Wiki tree

[Ann In the UK]

Has anyone used this site? Can someone explain it to me. I've not registered so I can't log in, I've just come across it and found a huge chunk of what looks suspiciously like my research has been copied to it by someone who appears to have no connection to me or it. Just trying to figure out what's going on.

Ann

[Falkyrn]

It appears that trees which are made available online at various sources including Ancestry public trees are being gathered to create a genealogical database.

[Ann In the UK]

How tut! tut! annoying. That's what I thought. Just taken another look. Looks like an early tree I started before I made it completely private - with quite a few rookie mistakes in it - that someone else copied and pasted to his own tree (a name collector with no connection to me whatsoever). Another good reason for locking it down when I did. What a cheek.

Someone's going to have a field day on there - an off the peg tree of the one size fit's all variety - shame most of it's wrong. What a shabby way to research your family history.

Ann

[Ann In the UK]

Just had a little at the person responsible for uploading the gedcom. Sent a message asking where she got her information from re my line. Told her it looks suspiciously like a public tree I created a long time ago that some other unscrupulous name collector instantly copied and skewed - it even has all the same spelling mistakes, all the same rookie inaccuracies...all the same wording.

I said, random name collecting like this doesn't seem to me to be particularly good research practice for anyone - especially for a site porporting to want to help genealogists "for free". To me the price could be very costly indeed as it could not only skew unskilled/unsuspecting researchers trees completely, it could send them off on expensive tangents before they've even realised what's happened. I said, if this is how wikitree intends to go about things, then heaven help the genealogical community for, rather than create a "world family tree" that would be of benefit to us all, they're more likely to create little more than a random bunch of names that bear no connection to one and other whatsoever.

I hate that some people think there's an easy way to research your family history and that getting back to Adam and Eve as fast as possible is more important than finding out about what Uncle Bill and cousin Fred did in the war. But I hate even more those who make it seem that easy, and offer it to them in neatly tied up packages.

[Falkyrn]

Unfortunately at least one of the larger companies involved in the provision of genealogical databases actually advertise that you can find everything about your family history at the click of a button.

The relative ease with which information can be gathered from these sites encourages poor research and becomes self perpetuating as the attitude that "it's on several trees so it must be true" takes hold and so the circle goes on.

[Ann In the UK]

Just recieved a very nice reply from the person who posted the info, apologising profusely and telling me she's now removed it as best she can. She seemed just as frustrated as I was with the whole wiki tree thing, and far from it helping her with her own research, she seems to have received nothing but abuse for her efforts. It seems you download a gedcom from Ancestry (for which you're charged a fee) and it simply grabs all the names and info on your behalf. tut! tut! cheek!

It seems a bit pointless contacting Ancestry about it - acting like an increasingly faceless multinational corporation these days, they're unlikely to do much about it - but once again my faith is restored in the genealogical commumity. She actaully seems lovely!

Best wishes
Ann