Thursday, October 9, 2008

Using Genea-Net.org - Post 2

I started this thread earlier this week, introducing http://www.geneanet.org/ as a social netowrk and family tree web site with over 200 million names in their databases in the post Using GeneaNet.org - Post 1.

At the end of the first post, I had decided to look at entries in my own family tree submitted to GeneaNet. In this post, I want to check out how GeneaNet resents the family tree I submitted.

Here is the screen after I selected one of the Search matches for "Seaver" - I picked my own tree:


When I clicked on the link to "Seaver," I figured that it would take me to the specific person in my tree that I had clicked on in the Search results screen (in Post 1). I was wrong - it took me to the Seaver family tree data that I had in my database. The Search in the database links only to Surnames, not to a specific person with that surname.

The next screen is the top of a Descendants Chart of the Seaver family members in my database:

The Descendants Chart provides names, spouses, birth-death years of each person with the surname in the database. The program picked the earliest ancestor for the top spot in the chart. Note that on this chart that there is a link at the top of the page for an alphabetical list of persons with this surname. That link could be used to go to a specific person with the surname.

I decided to click on Isaac Seaver 1823-1901 to see what information is included for a specific person. The resulting screen is shown below:


For a specific person, the screen above shows the person's information (birth, baptism, death and burial), the parents, the spouses and children, the siblings, and then notes for the person. The next screen shows the continuation of the above screen:


All the way down at the bottom of this web page is a five generation pedigree chart for the selected person, as shown below:


In order to generate some of this material, the user has to go into the My Account>Online Family Tree>Customize page and decide on the format for the web page presentation. To some extent, what can be shown is user-selected. For instance, I chose a plain white background for the information above rather than a sepia-colored document background. I chose to add the pedigree chart to the selected person's page.

One thing I've noticed is that persons born in the last 100 years or so have their years of birth obscured. for instance, my information and that of my parents and siblings, and our spouses and descendants, have our years of birth and marriage obscured, but not our names. I appreciate that for identity reasons.

In the next post, I will explore some of the report options available in www.GeneaNet.org.

2 comments:

Jean-Yves said...

Randy,

You can configure the privacy settings at
http://my.geneanet.org/geneweb/configuration.php3?action=autres_options

Regards,
Jean-Yves

Jean-Yves said...

About Wizard and Friend Access, see http://my.geneanet.org/geneweb/configuration.php3?action=travail_groupe

It could be useful for building a collaborative online family tree!

About the privacy of living persons, see http://genealogyblog.geneanet.org/index.php/post/2008/09/GeneaNet%3A-Privacy-Of-Living-Persons.html

See our GeneaNet Tips at http://genealogyblog.geneanet.org/index.php/category/geneanet_tips