Genealogy Chat

Wouldn't it be a good idea if you could see how many relatives a member has in thir tree prior to contacting them with a possible match? You'd have an idea of how likely a contact with them will help you. Do Genes Reunited have a suggestion box? Or is there a reason I haven't thought of that makes it not such a good idea?

Up untill not that long ago you could see how many they had and also when they joined.

I wonder why they changed it? Were there lots of people with only half a dozen? Or do most people have a couple of hundred? I've been doing this from scratch since February and have 600 odd and that's with no effort at all except an annual subscription to findmypast. If Ancestry will ever let you subscribe without a rolling subscription to your credit card, I might think about joining them...

Point taken Diane. Another thing that makes me wonder is why, if you contact another member, do they often not reply? Why bother to join if you're going to ignore messages?

I wish some of you knowledgable people were related to me... There doesn't seem to be many Bethnal Green natives with an interest in genealogy!

I have been researching for over 35 years now and have about 6,000 names. But I only have 300 on GR. Partly because I got pig sick of trying to correct mistakes - mine AND GR's, and partly because I got pig sick of fending off the dafter Hot Match enquiries. My sub runs out in a few days, and my tree will go down to five people - the minimum I need to lead to my brick wall, which is the only thing which will entice me back to this site...my 2 x GGF waving coyly from someone else's tree! And the recent lash up, when GR allowed the world and his dog to see your tree, made many people remove their trees altogether. OC

I have 3800 in my tree, but ONLY because Im doing my husbands and mine, and some of the ancestors bred like rabbits! Im also lucky enough to be able to spend 11 hours a week on the tree, which isnt as much as some people, but it helps. Ive given tree access to someone with only 5 people in their tree, and they copied the lot. Ive also given it to someone with 15000 in his tree - and quickly realised WHY he has that many, he copies every tree he can get his mitts on. Dont know if there's really an answer.

The size of the tree is totally unimportant. What really matters is whether a person you contact has any KNOWLEDGE, not just of a tree but of the ANCESTORS that have made that tree. I only have a very few ancestors on this site but someone recently gained my tree from another person who had passed on my information to a relative expressly asking that the info was not to be posted on to this site. What saddened me was that she not only disregarded my wishes, but that she had put the tree on here without any checking. She had put all the dates on here without knowing how these people had married in one village and moved on to another village for children to move back to the first village and then to move to another village to get married by licence to then move on again. I had done all the research into settlement certificates, wills, marriage Licences and Quarter sessions, which was painstaking around the villages crossing over county boundaries and knew exactly what was going on. To me these ancestors are living, breathing people. To her they were just number crunches. I had even got a name back to 1340 from an incident that happened in one village I was interested in which story I had obtained from the Family History Society Quarterly Magazine. Unbelievably, she even had this date in her tree without knowing the story behind it! So would you rather contact a person who has a lot of knowledge of a family and a small tree or ask a person with a large tree who may have little or no knowledge? And how will you know unless you make contact? Janet

Janet I completely agree. Most of my tree was compiled before the internet was ever dreamed of. There was only one way of doing it then, and that was from primary source documents, plus bmds. I know that my tree is as accurate as i can make it - apart from a few far flung twiglets, who are of no real interest to me. I honestly don't care whether someone's tree is large or small - what interests me is Is it proved? OC

The size of a tree is irrelevant. So many things could affect how large or small a tree might be. Someone might have researched for years but hit really solid brickwalls which mean they are stuck and likely to remain so unless some new document turns up. Others may have enormous trees which are the result of a lifetime's work. Someone may get lucky and find a link to a well researched shared tree so the numbers on their tree could be large very quickly. Most of us enjoy doing the background research which puts flesh on the bones. Understanding the area where ancestors lived and the jobs they did makes family history fascinating but there will always be some ancestors (even recent ones) who are only names....and sometimes only a first name. You cannot judge how good someone's research and tree is going to be from the size of their tree. There are people running databases online with huge numbers of connected families on them. I use some which are excellent and very well sourced but the owners of those sites must spend many hundreds of hours creating them. Someone's very small tree just might have the vital shared relation to break down one of your own brickwalls. Sue

in terms of rating, I have noticed in the last couple of weeks that I can now rate my contacts out of 5 stars, but I think only i can see that information as obviously what is someones 1 or no stars is someone elses 5 stars with brass knobs on! :o)