Are Online Family Trees a Substitute for a Local Desktop Genealogy Program?

For some genealogists, online family trees are anathema. I am guessing, but the number of genealogists who abhor online family trees is probably only an insignificant, tiny percentage of the "genealogists" who have their family tree online. With over 71.5 million members on MyHeritage.com alone, plus the millions more on Ancestry.com and other online family trees claiming huge numbers, such as Geni.com with over 77 million, it is more than obvious that online family trees are "genealogy" to most people interested in their ancestry.

So why the antipathy towards family trees? Errors and bad genealogy. Right now I am looking at my Geni.com family tree, for example. Here is a screenshot for illustrative purposes:

The arrow points to a suggested invitee to help "complete my family tree." The name, identified as a "great uncle" is Ralph Carum Tanner who is further identified as a "son of Henry Martin Tanner and Eliza Ellen Tanner." This claimed individual is well known to me because he does not exist. I have searched every possible record and no one by that name exists. I am also extremely well aware with elaborate documentation of each of the children of Henry and Eliza Tanner. He is not their child, if he exists. How do you get rid of this type of unsupported information? The answer is that this fictitious person now lives in hundreds of family trees online.

Apparently this core problem with family tree programs is no disincentive to the millions of online users. So, one of the most common reasons given for having your own independent desktop genealogy program is to provide a "clean" copy of your pedigree so that when the rogue online family tree users start messing up everything, you have someplace to go to get "good" information. This reasoning is based entirely on the idea that the genealogist making this point is always and completely right. What if each and everyone of these millions of online family tree users had all of their data in their own program. What difference would that make to the accuracy of the overall online family trees?

How would everyone having their own program on their own computer help with the accuracy of the existing online family trees? Wouldn't the desktop programs simply mimic the online family trees? I believe they would. The hard core genealogists take the position that they are right and all the online folks are wrong. This may or may not be true. Let's suppose I have my genealogy in three or four online programs. Isn't that back up enough? Why do I need another copy of the same information on my own computer? Especially if I don't know enough about genealogy to tell if there is a fictitious person in one of my families.

Technically, you could define genealogy to the point that your were the sole person on the earth who was a qualified genealogist. I think those who consider themselves to be genealogists are going to need a new way to "prove" that a person needs a local desktop genealogy program.

Back up your genealogical data files -- a reasoned approach

The recent Denial of Service attack at Ancestry.com and FindAGrave.com point out the vulnerability of the Internet yet in again in a very graphic manner. Although this attack is over, there is nothing stopping another such attack at another time and place on the Internet. During the past few years, the "Cloud" a euphemism for the Internet or Web, has been touted as a solution to individual backup challenges. It turns out that storing your data online is subject to some of the same risks as any other method of data storage. It is time to evaluate each type of storage media as to its merits and limitations.

A computer system consists of several integral parts that work together. Traditionally, the computer hardware consisted of a CPU (Central Processing Unit) chip on a board with other processors, a power supply, connecting cables called busses, perhaps a fan, a memory storage device and box to put it all in. Then you start adding things like keyboards, a mouse or pointing device and you have a computer system. Today, all of that can be packaged in a smartphone. I am focusing on storage. We moved from recording tape in cassettes or on spools to floppy disks to hard disks to flash or solid-state memory in just a few short years. At the same time, there were all sorts of variations including hard drive cassettes and CDs and DVDs. Where are we today?

As genealogists, unfortunately we are all over the board. We have a core of people who are still holding on to their floppy disk storage and we have those who use the latest and best storage methods.

Now a word about the "Cloud." There is no magic place to store your information called the "Cloud." The cloud is nothing more or less than a bunch of computers with hard drives attached. So when you are storing your data "on the cloud," you are really just using someone's computer and hard drive, usually in a huge array of computers called a server farm, like the one pictured above. Now, these computers are subject to all the same failure possibilities of your own computer in your own home. The difference is that they have people working 24/7 to replace the computers and hard drives as they fail. They keep the backups. But what if the whole server farm fails? Exactly the problem. The key to safety is redundancy or in other words, multiple backups.

The same rule holds true whether you are storing photos on a smartphone or genealogy on your computer's internal hard drive. You need to have multiple copies of your data on different storage devices. All of this costs money. But you always have to place a value on the time it has taken you to accumulate your data. I have people come to me crying because they lost their data. Upon questioning them, it turns out they have 40 or 50 names (or some other very limited amount) of data and are devastated because of the prospect reconstructing those 50 names. Think of the real world where people like me have more than 3 Terabytes of data and over 300,000 files accumulated over the last 32 years. How do we back up this data?

Here is where we are today.

A 4 TB (Terabyte) hard drive cost just $150 on Amazon.com. That is how I backup my data. I have multiple hard drives and make copies on each. But what would happen if a meteorite hit my home (or something more predictable)? I make periodic copies of all the data on another hard drive and give a copy to one or more of my children. How often do I back up? Every time I think about the effort it would take to reproduce all that data.

Even if you don't have this massive problem, the answer is the same. You back up your data on multiple drives and keep them in multiple places. I don't rely on Cloud storage so much because of the massive amount of data I have and the cost to keep it online. I do use Internet or Cloud storage for some types of data, particularly those items I use regularly on a variety of computers.

What are the hardware options? Hard drives are still the most cost-effective way to store computer data. Flash drives (thumb drives whatever) are reliable and convenient. If your data fits on a flash drive, go with it. But they are easy to misplace so be careful. Flash drives may someday replace hard drives (mechanical spinning media) but that is still a ways off. CDs and DVDs? They are still a way to backup data but they are slow and limited in size. They are also on their way out. Most new computers are not being made with CD or DVD drives, this is always an indication of the end of a particular form of storage.

What about storing data online (the Cloud)? Good idea but not any more reliable than hard drives or flash drives. The best idea is to use more than one method and make sure the copies are in more than one place. I use all these types of storage for different reasons at different times. I have hard drives (very large ones). I have flash drives (very large ones). I have CDs and DVDs but I am transitioning away from them as fast as I can. I have some storage online but balance the availability against the cost and the size of my storage needs.

Gathering feathers from the wind

The analogy between gossip, untruth, lies and other undesirable communications has been compared to feathers scattered into the wind. They are impossible to retrieve. The principle is often illustrated in the form of a "folk tale" where a wise man is correcting one who is less wise or inexperienced. I am certain that genealogists and would-be family historians do not intentionally go out of their way to spread undesirable communications, but the the "feathers to the wind" analogy works well with poorly done research reported in online family trees.

I have been working with FamilySearch.org Family Tree since it was introduced. It has the promise of being a unified family tree program with great potential to quell rumors, gossip, lies and undesirable communication involving genealogy. But the task of retrieving all those "feathers" is almost overwhelming. I mentioned in my other blog, Rejoice, and be exceeding glad..., that I had been looking at my Mayflower passengers lines. Here are the basics about the Mayflower passengers.

One of the older lineage organizations in the United States, The General Society of Mayflower Descendants, usually called "The Mayflowers Society," was founded in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1897. Membership in the Society is open to the following:

Anyone who arrived in Plymouth as a passenger on the Mayflower is considered a Pilgrim, with no distinction being made on the basis of their original purposes for making the voyage. Proven lineage from a passenger, approved by a Historian General, qualifies one to be a member of the General Society of Mayflower Descendants.

 Technically, the "Pilgrims" were not all religiously motivated. The Society describes the group as follows:

The group of 102 passengers who crowded aboard Mayflower for the crossing was not homogenous. Many of the passengers were members of the Leiden congregation, but they were joined by a number of English families or individuals who were hoping to better their life situations, or were seeking financial gain. These two general groups have sometimes been referred to as the "saints" and "strangers". 

Although the Leiden congregation had sent its strongest members with various skills for establishing the new colony, nearly half of the passengers died the first winter of the "great sickness."

All of the survivors have been extremely well documented. I would guess that there has been a huge investment in time and money in the research of this relatively small group of survivors. The information available about the surviving families is very specific and extensively documented. For a list of the passengers who died see Wikipedia:List of Mayflower passengers who died in the winter of 1620-21. Only 57 Pilgrims survived the first winter.

I have visited the Mayflower Society Library in Plymouth, Massachusetts and I am reasonably well acquainted with the extensive research on these families. If you are interested see The Plymouth Colony Archive Project.

The Mayflower Society has compiled a set of books documenting the descendancy of each of the surviving passengers for five generations. We refer to this set of books as the "Silver Books" because of their silver colored binding. Unfortunately, these books were published at different times and different editions and it is difficult to get a complete citation for the entire set. Here are citations to the books about one of my ancestors for an example:

Wakefield, Robert S., and Ralph V. Wood. Francis Cooke of the Mayflower and His Descendants for Four Generations. Plymouth, MA (4 Winslow St., Plymouth 02361): General Society of Mayflower Descendants, 1987.

Wood, Ralph V. Francis Cooke of the Mayflower: The First Five Generations. Camden, Maine: Picton Press, 1996.

Now, contrary to most "surname books" these particular books are extensively documented and sourced. Any changes to the research because of "new discoveries" is generally reported in the American Genealogist  or the Mayflower Society publications. There are other societies and organizations involved in this particular area of research.

Now, here is the point. FamilySearch.org Family Tree shows the chaotic mess that the thousands of unexperienced, careless, and I must say perverse researchers have made of the rather simple task of ascertaining the identity and lineage of the Mayflower passengers and descendants. One example is Philip Taber who married Mary Cooke, the daughter of Mayflower passenger John Cooke and his wife Sarah Warren, the daughter of Mayflower passenger Richard Warren. Presently, Family Tree shows 21 duplicates and separate "marriages" for Philip Taber. The program refuses to show the correct information, even if I mark it preferred. There are a multitude of duplicates for Mary Cooke and at least five duplicates showing for her grandfather Francis Cooke. In fact, John Cooke is shown as his own father. Remember, this is all documented extensively in the Silver Books and elsewhere. 

Is there really anyway to reconcile and untangle this mess? As I have indicated, there is no controversy about the facts. All of these differing "opinions" in Family Tree are entirely lacking sources. No one thought to look at the Silver Books and obtain documented information. As yet, I cannot reconcile this mess because the program will not recognize merges and people keep changing the information faster than I can put it into the program. 

There may come a day when we can see our way to gathering the feathers, but is still a long way off. 

Hello Utah!

We moved our computers to our new (to us) home in Provo, Utah and that is where we are now. Goodbye to Mesa for now. Our house is still for sale in Mesa so if you know someone who needs a nice house it is on Trulia and Zillow at 3340 E. Fountain Street in Mesa, Arizona.

Our phone numbers and email will all remain the same.

Looking forward to working in the BYU Family History Library on the Brigham Young University Campus in the Harold B. Lee Library. Really sad about leaving all my friends in Mesa at the Mesa FamilySearch Library. No time for tears, too much work to do to move in completely. The usual house full of boxes.

FamilySearch Webinar now online

The Webinar I presented on 18 June 2014 is now up online as a webcast. You can get to the webcast on the Mesa FamilySearch Library website. Here is a screenshot showing you the link to the webcasts with a big red arrow:

There are two gliches in the recording, but I think everything came through intact. There are about 60 recorded webcasts on this site. You may find a lot to interest you. Here is a link directly to the webcasts.

Technology, Denial of Service and Genealogy

I was in the middle of teaching a class that involved an online connection to Ancestry.com when it stopped working. As it is with most technology issues, they just happen without any warning. Screens go dark. Systems shut down and online life comes to a halt.

When I was very young, we lived in a really small town way out in Eastern Arizona. Electricity was something that came and went with the storms of Summer. Sometimes the storm was far away and sometimes close by. I remember one time the electricity went off while I was at a movie in the "downtown" section, about a half a mile or so from our house. This happened regularly and usually, we would all sit there for a while until the lights came back on. Finally, someone from the movie theater would show up with a flashlight and we would all file out onto the dark street.

It was a cloudy night with no moon and it was so dark, I could not see my feet. In our world today, it is hard to imagine how dark it can be when there is no artificial light. I knew the way home and when I started up the hill to our house, the only way I could keep going up the hill was to put one foot on the pavement and one foot on the gravel and "feel" the edge of the road. I will always remember how dark it was. This was one experience of hundreds when I have had a power outage. In our house we had flashlights and kerosene lanterns for backup.

Today, we take basic electrical service and even all of our connected appliances for granted. But if we think about it. It only takes one big storm to turn off all the electricity to wide areas of the world. Power outages are a fact of life.

Back to Ancestry.com. It took me only a few minutes to determine that Ancestry.com was the only program not working. So, I did what I have always done, ignored the problem and made due without the connection. Since I was busy teaching classes and helping patrons at the Mesa FamilySearch Library, I didn't have time to get online and investigate for a while. When I did, I posted a short notice about the problem and went on with other activities, including presenting a Webinar.

Again at the Webinar, I was reminded of the limitations of technology. The system went down two or three times and had to be restarted during the presentation. As usual, I ignored the problem and went on presenting and answering questions for those who were physically present at the presentation. Ultimately, we got back online and I finished up. The final presentation was saved and will be online shortly.

These incidents illustrate an important and fundamental principle for genealogists. More and more, we depend on technology. But technology is fickle. Our systems are infinitely more complex than the simple electrical circuits of my youth, but they are just a vulnerable to the same consequences as the lights in our small town. Today, it may be a Denial of Service or DoS attack by a misguided and anti-social miscreant, but it could just have well have been a storm, earthquake, lightning or whatever. If you want to know more about a Denial of Service attack, look at this article in Wikipedia. We may not be aware of all the iterations of these almost random attacks but the consequences are real.

So what is the lesson here? We aren't that far removed from the power failures of my youth. We talk about backing up our data and that usually means putting it in more than one location and more than one format. But there is an even more basic lesson here. We need to understand the technology to the extent that when we do our "backups" we are not just moving the data from one vulnerable storage location to another. We need to think about what we need to realistically preserve and make sure that there are copies of that information in more than just one or two locations. Perhaps this means we publish our data both in print and online. Perhaps this means that we make sure other people have access to all our files and keep them supplied with new information. Perhaps we need to spend some time thinking about whether or not we are prepared to have the lights go out.

A Very Interesting Development in FamilySearch Family Tree

My friend Diane Miller called the following entry in FamilySearch.org Family Tree to my attention. I have to do the screenshot in more than one stage. I am blocking out part of the information, just in case this indicates some kind of family feud.

You have to look carefully at the family outlined on the right-hand side of the screen to understand the full impact of the statement above:

It keeps going on:

Notice that there are no sources, yet. We can only imagine why this particular entry was chosen for the imposition of Read Only status. It looks like there might have been a measure of unsourced disagreement over the content. I can only say, that this is a good sign. I have a whole list of people who should be read only in my own family. But I would prefer it was done after I had added all the sources. We have been told that FamilySearch will take this step in some cases and here is proof positive that they are taking this program seriously. If you want to fight about your ancestors go somewhere else to do the fighting.

By the way, it would take me about ten minutes or so to fix this entry, assuming I had some source to go on.