Who do you put in an online tree?

[Phoenix]

I have just discovered one grandfather on Family Search. Okay, he died fifty years ago, but I find it deeply distasteful that someone has joined up the dots and put it out there.

[Olde Crone]

I sit firmly on the fence here!

I don't have a public tree. My private tree doesn't have any living people on it. However, about an hour ago, I added a close relative who died last year. (I only just found out today).

Yes, very upset to find my parents on someone's public tree, still alive according to them. I think I am upset because they were MY PARENTS but were only a distant un-met twig to someone else.

OC

[Merry]

I just googled my own birth name and I appear on four trees (two created by the same person) with my OH and children.

[Merry]

I must say I'm not remotely bothered if I find my dead immediate relations on other people's trees as long as the details are correct. I have other people's dead close relatives on my tree (though not online), so I can't complain about mine being on other trees.

[kiterunner]

I wait a while (maybe about a year) after someone's death before adding them to my tree.

[Phoenix]

While I regard the idea that someone goes to mormon heaven simply through the actions of a living relation as nonsense, I still feel indignant on my grandfather's behalf that anyone should presume to think that that was what he would have wanted. I certainly know how his daughters would have reacted.

I don't think I would have reacted so strongly to finding him on any other online tree.

Personally, I don't like showing anyone under a century dead on an online tree, though I appreciate that the dead have no rights.

I'm horrified, Merry, that anyone should dare to presume to put your children online.

[Merry]

I have contacted the person with the two trees a few times in the past asking him to privatise a load of entries, but he never responds.

I've said this before, but I was very annoyed when a new contact added all my Quaker ancestors to the LDS site and then preached to me about why she had done that. She hadn't told me she was a member of the LDS before this.

[James18]

Whoever I can, so long as there are at least basic accurate details. I use Ancestry, so living people are not displayed, and only a few of my trees are public anyway.

We don't own our relatives, so we shouldn't be surprised or offended to see them appearing on other people's trees. This is a particularly bizarre thing to be offended by for people who spend much of their lives studying other people's relatives (even if they may well also be ours as well).

[JBee]

Most of my online trees are private - I have put a limited tree as a public one when fishing for contacts with names like Smith and Brown.

[Nell]

My tree is online but private. I am happy to share info if someone asks, but I don't open my tree to anyone as there are people alive on there.

It's so easy to find out about people now though. I do remember being really annoyed when someone contacted me and then added my grandmother to her tree with the wrong place of birth as she assumed she knew better than me!

[Olde Crone]

It is one thing to research living or recently dead people. It is quite another to put them on an online tree. I was aghast to see a tree online which led to living people, their children, their full address and where the children were at school. This was on the flimsiest of connections in the early 1700s. When I remonstrated with the tree owner, he hit me over the head with that old excuse of "it's all information in the public domain so what's the problem?"

he was quite upset when I refused him access to my private tree. Alas, it took me ages to realise I should have told him he didn't need access to my tree because all the information is in the public domain, haha.

OC

[Phoenix]

Private trees don't stop information being found and living people on trees can often be positively identified by other bits of information.

No way do I ever put living people on online trees, even if shown as living, since the software will have the information, and any software can be hacked.

It is interesting that it is usually men who argue that all information should be out there, and women tend to be more circumspect.

I know who my relative the paedophile is, and so may his descendants, but that is one little snippet that won't appear in my notes.

[HarrysMum]

My trees are all private, but I never put living people on them, except Tribal Pages, where I have my own name as the only living person. I get more contacts from that tree anyway. I think maybe because others cannot see relationships, just names.

[James18]

'I was aghast to see a tree online which led to living people, their children, their full address and where the children were at school.'

Where was this? Who on earth puts that kind of information on a family tree?

Truly bizarre.

[Kit]

I've found my grandparents on online trees and didn't like it. It might have been different if I knew who the person was who had done it but it was a stranger to me and my grandparents. My grandfather was my first death and while it was a long time ago now, I found it a shock to see it on the screen.

I put anyone and everything on my tree but it is not online so no one knows, nor can get upset by things I find out.

[Olde Crone]

James

I can't remember now but as it was a public tree it must have been on one of the main sites. It was what I call a vanity tree, the look-who-I-am related-to tree, based on an extremely flimsy connection to landed gentry in the early 1700s.

OC