I made that mistake. The first annoyance was it wanting me to go through 9k people and check them against what was in the tree, but half of the "duplicates" it was showing my had nothing to do with what was in my tree. So, I did a few and gave up for the night. Then, I get up in the morning, and someone has deleted several of the ancestors that I confirmed as not having a duplicate. They claimed I was messing them up and stealing their research, but my person was "Mary Lamb, born 1850" and their person was "Karen Lumb, born 1846" with completely different parents. And this same person went through my tree and deleted several people as duplicates. That had nothing to do with what was already there. Because they didn't even compare, they just got some notice or something that said they might have duplicates and told the system "yep, those new ones are all duplicates." And then a completely different person contacted me because I had a child of a couple that they didn't have, and even though I showed them an obituary, marriage record, census record and birth index with that child in it, they still insisted that it was wrong, even though one or both parents showed up on those records. So, I deleted my gedcom and only use familysearch to look up records and how to find things.
The good thing is you can go back and undelete those people. What they probably did was merge them, since 2016 you can only delete people that you personally entered into FamilySearch and no one else contributed to.
Another reason for not uploading gedcom files to FamilySearch.org is that the website is used best by creating the tree one hint at a time. That way the tree gets documented with all the proper source documents. If you upload an old gedcom file, it very likely didn't have a lot of source citations, and even if it did, it was almost certainly just citations and not copies of the actual documents themselves. The reason FamilySearch.org is the best tree around is that it is directly linked to so many source documents, all for free! Where it gets off into the weeds is generally at the tips of the tree where the data runs out.
Another great comment. Thanks for being apart of our community. We fully agree that FamilySearch is pretty darn awesome because you have to update the tree one person and one record at a time. And any portion of the tree (not just the tips) are full of weeds when the records are available.
THANK YOU. I spend a few hours a month cleaning up duplicates from pointless GEDCOM imports. Honestly FS should flat-out ban imports for people before 1800, especially from the US. It's almost certain that they're already there.
Yes, I have only come across 1 person that I considered recommending they upload their gedcom to familysearch. They were from Syria. In the end, it was better to put the individuals in one at a time and verify the work that their father had done.
I felt cheeky deleting someone else's research which wrongly involved my grandparents in their family so i posted alternative details with evidence attached to prove their true tree and posted the correct details for my tree, leaving a message in the hope the other person would go and correct their posting anyway. 3 years later they have not touched their tree or replied to my message but others are constantly confusing the two trees because of their faulty research. Without version control there should be a way of flagging information as doubtful and redirecting people to alternative data and rating usefullness based on linked source material.
FamilySearch tries to reduce the inaccuracies by having folks work collaboratively on the same tree (rather than so many variations as you've experienced.) It'll take time, but that's part of the journey as genealogists.
@@FamilyHistoryFanatics the other trouble is many of these are published by retirees and you don't even know if they have passed on if there's no recent activity
Thank you very much. As some what of a nubee others (experienced) tell me to add my GEDcom file to other sites. I did upload it a while ago to MY Heritage and I got a load of emails and a load of very questionable info. I am glad I read your info on this subject and I have used other of your videos to find hints and how to use GEDmatch. THANKS.
Glad you watched those videos. THe only site not to upload GEDcoms to is FamilySearch because of the way they designed their platform. You need the GEDcom to share information to MyHeritage, Geni, WIkiTree, etc.
This is the most helpful video of the past 10 years for me. So little about how to do anything but download a GED.com file out there. I want to work with Excel and Access. This confirms my suspicions as a programmer. There is a better way, I know, just haven't settled on it yet. Thank you for making sense here..
Right on man. This is right on target. I had to revolutionize the way I do genealogy now. Getting beyond the gedcom files is getting beyond the breakers so I can get off the Island of Gedcom files and do family history that has never been done before on Family Search. I have an approach that blends technology with traditional methods, and I have been successful.
I almost ventured to have a seminar on it, but the college kept changing the date on me, so, I decided to keep it to myself. I had a meeting with ancestry, but in some ways I was mocked just because I did abbreviated citations on my work, and I had referenced wikipedia for a couple of items that was not deemed scholarly. However, if it was not for the internet and a wikipedia article, and the ease of access, I would have never found out about one of my ancestors. The problem is that what works for one ethnicity will not work for others, since the availability of sources depends so much on geological locale of where your ancestors are from. I just don't know how I would market my methodology since, my methodology seems so eurocentric.I am keeping my methodology as a trade secret right know until I can see if it would even be feasible or worth the trouble.
As a former manager of a database at the Department of Defense, I completely understand what you are saying. Dozens of records for the same person are poison to a database.
Thank you for sharing this, so many people ask me how to upload a gedcom to familysearch family tree. Those that do are always upset afterward. I usually advise against it
Now you can share this video with them. But we hear the same thing all the time. It's the fear. The fear of an open edit tree 'messing my work up.' Folks have to learn that own research is not certain until others review it and come to the same conclusion.
Informative! I can see how all these old GEDCOMs have created enormous numbers of duplicates. Now I know to delete any outdated GEDCOM files that I may have inadvertently uploaded to Family Search. Going forward, I'll focus on adding new people to FSFT but be sure to check for duplicates before creating anyone new.
Ancestry is really easy to accidentally create duplicates on. When you find a record or hint and go to accept it and it asks about adding those people it is usually indicating they are a new person, not just adding new info to an already existing person in your tree. On Ancestry tho, when I notice those, I click on one of the profiles and go to their page and hit the setting icon on the top right corner of the page and hit merge duplicate. Usually the duplicate(s) are already listed and you may have to do it a few times, depending how many duplicates are listed there. Somtimes you know there is one, but some of the info is slightly skewed so it doesn't automatically come up and you have to type in their first name or the alternate spelling that got saved on the duplicate name. Hope that helps. So far, they are the easiest I have found to correct.
If you are a member of the church, the names and information for people's ancestors are already there on familysearch so you don't need to upload your family tree from you GEMCOM file to an online familysearch website.
Do you mean a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? If so, then yes, there is a high probability that your GEDCOM file is already in the FamilySearch Family Tree because part of the 2012 database was created based on user-submitted trees collected by the LDS Church and contributed to the IGI files of the past. And also because the LDS Temple tracking system is part of the FamilySearch Family Tree database.
Very informatIve, I deleted my GEDCOM file from familysearch after watching it. The physical family tree that my mom inherited for one side of her mom's family was done in the late 1950's/1960's so the one thing I can rest assured with is it is not in a GEDCOM file. It is true what you said about the research, what took my 3xgr. aunt probably 3-5 yrs to do by hand and "snail mail" record requests and response would have taken me maybe a year since I could email the records offices in the UK having obtained the correct page and vol. for the birth/marriage/death certificates having searched their database online.
You deleted your GEDCom from the genealogies on FamilySearch? I thought that was semi-permanent while the family tree was changing as folks find new discoveries.
I’m a member at Geni, which competes with FamilySearch on the “one tree” concept. Geni ended up prohibiting GEDCOM uploads - probably for the same reason that you cited. I manually added the most recent 400 years or so of my direct ancestry to Geni...and then later discovered that many of the profiles were duplicates and had to merge them. 😔 Yeah. And duplicates are the bane of Geni, as they are of any crowdsourced “one tree” genealogy platform.
Thanks for your insight. I haven't used that platform but finding duplicates can be fun and frustrated. Fun because we're collaborating. Frustrating because we're collaborating. ,🙃
I have a family tree maker but all I do is sync it with ancestry and I don't know anything about all those computer files! I don't even try and mess with them except to back them up before syncing.
The problem is that GEDCOM is not a "standard". It's more of a guideline that gives software makers a lot of leeway in their final product, usually depending on a desired price point. Notes, sources and descriptions are the best examples of the chaos it can bring.
Is there a way to maintain them all, not really. Can you upload GEDcom files from your computer to Findmypast, Ancestry, MyHeritage, Geni, WikiTree, and others. Absolutely. FamilySearch is unique because it wants to build one world tree, which means building it one person at a time. There are so many duplicates in the tree already. Does that make sense?
@@FamilyHistoryFanatics Thx I was wondering if there was a desktop genealogy program that can update multiple sites FamilySearch is not unique - Geni & Wikitree also uses the one world tree model
I was just about to upload my GEDCOM to familysearch.org prior to taking a break from my long-term ancestry subscription. Thank you for this information explaining GEDCOM files so that I could make an educated decision NOT to upload GEDCOM files. As a 40 year researcher your information makes sense. There is a lot of flotsam and jetsam out there making online research more difficult as we navigate outdated and erroneous information.
I have made all my ancestry.com trees private because I became tired of seeing pictures of my relatives copied to other people's trees even though they were totally unrelated. Yes, they sometimes matched a surname in that tree. But they were not relatives.
I understand the problem with folks 'stealing' relatives photos rather than linking to your tree and the images there in. Instead of privatizing my tree, I reduce the number of photos I share. I still want to collaborate but folks don't need everything I have. Yet, should I die and my children decide not to carry on my research, the research is available for the next genealogist to pick up where I left off.
Sorry to hear that. Unfortunately, many people are correcting the tree. Last night I sorted 4 generations and 30 people who were incorrectly merged. It stems from three men named Samuel Ranck. Two married women named Elizabeth and on married a Susannah. The three Samuels were born in Pennsylvania at the same time, but they were separate individuals. On FamilySearch and Ancestry, they were merged together. Only on FamilySearch could I sort them out. I'm glad I could change the tree in hopes the changes will stick. On Ancestry, there is no chance of getting people to change their tree.
Keep your own information on your own computer (or thumb drive) using PAF 5 or a newer program. Backup your data onto CD at least monthly, and save a backup copy on your hard drive at the end of every day of editing. You can't have too many backup copies if they are all dated. If you want, you can also put a frozen copy of your tree on rootsweb.ancestry.com for free and it will be searchable by you and others but not editable. Also put the information on FamilySearch.org for any person who is not there already, and correct any misinformation that is there. But don't upload more than a nuclear family at a time in a gedcom file. Add sources and notes as appropriate to let people know that your information is correct and where you got it from so they can verify it. Be careful to remove as many duplicates as possible, but be careful to make sure they are true duplicates. When in doubt, leave it as is for a more skilled/knowledgeable person to sort out. Be aware that someone can come along behind you and "correct" it incorrectly, sometimes disastrously. Despite that disadvantage, FamilySearch.org is still the most valuable genealogy resource available and you should make full use of it.
You shouldn't hate it, another researcher may have found very valuable sourced information. If you have repeated problems with someone changing your tree without sourced info, you can report that person as abusing the website.
If you are a member of the church, I think the names and the information are already there and already taken to the temple so you don't need to upload you GEMCOM file of your family tree to familysearch family tree website.
I went back far enough thru years of personal research by interviewing family and receiving treasured family documents, drilling thru microfilms, sucking dry relative history books. I'm mostly English, some Scot, Irish, and Welch mixed in, and thankful for my Italian ancestors for my complexion. GED MATCH; who knows what or who is behind it. We know Doctor Mengele has to be dead.
Hi, I'm just curious, what significance does genealogy have to people of the church of LDS. Reasons other than those other people have. I ask because I've heard mention of the church multiple times in connection to family trees.
Several scriptures inspire LDS church members to seek after their ancestors: Malachi 4:5-6 5 "Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord: And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse." Tie that to LDS additional cannon Doctrine & Covenants 128:15.. "that they without us cannot be made perfect-neither can we without our dead be made perfect." These and other scriptures tie to the concept of eternal families and the need to link families together through genealogy research. If you have further doctrinal questions, we would refer you to Mormon.org.
They also do the baptism of the dead, since a lot of people's ancestors haven't been baptized by the LDS church they believe they can do a stand in baptism for them. They do this because they believe that only the mormon church has the authority to baptize and that their ancestors won't go to heaven without it.
There are some points that you share that are accurate and others that are inaccurate. We'll refer you to Mormon.org for sorting through which is which.
Here's the problem I am having, a family member keeps and updates the tree on his computer. Then he will import his tree onto a CD with a GEDCOM file. The website I am using only updates the data with a Gedcom file. The problem is familytree maker 2017 will not export a gedcom file. therefore we can't update our website. I am missing around 2,000 names.
I appreciate what you are saying, but I must be missing a bit of information to process it with, because I don't fully get it. Sites like My Heritage and other sites encourage to upload your Gedcom. Why is that? I agree the old ones should be taken off. Is this advice specific only to Family Search? Love the site btw. But, doing a tree on there seems tedious.
Yes, it is specific to Family Search because they use a one world tree concept. For sites that you have your own tree, it doesn't matter about uploading.
Standards? I'm not sure I understand how you're using the term. If you mean facts and resources conflicting, then in the Genealogy Proof Standard (the methodology for doing research) has steps 3 and 4 as: 3. analysis and correlation of the collected information; 4. resolution of any conflicting evidence So, the 20 year old data and the new data must be analyzed, correlated and any conflictions must be resolved.
When my parents were doing genealogy back in the 90's, they were instructed by the church to keep their own records which I thought at the time was backwards, if they were really interested in promoting genealogy. They could of had only one database that everyone has access to. But to have the database updated, the information would have to go through rigorous examination to make sure there were no duplicate or errors. That way everyone could submit information to make light work for everyone, and only one database that everyone has access to. It sounds like everyone is still being taught to squirrel away their own information.
Many people are still in that mindset. In some cases, having a backup copy of your database is good research practice. If someone makes a huge mistake, you can go back and fix it. However, there is one HUGE tangle that I'm about to unravel that's been perpetuated for decades. If people keep submitting their GECOMs with the inaccurate relationships, then we're kicking at pricks instead of extended the family tree in many different directions. In time, keeping a backup but working collectively may become the standard operating procedure. It's not there now.
If you are really dedicated to genealogy, you might look into creating your own data base using blockchain technology that covers everyone's genealogy using open source. You might make it into a business that makes you money while superseding the old way of doing things.
I've attempted to create a database back in the 1990s when I worked for the DFW airport. It was challenging and not my talent. Our talent lies in education, but we may support others you develop a service like you suggested.
There's not really any need to resort to blockchain technology. FamilySearch.org already keeps track of who makes what changes to the database, so if you find that something was changed in error you can go back and pick up the better data. Despite the problems, FamilySearch.org still has the best global tree around, and all its information is totally free! Make maximal use of FamilySearch.org, then save off your portion of the tree in your own database on your own computer. As new information becomes available, update both and save backups of your data.
The LDS Church doesn't have an opinion. FamilySearch has stopped accepting Gedcoms files into the main tree but allows folks to upload their Gedcoms for preservation purposes. FamilySearch has to nudge change so that it will happen, thus, the prevention of adding Gedcoms whole cloth to the tree but allowing uploading of Gedcoms in a separate location. It's a balancing act.
If you're truly a beginner, find a local Family History Center in your area. There are volunteers who would love to get you started. www.familysearch.org/help/fhcenters/locations/
They need a new standard using either xml or json. Things like events should be an array. Everything should be quite flexible. IT is not that hard to figure out what it should look like. I really do not know why they do not just sit down and do it over a day or 2. It really should not be that hard.
I created my family tree on Family Search and I put theese people on RootsMagic to create a GEDCOM file that I upload on MyHeritage and GEDMatch. I would like to know how to separete the tree, because of people already connected. If I delete and re-upload, I'll need to reconnect all of them again.
@@FamilyHistoryFanatics on RootsMagic7. I'm not from that Church, my family is not rich and I only know at most 5 generations upon me. When I find a family member, I connect by FS. But I don't like to edit them, 'cause I think it's a pleasure of the profile creator.
@@FamilyHistoryFanatics I want to separate the families 'cause if my MH profile become too big, I only delete the family aggregates (that's how I call them), like cousins of grandparents, fathers-in-law, etc. I like to add them when I find some document at FS, 'cause it's a way to find easily documents of my blood relatives but also it's a way to help other people in the future.
@@FamilyHistoryFanatics I made my DNA test on MH and I'm still waiting the test results. My doubt is when I connect the relatives, can I delete and re-upload the tree? I think it's unpolite. So, when I edit something on my FS tree, I need to edit the tree on MH and on GEDMatch. That's why I want to separate the tree branches.
If I export a GedCom from my software (GRAMPS) date formats are changed from what I use (ISO standrad example 1977-10-03) to american standard (Oct 03 1977) and I cant do anything about it.
I wish that FamilySearch.org would accept dates in any reasonable format, translate to one standard format, and then let you choose as a personal preference how you want them to be displayed for you. It should keep them all in one invisible internal format and then automatically translate to your preferred format even if that is different from the format used by whoever entered it. I've told them this, but they need to hear the same thing from lots of other users. Same goes for place names. People have lots of different standards, especially in how they want names abbreviated. The solution they came up with is very poor. What is displayed may not match what is being used internally, and the mechanism is manual and not automatic.
I like the date suggestion. It's frustrating that there is no standard across platforms, but I think you're touching on a solution. Internally companies/services can have their own standard. On the user side, we can have whichever format we prefer. I'm not a programmer so I don't know how hard this is, but I think that would make the transference of information between platforms improve. As for the place names, I'm not a fan of abbreviations - Frank Co, Franklin Co, Franklin County, Franklin (no county) is insanely confusing (as it was on the old paper forms). I do like RootsMagic that will 'yell' at me when I attempt to use a location that wasn't in existence at the time an event I'm inputting occurred. I could use a 'standard' but I really like to see how Lincoln, Ontario, Canada changed from Upper Canada to Canda West before becoming Canada. There's definitely room for improvement on the locality.
The date suggestion is very easy to program. The place thing is harder. Especially since names and even borders changes. In Sweden entire provinces can be merged, split, or even scraped for a new one. Do I name a place after what they are named NOW, or after what they were named THEN?
Oh, I love your thoughts on the date. I personally like the date, month and year with the Month completely spelled out. It drives me nuts that every program I see shortens the month to three letters. Hello, Jan, Jun and Jul as well as May and Mar are very easy to mix up, just write it out. As far as location programs keeps taking out the county or township when I put them in. And that annoys me. I may know that something took place in Monroe, Ohio, but Monroe the city and Monroe the county are very different. But Ancestry and Rootsmagic and even Family Search don't give you that option. And on that note and city and a township are not they same. I don't get what is so hard about wanting to acknowledge that.
@@FamilyHistoryFanatics I still don't get it. I want to save all my ancestry.com research onto a jump drive but there doesn't seem to be any info on this--maybe it is not possible to do. All I hear is download from ancestry, then upload to 'another system.' I do not know what that means. I tried familysearch, and I see some of my people are numbered which I presume is LDS ID. I do not want to share any of my info just yet. What platform may I use to copy ancestry info to something private or to a jump drive? Thanks.
A billion people is not a lot... there have been nearly 200 billion people who have lived. So there’s only a 0.5% chance the ancestor you are looking for is there.
Very true. And a large percentage of the 200 billion people who have lived have no records recording their existence. So, yes, there's a great chance that they won't be found in the database or anywhere else for that matter.
Family History Fanatics even if we ignoring everyone who's ever lived and focus sololy on the people alive today. 1 billion is not alot. Add the last 200 years and it still barely scratches the surface.
@@FamilyHistoryFanatics Granted however viewing the "tree" on family search, it is full of errors so far as my family is concerned. My GEDCOM is updated with the correct data. Conflicts between the tree and user files should be flagged. If you assume the tree is unquestionably correct it will forever remain incorrect. Just saying. There are ways to correct this at the server but to do nothing is not much of a solution. It is not my gig however, I am just a casual user interested in my own tree.
If you use a 3-Party App, the conflicting data is flagged and you have the ability to make changes to the software or the FamilySearch family tree. There still should be human involvement to make the final decision on what is accurate and what isn't (and then inform others with explanations for that determination in the 'reason to change' boxes). Otherwise, the computers will be in a constant loop of changing a central tree because of conflicting inputs.
@@AmericaAndAllies It's kind of confusing. Lots of data on the tree are people with "abt" on the dates or someone who forget to put "abt" in an estimated date. But: you know a lot of ancestors have several children with the same name (one or two years apart). How is a program going to solve this? When you search for duplicates in your tree in PAF or any other computer program, you see there's a lot of matches that are different people. And the same happens with your contact list on your cellphone: my husband tried to clean his contact list. Maybe (he can remember) he or someone who was helping him merge "duplicates" automatically and he ends up with two different people with the same first name and different last name together in one. Automatization is one of the best way to create a mess. Of course there are a lot of information to correct and people trying to help without knowlege is not really helping, but the way to solve it is having an army of people fixing one duplicate at a time. With our technology, if you can create your own tree in less than a year, you can correct the branch of your tree in less than a year. But: someone has to put some order in this and lead the change.
@@constanza1648 Nothing good is easy. It would take some time to analyze the problem and I am not being paid to do it. The first thing that would come to mind would be prioritizing the legitimacy of associated documentation. For example, if someone applies for SS benefits, that would probably rise above say a marriage documented only in a book. If two sources (like two people out on the Internet) submit conflicting date or data for the same person, there should be a conflict icon posted to indicate such. If someone can provide a traceable document to prove one way or another the conflict can be resolved. The duplicate person problem could be addressed by centralizing all conflicting data into a central record then associate the duplicates for resolution. If there are 10 duplicates that likely all point to the same person, they should be identified as such and not be allowed to be duplicate instances (often incorrect) to be floating around and replicated. There are ways to do all of this, it just takes a dedicated team of software developers to address the problem. From what I see, including at Ancestry and elsewhere, is to just throw up the hands and let the bogus data be replicated and copied, irrespective of legitimate source data. These are all interesting problems but again, volunteers can only do so much. People being paid to maintain the software at all of these websites and databases should be the ones doing the task. These are obvious technical issues. This will get cleaned up by some site, sooner or later, when they get serious about the problems. Until then, expect lots of junk data floating around.
I uploaded my 23&me data onto my heritage, is that a gedcom file? I have no idea because it didn't say what type of file it is. I just clicked on download raw data. Also, is it better to upload your data as a zip file?
The DNA file is a text file that should have been in a zip file. You want to upload the data as a zip file otherwise they won't be able to read it. A gedcom file is a format for documenting your family tree (not DNA). You can create your own gedcom file from an Ancestry tree or another software like Rootsmagic. That can also be uploaded to MyHeritage. Once you have a tree (gedcom file) and your DNA uploaded, then you can link your DNA to your tree.
can i get the most correct information like the birth certificate from any country which my ancestors were born as being their descendants? are those archives open ?
Wow... there is a lot to unpack here. - No one record will have the most correct information, including a birth certificate. You want as many records as possible to establish a fact and even then accuracy can be questionable. Can you get a record from any country? Not necessarily. First, you need to know if that country (or county within a country) created such documents for the time your ancestor's life events happened. Every country (and county) has differences in how and when they kept records). If records were created, then you have to consider the laws governing accessibility to such records. Again, every location is different. In short, it's difficult to answer your question with anything other than it depends on the time your are researching, the location you are researching, and the legal access to records, if they were created in the first place.
Ha! You're the first to comment on Andy's shirts. We were going to have him wear different shirts from the colleges he's visited. He's a huge Texas A&M fan, but we've visited colleges and bought the shirt. So.... you never know. He might wear another college's shirt in the future.
GEDcom should not be confused with GEDmatch. GEDcom is a file type for storing genealogical information. It is useful for transferring between programs. What we don't advocate in this video is uploading GEDcom files to Family Search Family Tree.
This video is about uploading gedcom files to FamilySearch. It can't be done. But, to get your family tree into other platforms, you migrate the Gedcom from FamilySearch (or other programs/services) to GEDmatch and the like. It would be lovely (perhaps) if we could migrate without the GEDcom file step, but that's the way things are.
This video is talking about gedcom files which are not related to DNA. Although you can upload gedcoms to GEDmatch (which I recommend) I don't want you uploading them to FamilySearch Family Tree
