Suggestions

After more than ten years intermittent research I now have nearly 500 ancestors on my tree. Whenever possible I have documentation of some sort, census records, BMD documentation etc.
I see people with ten to fifty times as many ancestors, and wonder how this comes about. I can understand that many people may have more than me, but that number?
I'm not jealous, just bewildered. :-S

I have got 23,000 on my tree and have been doing a little bit each night for several years and the number has surprised me.

I probably have documentation for about the same numebr as yourself, Roger. With the others I always tell people they are not close to me, they must check them out, but I think they are right. I use a lot of logic and cross-referencing, but I don't spend very much cash..

I suppose I hate to see a wife or a husband on their own and parentless and siblingless. So I do a bit of surface digging. Sometimes I see the same tree on Anc*****y and, if it looks right, I leave the tree there - thinking that if someone wants to delve into that family there is already a reference point. But if the tree on Ancestry appears wrong I leave them on my tree - hoping the people more closely involved will at least debate whether my tree could be right.

I have had to stop building my tree since they changed the tree format. I was going to stop next year and get it all in book form for posterity, anyway as I am 66 and not going to be here for more than another 40 or 50 years at most. I am now finding I cannot bring myself to enter anybody anymore, and I am really struggling now to answer letters (and I obviously get quite a few) suggesting they match with someone on my tree. I even hate searching using this new tree format, so expect me and my 23,000 "close" rellies wil have to vacate our space on Genes soon.

We will miss Genes a lot

I think it is quite a difficult problem limiting your tree to a reasonable size.

One way, of course, is to limit it to direct ancestors only, but is doesn't seem right not to include siblings and then you need to include their partners etc.

It would be nice to have some sort of indicator attached to a person to say, in effect, "I know there is more information about this person, but this is all I am interested in".

My tree is large, but it's mine and my husband's (he has absolutely NO interest).

I have ancestors going waaaaay back, but I'm fascinated with "cousins"... and which branches stayed in the UK, and which branches left...... where to?

I'm in touch with many of these cousins, all over the world.

I love connecting my "relatives" to a famous person. That can be difficult at times. But found a draper called BOSWELL in Wolverhampton. Yes, he seems to come from same viillage as the famous BOSWELL. So watch this space.

But the best thing we are all doing (however big our trees) is keeping memories of long gone ordinary people in our minds. Many of them are far from ordinary when we learn a bit more about them. Ag labs did go abroad to fight, gen labs could be "leader" of their local chapel etc.

Everyone's life could make a book (rather thin in my case but, at 66, I still have 40 years left to make my mark) :-D

Me too John. I have a few people of note in history. It's fascinating to find out an ancestor signed documents that are in museums.

One of my many times grandfathers is mentioned in a book..... but I think that was the author's imagination!

I'm also related to some "famous" living people, but they don't appear on my GR tree ~ I don't put living people on there....but it's nice to know!

When they implement the facility to have the same entry for a person who appears on the tree more than once, would it be worth having a facility to search big trees for such occurrences and an easy means of merging the entries?

Have noticed on "A that cannot be spoken" many of the trees are wrong. But when I write politely, I never ever get an answer. So there is very little two-way communication there.

This site has been brilliant for that in 9 years I have been bashing away for an hour or so every night (hope not another RR :-D)

Anyway, however many times I have got annoyed by freezing cold "hot" matches, I have almost always tried to help anyone who has written to me thinking they may match with one of my 23,000 rellies (and yes, I know them all ;-)) Perhaps if they expect me to show them mine without first showing me theirs, they don't get such a polite response.

And I do think this communication (whether via our trees or whether via Community Boards) has been a great strength of Genes. They have a lot of fans. And I hope these troubled seas that we now sail through (with PP and Detective bailing out like crazy) can be smoothed soon and we can all get back to our hobby.

John, I am not bailing out like crazy, ? My stance has never changed i like most war veterans fight the fight from more than one direction ;-) and as some members keep saying that although the help is appreciated i now tend to believe that the advice is not being acted upon so no point pushing it on death ears,

If people only want to complain then thats fine with me they are entitled to do just that,

but it's a shame that after coming and asking/complaining on the boards that advice given is often just dismissed as if it doesn't apply to them,

If it did not apply then chances are that most complaints about errors and missing save/search functions or the pages not loading or being all over the place simply would not be on the boards

Roy

Well, at least the flood of new complaint threads have reduced to a trickle ( not going to get into that 'reasons for discussion' again)

And with Roy's + others, brilliant work-around thread we can point them to that even if the individual responder is agin' the new tree.

http://www.genesreunited.co.uk/boards/board/suggestions/thread/1309077

John has hit the nail on the head - GR has a fantastically varied membership, with advice freely given on topics not just on research, but also other problems ranging from basic IT through to cooking and gardening...even a bit of car maintenance when I forgot how to connect a car battery charger!