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 withdrawn in future when beta testing is complete.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.

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. > >Useless. Thanks to you and everyone else who commented. I hope you all click on the "feedback" link on the site, and tell them how you think it can be improved! I've now written a review of the site on my blog at: http://su.pr/2kjHyK -- 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