Genealogy Chat

Hi all,
I'm a newbie here and wondered if anyone can tell me how to change the "startup" family to a different part of my tree?
Thanks in anticipation

Welcome to the boards David.

You probably mean the 'Root' person. It can be done on Ancestry and many off line commercial trees but not sure if it can on Genes.

If you only have a few people on your tree, have you considered deleting it and starting again?

On the family tree page, if you select the tree options setting (cog icon). There is an option to change root relation.

It then gives several options.

One of my earliest contacts on here, with several thousand relations on her tree, :-| :-|
had the tree "upside down". In other words, her root relation was some Ancient Brit and she was about 50 pages up!!

She wasn't a contact for long - once I found out what a name-collector was!!

Thanks to all - will try your suggestion Elaine.
As for "name collectors".......what's that all about Andysmum?

A name collector is someone who gets carried away.

Rather than undertaking their own research based on census and other on-line records (even if it is twigs of twigs) they gain access to a more closely related person's tree, and copy off every one they can.

There's nothing wrong with researching extremely distance connections - I've done it for an 'Island' + gone as far back as possible of genetic related ancestors, then trace the families of grt x n aunts/uncles down to more recent records - other people may be doing a one name study.

What is frowned upon is 'stealing' other peoples research without permission rather than verifying records to begin with.
As everyone of us is capable of make mistakes, errors creep in and are repeated ad infinitum

Ahhhhhh I see..just not cricket to steal research !!.....but its great to have a community like this for when you get stuck I guess...... I have found a couple of folks who have helped me unlock anomalies. :-)
Thanks for the explanation. ....... its good to know.

This particular person had about 200,000 people on her tree!! She was actually related to me, but I broke off contact after I asked her where she had found a particular bit of info and was told that she had no idea. She had so many people on her tree that she couldn't remember where any of the facts had come from!! :-( :-(

Good grief! I thought 13600 (on GR) was bad enough, but 200,000 is riduculous! She obviously didn't have an offline version to keep track with or bothered to give sources against on-line versions.

This particular person was related and was able to help me out with some of the mutual relatives. What irritated me was that I'd shared some family lore which she published as a note (with my name!) on a submitted tree on familysearch.

This is useful......is there anything else a newbie like me should be aware of to ensure good etiquette ?

If you send a message to a member who you think may list the same relative as yourself, compose your own message rather than use Genes default ones.

Put the name in your title & possibly dates. In the body of the message add their years of birth/death and location. Give a little more detail such as who they married, name of a child/children or parents.....depending what you've already found out. Theres no harm on saying if the entry is a grandparent or other direct line relative. That helps the member to find the entry in their own tree or to work out if it's the same person.

Ask if it's the same, and if they can give any more info that you may not have.
Be polite!

You can always check if your message has been read by looking in your 'sent message' box. Unread ones have an envelope icon next to the title. Unfortunately Genes never remove dormant accounts. Consequently some were created by people who have since died, lost interest or changed their main email account but not linked the new one to this site. Have patience. It's always possible they'd reply years later.

That is excellent advice, David. Also, I always answer messages from other people, even if it's only to ask why I should open my tree for them. This is from people using the very abrupt and uninformative automated Genes message that DetEcTive was talking about - the one that says "Please open your tree".

DetEcTive, I don't know what she had or didn't have, but my OH and I have a shared tree, with about 1,000 people each. This contact was my 5th or 6th cousin, but she not only copied all my info, but also OH's!! Right back to his several times great grandparents, their siblings and down to the more recent ones! :-| :-|

Personally, I can't see much point, or pleasure, in collecting names like that. :-(

Thanks all.....Good advice (seems like common sense to me but clearly not "common")