Genealogy Chat

I am so annoyed!! I have just been looking at some names that have been added in the last couple of days - only about 10% had any place of birth or dates completed. How do these people get them on the site?? The worst one I have seen is someone has added a name and the place of birth says 'NO EYE DEER' . It is really starting to get on my nerves, how are you supposed to use a site properly when people keep adding crap info??? :-)

I dont see anywhere where Genesreunited says you can only put details in if you have everything, at least there being honest they could have put bogus information instead and that could have been worse. please try and be patient with other members I'm sure they dont do it to be annoying.

Hiya Partridge, It happens when someone uploads their Tree as a Gedcom File. Something about GR recognising birth dates but not baptismal dates. I have been going through mine and adding the info manually, but with over 2000 names to check it is taking some time. Seems a pity as we usually only have birth dates going back 167 years whereas baptismal dates go back for centuries. However I do agree that the idiot who put NO EYE DEAR should go and play somewhere else and then those of us who ARE doing research on our families can get on with it in an atmosphere conducive to achieving results.

Two reasons: (1) If you upload a GEDCOM file to the Genes site, then if the date or place fields are empty in your GEDCOM, they will be blank when uploaded to Genes. (2) If, like me, you don't want to give out personal info of living relatives, then you "privatise" the GEDCOM before uploading it. This strips out the place and date info (rightly so) for those still living. It seems ridiculous to me that Genes insist on a place & date (when entering data manually). Sometimes this info is genuinely not known, so why be forced into guessing or making something up?

When you add a new name to the site the two fields which are marked compulsory are the year of birth (or circa) and place of birth (or circa). When I have added a name and accidently missed either of these fields it asks me to complete them. I understand that people don't know all information (I don't myself!!!) but it is frustrating when you do searches on names or places that don't even exist. If people have 'NO EYE DEER' where someone was born then surely they should leave the name off the site until they do have some (even if approximate) information. I'm not having a go at new users (the more the merrier!!!) it's just that if you put crap in you usually get crap out and that can't be good for anybody.............

Hi Grandpa & Richard, I didn't know about the GEDCOM situation - that explains why there is alot of blank fields when searching!! I must admit that they haven't bothered me before, it was when I seen the 'NO EYE DEER' that I became a little hot headed. Apologies ........

I have to disagree (about adding names when you have little info). If you know a name (eg the father's name from a marriage cert) then it is fair enough to add it to your tree, without a date or place of birth if this is not known for sure. Far better that the fields are blank rather than assuming that the father was from the same area, or "guestimating" a year of birth. The person who wrote "No eye deer" evidently has a sense of humour and was frustrated at the Genes site insisting on adding a birthplace when he obviously didn't know it.

Hi Richard, point taken........ I have calmed down now and seen sense!!!! Kx

It is annoying to see no date or place, but they lose out in the end. I never look at the names at all (on the Name Summary) but only at the place of birth. If there isn't one I just ignore it. Simple! Anne

P-in-a-P, Thanks for calming down! We all started once and I remember (many years ago) receiving patient help (I could see March and June catalogues in St. Catherine's House, but no April or May - a kindly soul explained to me!). I'm guilty of the no date of birth because I've uploaded a massive gedcom but GenesReunited strips out all the baptisms I think - so everyone baptised before 1837 was not born! Going back through several hundred of these updating them one at a time on this rather slow and clunky GenesReunited is a chore I'm putting off. GenesReunited should be able to do better (I've asked, but had no reply). Also the awkwardness that GR requires a place and date of birth - even for living people whose privacy I want to respect is another source of these problems. My tolerence was tested the other week by someone tracing a woman with the same name, date and place of birth as one in my tree and it took two exchanges of notes to discover that this person had been entered under their married surname. Oh well, as I say we all make mistakes and we were all young once (and/or new to tracing our family history). Happy hunting, Stephen

Richard, Hi, are you using FTM 2005 by any chance? How do you "privatise" please. I would like to do this for living relatives as well. Thanks. Jan

Dear Partridge, Having had similar experiences, I sympathise entirely - a little consideration for others would be good when people post stuff and I don't mean the accidentally duff information, that can't be helped. Nobody MEANS to upset anybody else, but my first thought when making anything public is for the effect it will have on others - clearly others disagree so I am now reluctant to share my information. Hope no one else rocks your Pear Tree this Yuletide season! Happy Hunting & Best Wishes! Regs Jane

P.I.A.P.T - didn't mean to rock your boat - just that if the information is no good to you, then don't use it - can't see where the problem is in that? The thing is, it may be useful to others who have been granted access to someones tree as that way they get to at least see the connections of that unlocated, undated name to the rest of the tree. To be honest, the GR tree system is pretty useless - fine if you've only got a few dozen names but when you get into the thousands it's a nightmare to maintain. That's why a lot of people (myself included) use alternative software (such as FTW) and then upload GEDCOM's to this site. Jan - I use FTW v11, but I presume that v2005 behaves in a similar way. Click on the "File" menu, then you should see an option "Privatize file". Select this, and the software temporarily hides all sensitive info for those that it thinks may still be living (i.e. no death date shown and with a birth/christening in the past ~100 years). Once privatized, you do your GEDCOM export (which is then also privatized), and then select "File" - "Un-privatize file" to return your FTW file to the normal state.

Thank you Richard. Yes, same as your software, I've done that now. KRs. Jan

I think it's better to estimate a year of birth, so long as you put about or circa. Otherwise they could have been born in 1531 or 2001 for all the person searching knows.

Jan I forgot to mention that once you have created a privatised GEDCOM, before you can upload it to Genes you will have to re-enter your own date & place of birth - otherwise the Genes site won't recognise you in the GEDCOM file and won't accept it. To do this, open the privatised GEDCOM in Family Tree Maker, re-enter your d.o.b. etc then re-export to GEDCOM again.