General Chat

I have had some trouble in linking my tree to a distant cousin's. Today I managed to do it. What an anticlimax! I expected that once the link was made both trees would be merged because this is the stated objective of the site to try to link as many individuals as possible. What actually does happen when you add a link? Jim, Gosport

Think about it logically and I'm sure you'd come to understand the reason why trees won't be merged in this way. If you were to merge a tree who would get control over updates made to the shared individuals? If I merged my tree with yours whats to stop me adding a record suggesting that your grandfather was donkey. Or on a less silly note to add widly innacurrate records and dates because I believe they are true and not because I've researched them?

Yes- you do expect a fanfare of trumpets and bells and whistles at least don't you! After all you've found a long lost rellie of some descript. But then - you can quite see why it isn't like that- it's a shame, but..... It's a bit like when zapping flies with an aerosol - it would be so much more exciting if the flies burst into flames and spiralled down. But they don't. There just aint no more flies! I'm still gald I found a rellie I didn't know I had. And there's hundrids in her tree I knew nuffink about. Goodstuff in here innit. Rosi

I don't think access to others trees would be so much a problem, after all I am looking at a list of messages here from everybody but I can only edit mine. I just feel that there should be at least an acknowledgement somewhere of ones linked trees, and possibly access to a process whereby, if there are differences of information in the two lines, somewhere both parties can discuss and agree before any changes are made. Jim

James There IS provision on the site to link individuals. And the idea is that if you have data which you think should match, but doesn't exactly, you e-mail the other party and negotiate, compare data sources etc. until you are in agreement (or agree to disagree).

I hear what you are saying Brian, but the link doesn't extend to allowing me to go to a joint ancestor and then wandering through the other tree, which is, after all a branch of mine. This seems to mean that if I get info from someone else, and am happy with its accuracy, I am welcome to physically add them to my tree, and the other person is welcome to add my information to theirs. Surely this is simple duplication and if each member were to find a link with every other member and enter their info we would end up with umpteen thousand copies of the same tree. It just seems to me better to connect links as they are found, still leaving the primary submitter with control of amendments to the people they entered. But avoiding the time and effort it takes to enter them again. Jim, Gosport.

Hi all. I agree that this "linking of trees" isn't really much of a linking! I linked my tree up to a relative of mine and was disappointed to note that it didn't do much. I was sad enough to copy all the information from her tree into mine though (pathetic or what!). I did have a quite quick way to do it though - I used a dicataphone! It would be great if we really could LINK the trees and, as I think someone has already said, only allow us to edit our own original parts of the tree or have joint consent of some sort between the "tree makers" - whereby we both have to give written consent or some such to GC before the amendment can take place. GC - Would this be possible? It would make a lot of people happy. As it is, the "linking of trees" doesn't really help.