My five pennyworth ...... I understand your postion, Jeremy, up to a point. But we do not have an all-encompassing 'Hampshire' gedcom, or anything similar for any other county, and there seems little sense now in trying to go down that route. The Wiltshire example is, I believe, almost an 'accident' of website history, and had we or James known how this particular 'Topsy' was going to grow we would probably have gone down the road that I know is preferred by some, where each gedcom contains just one tree. IF ..... the Lovelock community had a serious research effort in hand which had a reasonable expectation of joining up all the trees and finding a home for those hundreds of stray data facts that still exist, I might take a different view, but unfortunately, even if understandably, that clearly is not the case. James has done his best to muster more research resources, through regular exhortations to this List, through changing the whole basic framework of the website to make it more 'user-friendly', through introducing the 'Work in Progress' page as a deliberate attempt to highlight areas where there was some research going on and where help in any form would be very much appreciated. The fact remains that very few of the Lovelock community are able to help in the development of what we must all agree is a very impressive database. It will hardly have escaped anyone's notice that I have been pushing a modicum of information James' way in the last few months. I do my best (being less than IT-literate) to provide it to him in the most easily available format that I myself can understand, but the fact remains that James has to do a lot of work on it to turn it into a new web page, or an update to an existing one. I'm eternally grateful to James, as I am sure we all are, for the amount of time and effort he puts into maintaining the website, and I really do think that sometimes we might have to accept some limitations on what we can do with the data in order to ease the burden on James of getting it there in the first place. With respect to the current issue of whether or not to split up that Wiltshire gedcom, there is of course the prospect that if anyone can find those 'missing links' then the gedcoms would all be joined up again anyway! Of course, some of the 'links' are probably not out there to be found anyway. Your mention of the Civil War effects, Jeremy, being a case in point. Some registers went missing, lots of others were just not maintained, and the traditional fallback of the Bishops' Transcripts seemed to often fall into abeyance as well. So the prospects of taking back to earlier times what everyone will have deduced is my favourite - The Lieflock Line - are remote in the extreme (although James' heart probably sank again the other day when I told him that I have yet another addition to it that I am currently investigating). However, there are still significant gaps in our data at much later dates than the Civil War. Perhaps if we could persuade James, with help from Listers, to assemble a 'To Do' list individuals might volunteer to tackle specific topics on the list? Could we please have an indication of who on the Mailing List would be willing to volunteer to join in on this? Of course, inability to get to Record Offices, or to access some of the on-line sources, would prevent certain things being done, but we might be able to devise some work-arounds that would help. My concern is that future website updates will only occur at ever-increasing intervals due to the complications of James having to cross-check so much before launching the changes, and that would be a great shame. Everybody that I introduce to the website is invariably impressed by the wealth of information available and the useful way in which it is presented. I think James needs all our support to help him maintain those standards. And we must never forget that he can't actually prove his own link to a LovelOck line! I for one am willing to volunteer for further duties. I've been researching for over 18 years, but the thrill of finding some hitherto undiscovered gems has still not gone away. Please join in ! Regards to all, Graham --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: "Jeremy Lovelock" <[email protected]> Reply-To: [email protected] To: <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [LOVELOCK] Proposed split of the "Wilts and beyond" database Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2006 08:54:49 +0100 Hello James I do not understand many of the complications of the Computers and the language. I download the Gedcom file for my own use for Wiltshire and for Berkshire. If I get enquiries from people, then I can view the file at any time. I have Family Tree maker software (Brondebund) and therefore an LDS connection. Your Gedcom file is displayed like my own information and I can search for names quickly. If you split the Gedcom files into three for Wiltshire it would slow me down in searches. I only tell you this so you can see how a user takes up your information. What file I am using and which viewer is beyond me!! Thanks for doing all the work, though. It is fascinating to see how far back the records go. The English Civil War (pre 1650) no doubt destroyed many records as well as church interiors! Best wishes Jeremy ----- Original Message ----- From: "James Loveluck" <[email protected]> To: "Lovelock mailing list" <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, October 01, 2006 5:22 PM > Hello again! > > In a previous message I mentioned that I was planning to make some changes to my Lovelock database and the corresponding gedcom files. > > The "Wiltshire and beyond" database currently contains a number of Wiltshire trees (including the Lieflock Line, the Lyneham Line, the Wroughton/Tidcombe Tree, the Wootton Rivers Tree, the Shrewton Tree, and several more) together with one tree with its origins in Hampshire (the Tangley Tree) and a lot of odds and ends (small fragments and even isolated families). The disadvantage of this is that it makes Web site updates a bit complicated since the different trees all have to be updated at the same time. > > What I plan to do is to split up this database into separate ones for each of the trees concerned that are currently diplayed on the Web site. This would then mean that I could update the database for a particular tree and then update the corresponding tree and gedcom file on the Web site independently of any other trees. > > There is perhaps an issue concerning all the odds and ends (fragments, isolated families) currently in the "Wiltshire and beyond" database. Most of this material has not evolved for some time, and I would leave the current version of the "Wiltshire and beyond" database on the Web site in case anyone wants to consult this material, but no corrections or additions would be made to the gedcom file. If there were significant additions to any of the fragments concerned then I would probably produce a new database and corresponding tree and gedcom file. Obviously any of the bits that got connected to one of the existing trees would be incorporated into the appropriate database. > > One other issue I can see concerns the Ahn applet. Currently this allows one to browse the whole of the "Wiltshire and beyond" gedcom file, but if I carry out the split proposed above this wouldn't be possible, or only for the current version of the gedcom file, which would rapidly become out of date. I'm not sure what I'll do about this yet, but it would help me to know if people actually use the Ahn applet. It is now pretty well superseded by the PhpGedView software tool, which also allows one to browse the gedcom file and displays the information in a much more structured fashion which is also easier to navigate. I do intend to add the other gedcom files to the PhpGedView site, so you would be able to browse not only the Lieflock Line and the Wallingford (Berks) Line, as at present, but also the other trees for which gedcom files would be created (Lyneham Line, Wroughton/Tidcombe Tree, Wootton Rivers Tree, etc.). > > Please let me know if you see any significant problems in splitting up the database in this way. > > James