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Messages - pgmoir

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The Common Room / Re: Other members family trees on findmypast?
« on: Tuesday 23 September 14 23:24 BST (UK)  »
Personally I would like to see users of all DCT Family History websites sharing trees and ancestor information, and that includes Findmypast, Genes Reunited and Mocavo,and any other site that we partner with. I don't think there needs to be any barriers because of brand choice. I do strongly stick to my guns on the privacy issue, and I'm not an advocate of "public" personal trees where living people are linked. I think historical trees, like royal family trees, are ok for the public domain.

Regarding dead trees. I didn't agree with the views of some on the Genes Reunited team that we couldn't show elements such as last active date or the like. I think they should have been shown (that is the personal details of the author/owner). I would have liked to have worked on a solution to limit that frustration, but also to try and re-engage the authors back into the community or to help expose elements of their trees so that others could benefit.

I'm sure this issue will become relevant again when we have tree searching and sharing on the FindMyPast tree.

Cheers
Phil

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Census and Resource Discussion / Re: Find My Past Uploaded Gedcom inaccurate!
« on: Tuesday 23 September 14 23:11 BST (UK)  »
Thanks for the welcomes. For those familiar with my posts of old on Genes Reunited, I will always be honest and as helpful as best I can. And do my best to correct code errors where I'm able and capable of helping. And the opinions will also always be my personal ones, just like my blog. I leave official opinions to others.

I do agree with the advice on keeping copies of your personal data in different places. But remember your home PC can crash. My own laptop failed miserably about 12 months ago, and I lost everything that was on it at the time. Fortunately my family tree data had been backed up elsewhere!

Where you do most of your work should be your primary location, and for me that was always the desktop apps, but I also stored copies on Genes and Ancestry. I now use Findmypast for my primary source, mainly because I'm 100% comfortable with its safety (I wrote much of the system and I manage it on a daily basis), but also I find the interface more clear. [but it can still be improved!] I still have copies all over the place for hints, sharing, etc., and with the release of export, and improvements to import, I am also happier to move things about. My aim of the GEDCOM work was to try and capture 100% of data going in and out. Quite a challenge as every system deals with data in slightly different ways. The only advice I give is just don't forget where you put your tree, and I (personally) also recommend keeping the tree "private", and letting users contact you for access.

Hope the advice helps.
Phil Moir

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Family History Programs, Tree Organisation, Presentation / Re: New findmypast tree
« on: Friday 19 September 14 07:58 BST (UK)  »
Sorry for responding a bit late. The links from your tree to search results are vastly improved, and we're looking at better ways to tweak them all the time. Hope they're proving more useful now. And you can attach records also. (That's definitely a big help!)

Phil Moir
Technical Lead - Findmypast Family Tree team

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The Common Room / Re: Other members family trees on findmypast?
« on: Friday 19 September 14 07:55 BST (UK)  »
Thanks Pootle for posting the link to my blog.

Yes, we have built extensive (but not unique) privacy features into the Findmypast Family Tree. And these are similar to most of the other sites too. Some elements are still in development (such as searching for tree matches), but here is a list of the privacy options you can have.

The tree can be set to public or private. This has pretty much the same definition as found on other tree websites.

Public means that anyone who has a link to your tree can view the details. You cannot default to Show Living AND Public. But you can set this option on a per user basis through the Tree Shares list.

Private means that other users will be able to search for a tree match, but will require your permission to view the detail. This is identical to Genes Reunited as we have at the moment.

There are other privacy elements that are worth noting. Any fact, event, note, source can be set to private, and these will NEVER show to other users when they are giving access to view your tree.

Where Hide Living is set, then all details about that person are removed from the view, and the only indication is of a male or female person, and their name is changed to Hidden. So you can see the shape of a family group, but no more.

This also applies to family facts, such as marriage, etc. If either person is still living, the details are not shown.

If you want to follow the progress of the Findmypast family tree, then do dip into my blog http://pgmoir.wordpress.com/ . We were one year old this week, and I believe certainly something to take a look at, if you haven't already tried it. And any suggestions are always welcome.

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Census and Resource Discussion / Re: Find My Past Uploaded Gedcom inaccurate!
« on: Wednesday 10 September 14 06:51 BST (UK)  »
It is VERY weird and VERY annoying. And extremely frustrating when I discovered the reason. The problem has been caused not by the FindMyPast import, but the Genes export, and originates from when a previous developer introduced two fields for storing date of birth and death. One for year and the other for date. Some people add the year ONLY to the year field, some people split, and some do both and even some people enter DIFFERENT year values between the two fields, e.g. year of birth 1879 and date of birth 5 Oct 1875. So it gets very confusing. The current GEDCOM export on Genes uses the date field. I am currently in the process of testing a new GEDCOM export on Genes which will do its best to get the complete date from using the information entered in both fields and will include other missing information added into your Genes tree. This should hopefully be available in the next few weeks. With regard to transferring your tree from Genes to FindMyPast, don't worry as you will be able to transfer it again after the new GEDCOM export is in place.

Phil (Technical Lead - Findmypast/Genes Reunited Family Tree Team)

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