I am interested in others views on world connect and sharing gedcom files. Worldconnect is a rootsweb/ancestry.com site that allows you to place your gedcom data on the web, where others can search from it. There is an option which you can turn on or off which allows users to download your gedcom. Do people here you this site? I do, because it increases the likelihood of finding people with common ancestors who may be able to share research. I also like the fact that my research is "published", in case unforseeable events mean that me and my gedcom file vanish. However there are downsides as well. Sometimes there are 20 or 30 entries for a single soul (20 or 30 people have the person in there tree), and it is hard to determine who, if anyone actually did the research, so you can follow up on it. Ideally each entry should be documented, so that you can repeat the research more easily if you need to. On numerous occasions I have contacted owners and found that no little about person, they just copied the person undocumented into their tree as they were distantly related (I guess bigger is better?). For this reason I don't make my gedcom downloadable - I don't want vaguely interested people pasting my entire gedcom into theirs. If someone came looking to share information on an ancestor and encountered the 29 people who only have a vague interest, they might never get to me.I sometimes get requests for my gedcom from people who I have not shared any research with, and I do not know how to politely convey my feelings on these issues. I am happy to share my gedcom with people who care about documentation, will not extract holus bolus data from it, and won't keep propogating it. One copy on the web seems enough. Do other people feel this way? Am I just being a stinge and unfriendly? If the shoe were on the other foot, if someone had some beautifully researched and documented line of mine I would certainly like to incorporate that line in my tree (for printing trees and reports etc). A second downside of using worldconnect is that ancestry.com emails me every so often and asks me if I want to pay to read my database ("Anthony, we have found an ancestor of yours, please pay us to expand your tree"). It annoys me that I place my data for tree and ancestry tries to hock it off for money, without saying it is available on worldconnect (where they must have sourced the names I'm talking about) for free. I am interested in your views on these matters. Cheers, Tony