Thanks everyone for your response to my post last week concerning my idea to create a "repository" for REEVES/REAVES/RIVES/etc. GEDCOM files. I thought the discussion was excellent, and I was thrilled to learn that virtually everyone thought that it was a good idea! Not to unnecessarily drag out the subject but I want to revisit it one final time w/ some comments. First, I clearly was the one most concerned w/ privacy issues; most correctly pointed out that "true privacy" in today's online world is illusionary anyway (Bob Reeves suggested visiting http://www.switchboard.com)! I do still think it'd be important that we "strip-out" individuals from our individual files who are born after, say, 1920. Most commercial genealogical software permits this kind of manipulation prior to GEDCOM generation. Paul Reeves probably had the best idea; he suggested that access to the repository be limited to those who have contributed to it, much in the manner of some larger commercial sites. We all, at least, could view/exchange/study one another's files without worrying that the rest of the world would have ready & instant access. Second, I want to address a slight misconception some had concerning the "use" of the repository. Some of you are aware that using a shareware utility called GED2HTML (for the PC) or Sparrowhawk (for the Mac), one can convert a GEDCOM from it's original form and make it HTML compliant, meaning that the information from the file could be viewed on a web page using your web browser. The beauty is that it actually generates crude but completely interactively-linked pedigree charts! For a beautiful example, check out Kim Waddle's page at: http://www.wolfenet.com/~waddlej/#roots, click on her "surnames" link and go from there! Unfortunately, processed GEDCOMs using one of the other of these 2 utilities are usually massive! They say that you should figure that the HTML form of a GEDCOM will take up 5X as much space as your original GEDCOM (unless you have lots of notes, etc). For instance, my measily little 2500+ person database generates a GEDCOM of about 450K but when I used Sparrowhawk recently to prepare it for my web-page (still in progress), the result was a massive 15MB file! Keep in mind that while most ISP's allow you 3-10 MB of storage space for homepages at no extra charge each month, paying (in my case) for that extra space could obviously get pretty expensive! Now, imagine how massive of a HTML-compliant file would result from a GEDCOM that actually is 50 GEDCOMs merged together! For those interested, there *IS* a less expensive alternative, a site at http://www.gendex.com/webpages/ offers storage space for these kinds of web-searchable files for just $2/MB/year. That'd work out in my (individual) case to about $4/month and I'd just need to provide a link on my home-page to the distantly stored file. In can be done in my case and *WE COULD* do it collectively if we wanted to create one enormous, searchable REEVES file and figure out a way to split the cost. But my original idea was to simply collect them and store them on say, one, two or howevermany 100MB Zip cartridges (ca $15/each). Sure, it'd be more crude, but the individual GEDCOM files still could be studied, exchanged, and safely-stored at a remote location. Taken to it's extreme, each of us could do just that; store everyone else's files, ect. In fact, to a point, I imagine most of us do something like this anyway, at least temporarily? This, then, was the nature of my offer to serve as a "repository" site. And I'm ready to accept anyone's GEDCOM via Email if you still want to exchange it. Just write me first so that I can coordinate "mailing times," I suspect that my ISP would frown if suddenly my mailbox swelled up with 10-15 1MB+ GEDCOM's all arriving at the same time!!! Let me know too if you'd like for me to send you my own; I'd love to oblige! I'm simply eager to study some other REEVES files hoping to find connections. Understand too, if I find connections between 2 or more of you that don't affect me, I'll still work to alert you two (or more) to the liklihood of your REEVES connection. Enough! Greg Reeves REEVES-L Listowner greg@rapidnet.com ------------------------------