Is there a quick way to populate a Family Tree, e.g. from Ancestry Tree?

+2 votes
172 views
in WikiTree Help by David Ling G2G Crew (810 points)

3 Answers

+8 votes
 
Best answer

As Marion said, one person at a time is probably best. But....

Since WikiTree is a single worldwide tree where we all share, and collaborate on, ancestors you only will need to add parents, grandparents, etc until you find your ancestor is already on WikiTree. 

You can search for your closest ancestors (and their ancestors) from the WikiTree page. This should give an idea how many you may need to create before you can connect to someone already on WikiTree. There are 1795 people named Ling on WikiTree.

The next steps are described here Membership

by Kay Knight G2G6 Pilot (593k points)
selected by Susan Smith
+10 votes
You could use a gedcom, but I don’t recommend it. You will still have to manually compare and select.  Although it is slower to add one at a time the result is worth it. Often you will find some already here on wikitree. Using a gedcom will necessitate going back over each profile created and ensuring that sources are correct, (not from trees that have no sources).

That’s my 2 cents worth, others might have different advice.
by Living Poole G2G Astronaut (1.3m points)
My advice would be the same as Marion's. Profiles created by GEDCOM imports are "messy" so they have to be "cleaned" by deleting a lot of stuff and the sources are not presented in a format which make them easily accessible by others (especially since most of your sources are going to be behind Ancestry's paywall.)

You cannot subdivide your GEDCOM if it comes directly from Ancestry.com, so if your tree contains more than 5000 individuals you will not be able to upload it to WikiTree.

It is recommended that you keep your uploaded GEDCOM small (500 individuals or even fewer.) If you don't, the GEDCompare process takes a very long time (where you compare every person in your GEDCOM to potential matches who are already on WikiTree.) You cannot add even a single person to WikiTree from your GEDCOM until you complete the GEDCompare process.

When I first joined WikiTree, I uploaded a GEDCOM and went through the GEDCompare process and added a couple of profiles. I hated it almost immediately and abandoned that way of adding profiles. I now add all profiles manually. It is slower, but, in my opinion, you end up with better quality profiles.

Most of the sources I use in the profiles I create manually come from FamilySearch which is free to access. There are a few sources which I can only find on Ancestry.com. There is a way to add them and provide a free link to the image. I won't discuss that here, but others will be happy to share that process with you when/if you want to or need to use Ancestry.com image files as your sources.
+4 votes
There is a quick way to see if there are possible matches within your tree: uploading a GedCom and use the compare system called 'GEDCOMpare'. That will not really create anything here and the file is also automatically deleted if you don't do anything with it.

The process of actually creating profiles for individuals that do not already have a profile on Wikitree is not very quick though. As stated in the other answers: quick usually means messy profiles without sources. Wikitree highly values the use of real primary sources and showing nice profiles. Unfortunately the Gedcom import is not perfect still. I personally use the GEDCOMpare system to keep track of what I still need to do and highly recommend it for that.
by Michel Vorenhout G2G6 Pilot (307k points)

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