Genealogy Chat

Stirred up a hornets' nest there Jim! Ann Glos

I'm no budding geneologist, I just want to find my Dad's family. He fell out with them before I was born, and refused to discuss them! I hope to find living relllies, but in order to go forward, I have to go back. I can't find cousins until I've found grandparents. When I've got names, then I can go to Friends Reunited. Regards, Jackie

Grampa Jim, you seem to have a knack of stirring up things! LOL. I totally agree with you. I'm a bit of a stickler for detail myself and find it very frustrating when others are not. However in order to save my blood pressure I have come to accept that we're not all the same. I'm afraid I just ignore any names on the Name Summary which have no date or place attached. It's not worth replying to because there's so much doubt. I just think "their loss" and leave them be. Anne PS It also bugs me when people continuously update their Gedcom file which automatically re-submits ALL the names in their tree. Sad perfectionist that I am, I only add people to my tree manually. Yes, it takes ages, but it is accurate! But there you go, we're all different.

Hi Ann, From Glorious Gosport. (P ing down with rain at the mo) Marion, My serious research is in dusty archives and crabby writing. I do find GR very useful in filling in the gaps. However, what drew me to this site was the idea of Genes CONNECTED. Seeing if we could link up our Family Trees. Apart from my own Tree which is 90% Blood link, I have an extended Tree of over 15000 names. The fun to me is finding where we have links, and creating the database. That was what prompted my outburst today, looking up what people had put on the site and finding it so sloppily done that there was no way to guess if there could be a link. Jim

And my final gripe of the day. GR claims to have over 17000000 names. How many of them are duplications or even quintuplications? Jim with a BIG SPOON P.S. Thank you all for visiting my Thread. I hope you all had a good time. XX Jim

Yes I did enjoy reading your thread Grampa Jim, especially Natalie's comment about her tree being small and perfectly formed!

When I have a baptism date - and it isn't something daft like the day before the marriage - then I put born circa baptism date. I haven't yet found a baptism that wasn't within two years of birth, but then again I have only just got into the 1790s. As for requests on the Records Office boards, if I see one more 'Info wanted on the surname Smith' or 'I need a 1784 census lookup' I will take Jim's spoon and beat the poster over the head with it.

Funny, I was just thinking that the info on this site is rapidly starting to resemble That Other Site, about which I frequently complain - inaccuracies, vagueness, downright lies and my own particular HATE - endless duplications! And couldnt GR somehow flag entries, to show that their Submitters havent visited this site for, say, 6 months, or had not renewed their sub. At least that way, we wouldnt waste time following up dead cold information.

Hello Jim and Ann in Glos Just like old times on GC (Yes I said GC!) Haven't been on for months but seems like the old times, same old problems. Tip - For a married lady with no maiden name I add her as 'Mary Mrs' for her Christian name on the same line then her husband's surname e.g Cooper on the surname line. On the list it looks like Cooper Mary Mrs Regards to all the old GC members from Vera in Manchester. EOM

Hello Jim I have just found this thread and I thought I'd add my 'two pennyworth'! I too get annoyed when incomplete dates are shown. I understood that the ones with no dates or birthplace were from Gedcoms, but surely they don't have incomplete birthdates! I sympathise with bad spelling (Isle of White) but accept that not everyone can spell correctly. I have found a couple of entries for names in my tree listing the birthplace as Chipshop, Devon. Can someone please show me a map of this place? When entering a wife where I don't know the maiden name, I put the surname in brackets, and change it once I have the correct information. I know this may confuse some people, and I apologise for that, but I couldn't think of any other way to enter these rellies. Sue PS Good to hear from you again Vera :o) Hope you are well.

I guess re the spelling of place names, we have to remember that not all the contributors are from the UK, thus when you get something like Ilford, Sussex (instead of Essex) we have to appreciate these people may never have been to the UK. Re Baptisms, I have found them taking place en masse within a family when all were adults. I understand that quite often a vicar would refuse to marry a couple if the whole family were not baptised first! Makes it a bit of a problem when you see someone apparently aged 1 getting married though!

If I don't know the wife's surname I enter it as 'unknown'. I apologise if anyone is searching for a family with the surname 'unknown' but somehow I don't think I'm saying sorry to many of you. It's quite funny if you check out the name on the 1881 Census. One family had five lodgers all called unknown unknown!!!!!

Jim's original post wasn't about lack of contacts, but entries lacking basic data or useless (e.g. no century in birth year or year zero). It is a shame in a way that the site allows gedcom uploads if it doesn't reject those which lack the data in the fields which are compulsory if entering manually. It's not that much hassle to add persons manually, after all, if you are adding a couple a week you're probably doing quite well from the research point of view.. I've got a few hundred (haven't checked recently) all manually entered and therefore containing as much and as accurate info. that I have to hand. Alternatively upload once, fill in the missing fields and then update manually. I still see the purpose of the site as enabling connections to be made and information shared (even if the name change dilutes this). It is annoying to receive an enquiry from someone who has only themselves or half a dozen names on here only to find that they have a tree at home with hundreds. If that info. had been on here we would both have had the chance to make the connection, thereby doubling the chances.

Jim - in case you, and some others, don't know why I have only two names on my 'tree' on this site (those of my husband and myself) - it is because of somebody whom I named as a 'people taker' a while ago. The person was taking my family and researching them, even though we are not connected. He was asked to remove them by the site owners. He also had names of living people without their permission, and the site owners asked him to remove them too. Prior to this, I had direct ancestral family back a few generations for both of us. Joy

PS I agree with all you say, Jim, about accuracy, as far as possible, sharing, and connecting. Joy

PPS Since then, Jim, I solely have fun with 'stirring' (as you know), try to help if possible with tips, and participate on threads if I think I may have something useful / helpful / friendly to offer. I do not use the site for family history research any more though after that nasty episode. It spoiled one of my major hobbies. And the site owners know this. Joy

Quite an interesting one this, it is so easy not to contribute all information that you should. Now take this example. Use Family Tree Maker for Windows. Many of the entries on my tree I do not know the precise birthdate. However I do know the date of baptism. When you enter this into FTW and subsequently generate Gedcom, it throws away the date of baptism! I am now updating my tree with the assumption that the year and month of baptism were also the year and month of birth but of course we all know that is not necessarily true! With 415 individuals in my tree is taking some time to update all these fields, and then of course periodically you have to delete the tree and re-upload it. I'll get there in the end though. Andy in Hemel.

We are all different and the art of getting on in life is called acceptance - stop trying to understand why people do or do not do things and just accept that that is the way it is. It is less frustrating . Accepting differnce and embracing individuality is the way forward. Take some deep breaths Granpa Jim and ignore evryone elses failaure and just enjoy life.Your tree will grow much quicker for it. Regards Tracey

Jim does enjoy life. Joy

Hi Jim Sorry but I don't see the problem - surely you just look for names and dates that match those your looking for or already have? Many people have been serious about genealogy for years but are new to this site or online genealogy in any form. In my opinion anyone tracing their family history is a genealogist . Some of us can spell with ease and some of us can't - we all have different ideas about how things should be done and need to accept that others might be different from us: David