OneWorldTree

Question

http://www.theancestorhunt.com/blog/no-you-cant-have-my-photos-and-stories-one-world-tree#.VcvuB_m5VCw

I came across this article, and I have never heard of oneworldtree. I wanted to get some thoughts on his opinions and get your opinion of oneworldtree. He lists this site as part of it, along with Ancestry.com.

Comments

He doesn't seem happy.  It's too bad he does not enjoy genealogy and people more.

I think the term "one world tree" is meaning sites where all of the members supposedly collaborate to work on one tree, like what we do here, rather than ones where you each have individual trees.

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"The Ancestor Hunt" is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.

If you look deep enough eventually you will see the website from which this person is writing appears to be doing this for money.  Who would'a guessed? :D

Answer 1

You can see both sides and each person has to do what they feel best but I never knew my father and I was so grateful to those who shared the stores they knew that helped me feel connected to that side of family and like the one person said you have to face the fact we all will die one day do we want our ancestors memories to die with us and those stories don't belong just to you they belong to the family and I think that includes the family from generations to come.  I do get where he is coming from with people stealing stories or pictures and taking credit or putting them with wrong people with similar names but for me I have decided I want my ancestors to be remembered and for future generations to feel that connection I got finding  that's why I'm doing wikitree

Answer 2

I sit on the fence on this one. I've been doing research for 30 +/- years, and I have a ton of documentation and photos that I'm happy to share. My problem was when a DISTANT relative started uploading short biographies that I've written over the years in such a way that it appears SHE wrote them. When I mentioned it to her, she didn't see any problem with doing that. I'm big on documenting everything, and I've worked hard over the years. Please don't take my hard work and pretend that you are the one who did it.

One of my pet peeves: If I upload a photo, it's in my possession, or I have permission to upload it from the person who "owns" it. I document that. I can tell you where the original is so you can follow the trail back to the original. So many people don't do that. There is a wonderful photo on ancestry.com that is SUPPOSEDLY of my g-g-g-grandparents, but there is no documentation. When I contacted those who uploaded the photo, they can't tell me where the original is, or where they got it from. How do I know who the people in the photo are if you can't even tell me where you got it??? That's no better to me than cutting a photo out of a magazine and uploading it as my ancestors.

Answer 3

Hi Christopher,

Let me begin by welcoming you to Wikitree.

Moving right along I am certain the author of the article in using 'One World Tree' and OWT as a simple way to refer to the variety of sites where multiple users can contribute to most, or any, profile (as opposed to sites where each user maintains their own tree) and not to a specific website of that name.

The cynic in me is pretty confident that Smaug sitting on his hoard would be more than happy to share all his treasures if he turned a profit by it. Anyway, it's his work, his photos, his memories and he is entitled to do with them as he pleases - chances are good that eventually the information he is keeping 'in the family' will one day either be published and publicly available or lost and forgotten.

My view is that research is a wasted effort if it is never published - putting it 'out there' allows it to be built upon by others and when necessary challenged/corrected.