Genealogy Chat

I disagree with the comments that all HotMatches are useless. In fact I find to the contrary and have made many useful connections as a result.

Yes there are limitations, especially as the pob isn't checked, but this doesn't mean that you dismiss them out of hand as being rubbish.

I am fortunate that I have a number of relatively uncommon names which are found in a small handful of places so it is easy to see which I should follow up. I also do mini one-name & location studies with some of my names so always follow up leads, however tenuous, if I think they might add some extra information.

Another issue about family trees and not having many names and or details are because the tree owner may not know very much about their family and are perhaps trying to find family connections when they ask another member about their tree,
Mayfly

Michael, I agree with you about hot matches. If they have more than about 3 matching names I'll look at them and sometimes they do come up with something. As for the single name matches, usually I just pick a couple at random to look at, find they don't match, and discard them along with the rest.
The problem is that whilst an algorithm to match years is simple, matching places isn't. If, say, you know a relative was born in or near Exeter but you're not sure where, do you put 'Exeter', 'Devon', or even 'Devonshire'? The matching algorithm can't make allowances for that. The same thing could be said about matching names where different spellings exist. So as you say, most hot matches are useless.

I keep everyone on my tree viewable. My living ancestors know about their presence on the tree and i don't include anybody else.

I have a primary tree that I work on offline and export this on a regular basis to GR.Other living relatives are never exported to the gr tree.

It is almost impossible to find out anything useful from a tree that excludes everyone born in the last 120 years as you cannot tell how they are related to the shared ancestors.

Having said that 'HOT MATCHES' are neither HOT nor MATCHES and next to useless. Without some reference to a place of birth the majority of them are a waste of time.

I might find a likely match (name, birthplace, EXACT year ) for two or three people every two weeks and most of these come to nothing anyway.

Or do you mean that they only have a few names on their tree and not much else. I;ve seen one or two like that!

Jill

Gill
The option is to hide living relatives. This means anyone for whom a date of death is not shown but who was born within the last 120 years; obviously some people who have died will be hidden if their date of death has not been added. The idea is to preserve the privacy of your living relatives who may not be as keen as you are to have their details shown. But it's a bit of a blunt instrument as it hides you as well.
If I get contact from somone and if, after they've seen the tree with relatives hidden, I'm reasonably sure about them, I will very often change my tree from hide to show so that they have chance to see all the names, and then switch back to hidden after a week or so.

I do not understand if another member contacts you with a so called connection that when they share their tree they are not even on it. Even the person who they are connected with is not on there. It does not make sense. Also what is the point of hiding people that are dead, I thought it was only if you wanted someone alive to be hidden e.g. kids. I have not hidden anyone, maybe I should. Gill