Should I or shouldn't I? I'd like to know the general opinion of TD-ers ... I buy Certs for immediate family, and am happy to share them via e-mails to individuals, but have been reluctant to put them on general display - thinking that if fewer people use the service, GRO might increase the price! But having recently found Certs on Ancestry for a whole family who I would never pay for (ancestors of my husband's ex-wife), which made the research a whole lot easier, I'm now wondering whether to go ahead and share to the world! What do you think? Jane
OOoooh, err- you know you want to BUT- the "oh that looks good'' element will harvest & add to their 'tree' regardless of whether or not it belongs. Believe me ! Share with real rellies yes, We've all had our 'poor' moments, but advise them to keep such with in private family trees & Files. Face it so many still - with subs- will hone in on a 'marriage,'baptism', death. & say hey that fits. Don't add to the garbage collectors.
I guess it all boils down to how generous you are (or feel), Jane. Having heard all the horror stories about "theft" from Ancestry (whether relevant to individual research or not) I'd be reluctant, I have to admit. On the other hand there's a site online started by a very nice and helpful man (whose first name is Gordon but his last name escapes me for the moment), who asks for donations of certificates from people like us and he puts them up on his site making them available for anyone who wants to enquire. This one I'd support. Crazy standards, eh? I guess it's a case of he puts his money where his mouth is and he started off with his own family certificates. Might be that I just prefer give and take as opposed to just take.
I too have donated certificates which it proved not to relate to me or mine. Hoping a real relly may happen upon it, but the open attachment to a tree or such, I learned my lesson the very hard way - so no! non!, nyet, no more freebie handouts.
I concur with Wendy and Philippa! I put my tree on Ancestry but I didn't put my certs on, this was when I had a subscription many moons ago. In fact since then I have removed my tree, that was after I discovered that someone had just about stolen my whole tree and even named it similar!!! PS @Philippa if you remember that Gordon mans last name can you let me know please, thanks
What Mrs. Dotcom said. You could, however, draw a crossed line through the image before uploading it. It stops people mindlessly pinching your images, and if they are interested enough, they can message you. Then you can choose to share the image once satisfied they know what they are doing.
Just been doing a bit of digging, both in my head and on my records, and Gordon's surname is Beach. The site he has set up is here: http:// ausbdm.ucoz.org/ I broke the link because the opener is an ad for a website designer - no money mentioned, but better safe than sorry, I reckon!! Did I dun good?
Well, the consensus (? doesn't look right!) appears to be to continue as at present. Thanks guys. Although I'm not convinced by the reasoning - if some Idiot wants to use my certs without checking them, that just makes them more of an Idiot, doesn't it? I only own the certificates; I don't own the ancestors. I've been pondering this matter all day. I think what has convinced me to NOT display the information is, selfishly, that I can use them as a bargaining tool to get direct descendants to share with me - ie "If you can give me some info on my 2nd cousin, I can send you their parents' Birth/Marriage/Death Certificates". Maybe then they will reply! Thanks again! Jane
I don't upload anything to Ancestry -- period!! However, I do share transcriptions of my certificates with relatives and one of my transcriptions appears on Ancestry attached to several trees. (I recognise the format and, anyway, it has my name and logo on it as the transcriber). I know who I gave it to originally and she has uploaded it as a source for a marriage on her tree and then this has been used as a source in other trees for the same person. Should I mind? I suppose in reality I gave it to my cousin for her use and to help with her family tree; but I didn't place any restrictions on what she could do with it. At least the transcription has my name on it but I wonder how many have accepted it as gospel without even bothering to check the facts. Even the most careful of us can make mistakes!! I don't know whether it is legal or not to publish a GRO certificate on a public website or, indeed to share it with others. That's why I make my own transcriptions and share those. I believe I own the copyright of the transcriptions so am entitled to share them as I see fit. All the best.
The National Archives has a guidance note on BMD certificates which includes this. Q. "I'm publishing my family tree on the internet - I want to publish images of the certificates I have. A: As long as there are no details about living individuals there is no problem about publishing the images of the certificates on your family tree website. Any modern certificates would be subject to the Data Protection Act, and would need the permission of any living named person prior to publication." See: https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk...tion-of-birth-death-marriage-certificates.pdf
I am an Ancestry user and my main trees are all open to the public. I have put photos, certificates and other documents on my trees. I particularly like to attach newspaper articles and family notices I find on Trove and other newspaper archives. And I am happy to share these with others. I am really pleased to see Flook's link to the National Archives guidance note about publishing certificates on family trees etc. I thought long and hard about making my trees public, but decided that I would because I wanted to share my father's research and my own research with all those distant cousins out there. And as a result I have made contact with quite a few of them. I use other people's trees as leads, but try to verify as much as I can before moving on too far. Or sometimes I use them for comparative purposes and to find additional sources. I like to be contacted by other researchers, even if they are telling me I have got something wrong, but especially when they offer to share info or photos with me. And I make contact with others or sometimes make a comment on another tree. And yes sometimes people don't do enough checking and get things totally wrong, or they are simply lazy or naive. But I figure if I can put up what is correct then that counter-balances some of those wrong trees. And if more of us share well researched trees then the quality of the trees might improve over time. That said Ancestry, and the other genealogy sites for that matter, are really just like the old game we used to play where you whisper a sentence to the person next to you and they whisper what they heard you say to the person next to them and so on. We all know that what the last person in the chain hears is often quite distorted from the original. So it behoves all of us to do our own checking and verifying to make sure we have not been led up the garden path.