genealogy websites uk

[tezzer]

Apart from ancestry, are there any other UK orientated genealogy websites that allow you to view other peoples trees?

[KGarrad]

Best to do your own research

Other people's trees are often wrong!

[Rattus]

FindMyPast has added this feature since I let my subscription lapse, so I can't vouch for it. But in general I have preferred FindMyPast to other sites and I find its search functionality much more to my taste. It seems to allow greater precision, whereas Ancestry returns anything and everything to get you excited. (And sometimes that has its place and is very useful too.)

I've ended up relying on Ancestry for several reasons: lack of funds and availability via my library while I was unemployed, ongoing library availability at home during lockdown, lack of time since resuming work to kick-start my research in a way that might justify a FindMyPast renewal.

In short: I like FindMyPast, but don't know if their public trees feature is any good. (I suspect it might be that - rather like Facebook and YouTube in their respective fields - Ancestry has gained critical mass and nothing else will ever be able to approach it in terms of breadth and mass acceptance, but I'd love to be proved wrong.)

I kind-of agree with KGarrad, but with reservations. I've seen so much poor quality research in other people's trees, but sometimes, perversely, that has been useful. And occasionally I see detailed but unattributed stuff that could probably only have been obtained from primary sources (certificates, family bibles, etc) that I will accept as 'possibly true' with the caveat that one day I have to identify the source myself.

[tezzer]

I have been with ancestry for quite a number of years i use other sites as well mainly the genealogist but have also tried find my past and my heritage My heritage claimed to access to other peoples trees but its mainly American trees. ...i agree with both of you my own trees have only proven connections on them and i wouldn't add any one with out proving the connection myself ...its not the tree I'm practically interested in its family pictures i have a fairly limited tree due to my own restrictions of only following the male members i only trace the females until there death i don't then trace there children plus I've only been able to prove 100% back to 1822 and I'm not able to prove his family so he is on his own at the moment with no brothers or sisters or mother and father ...which in a way has helped because i have a limited amount of people  to trace  i have managed to contact every one tracing my family tree on the site I'm on and we have shared pictures of our relatives ...but there's two branches with no direct decedents and i have no pictures of any of them (I'm talking about relatives who are now no longer with us and its done with the consent of the original owners)...we have exchanged lots of information and all gained through this co operation, but I've now exhausted the links on my websites and was looking for another which is set up in a similar way so that i could find other members tracing my tree and hopefully find someone tracing those two branches. 

[Erato]

"only following the male members"

Weird,  If you're only going to follow one sex, doesn't it make more sense to follow the females since you can be almost sure that the parent/offspring relationship is correct.  Fathers can be iffy.

[tezzer]

I'm following the name ...which obviously changes once married ...the name is the reason i got into genealogy in the first place ....it was to do with an uncle who had travelled to Ireland to try and find my grandfathers family...he wasn't able to find them although he did say it was a popular Irish family name. so i started tracing the name back ...funny thing is as far as i have got they all come from London 

[jc26red]

If you are only following the male line, I would suggest doing the YDNA test with familytreedna. If you come up with any matches with the same name you can peruse the connection.

[rogerb]

In defence of "other trees" I have definitely found them helpful in the past.  I accept there are a lot of errors out there - I found that out very early on in my Ancestry career.

But I was helped once whilst researching a marriage of a very common name (William Brown) who was from a small Hertfordshire town.  There were so many possibles that I hadn't managed to firm anything up.  Then I saw a tree of the same person showing a Marylebone marriage.  I contacted the tree owner who had the certificate which proved the point.

I also find trees useful where the records have either been mis-transcribed or the original record has been mis-spelled.  Even though I think I am quite good at searching for alternative spellings etc  there are other people out there who have used different search parameters  to find a target.

So I think trees can be a useful tool in the genealogists armoury.

[Maiden Stone]

WikiTree with same caveats as others. Allegedly I was x (40?) number of degrees removed from HM Queen. I quickly found the error so I'm no longer connected to HM.