What software do you use for your family tree?
What software do you use for your family tree?
I know folks here on Lemmy love FOSS so I’d suggest Gramps if you’re looking for suggestions!
I briefly looked into Gramps, but found that it wasn't the best fit for my needs and interests. What do you enjoy about it?
I think my Dad used GSP Family Tree for a while, but I've since switched to WikiTree. I like their goal of building a single world-wide family tree and they offer a nice balance of privacy and collaboration. While it is not fully open-source, they have some decent reasons behind this decision.
I've heard of webtrees as another FOSS genealogy application, but collaboration didn't seem as easy as with WikiTree.
Does anyone know of any federated genealogy platforms? I think this could be another possible software niche for the fediverse.
P.S.
FOSS software
Free Open-Source Software software? You'd better not forget to put your PIN number into the ATM machine :)
I’ve been looking for federated software for genealogy but it doesn’t seem anyone has made anything like that yet and also thanks for reminding me to check these before I post 😅
Seems like WikiTree would sort of have a Federated ethos, if not infrastructure. I haven't looked lately, but how is the quality of data on Wikitree compared, to, say, the Mormon grannies' world tree on FamilySearch?
Yeah, I think that WikiTree probably the closest thing to a federated genealogy platform that currently exists. While the website is only "free as in beer" (and not "free as in speech"), most of the genealogy data is free in both senses.
I haven't closely compared WikiTree to other sites, but I WikiTree definitely favours quality over quantity. Adding new profiles might be a bit more cumbersome, but part of that is due to intentional steps to avoid the creation of duplicate profiles for the same person, and to encourage accurate sourcing.
The current worst drawback of WikiTree (in my opinion) is that it tends to be fairly English-centric, which has limited my progress on some branches of my tree. Despite this, WikiTree is still my preferred genealogy platform, and there have been gradual efforts to address the language issues.
Don't shoot me, but I just leave them on Ancestry. I suppose I'll download the GedCOMS at some point, but Ancestry's where I made them, and they are still there.
Now that said, my journey through genealogy was most intense over a two year period where I did 23andme ten years ago, as an adopted person from the era of closed files, to find out what little genetic health info I could. I saw enough cousins to think it might be possible to reverse engineer my biological family tree. I have SOOOO many dead-end trees with other people's relatives on them, and if they're not perfect, they're at least better than average for Ancestry, (low bar, LOL). I eventually did find my birth family, and it's been overall a good thing, though with the inevitable ups and downs.
These days, it's just sort of one more thing I know more about than the average person, though I do enjoy old records and stories.