The following news release was just received from my old friend, Claire LeBeaux, who tells me she has gone to work doing PR work for OneGreatFamily. It was good to hear from her again.
Too many hits to be useful?! Updated genealogy engine at www.OneGreatFamily.com turns up matching names, plus automatically merges family tree branches and now allows you to accept or ignore conflicting data.
February 10, 2009, Springville UT – www.OneGreatFamily.com today announced the release of a significant enhancement to its unique automated searching system. Dubbed “Conflict Ignore,” this groundbreaking feature is immediately available to all OneGreatFamily.com subscribers.
OneGreatFamily’s Powerful Automated Searching System
As online genealogy has grown in popularity over the past decade, a wide range of individuals, genealogy groups, and companies have published historical data online. This proliferation of data has brought problems of its own – someone searching online for information on just one ancestor might find hundreds or even thousands of leads, too many to be useful, and many of them duplicates of the same information. For example, dozens of hits may be from the same branch of a family tree that was downloaded then re-posted by different people repeatedly. Weeding through this mountain of similar and identical data to find genuine new leads is tedious.OneGreatFamily.com uses powerful technology to compare and combine data at the site, saving users countless hours. Every week, as hundreds of thousands of names are added to OneGreatFamily’s existing database, the site analyzes the full ‘handprint’ of all family information, including names, dates, and the complicated web of family relationships. If OneGreatFamily’s technology deems the complete handprint of information is nearly identical for two ancestors contributed by different people, their trees are automatically merged.
Unique Views of Data Are Preserved with New “Conflict Ignore” Tool
To ensure that each user has the ability to research and prove the facts in their individual tree, OneGreatFamily maintains each contributor’s view of facts and conflicts separately. No user can ever change someone else’s data in OneGreatFamily. No other genealogy site that matches and merges data is powerful enough to maintain unique views as OneGreatFamily does. Here’s how it works:When OneGreatFamily finds information about the same ancestor that was contributed by different users which is very close but not identical, the site carefully preserves each submitter’s version of details about that ancestor and highlights any differing information as a “Conflict.” A lightning bolt icon flags the conflicts, and a user can choose which version of information to use in their tree. With the newest update, if someone is certain that their information is correct, they can choose to permanently ignore a hint about conflicting data. (Previously, they could display their chosen information, but the flag for conflict was still shown on-screen and appeared to be an area for further research.) Once hints about new tree branches and conflicts are reviewed and accepted or ignored, it is easy to see any remaining conflicts that need to be resolved and to direct future research to those conflicts or new leads or dead-ends.
How to Ignore Conflicts but Accept Other Leads from Another Contributor
For example, imagine that distant cousins contribute the same branch of the family tree (by entering it online or uploading a GEDCOM). John’s contribution contains 800 individuals; Mary’s has 450. On a branch of the tree is a common ancestor Margaret; all details and family relationships for Margaret are the same, except that John thinks her birthdate is March 30, 1830; Mary says it’s March 29, 1830. The branches are automatically merged (so Mary now has grown her tree by 350 people). However, John still sees Margaret’s birthdate as March 30 (flagged with a lightning bolt Conflict icon) and Mary sees it as March 29 (also flagged with the lightning bolt).Clicking on the lightning bolt enables John and Mary to attempt to resolve their conflicting data separately. They each have four options:
- Accept the other submitter’s birth date, replacing their information and resolving the conflict.
- Click on the Collaborate link to contact each other and share and request evidence while arguing their own case.
- Click Close, which leaves the conflict unresolved. This allows further research.
- Click the new Ignore All button, which leaves the conflict unresolved and removes the flag from that user’s Family Tree.
So, if John evaluates Mary’s claim but remains convinced of his own conclusion, he would choose this option. This removes the lightning bolt from his family tree, allowing him to focus on other areas. (All other information has been merged, but John and Mary each continue to see the birthdate they entered themselves.)
OneGreatFamily’s ability to precisely merge entire branches of the family tree, eliminate duplicate leads, and preserve a unique version of the family history is unrivaled among genealogy sites.
About OneGreatFamily.com
OneGreatFamily.com, L.L.C. was founded in 1999 by Alan Eaton with a vision to match and merge all of the separate family trees created by genealogists into one single unified worldwide family tree. This single family tree would remove all duplication while maintaining all differences in conclusions genealogists would draw from the research evidence. Today more than 196,000,000 individuals have been submitted to OneGreatFamily.com in family trees. The company is privately held, based in Springville, Utah and has approximately 25 employees.www.OneGreatFamily.com offers a no-obligation 7-day free trial. All capabilities discussed here are available with a subscription. Current pricing: Annual billing ($59.95), Quarterly billing ($19.95) or Monthly billing ($9.95).
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