RootsChat.Com
General => The Common Room => The Lighter Side => Topic started by: Sylviaann on Thursday 08 February 07 12:33 GMT (UK)
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A fellow dog walker said to me the other day "Have you seen that new site Genes something" This man was interested in his family history and I gave him a lot of info and a list of sites a few years ago. He has an unusual local name and could find loads on the web but I think he wants it all done for him. I'd do it if he paid me. Mind he is also the person who actually paid for the 1881 census from e-bay last year. I told him it was free and anyway he could have had my old copy which I bought before it was on the LDS site.
Sorry for the rant but this is the sort of person this advert attracts. I'm not going to renew my membership anyway. I provide info, no-one gives me any and i'm sick of their hot matches. I've been a memeber for a few years and shouldn't have to pay for their extra searches now.
Sylviaann
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I only joined GenesReunited a month or so back and I suppose I was curious. I uploaded my gedcom and have been contacted by a few very genuine and helpful people. I must admit that I paid my money so I could contact one of these! It was a risk but turned out to be worthwhile.
The downside is that I have people contacting me who give me their surname and then ask if we are related. I look in my tree and find that perhaps I have one instance of the name and that some 100 years ago. I write back (courtesy never costs anything) and request a little more information and never here another thing. I agree that the so called hot matches are sometimes quite laughable.
So I am rather undecided as to whether I should renew my membership.
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Hi, I have made a few good contacts through Genes but I do agree that the hot matchs are a little annoying.
Don't get me wrong I don't mind people contacting me about the relatives I have in my tree, in fact I enjoy having a chat with some of the people even if the relatives are not a match and at the end of the day thats what genes is there for.
What does annoy me though, is when people contact you using a tone which implies that you have contacted them about a certain person instead of the other way round and when you do reply to them you never hear anything back. Whats that all about? I've had quite a few of these. I don't think its so much the site anymore as the people who use it! I much prefer using rootschat, everyones polite!
Regards
Kate.
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We have these conversations about GR regularly, don't we. At the moment I am custodian of a friend's tree - I researched it for him and persuaded him to join GR so that I could upload the tree. So now I'm intercepting a lot of messages, and the demands to view the tree. I always say, politely, email me on .... and we can swap information. Most do so. Others respond with a "request to view your tree" or don't respond at all. I had a lengthy correspondence with one lady who couldn't understand what the problem was with giving access to the tree - it was simply sharing information, she thought. I am not interested in providing more names to collectors of names, or in acquiring more names myself. We should be helping each other with research.
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I agree entirely.....we should be helping each other where we can. I suppose that my impression of genes is that it's all give and not a lot of take!
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Hi again
Yes I'm relatively new to this and haven't posted too often but where I have, the replies have been so helpful. By reading through the various threads, I've learned a great deal too.
I've found Ancestry invaluable in looking up census records etc but sometimes the tree matches are a little bizarre. I saw a wonderful example the other day where a woman born in 1580 was married to a man born in about 1862. Now we have all made mistakes but that seems a little extreme!
I use tribalpages to store my "latest" version as it's easy to upload and download the gedcom and I can chose who to give access to - it's password protected.
I'm sure there are advantages and drawbacks with all these sites!
I think you are right...it's the people and not the site!
Ian
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I always seem to reply to a GR subject !
Of course it's not perfect, but over the years I have had, and instigate many contacts.
There is no way i could have ever found the 3000 ancestors and their descendants , without these wonderful researchers All of them are blood relations, however distant and sometimes we have swapped photos.
Yes there is always the ignorant who for whatever reason is a pratt.
Hot matches has , in the new contacts just provided me with two new huge branches . I go through the pages and check the boxes to bring the "maybe"
names down to three pages.This means the computer generated matches next time will give me a new list of potentials.
Thinking of all the £££s, I have spent on other sites and obtaining Certs. I still reckon it is good value.
I have not got "just a list of names" but have learned so much about their lives and have been sent extracts from books/ newspapers about their lives.
Spring
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I've had good and bad experiences with GR but all in all I am very pleased with what I've had. I recently got in touch with my second cousin, our grandparents were brother and sister. She lives in Wales where she was born and we have shared a lot of valuable and interesting information. I've had quite a number of other successful contacts too. The down side is the 'takers' - I had one who picked up 45 names from my tree and that was after I had posed a number of questions to find out if he was genuine! But one of those names was my own, and despite emailing twice to ask him to remove my name he didn't. I had to resort to reporting it to GR as abuse and I must say they were very prompt in their response, they removed my name from his tree and emailed him to tell him. I don't like the feeling that I'm related to someone like that, however distantly! ::)
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I've got to agree with most comments esp. on the hotmatches. And how easy it is for people to assume they are related from sum so many 100 years back.
However the people who reply to al my emails i send i have to :) about. For instance my dads aunt lives in canada, and rarely have contact. I found her on GR, if only i knew she was tracing the family back (and properly buying all the cert s and such) i would of got hold of her a long long time ago (i'm in the lack of money part and only buy cert every so many months!) Now she keeps me updated and has put me in contact with all her contacts, and has me galloping around taking pictures of gravestones, nd any family photos she hasnt got from her parents families.
aswell as people who have got me in contact with particular history books and such which feat. ancestors. People who always ask me questions about my tree, and i cant answer them i almost always tell them of this site 'bigging it up' because everyone on here seems to be truely helpful and sincere, so many have helped me push into the right direction when i've hit brickwalls....
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I have over three hundred contacts established through GR and most of them are very good. I do find it tiresome when I find some who has X married to Y and I have X married to Z and I explain this situation. I present my evidence and ask them for theirs to get the reply that they know they are right because they got the information from someone else.
The major problem with having a large number of contacts on GR is finding out their surname particularly for married women. GR uses their maiden name in its message system but their married name in the contacts list. If you receive a message saying that they have given you access to their tree it then involves a major search to actually access that tree. Unless someone knows better.
David
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I've certainly made a few good contacts but most seem intent on getting as much information from me without offering anything in return. I suppose, on balance, its been worthwhile for the few good ones though.
I'm very new to this kind of research so I expect some of my research is faulty especially with those families on the edge of my own. I It worries me that my mistakes will just be copied - maybe I seek the reassurance that I've got it right! If someone said to me that I had made a mistake or two and then pointed out where I had gone wrong then great...its part of the learning curve. Sadly its often, "Thanks very much for that" and just gets copied into another tree.
On the subject of "hot matches" - does anyone else get matches for say "William" or "1837" as well as for surnames? Maybe my gedcom file loaded incorrectly?
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On the subject of "hot matches" - does anyone else get matches for say "William" or "1837" as well as for surnames? Maybe my gedcom file loaded incorrectly?
I doubt there's anything wrong with your gedcom - the Hot Matches are only located via names and years so it's up to us to sort the wheat from the chaff. If GR chose to match places of origins I would have missed quite a few Hot Matches from the city of Hull. For example; Drypool and 'Sculcoates' are parishes within the boundary and thus if other researchers had used those latter place names I would have been denied knowing other people were researching my family.
The further back we go when families followed a naming pattern and we come across several cousins named after grandparents it can be very daunting choosing our direct bloodline and it is a boon if we can link to other researchers coming up to meet us from another branch so that we can compare and maybe eliminate incorrect assumptions.
Quite often stories handed down are also a boon and I always ask contacts if they have any old family stories. We've made holes in a few brick walls based solely on fitting these into the puzzle; e.g. "she married beneath her, he was a gardener" (!);
"he was away at sea months on end, children were starving and she left him for another man" (1811 brick wall blown open).
good luck to us all,
Rena
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I usually complain about GR, and certainly it has it's fault (the "new" tree system and hot matches being most notable)...but I've got a lot of information from it, and am quite happy with that. Just been contacted with a descendant of my great-grandmother's brother this week, so I can't complain really. Really helped to clear up a few points I'd been having issues with.
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I must admit I have found GR quite helpful.
It does infuriate me when people ask for information, I reply, then I hear nothing from them when I ask them a question.
A couple of instances :
One lady asked me for info, I sent her details (didn't let her view my tree), emailed her photographs and newspaper articles. I have heard nothing since. When I viewed her tree (out of curiosity) she had put all my info into her tree.
After this I definately wouldn't let anyone view my tree.
I heard from someone who was looking for his long lost cousin, who was in my tree - they contacted him and had a family reunion.
So there are good and bad points about it.
I must admit RootsChatters have been fantastic and a great help and I felt great the other day when I was finally able to help someone else for a change!! ;D
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There is no way i could have ever found the 3000 ancestors and their descendants , without these wonderful researchers
Eek! You'd have a huge task to check the accuracy of all that research, Spring - can you really be sure they are all correct?
Bill
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Bill of course there some conflicting bits of information, but I am not in a position to physically check dates from the 16/1700s. I always put these into my personal programmes with the sources and a Note to show two dates or whatever.
Fortunately quite a few of the branches have been done from differant angles by a distant dedicated rellies.Such as Church records and gravestones., with another concentrating on old records in Kew etc.
Yes I do have a gripe with the attitude of my latest attempt at a contact on GR....(Will use thick head as opposed to what I'd like to call him) After the two fantastic ( and via the same name too!) contacts where we are all stuck with this George, The gent said he had no further information about this name. Well hang on, has he just picked this name out of thin air, he obviously had no info on descendants but surely he could have given a couple of siblings names...There are three of us on GR all trying to link up our branches and it is sooooooooo frustrating
Had to get that off my chest, but truly I have every reason to be greatful to GR
Spring
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I have some good results from Genes but recently I contacted someone who never answered but opened his tree. When I looked at it he had downloaded all my tree to his. I have unticked all my boxes and make sure until I know they are related that I do not tick the box.
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I am finding Genes less helpful than it use to be. What is the point of hot matching one person? There are so many pages with only one match and it is very time conduming tring to whittle the pages down. I have had a few really good contacts probably about 10 or 12.
I dont like it when you are just asked for for someone to view your tree, but not providing infomation first I find that really rude. AS do I find not replying at all really rude. I do find that I am doing a lot more giving than reciving nowdays.
IMHO, I dont have a problem with people copying infomation on to their tree from mine though. Also when I do look at peoples trees I dont asume that if the info matches it must have come from me in the 1st place. If I found the info out somebody else probably did too.
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I really like GR and recommend it to everyone who is interested in their family history.
It's great for sharing info.
Yes, there are occasions where details have simply been copied from me ~ sometimes incorrectly ~ but this can happen anywhere. The same thing has happened to me on other sites and via other means. It can be very annoying at times.
I don't mind people using the information that I have researched, or which has been researched by others and passed on to me ~ but I do wish that they would acknowledge the people who really discovered it, & not just claim it all for themselves
I allow most people who want it to have access to my tree. I'm not sure that this is a good idea, because it means that they have access to information that isn't 'theirs' but which they can, and sometimes do, add to their own tree, anyway. (There may be stolen identity issues, too)
I rarely add living people to my tree ~ and never without their permission. But I take this further, and rarely add the deceased parents of living people, either. Usually this just doesn't feel right.
But yes, some people will just add everyone they find on someone else's tree.
I like to prove relationships first, too.
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I've had some very good matches on Genes, especially on my mum's side of the family. One man, who is descended from the husband of my gran's sister, has been very helpful and gone out of his way to visit libraries and look up trade directories etc. to find information on relatives on my father's side of the family, which are of no consequence to him. Only due to his persistence, did I actually find the date of my g.grandad's death. From him and others on my mother's side of the family, I have got photographs, certificates and lots of other information.
I live in hope that every month will bring new contacts. This month has brought me 3.
Then again, I did have a Hot Match with someone who apparently had 33 matches with me including my g.gran. I e-mailed him to ask his connection and just got a reply back saying she was only a distant relative and he had now deleted her from his tree. However, this month the same hot match appeared, so he hasn't deleted her. I have a feeling which distant relative he is connected to. I'm not bothered that he has copied all the details, as some of the info I was given by other people (with the appropriate certificates to verify it), I just wish he had told me where he fitted in.
Liz
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I found Genes Reunited by accident-and was just doing a search of names similar to what I was looking for. Messaged several people who had surnames similar, and the reply-the very next day gave me shivers- I have kept his email-telling me of out relation, his family never knew what had happened to the relatives that went to AMERICA, they never kept in contact. The feeling of elation was overwhelming-finally a breakthrough. I cannot say enough about this site, it provided me with information I had previously not been able to find-as well as relatives I did not know existed, I will never forget "I am Roseanna Austin's Great grandson...." For those who have had such a breakthrough I do not have to say more-for those of you who have not, it is an unbelievable feeling of connection.
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Like others I have good and bad past stories about GR. Thankfully over the past 12 months I have made, and been contacted by 20 or so people who all have contact in various ways to individuals in my tree. Some of these people I now correspond with very regularly and we have a good rapore. I never bother to check hot matches, as in the past they have mainly proved irrelivant. I find it easier to use the search on the family tree. That way, if you have a number of entries for a family, you can see easily if another persons name is shown searching for the same individuals. Also when I receive a message from a person with a query about an entry in my tree, I always make sure I uncheck the bottom box, which allows automatic access to viewing my tree. I've only had one person who really annoyed me. This person contacted me through the site last year. She persistently asked for access to view my tree. We exchanged information which verified to me that we were looking at the same people. I hide living relatives on my tree. When I viewed hers I saw that she complete family details, down to children b 1990's. These details had been taken from viewing another family members tree. I very politely asked her to remove them and her response was very nasty, and she instantly removed my access to her tree. I contacted the site and they acted by removing the details. My relatives were not directly connected to this woman so she had no reason to add them to her tree. I also contacted the other family member and pointed out what had happened, and she changed the details on her tree, so that the relatives were hidden. But the damage was already done. Some want to build the numbers I know, but people should be respectful when it comes to up to date information. Another thing that amazes me, is the amount of personal information members allow to be viewed about them. Not good in these days of identity theft etc. :) Lyn