Is GEDCOMpare too restrictive and cumbersome?

Question

I am completely frustrated. Having uploaded my GEDCOM I was presented with a list of suggestions. After going through 100 of them I was able to confirm 27 matches - each and every one of them were profiles I already manage. Many suggestions linked to unlisted profiles where there is absolutely no way to confirm or reject due to the lack of data. However, what is truly discouraging is that, after spending time diligently looking at the suggestions, I find I still have nearly 500 to deal with before I can use the GEDCOM to add new profiles. Surely it would make more sense to allow the 'ADD' button to activate upon having dealt with an individual profile rather than having to look at far-fetched suggestions for profiles that the user may not have any intention of adding.

Comments

I prefer adding the profiles individually Bill. And I applaud you for only adding profiles that have valid sources! If you decide to use a gedcom in the future, I would break it into more manageable pieces and then look at the following pages:

GEDCOM File Usage Primer

2018 GEDCOMpare Process

Answer 1

As an alternative you can work with smaller gedcoms to make the comparison provess more efficient.

Comments

Thank you Herbert. I suppose if the process has flaws then the best solution is to make unusable. Brilliant in it's own way I expect. I do not believe that pointing out how much one might have accomplished while seeking improvement is entirely helpful.

---

If your goal is to seek improvement, by all means carry on the struggle!  If your goal is to build our shared tree, make profiles.  I wasn't sure which end you had in mind with your question, so thanks for clarifying.

---

The two goals are not mutually exclusive. There seems to be a misconception amongst many that GEDCOMs are evil and need to be exorcised. However, there is no reason why they cannot be used to facilitate rather than hinder the growth of the tree. Many people, often without thinking, blame them for inaccuracies. Properly done, GEDCOMpare should be a more convenient way of contributing and every bit as accurate as posting manually. I'm beginning to get the impression that there is resistance to making it better and that there is a lack of interest in seeing the shared tree succeed.

---

I would very much like to see a fully functional gedcom upload Bill. I would have added much more to Wikitree when I first started if it had been easier. Most of the lines I have researched are not already on here so there would have been little duplication. However, I was deterred by a couple of things. I don’t like the way the gedcom import populates the biography and sources. I also find it frustrating that Wikitree does not have fields for baptisms and burials which are the main records on which my English research is based before the introduction of Civil Registration. This important information gets lost in the gedcom imports.

---

Agreed. However, I should point out that I am not advocating large data dumps, but would like to see an easy way to add profiles selectively. Much of what is on my paid site is, as yet, unsourced and I would not want to see it on here. On Wikitree I post only those I am comfortable with and for which I have done the actual research. I play it loose on MyHeritage and keep it much cleaner here.

---

In that case Wikitree X might meet some of your needs. 

---

Thanks Lynda. I've just given Wikitree X a try but it doesn't work well with MyHeritage. I will play with it some more because it does seem like it could be quite useful.

---

Bill,

Those of us with a bad taste in our mouth for GEDCOMs have gotten this way because of the history we've had dealing with the aftermath of bad data dumps-- people uploading their GEDCOMs and then disappearing, leaving the cleanup to the rest of us.

And for those of us actively involved in projects, we've seen that even the newer GEDCOMpare process destroys far too many quality profiles.

So the bulk of our experience is that GEDCOMs-- old and new-- do more damage to the tree than adding quality.

If there are good examples of GEDCOMs adding quality, I'd love to see them.

---

Wikitree's poor handling of GEDCOMs will never improve if we continue to believe that they are the problem. It is foolish to think that the work of others has no value and only that done by a handful of self-proclaimed experts can make any meaningful contribution. I would submit that any damage done by GEDCOMs pales in comparison to that done by the closed-shop mentality.

---

it's an interesting dilemma. I submit that what you're calling "closed-shop mentality" (by which I assume you mean project-protection/management of profiles and pre-1700 and pre-1500 requirements) came into being because of low/no-value contributions most often added through source-less gedcoms. Bill, you've been here since 2014; certainly you've encountered the mess that I'm speaking of?

Throughout various projects, I've seen higher quality profiles than from before.  So I simply don't experience the damage done that you're referring to. I would like to understand your perspective and experience, though.  My sense is that you're experiencing a cost of these semi-recent change/restrictions, and I think it's important that wikitree understand what those costs are.