Noesis

Through the development of a very much work in progress Trefeglwys Online I've taken a strong interest in online collaborative working for genealogists, and ways how this can be improved.

I was just playing around with Geni, more about can be found here.

Its not the first social networking genealogy website, and GenMates is an example of an alternative site with a drive behind this. However, networking is not limited to families, and does include people who might be researching similar areas to you, but not yet found a connection. After all genealogy is not an exact science, and there is a need to go beyond immediate family and create other links to assist with research. However, perhaps that is not what Geni is setting out to achieve.

In a flash / ajax environment, Geni, makes it slightly more hip than other websites. Your individual details, which includes appearance, beliefs, education, favourites, and even a sprinkle of Web 2.0 thrown in asking for individuals YouTube, Flickr and Skype contacts! This is good, if you live in a particularly geek family, want to all network and everyone is Look I have a problem with imagining that my parents would understand this, nevermind my dead of 20 odd years grandparents and generations above.

Beyond living relatives, the fields feel so out of place: asking for the IM address of my ggg grandparents, its as if someone is taking me on a voyeuristic and surreal trip. Perhaps they do have wifi six feet under, or in the clouds, whichever way you want to look at it.

Although the site is in beta, It so painfully obvious that it has not been developed by a genealogist. For a start, where is the function to upload a GEDCOM file? I currently have 705 people in my family tree, and I really do not want to go through the process of having to input each individual again, for the sake of some third party software.

The other major failing with this application is the lack of space for raw data. Within genealogy, a tree is not a viable tree to other genealogists, until you can prove each step by primary data: census returns, birth certificates, baptism records, marriage certificates etc. Where is the space to input this? Or are we just going to take someone's word for it, a certain Joe Bloggs is theirs?

It feels extremely odd, when inputting a name for your ancestors, there's an initial field that asks for their e mail address. Perhaps, its a mould I need to break, and ignore this field.

There's a point, why bother with ancestors anyhow, they won't have a Flickr account, which the rest of the family needs to know about. However, in the absence of ancestors, you cannot include distant relatives and relationships in your tree, and move towards the site's motto, "Everyone's Related!"

The site needs to move away from being US focused, take the qualifications and languages in the set fields. Immediately, I want Welsh and British Sign Language to be amongst the languages on offer, and feel rather frustrated its not. Perhaps a blank field would be good here?

Despite the above points, and a lack of genealogy drive, it is good to see a Web 2.0 mentality coming to this field. Pushing genealogists into 2007 and beyond has to be a difficult task, when some are just starting to get to grips with the concept of e mail, nevermind anything else.

Update: I've been trying this out a bit more, and how I wish I could have a portable application to install on my website. What I really detest about this now is e mails becoming locked into the system. Once you’ve entered an e mail address of a relative, so far I can find no way of taking it out. Even tried to make the said living relative dead, no e mail address … but it comes back to the original address is retained. You cannot delete a person from your tree once their e mail address in inputted. This is a major concern, and discourages me from using.

Apart from the ajax / flash, in other words the visuals, how is this really different from Ancestry, Genesreunited, et al?