"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 withdrawn in future when beta testing is complete.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 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/