Well, the new ancestry "service" leaves a bad taste in my mouth. People submitted these trees to free-ly share information with others as I understand it. I know that this costs ancestry.com some money and they have done a wonderful job on other services (with the census data in particular), but still ... to charge for these trees that others researched and provided?????? And, yes, I know that the World Family Trees are much the same and are sold, but you know that before deciding to submit yours. Does anyone know about the Rootsweb WorldConnect project? Is it still active? Is it still "free"? How closely does it mirror the ancestry trees? Thanks, Sharon Fitzpatrick

I also have a bit of a problem with anyone charging for the information that's given to them, but it's a definite sign of the times and if it helps someone else, well......... The WorldConnect Project at Rootsweb seems to be very much alive and well. Hopefully it will remain free as promised. If anyone isn't familiar with it, go to http://wc.rootsweb.com. I'd say like Ancestry, the World Family Tree, or even the LDS files, the information at WorldConnect is as good as the research done before it was put there! I've found many good leads and made connections with 'cousins', as well as finding bad information. ----- Original Message ----- From: Sharon Fitzpatrick To: PATE-L@rootsweb.com Sent: Monday, May 03, 2004 9:22 PM Subject: Re: [PATE GENEALOGY] Your Family Tree Well, the new ancestry "service" leaves a bad taste in my mouth. People submitted these trees to free-ly share information with others as I understand it. I know that this costs ancestry.com some money and they have done a wonderful job on other services (with the census data in particular), but still ... to charge for these trees that others researched and provided?????? And, yes, I know that the World Family Trees are much the same and are sold, but you know that before deciding to submit yours. Does anyone know about the Rootsweb WorldConnect project? Is it still active? Is it still "free"? How closely does it mirror the ancestry trees? Thanks, Sharon Fitzpatrick

Charging for information that has been provided to Ancestry for free does not seem like good business to me. A lot of the information that I have found on my family lines was provided free to me, and I would like to pass it along freely to any future researchers. I for one will not "give" Ancestry "free" information for them to sell. I will post my line elsewhere. ----- Original Message ----- From: "M Nickless" <unicorn1950@comcast.net> To: <PATE-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Monday, May 03, 2004 11:57 PM Subject: Re: [PATE GENEALOGY] Your Family Tree I also have a bit of a problem with anyone charging for the information that's given to them, but it's a definite sign of the times and if it helps someone else, well......... The WorldConnect Project at Rootsweb seems to be very much alive and well. Hopefully it will remain free as promised. If anyone isn't familiar with it, go to http://wc.rootsweb.com. I'd say like Ancestry, the World Family Tree, or even the LDS files, the information at WorldConnect is as good as the research done before it was put there! I've found many good leads and made connections with 'cousins', as well as finding bad information. ----- Original Message ----- From: Sharon Fitzpatrick To: PATE-L@rootsweb.com Sent: Monday, May 03, 2004 9:22 PM Subject: Re: [PATE GENEALOGY] Your Family Tree Well, the new ancestry "service" leaves a bad taste in my mouth. People submitted these trees to free-ly share information with others as I understand it. I know that this costs ancestry.com some money and they have done a wonderful job on other services (with the census data in particular), but still ... to charge for these trees that others researched and provided?????? And, yes, I know that the World Family Trees are much the same and are sold, but you know that before deciding to submit yours. Does anyone know about the Rootsweb WorldConnect project? Is it still active? Is it still "free"? How closely does it mirror the ancestry trees? Thanks, Sharon Fitzpatrick

My understanding is that Rootsweb's WorldConnect and Ancestry's donated family trees merged. For a while Rootsweb had a nicer search engine, but that may have been taken over by Ancestry too. I haven't had time to research this but I for one uploaded with the understanding that my info would never be sold. I'd prefer to pay something to keep it free to the public, because it's such a good place to store a GedCom in case something happens to one's home computer. Even whatever isn't displayed is there--living people, notes when not displayed etc. come back if your home computer crashes. There are too many bounces when you try to contact someone, so that it almost seems like they should remove the data when the contact person cannot be reached. Lila ----- Original Message ----- From: "Sharon Fitzpatrick" <sharon.fitz@sbcglobal.net> To: <PATE-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Monday, May 03, 2004 11:22 PM Subject: Re: [PATE GENEALOGY] Your Family Tree > Well, the new ancestry "service" leaves a bad taste in my mouth. People > submitted these trees to free-ly share information with others as I > understand it. I know that this costs ancestry.com some money and they > have done a wonderful job on other services (with the census data in > particular), but still ... to charge for these trees that others > researched and provided?????? > > And, yes, I know that the World Family Trees are much the same and are > sold, but you know that before deciding to submit yours. > > Does anyone know about the Rootsweb WorldConnect project? Is it still > active? Is it still "free"? How closely does it mirror the ancestry > trees? > > Thanks, Sharon Fitzpatrick > >