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 withdrawn in future when beta testing is complete.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 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