Genealogy Chat

I understand everyone has different priorities for what they would like to change or how to improve the site. Yes, we should keep sending in our ideas, the team are interested in what we like/dislike and want to hear suggestions for improvements from a users point of view. As we found out at the Guildford get together in December there are only 2 or 3 people that work on Genesconnected, so as frustrating as you may find it we will have to be patient. They have limits too. I would also like to point out that at least we do get a reply when we email the team. Michele

Suprise, Suprise. Got the bog standard reply to my email to GC about this. Thank you for taking the time to write to us and for your interest in GenesConnected. We are always pleased to receive suggestions for enhancing the site from our members. We are currently overwhelmed with some wonderful suggestions and whilst we do read through all of them, we are, unfortunately, unable to respond to each one in detail. Your comments have been noted and will be passed onto our development team to take into account for future site enhancements. Regards Alex http://www.GenesConnected.com

This question keeps coming up again and again. The problem is a fault in the way in which GC uploads a gedcom. Please don't say don't allow gedcom. If you have a large tree entered over many months or years on a PC, then there is no way that anyone is going to manually type it in again. GC's system of uploading a gedcom does not take into consideration the baptism dates or places that the simplist of family tree programs do. I have said this so many times, baptism dates and birth dates are not the same. They can be many years apart. GC have been telling me since April that are going to sort this out. Don't hold your breath!!!!!!!! Why should many of us with large trees go through our data to put in a false birth date just to satisfy an archaic system. I have asked GC many times when they are going to sort this out. I get the usual standard reply, they are trying to sort it but it is not a priority. WELL IT SHOULD BE! Margaret

Yes Ann; I am one of those people with no dates or places of birth for some in my tree. I have over 900 individuals and used gedcom to upload to GC. I had to delete my tree on GC with 232 individuals because of an error I had put in and couldn't fix without deleting 1/2 the tree anyway. I contacted GC for help and got an email telling me how to do it! Each deletion took about 2.5 minutes! Alot of time to spend to fix the problem. Anyway when it came to replacing it, I pondered long and hard about whether to upload my tree from FTM or to start from scratch. Having 4 children (all under 9) one with different needs and my own business, I thought the former the best move. I can't include dates and places I don't have! I thought it best to put nothing (just a country) rather than hazard a very wrong guess and lead people astray. I can sympathise with your moan but I think we all have to be realistic and come to terms with the fact that there ARE going to be blanks beside names and contacting to GC probably wont achieve much. Besides, what, realistically, can they do ...... go and delete every tree that doesn't have all the dates and all the places in it? She's be a pretty bare old site if they did that! :0 There isn't a rule that you HAVE to have a tree if you are a member of GC and if you do have one that you choose to share, then I think it is a bonus. Obviously the more info is on it the more it benefits everyone else and shows how much hard yards have been done by the owner! :) The more rules and regulations a geno site introduces, the quicker casual and beginning family seekers will be deterred. Sorry for rabbitting on! ;) Warm regards Sonja in Oz

I'm sorry if I seem a little controversial but I don' think its just gedcom files that cause the problems. I personally have uploaded my gedcom file and 99% of all people have a place or date of birth even if its approximate or with a question mark sometimes. The gedcom upload has faithfully reproduced this, although I accept that some FH software is possibly not so goodas that which I use. The trouble is I don't want to maintain my family tree twice as it already takes a long time, so I would find Genes Connected less useful if I could not upload my gedcom. I would prefer a fetaure where you can list people in DoB order or Place of Birth Order. For instance there are 400+ John Phillips and they appear to be shown in no order whatsoever. If it were possible to sort these either by date or place of birth or to have the choice to do either it would also solve the problem you have as then all the people without places or dates of birth would be together at the top of the list and you could scroll down past these. I agree that just names on their own are not too helpful, but some people don't enter complete details either, so its not just gedcom. As has been stated in another thread, I think that people have the right to use GC how they want. If GC had a bit more funcrionality though it could be an even better search facility. Regards Simon in Munich

Why don't others contact GC as well? Ann

I, too, would disallow gedcom downloads unless and until all details can be imported. In a strange way, the problem arises because GC have been too helpful in accomodating members requests. If it had stuck to the original aim of being a search tool to enable links to be made, restricting data to name, year and place of birth and death, with data entered manually, then it would be more useful than the present position of having probably half of entries having name only. As a search tool it could be excellent, but isn't. As a geneological program it has limitations. Geneology programs are two a penny, search tools are as rare as hens teeth, so why not concentrate on its unique qualities.

Stop allowing Gedcom downloads.

here we go again... we'd all like them to do "something", but what? Constructive ideas below please...

I know we have had this moan before, but here goes again. I have just mailed GC to ask again if they can do something about the Names Summary board and the fact that there can be hundreds of names with no year or place. I am no computer whizz but feel like giving up sometimes looking on that board even thought I have found connections from it. Please join me in contacting them too if you feel like I do! I appreciate they do a good job and have told them so and this site is great most of the time! Regards Ann,From sunnier Darlington