apparently cannot do with Mundia is create such private tree. Well, that is the tradeoff for getting the service for free. They seem to be adding some bells and whistles from the social media paradigm, which would update the rather barebones Rootsweb tree interface (though in many ways I prefer that old interface to the public tree "profiles" interface), and they allow someone to override the display of "living" people in a tree by making their profile (and apparently only theirs) visible in such trees. This seems like a pretty trivial and mostly useless change. Seeing me in a tree tells the typical person rather little of genealogical interest if my (living) parents, spouse, kids, and siblings, are kept hidden because they haven't enrolled. But it does fit with the social media aspect. I've heard that there is another social media site centered on genealogy (though I've never looked), and Mundia may merely be ancestry's attempt to compete with that site in addition to making their public trees as available as their rootsweb trees. (Their claimed 2.5 billion profiles almost certainly includes rootsweb trees as well as ancestry public trees, so perhaps those are being more fully integrated into the new service than they currently are in ancestry). lojbab --- Bob LeChevalier - artificial linguist; genealogist [email protected] Lojban language www.lojban.org

On Thu, 16 Jun 2011 01:36:55 -0700 (PDT), Peter Brooks <[email protected]> wrote: >On Jun 16, 10:11 am, Steve Hayes <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> >> Programs written in Turbo Pascal no longer work on modern computers -- they >> can't handle the increased processor speed. >> >I think you must mean programs compiled by Turbo Pascal. Programs >written in it can, almost certainly, be compiled by the Free Pascal >Compiler (fpc) and work well on current kit. Quite a lot of genealogy software was written in Turbo Pascal, so here is a possibility of reviving them or extending their use, if we can persuade the writers to release the source code. One I would like to revive is Christopher Long's Tiny Tafel editor. -- Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa Web: http://hayesfam.bravehost.com/stevesig.htm Blog: http://methodius.blogspot.com E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk

On 16/06/2011 10:25, melanie chesnel wrote: > I went to the website to take a look as you asked to be confronted > with a home page requiring I become a member (free) before I can use > the site as I am already a member of Ancestry I didn't want to do this > just to visit the site and see what's what. So I visited the FAQ and > discovered I could log in using my ancestry sub, but I had to accept > the Mundia terms and conditions, so again I didn't bother. Likewise. I thik this is Ancestry trying to get in quick with a money-making site before newFamilySearch (which will be free) is opened to the general public. -- Jenny M Benson

On Wed, 15 Jun 2011 15:47:00 -0400, singhals <[email protected]> wrote: >Steve Hayes wrote: >> On Wed, 15 Jun 2011 08:18:48 -0400, Bob LeChevalier<[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> That is just relocations - in this country, people often go to a >>> neighboring state (or to Las Vegas or some other resort) to get >>> married, though they don't actually relocate. Vegas's county has some >>> 120,000 marriages per year, with a population just under 2 million, >>> about 3 times that of the total population of Nevada 30 years ago. By >>> the above definition, most people in Nevada are strays, since they >>> weren't born in Nevada, and most marriages in Vegas are strays. >> >> Well there you go -- a strays index for Nevada marriages would probably be >> useful to lots of genealogists. >> >> > >Now, Steve, how do I phrase this ... (g) > >Nevada has a perfectly good index to marriages. Given >enough time, the LDS volunteers will have it completely >indexed. Redundant redundancy is generally not a good use >of time and resources -- unless you're stocking the Space >Station or the shuttle or keeping your escape route open. Well then it's been done. But in lots of places it hasn't. -- Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa Web: http://hayesfam.bravehost.com/stevesig.htm Blog: http://methodius.blogspot.com E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk

I recently discovered "Mundia", a service of Ancestry.com. www.mundia.com It is in a beta testing stage, and while in beta testing it appears to give access to trees hosted on Ancestry.com but warns that this will probably be withdrawn in future when beta testing is complete. It has potential to be quite a useful service, but it also has the potential to do an immense amount of harm by encouraging bad genealogy practices, like copy and paste genealogy. For this reason I would like to encourage serious genealogists to visit the site and give them feedback during the bets-testing period, and also to discuss their findings here, so that suggestions we send to the developers can carry more weight. I posted something about it in soc.genealogy.computing, but there was little rersponse, and I got the impression that not many people had visited the site, or were interested in it. That would be a pity, because I think the site needs input from serious genealogists who know some of the pitfalls. It seems at first sight, to be similar to semi-scam sites like MyHeritage and Geni..com, where people are encouraged to goin (or coopted without consultation, in the case of MyHeritage, and then told that they must pay in order to be able to use their annexed data, A few people have given me access to their family trees on Ancestry,com and it seems a remarkably cumbersome way of organising one's family history. Some people seem to only keep their family history information on such sites, and when I ask if we can share and compare information, they offer access to their online tree, where there seems to be no possibility of sharing GEDCOM files. Is it really as bad as it looks, or am I missing something important? Here is a copy of my feedback to them - I would be interested in seeing what others have to say: Here's what I said: The whole experience of Mundia is a bit like feeling one's way in the dark, and very frustrating. You are directed (in the dark) to a group of objects. You can feel them, and chose one and turn on the light to look at it, but when you put it back on the shelf the light goes off again, and there is no way you can know whether you have picked up the same object, or one of the others. There is no way of comparing two objects to know which is the original or which is the copy. The objects are "trees". You enter a person to search for, and are shown a list of "trees" with that person. About five of them have exactly 10542 people in them. So which is the original and which are the copies? There's no point in contacting the owner if they have just copied everything from somewhere else. There is no identifying informatrion in the list to show which is which, so once you put a "tree" back on the shelf the light goes off, and you might pick up the same one five times. The "home" page for each user is singularly uninformative. There's nothing to say which families you are interested in and how you connect to them. There isn't even a list of links to web pages where the person can give more details. The whole thing seems to be designed to encourage bad "copy and paste" genealogy. As a bare minimum of improvements I suggest the following: 1. On the user profile, allow an explanation of the main familties being researched, or that the person links to, and a space for a link to the person's web page or blog. 2. When a list of "trees" is shown, provide enough identifying information so that you can know whether you have already looked at it -- even the owner's user name. 3. Provide an easy way of GEDCOM import and export, with the export clearly showing which "tree" the information came from in the source tag. -- Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa Web: http://hayesfam.bravehost.com/stevesig.htm Blog: http://methodius.blogspot.com E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk

On Jun 11, 1:30 pm, Steve Hayes <[email protected]> wrote: > On Fri, 10 Jun 2011 22:23:47 +0000 (UTC), Todd Carnes <[email protected]> > wrote: > > >Ancestry.com has the ability to import and/or export via gedcom files, > >but most people don't seem to realize that. > > >HOWEVER, having said that, the gedcom you get from Ancestry.com when you > >do an export is NOT clean. By that, I mean it has a lot of non-standard > >junk in it that either gets thrown away or ends up polluting your notes > >when you import it into a "real" genealogy program. > > >But gedcoms CAN be done on Ancestry.com. > > Do you know how? > > Would you care to share your knowledge? ===== to import gedcom http://trees.ancestry.com/pt/learnmore/gedcom.aspx to export gedcom http://www.ancestry.com/learn/library/article.aspx?article=11545

On Wed, 15 Jun 2011 15:47:00 -0400, singhals wrote: > Now, Steve, how do I phrase this ... (g) > > Nevada has a perfectly good index to marriages. Given enough time, the > LDS volunteers will have it completely indexed. Redundant redundancy is > generally not a good use of time and resources -- unless you're stocking > the Space Station or the shuttle or keeping your escape route open. > > Cheryl Nevada's marriage index is already available on Ancestry.com. I recently found my Dad's & my step-mother's marriage in it. Todd

On Jun 16, 9:39 am, Steve Hayes <[email protected]> wrote: > I recently discovered "Mundia", a service of Ancestry.com. > > www.mundia.com > > It is in a beta testing stage, and while in beta testing it appears to give > access to trees hosted on Ancestry.com  but warns that this will probably be > withdrawn in future when beta testing is complete. > > It has potential to be quite a useful service, but it also has the potential > to do an immense amount of harm by encouraging bad genealogy practices, like > copy and paste genealogy. > > For this reason I would like to encourage serious genealogists to visit the > site and give them feedback during the bets-testing period, and also to > discuss their findings here, so that suggestions we send to the developers can > carry more weight. > > I posted something about it in soc.genealogy.computing, but there was little > rersponse, and I got the impression that not many people had visited the site, > or were interested in it. That would be a pity, because I think the site needs > input from serious genealogists who know some of the pitfalls. > > It seems at first sight, to be similar to semi-scam sites like MyHeritage and > Geni..com, where people are encouraged to goin (or coopted without > consultation, in the case of MyHeritage, and then told that they must pay in > order to be able to use their annexed data, > > A few people have given me access to their family trees on Ancestry,com and it > seems a remarkably cumbersome way of organising one's family history. > > Some people seem to only keep their family history information on such sites, > and when I ask if we can share and compare information, they offer access to > their online tree, where there seems to be no possibility of sharing GEDCOM > files. Is it really as bad as it looks, or am I missing something important? > > Here is a copy of my feedback to them - I would be interested in seeing what > others have to say: > > Here's what I said: > > The whole experience of Mundia is a bit like feeling one's way in the dark, > and very frustrating. > > You are directed (in the dark) to a group of objects. You can feel them, and > chose one and turn on the light to look at it, but when you put it back on the > shelf the light goes off again, and there is no way you can know whether you > have picked up the same object, or one of the others. There is no way of > comparing two objects to know which is the original or which is the copy. > > The objects are "trees". You enter a person to search for, and are shown a > list of "trees" with that person. About five of them have exactly 10542 people > in them. So which is the original and which are the copies? There's no point > in contacting the owner if they have just copied everything from  somewhere > else. There is no identifying informatrion in the list to show which is which, > so once you put a "tree" back on the shelf the light goes off, and you might > pick up the same one five times. > > The "home" page for each user is singularly uninformative. There's nothing to > say which families you are interested in and how you connect to them. There > isn't even a list of links to web pages where the person can give more > details. The whole thing seems to be designed to encourage bad "copy and > paste" genealogy. > > As a bare minimum of improvements I suggest the following: > > 1. On the user profile, allow an explanation of the main familties being > researched, or that the person links to, and a space for a link to the > person's web page or blog. > > 2. When a list of "trees" is shown, provide enough identifying information so > that you can know whether you have already looked at it -- even the owner's > user name. > > 3. Provide an easy way of GEDCOM import and export, with the export clearly > showing which "tree" the information came from in the source tag. > > -- > Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa > Web:  http://hayesfam.bravehost.com/stevesig.htm > Blog:http://methodius.blogspot.com > E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk I went to the website to take a look as you asked to be confronted with a home page requiring I become a member (free) before I can use the site as I am already a member of Ancestry I didn't want to do this just to visit the site and see what's what. So I visited the FAQ and discovered I could log in using my ancestry sub, but I had to accept the Mundia terms and conditions, so again I didn't bother. Having read the FAQ it appears this site is only about copy and paste as there is no access to records, so no doubt it is cheaper than Ancestry but useless to family historians. As the trees on the site are all taken from Ancestry sites this site does not add to what I already have, nor does it seem to add much for people who don't have an ancestry sub. Free acess to Mundia will give little more than a free tree on Ancestry, and the premium sub will only give access to others trees not records so as such is in effect a cheaper Ancestry sub between free tree and basic sub. This may encourage more people to give eto Ancestry but will not improve the quality of trees on Ancestry as all trees on Mundia will be searchable from Ancestry! Not impressed regards melanie

On Thu, 16 Jun 2011 03:15:52 +0000 (UTC), Todd Carnes <[email protected]> wrote: >On Wed, 15 Jun 2011 15:47:00 -0400, singhals wrote: > >> Now, Steve, how do I phrase this ... (g) >> >> Nevada has a perfectly good index to marriages. Given enough time, the >> LDS volunteers will have it completely indexed. Redundant redundancy is >> generally not a good use of time and resources -- unless you're stocking >> the Space Station or the shuttle or keeping your escape route open. >Nevada's marriage index is already available on Ancestry.com. I recently >found my Dad's & my step-mother's marriage in it. Caveat: "On-line" sometimes means the records from blocks of years are on line, not that the entire archive is. I fairly often miss out because the marriages/births/death/etc. that I need fall in years that are not yet on Ancestry.com. Given that, the US records are still an invaluable resource for my research. Note that I'm subscribed to the US version of Ancestry--I don't know how that compares to the UK version for US record searches. -- Don [email protected]

On Wed, 15 Jun 2011 08:18:48 -0400, Bob LeChevalier <[email protected]> wrote: >That is just relocations - in this country, people often go to a >neighboring state (or to Las Vegas or some other resort) to get >married, though they don't actually relocate. Vegas's county has some >120,000 marriages per year, with a population just under 2 million, >about 3 times that of the total population of Nevada 30 years ago. By >the above definition, most people in Nevada are strays, since they >weren't born in Nevada, and most marriages in Vegas are strays. Well there you go -- a strays index for Nevada marriages would probably be useful to lots of genealogists. -- Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa Web: http://hayesfam.bravehost.com/stevesig.htm Blog: http://methodius.blogspot.com E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk

Steve Hayes wrote: > On Wed, 15 Jun 2011 08:18:48 -0400, Bob LeChevalier<[email protected]> wrote: > >> That is just relocations - in this country, people often go to a >> neighboring state (or to Las Vegas or some other resort) to get >> married, though they don't actually relocate. Vegas's county has some >> 120,000 marriages per year, with a population just under 2 million, >> about 3 times that of the total population of Nevada 30 years ago. By >> the above definition, most people in Nevada are strays, since they >> weren't born in Nevada, and most marriages in Vegas are strays. > > Well there you go -- a strays index for Nevada marriages would probably be > useful to lots of genealogists. > > Now, Steve, how do I phrase this ... (g) Nevada has a perfectly good index to marriages. Given enough time, the LDS volunteers will have it completely indexed. Redundant redundancy is generally not a good use of time and resources -- unless you're stocking the Space Station or the shuttle or keeping your escape route open. Cheryl

Steve Hayes <[email protected]> wrote: >>But how far away does "outside" mean? The next parish? The next county? And >>how long is 'normally lived"? I have ag labs in my databases who seemed to >>specialise in having each of their large number of kids in a new parish.... > >The Cambridge strays project seem to regard it as meaning "out of county" >which, here in South Africa, and in Canada, one might regard as "out of >province, and in Oz and the US they might regard as "out of state" and so on >for other places. The US census reported that some 40 million people in the US moved during 2005-2006, 20% to a different county, 14% to a different state, and 3% to a different country (into the US from abroad). Using the state level or higher, that is 7 million "strays" a year. Not a small number. http://progressiverealtync.blogspot.com/2007/10/us-census-bureau-releases-statistics-on.html Obviously the population was lower 100 years ago, but I suspect that the percentage rates were somewhat higher. But since many of those relocations were entire families, simply looking the names of the family members up on the census will find them even in another state. That is why I wouldn't consider people living with their families to necessarily be "strays" of the sort needing a special database (though perhaps if they are newly married and have changed states, that is significant). It is the people NOT living with their families that are hard to find, especially if the name is a common one. That is just relocations - in this country, people often go to a neighboring state (or to Las Vegas or some other resort) to get married, though they don't actually relocate. Vegas's county has some 120,000 marriages per year, with a population just under 2 million, about 3 times that of the total population of Nevada 30 years ago. By the above definition, most people in Nevada are strays, since they weren't born in Nevada, and most marriages in Vegas are strays. lojbab --- Bob LeChevalier - artificial linguist; genealogist [email protected] Lojban language www.lojban.org