OneGreatFamily.com - A Major Update

Seven years ago, OneGreatFamily.com introduced a revolutionary new service: an online genealogy database containing data contributed by users. Best of all, the data was shared by all and instantly updated when any user added or corrected any data within the single database. It was a revolutionary concept at the time.

Subscribers to OneGreatFamily.com accessed the service by first downloading a bit of software into their Windows computers and using it in a manner that was somewhat similar to other genealogy programs of the time, with one major exception: the data was stored in an online database instead of in individual "islands" on users' own hard drives. All the users shared one genealogy database. Any new data added to the centralized database was instantly visible and fully usable by others.

OneGreatFamily.com has continued to grow, and the company has occasionally added new features. You can read my past articles about the company at http://tinyurl.com/yuwykq.

This week OneGreatFamily.com introduced several major new features, perhaps the biggest upgrades ever. I had not looked at the service for a while, so I went back to see what's new. OneGreatFamily.com V.P. Rob Armstrong was kind enough to take me on a "tour" and point out the new features. I must say that I was impressed. The OneGreatFamily.com service has matured into a great product that will please many genealogists.

In practice, OneGreatFamily.com is a cross between a standard genealogy program that runs on a desktop computer and an application that runs in a web browser. In fact, it is an online application. The database resides on a large server farm on the Internet. Users access OneGreatFamily.com via an online connection. However, they don't use a standard browser. Most functions are performed by using small programs that download and run in the user's Windows computer. (There is no Macintosh capability.) Those applications communicate across the Internet to the database. In short, the OneGreatFamily.com programs operate in much the same manner as other genealogy programs (Legacy, RootsMagic, The Master Genealogist, Ancestral Quest, etc.) with one exception: data is not stored on the local hard drive. Instead, it uses a large database on a remote server for data storage. Everyone can read that data, and everyone can write to it, with protections that prevent overwriting someone else's data that I'll explain in a bit.

Upon signing up with OneGreatFamily.com for the first time (you do use a standard web browser for sign-up), you start by downloading a small program called Genealogy Browser. You enter information about yourself and your ancestors into Genealogy Browser. It will also import a GEDCOM file if you wish. At some point, the user decides to add his or her data to the one huge database at OneGreatFamily.com. Then the process gets interesting!

When I saw Genealogy Browser in action last week, Rob Armstrong entered very basic information about three people: himself, his father, and his mother. That's all, only three people. He then merged the data into OneGreatFamily.com, and within a few seconds he was looking at pages and pages of information about more than 1,000 of his ancestors!

To be sure, Rob knew in advance that all the information about his parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and beyond were already in the database. He was able to use this as a demo simply because the information he entered about his father and mother was already in the OneGreatFamily.com database, and the software recognized them when Rob merged his newly-entered information into the major database.

This "canned demo" illustrated an ideal scenario, but it also shows what can be accomplished. Most of us will have to first enter more than three people into the database, although perhaps not. It all depends upon how much data about your ancestors has already been entered by others. The OneGreatFamily.com application will accept your new data and then start looking for matches. It will display probable matches to the user and ask, "Is this a match?" The user can accept it or not, as appropriate. After identifying one or two matches, the OneGreatFamily.com application will then connect the user into all known relatives already documented in the central database.

While the example I saw earlier of connecting someone to thousands of ancestors after entering the information of only three people is obviously unusual, it is common for genealogy newcomers to find documented connections to thousands of ancestors after entering information of only eight or ten known ancestors.

Obviously, the more people you can document on your own, the better the odds of matching with data already available on OneGreatFamily.com. Once matched, you will see all the known relations, probably included many that you were not aware of previously. You might find a few new ancestors. Some people may find thousands of new ancestors. As with any other genealogy information obtained online or in books, you always want to verify the information. However, this is a great way to get started or to verify what you already have. OneGreatFamily.com has often connected genealogy newcomers who only have information about a handful of ancestors and then suddenly found themselves with a thousand or more ancestors already defined. .

In the demo that I saw, Rob initially entered data about three people but deliberately left out his own middle name, deliberately misspelled the town where his parents were married, and also left out county names. When his three entries were matched against the master database, he was presented with a series of options of whether or not to accept the various bits of new information. In this example, the master database correctly identified his middle name, corrected the spelling of the town, and also inserted all of the correct county names. Each piece of new information was optional; the user is queried as to whether or not to accept the proposed new data. If you have doubts, you can decline the offer.

Much of the data within OneGreatFamily.com includes source citations although that is not strictly required. Any good genealogist is going to verify the information anyway, whether it is documented or not.

Everything up to this point was done in the Genealogy Browser program. After data entry is complete, the user moves to a different application: Family Dashboard. This is where the fun begins. Family Dashboard provides the ability to "zoom around the family tree," investigates individuals and facts, create reports, and generally check your family tree research.

Family Dashboard is built using widget technology. It is similar to the widgets used in Yahoo, Google, and Windows Vista's so-called "gadgets." Widgets are small sub-programs that a user may elect to make available or not. Widgets can be "dragged-and-dropped" onto the desktop or removed and hidden at any time. Some of the widgets already available today include:

EXCELLENT online maps built on top of Google Maps technology. You can map the locations and the travels of your ancestors in an almost infinite number of ways. You can see migration patterns. You can see the ancestors' locations as recorded in census records and elsewhere. You may be able to see why some of your ancestors met, courted, and married spouses in some nearby towns but not others (for example, perhaps a river or a mountain range blocked easy travel in one direction but not in another).

Dropline Charts showing the generations between you and a particular ancestor

Shared Ancestors. In the demo, Rob selected his own name, then selected Lucille Ball as the person to be compared with. Within seconds, he was told that Lucille was his ninth cousin, once removed. Keep in mind that Rob had not entered any data about Lucille Ball and very little data about his own ancestors. Almost all the data had already been in OneGreatFamily.com's database before he started on the project. He picked Lucille Ball at random and was pleasantly surprised to find he had a very distant relationship. Most everyone has distant relationships with a number of notable people. You may find some notables among your distant cousins on OneGreatFamily.com.

End of Line Widget that shows all of your ancestors who have no data entered about their parents. You can show all of them at once or focus on only one or two. These are the people for whom you need more research to go back more generations.

The Time Capsule is a sort of "What happened on this date in history" application that links dates in your data to historical information stored on Wikipedia. This can be very useful for studying the factors that affected the lives of your ancestors.

All of this is the tip of the iceberg. There are more widgets available today, and new ones are still being developed. All widgets are available to all users of OneGreatFamily.com.

Navigating around your family tree in OneGreatFamily.com is a pleasure. You can "surf" your family tree, using a mouse to "zoom" in and out, up, down, and around the tree. Indeed, it is displayed very much like a tree or some thick brush with branches intertwined everywhere. Cousin marriages and multiple lines of descent from one person or from one couple all present no problems. You can browse through the branches effortlessly.

I do not have the words to properly describe this form of navigation. Instead, I'd suggest you look at the demo at http://onegreatfamily.com/LearnMore. It will provide a visual demonstration that is far better than any words I can write.

Another feature that I think will be very popular is the "Read-only view for non-members." A OneGreatFamily.com customer can create a view of all or some of his family tree and then create a custom URL (web address) that displays the data in a web browser. The customer can then place that URL on a web site or include it in an e-mail message. Anyone who clicks on that URL link will display the information tree specified. You have to be a OneGreatFamily.com customer to create the custom URL, but anyone - customer or not - can later use the URL to see the information.

OneGreatFamily.com handles conflicts about as well as any system I have seen. Any time two or more genealogists collaborate on research, there are bound to be disagreements as to which "fact" is right. OneGreatFamily.com allows all customers to enter all sorts of facts. At first, all customers will see all the claimed facts for any one individual. In cases of disagreement, each person is invited to communicate with the other(s) in a cooperative method. (E-mail addresses are never shown without your permission.) If the two people eventually agree, those two facts are merged together to reflect the newly agreed-upon information. In cases where resolution is impossible, the user may elect to show all facts or to show only the specific facts that he or she selects. In other words, while the database may show three different dates and places for the birth of your great-grandfather along with two different sets of parents, you may elect to see and display only the one date, one location, and one specific set of parents that you wish. If you elect to create a custom URL of your ancestry, only the data you selected will display to those who click on your URL.

While you are using a shared database and do have the benefit of everyone else's research at your fingertips, you are never forced to accept any information that you believe might be incorrect.

Sensitive data, such as children born out of wedlock, can be kept "hidden." You can grant access to the hidden information to selected people while simultaneously hiding it from all other OneGreatFamily.com customers.

The OneGreatFamily.com database supports all sorts of religious database fields, including dates of LDS events, Catholic christenings, Jewish Bar Mitzvahs, and more.

As you might expect, OneGreatFamily.com sends and receives a lot of information over the Internet connection between your computer and the company's servers. A broadband Internet connection is strongly recommended. Company officials told me that a few customers have used it on dial-up connections and that it does work. However, performance on dial-up is very slow.

All in all, OneGreatFamily.com has come a long way since its introduction seven years ago. The company has preserved the benefits of one shared database with thousands of genealogists collaborating together to build one huge family tree, showing how millions of people are related. More recent changes have increased security, protected privacy, added ease of use, and greatly enhanced the user experience.

OneGreatFamily.com has a slogan: "Enjoy your family tree." Indeed, the company has produced a product that helps you do just that.

Some of the company's employees will expand on that a bit by saying, "Enjoy your family tree without all the tedious data entry." I am not sure I agree with that completely as some data entry will still be necessary. OneGreatFamily.com has not yet reached the Utopian concept of "enter your name and click on a button to see all your ancestors back to Adam and Eve." Nobody has provided that service yet. However, I will concede that OneGreatFamily.com is closer to that goal than any other product I have seen to date. The company provides millions of interconnected records in a user-friendly display. It offers documentation that is as good as what the users entered (which often may not be sufficient) and then allows the user to accept or reject any facts in the database. If the user has better information, he or she is invited to share it with everyone else.

In short, OneGreatFamily.com has already accomplished what some other organizations say they will do within a few years.

OneGreatFamily.com costs about $60 a year, or $5.00 a month but paid annually. A seven-day free trial is also available.

This strikes me as an economical price when you consider there is no software to buy, never any need to purchase software upgrades, and no other charges - and the company takes care of all the backups. Your data is always protected via daily backups without any action on your part. Your complete genealogy data is also always available from any Windows computer with an Internet connection, be it your desktop, your laptop, a friend's computer, or a public access computer at the library or at an Internet café. Universal access is a big help for those who travel.

To learn more about this great service, or to sign up now, go to http://www.OneGreatFamily.com.

Comments

[JLB]

I spent a couple of hours in there and got fairly lost. I did understand their policy statement however. It says whatever you own is their property and they can publish it however they see fit. Does it ever end?

[JCarter]

OneGreatFamily's homepage also reinforces the need to verify data. They show a selected individual of President Harry S. Truman, born in Lamar, Jackson, Missouri. Actually Harry Truman didn't have a middle initial and Lamar is in Barton County. Still, as you say, a great starting point to find new avenues of research and to share what we already have.

[The Grammar Doctor]

INCORRECT:
"the data was shared"
"new data added to the centralized database was instantly visible"
"data is not stored on the local hard drive"
"Everyone can read that data"
"how much data about your ancestors has already been entered"
etc.
CORRECT:
the data were shared
the new data ... were instantly visible
data are not stored...
everyone can read those data
how many data ... have already been entered

Hint: the word "data" is plural.

[rdx]

Well, excuse me Dick, but this review looks like a paid advertisement.

[Dick Eastman]

Nope. Not paid. They don't have enough money for that. (smile) I always liked OneGreatFamily.com and was enthused about it when I first saw it seven years ago. You can read my June 17, 2000 article at http://www.eogn.com/archives/news0025.htm

I've always been amazed that the service didn't become more popular. It languished for a while but new managers moved in some time ago and have now rejuvinated the product. It should be interesting to watch over the next year or two to see if they are successful.

- Dick Eastman

[Barry Spinner]

Two questions I posted to this company today may be of interest to EOGN subscribers:
" snip], a few questions:
1) Your seven day trial agreement does not take account of your summer pricing promotion. Is that corrected upon billing?
2) Must one continue to be a subscribed member to access the information? That is, if at some future time, I do not remain a member, what services will continue to exist for me? I ask, because, I would be providing all my GEDCOM data - theoretically -to you apparently on a perpetual basis. Yet it appears that the business relationship is heavily biased in your company's interests. Am I incorrect in this analysis?

[theKiwi]

It would be nice if I could at least do a browser based search of the site and see some specific results (not just that there are 1300 matches for Moffat in the OneGreatFamily. That might get me a little more interested in giving them my credit card information.

But the fact that there's no Macintosh support on this site is pretty lame in this day and age I reckon - and the fact that their FAQ system seems to be broken as links to specific FAQ entries like "System Requirements" return an error also doesn't endear warm fuzzy thoughts .

Maybe someone who is a Windows using member can search for George Moffat born around 1790 +/- 5 years in Berwickshire, Scotland and let me know. :-)

Roger

[Melinda]

I realize that FTM and OneGreatFamily are two entirely different programs, concepts, etc. But....

Once upon a time, FTM encouraged one to upload your own data to them. After a few years, they sold all that data on CD's. We had to buy our own data if we wanted access. And now folks can download off the FTM site this data and post to WorldConnect and claim it is their own research on the families.

Is OneGreatFamily going to do the same? No where on there site spells this out. It all sounds almost to good to be true, so what am I missing?

It is entirely possibly the reluctance of many to run to OneGreatFamily was/is due to being burned by FTM. I don't know, but someone tell me why I can trust OneGreatFamily. Thanks.

[JLB]

Melinda, you can't. It says plainly in their Terms of Use:

3. You grant OneGreatFamily permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute any of the information included in your submission without compensation and in any form we feel appropriate. You also give us permission to use information from your submission to create new databases.
4. You affirm that you have the right to grant us permission to use the information in your submission, as described in these conditions. You accept legal responsibility for any permitted use made of the information you provide.
5. You agree that we are not responsible for any alteration, loss, damage, or corruption to your submission.
6. You agree that once you submit your genealogy to us, it becomes our property and cannot be retracted or returned. However, this does not limit your right to publish, sell, or give the information you submit to others.

Why do you think it's printed there?

[Melinda]

I never found the "Terms of Use". Privacy Notice, but not the Terms of Use. It must be found as one is signing up or something. Anyway, thanks for sharing this tidbit.

[JLB]

It's first presented while signing up and later it can be found in their Sitemap.

Consider this: First they charge you nearly $7 a month for uploading your genealogy, then they claim a right to own it and redistribute/sell it.

[JLB]

No, let me make that clearer. $80 a year (in perpetuity if you like) to store your genealogy database on their server, with all their rights as stated.

Mon Dieu, I can get an upgrade to Legacy Family Tree every couple of years for about $20, and it's mine.

I don't think a handful of widgets compensates for an insult of such magnitude.

[Ann]

When I first began family research (1976) kindly priests, clerks, and strangers would send me reams of info and copies of docs (well beyond what I had requested) simply for the asking and sometimes the cost of postage. Because research was very slow and tedious then, people were much more willing to share and help each other. There's still a lot of talk about sharing but it seems to be trending towards, "You can't use my information-it's MINE!" It seems to me that unless you're the only child of an only child of an only child, etc., someone at some point is going to upload the exact same info that you have so what is the purpose of claiming sole ownership to facts that anyone with a little gumption can ferret out for themselves? I think Ancestry, OGF, and the others are to be applauded for the work they've done and if they make a few dollars from the info they gather they've more than earned it-how else to pay overhead and salaries? I know they've saved me many thousands of dollars in time and travel costs to obtain what I have now. I couldn't possibly have done it without them!!
To those of you who have only found family by use of the internet go find someone who did research before computers and have them tell you how it used to take literally months and endless letters to find one small piece of information at a time-no sitting at a computer and finding entire trees with a few key strokes! Let's put the sharing back in genealogy.

[JLB]

The problem is not an unwillingness to share. I have a website for sharing. So far, people have mostly taken from there rather than giving back but that's fine. I have been freely given to through other channels and no-one's complained. And of course, as you say, it's common to gather family history that some-one else already has or could have. Mostly we don't beat each other over the head about who finds it 'first'. What I and others take umbrage to are genealogy websites who take from work that's freely circulated for the purpose of selling it.

OneGreatFamily can still charge a monthly fee for access, but do they really need to claim ownership of the data stored on their servers? with the over-arching threat of selling anything we put there, in whatever form at whatever time they choose. To me, that's just creepy.

On the other hand, I'm always open to hearing from a cousin who wants to chat about our common ancestry. Let's put the people back in genealogy!

[Happy Dae]

JLB,

We share opinions on this, so I won't repeat all you've said. I would add that there are some Crooks who might choose to "keep" their data safe, by uploading that of another (or worse, invented) and representing it as their own. THEN, they would have access to the information they were after. Meanwhile, others accessing the Crook's information are also cheated. I've heard complaints over the decades about the contributed, but errant, data that are on FamilySearch. At least FamilySearch doesn't charge for it, too.

My site is also free. It is an enjoyable work of love.

Happy Dae.
http://www.ShoeStringGenealogy.com/ssg1.htm

[Gerald Eberwein]

I agree with Ann on the "It's Mine!!" attitude. I had that from a few Town Clerks in NY State. When given the public records challenge, one told me, "That's not true. These records are my records and I decide who can or can't see my records."

I also have a problem with the assumption of legal responsibility for something when I can't control the distribution. If I might be sued, I sure as hell want to control who and when it is given to.

I already store my data on my own server and my family research team can access it. So far the only thing that's possibly useful is data imports almost automatically. But, a problem with that may be what plagues Family Search; when there are two submissions for the same person that don't match exactly, the program automatically creates a new person. Somebody has to resolve the problem to make it the correct person. I'll try the test run and see if it convinces me.

[Betty]

Since I signed on to Eastman Newsletter I have become increasingly aware of the fact that people get envolved in doing genealogy for many different reasons. Some people want total control of their information and others do not object to someone else taking the results of their work.

The key here is that everyone should always have the right to choose. It is frustrating to read comments from people who like sharing their information openly that impune the attitude of people who like to control their data. I think I hear a bit of a better than thou attitude.

I also was amazed that someone who called themselves the Grammar Doctor would post an uninvited judgement on another persons communication. That kind of behavior tends to stifle free flowing, creative thinking. We have lots of good minds working in this comment section and we need to keep this great communication going without being afraid of censure.

[Margaret]

I enjoy the articles by Dick and link to them for my genealogy e-mail buddies and this one is a definite "keeper." Additionally, I appreciate the comments from other knowledgeable genealogists who have experience where I have none or insights and concerns that have not yet arisen for me.

We need to assume that everyone posting is doing so "from the heart" and with good motives. Like gardeners, I find genealogists to be the most giving and sharing of persons.

Thanks to all of you for enlarging my core of knowledge!!!

[Linda]

I'm pretty appalled at the possessive nature of genealogy organizations and websites (OneGreatFamily and FamilySearch). Additionally, I just had my third encounter with a far, far distant "relation" who uploaded my immediate family information to Ancestry/Rootsweb in no less than three kinds of family trees. Another slightly distant family relation had given this person my family's info probably some time ago and he felt that he then had the right to post it to the internet. I cringe when I think of what might be on OneGreatFamily now that I don't know about--I'm a subscriber to Ancestry but not to OGF. Finally, this frenzy of hobbyists to post literally tens of thousands of "relations" to the internet without documentation in most cases has made me far less likely to share any of my ancestor's or relatives information on the net. One branch of my family has a few dozen descendants who are in the process of creating a website that only family members can access to share our research. This frenzy of invading others' privacy by posting so-called "relations" without permission has gotten out of hand, to my mind. I agree with a poster a couple of days ago in this newsletter--what ever happened to researching one's ancestors? Who gave you the right to post everybody in the world to the internet? And why aren't more people concerned about this invas?ion of privacy?
~Bewildered

[Trish Lewis]

I have a cousin who won't share her information with me, her own cousin. She has the only known source documents and photos of two primary family lines. The "MINE!" attitude is more scarey to me than the sharing on public sites that claim ownership. Pretty soon we'd all be in a vacuum...

[Lindsay]

"OneGreatFamily can still charge a monthly fee for access, but do they really need to claim ownership of the data stored on their servers? with the over-arching threat of selling anything we put there, in whatever form at whatever time they choose. To me, that's just creepy."

I would suggest that if you think about it for a while you will see that it would be impossible for One Great Family to offer the functionality it does if they didn't have the right to redistribute the uploaded data to their other customers. If you don't give them the right to publish and sell the data then they can't distribute to other users (who are paying customers - hence selling) and the whole system becomes useless.

A question I don't know the answer to is whether it is possible to download parts of the tree to import into your private collection. If not that is pretty strong lock-in. I don't think I would rely on an online service to maintain my data without any way to make a local copy should I decide I want to part ways. But there is no reason you can't manually take information from the site to add to your own database - so you can walk away and stop paying at any time.

Again, this makes me wonder if what the world needs is a way to collect and organize simple facts - something no one owns. This might get us beyond these arguments about who should be allowed to do what with what data because everyone would be allowed to do anything with any of the data because it is all just a bunch of uncopyrightable facts. The key would be to simply exclude anything that isn't a simple fact and do it in a way that no one can claim that they own the "collection of facts". The open source software community and creative commons folks have already gone down this road and developed solutions that make this possible. Just create an open database that anyone and everyone is free to copy. That way you don't have to worry about it "going commercial" or at least if someone creates a commercial service based on it free versions are still available, and the commercial service has to add value in some way if it wants to compete with "free".

[Lindsay]

"Who gave you the right to post everybody in the world to the internet?"

I think that was the authors of the First Amendment to the US Constitution. :-) :-) :-)

[JLB]

A simple approach is to only post publicly what you're willing to share with the general public, whether that's on your own personal website or on a public tree site. Once you put it out to the general public, consider it public. Why the shock and outrage that other people are re-using it?

A great deal of my family history is not "public", such as photographs from private collections, diaries and other hand-written documents from across centuries. Those are for sharing amongst family members who honor the sanctity of it. Draw that line where you may.

[Nora Nell Thompson]

I have been a member of OGF for 8 months or so. I have been interested in seeing how it works, but take some of the "merges" with a grain of salt. I prefer to use the information I find as a trail to find documentation and sources.

I am perturbed though to find that this past weekend I have been unable to access the family tree I uploaded in GEDCOM format. It just is not there. I sent them an email and was told that I must have edited my Tree which caused a break in the link. Well, I didn't, and since they no longer appear to have my tree, I am wondering just how secure my other trees will be.

I urge everyone to make sure they send copies of their data to other family members for safe keeping. Don't count on some online company to keep it safe for you. I figure the more people that have access to my data, the safer it will be.

Nora Nell

[Marianne Fisher]

Nope,No Thanks...I have a hard time giving them my credit card info for a "free trial".
I'm sure there's a few really good computer geeks out there who could setup a gizmo that would block the free trial access after that 7 day time frame is over.
By then ,if not before,the free times up...I'm sure someone can decide then to give them the yearly fee.