Wikitree

[JohnR65]

Yes there seems to be some tree owners who think they're related to Royalty!

 

[JohnR65]

I've just looked at wiki tree's comparison's with my tree and found so far quite a few that although they have the same names do not match my tree and a lot of them are American but on the other hand there are a few that do match, so I guess I could compare notes with the owners.

 

[Pauline]

Yes there seems to be some tree owners who think they're related to Royalty!

Not only that, but there seems to be a strong belief among certain people that everyone in England before about 1600 was titled and/or descended from royalty, which is probably a consequence of there being more surviving records for the "posh" than for ordinary folk. An awful lot of people have been retrospectively knighted by some modern researchers!

The other belief is that England is such a tiny place that there couldn't possibly be more than one person of a particular name having children at the same time, so if (for example) you have a John Smith having children in Cornwall in the early 1600s he absolutely must be the same John Smith having children in Northumberland.

 

[JohnR65]

They've just emailed me to say: There are now 36 million profiles on our shared tree. Thank you for helping us reach another milestone! Must be closing on Ancestry?

 

[canadianbeth]

ome people can be very persistent in their mistaken ideas, though, usually when they’ve found a titled family with the same surname elsewhere in England, and are unwilling to let go of their imagined link to these titled families.

This is what I have seen in some of my husband's information. His 3rd great-grandmother was Letitia Nelson, born abt 1787, in Ireland. Some have her father as Lord Nelson. I suppose he could have slipped over to Ireland in his late teens but I am not putting him into my husband's tree.
Others have her father listed as Reverend Nelson. That far back, in Ireland, I have found no real information at all. Nor from his 3rd great-father.

 

[Pauline]

Back to Wikitree, and it seems not everything is sourced. Looking at one line of my ancestors, under sources, it says “Unsourced family tree handed down to {member}”.

I’m not so sure about the “handed down” bit, since most of the tree information has been “lifted off” my own genealogy website (not necessarily by the member concerned), but the point here is that it seems you can upload unsourced trees.

 

[peter]

They've just emailed me to say: There are now 36 million profiles on our shared tree. Thank you for helping us reach another milestone! Must be closing on Ancestry?

It depends what a profile is. Ancestry has over 100 million trees. If a profile is an individual, then Wikitree is far closer to LostCousins than Ancestry.

 

[Pauline]

It depends what a profile is

As far as I can tell, a profile is an individual within the collaborative tree, so (using your figures) a long way short of Ancestry.

That said, having delved further, it could easily compete with Ancestry (and FamilySearch) in terms of the level of fiction and fantasy included. The same (mis)information shows up at all the major tree sites, and I sometimes wonder who first dreamed up what can only be described as utter rubbish.

Of course, just like at Ancestry and elsewhere there are some well researched and accurate profiles too, but as long as trees on other sites are accepted as a valid source, misinformation is inevitably going to spread from site to site. Nothing I've seen so far leads me to believe, that as far as accuracy in concerned, Wikitree fares any better than Ancestry or FamilySearch.

 

[peter]

 

[Kate]

Obviously he should have got it right, but I have lots of 1939 records on my private tree and thought that was necessary for finding DNA matches. I understand that some people use wiki as their only tree ( not a good idea ) so maybe that's why.

 

[peter]

Obviously he should have got it right, but I have lots of 1939 records on my private tree and thought that was necessary for finding DNA matches.

You don't need to have a tree. let alone any records attached to your tree, to find DNA matches. DNA matches are based entirely on DNA.

Attaching a tree will enable Ancestry to suggest how matches are connected to you (via Common Ancestors) and occasionally suggest who an unknown ancestor was (via ThruLines). But attaching sources to your tree will make no difference.

Attaching a private tree to your DNA results will do little or nothing to help your cousins. Attaching a public direct ancestors-only (as I have done) enables them to see who your ancestors were and when and where they lived.

 

[Pauline]

Referring to Peter’s post #29, anyone can legitimately add any of their relatives (however distant) to any online tree, the only restriction usually being that living people must be kept private. It certainly would be better if people checked the information before adding it (but many people only ever check original records if they can do so for free), though one advantage of a collaborative tree like wikitree is that you can at least get it corrected.

It’s not that I don’t sympathise with the person writing those comments, and I know how I felt many years ago on discovering my parents (then still living) in someone’s online tree. However, it’s always going to happen as our relatives are not only our relatives (otherwise what would be the point of Lost Cousins?). We should today be able to address the issue of living relatives not being kept private, and beyond that do our best to get misinformation corrected.

 

[Kate]

Although ancestry will suggest how a DNA match links into my tree, I like to check the record myself. Often the descendants have a totally different family name from that in my direct ancestors tree. I have followed advice to have a public direct ancestors tree but the one on my computer is more extensive.
I have had a couple of matches where I don't agree the line of descent and believe the match is descending from another close family member of the same name. As they are distant matches I think this is possible. I won't change my tree to match thru lines and other trees if I think their ancestor died in infancy. I would rather make my own mistakes than copy other people's.

 

[peter]

Referring to Peter’s post #29, anyone can legitimately add any of their relatives (however distant) to any online tree, the only restriction usually being that living people must be kept private.

But they are NOT his relatives, not even distant relatives - if they were, he would have been able to take my tree back more than three generations, and there would be some overlap with his own tree.

 

[peter]

Although ancestry will suggest how a DNA match links into my tree, I like to check the record myself.

Absolutely, they are only hints, and should be checked like any other hints.

Common Ancestors hints are based entirely on trees, often including the trees of people who are not DNA matches (or have not tested). The main difference is that because there is a DNA match you can be pretty certain that you are related somehow.

 

[Pauline]

But they are NOT his relatives, not even distant relatives - if they were, he would have been able to take my tree back more than three generations, and there would be some overlap with his own tree.

Sorry, since your earlier post was an image, it wasn’t clear you were the writer. I guess it may be like Findagrave in that respect - people just add whatever records they come across (legitimately or otherwise) regardless of whether they are related or not. I don’t know if Wikitree contributors likewise get rated according to how many profiles they add.

 

[Sue_3]

When Ancestry search for Common Ancestors and ThruLines hints they look at ALL searchable trees, private or public, which is why I often get a Common Ancestors connection with someone who only has 3 or 4 people in their tree. I doubt it makes any difference to Ancestry whether you connect your complete tree to your DNA results or do what I have done. My focus is on making life easier for my cousins....

The disadvantage of connecting a private tree to your DNA results is that your cousins cannot see your tree. They may discover that you have this or that ancestral surname in your tree, but they won't be able to find where those ancestors came from except by trial-and-error, which can be tedious, and can give erratic results. Having limited time I tend to ignore people with private trees unless Ancestry has found a Common Ancestor - there are plenty of other matches to work with.

What your cousins really need to know is who your ancestors were and where they came from: attaching a direct ancestors-only public tree to your results achieves that. With any public tree there is a risk that people who are not cousins will copy the information, but if I take my own tree as an example, my direct ancestors tree is less than one-twentieth the size of my main tree, so that eliminates at least 95% of the copying that might otherwise have occurred.

What a public direct ancestors-only tree won't do is compromise the privacy of your extended family. Even though Ancestry don't show information for living people the ready availability of BMD indexes for England & Wales makes it easy for others to figure out the hidden names - I do this all the time with my DNA matches so that I can add them to my tree without asking them for the information.

I understand all of this, however my difficulty is that I have learned, or confirmed, via DNA that some of my recent 'direct ancestors' were not genetically related to me at all. I do know who my actual genetic direct ancestors were. If I were to have a public tree with 'direct ancestors' it would either contain some people that I know I am not genetically related to or it would potentially deeply upset some of my living relatives who are not aware that we are not genetically related. I have good reasons for wanting to keep this information private. I know that I'm not alone in this, so I wouldn't overlook someone with a private tree if they were a fairly close match. I'd try to work out who they might be and often I can do that.

 

[peter]

I understand all of this, however my difficulty is that I have learned, or confirmed, via DNA that some of my recent 'direct ancestors' were not genetically related to me at all. I do know who my actual genetic direct ancestors were. If I were to have a public tree with 'direct ancestors' it would either contain some people that I know I am not genetically related to or it would potentially deeply upset some of my living relatives who are not aware that we are not genetically related. I have good reasons for wanting to keep this information private.

You do have good reasons for keeping the information private, and I wouldn't suggest that you do otherwise.

I know that I'm not alone in this, so I wouldn't overlook someone with a private tree if they were a fairly close match. I'd try to work out who they might be and often I can do that.

Most people are not in your position, so they ignore matches who have private trees - it requires 10 times as much effort, with no guarantee of learning anything useful.

 

[JohnR65]

I recently contacted a few of the tree owners and found at least one who has been very helpful in adding more ancestors to my tree. So I think it's worth having a punt at it.