What do you believe are the main reasons people have a private family tree?

Question

What are some reasons for a private family tree in WikiTree? Is it to make it more difficult for others to learn your mother's maiden name?  Or are there other important reasons?

Thanks and most sincerely, Peter

Comments

Hi Peter,

I personally do not have much info private and my ancestry is all public.

Some reasons others might have for high privacy levels could include:

• Someone has been or is being stalked
• Some law enforcement officers and military value anonymity
• The person has duplicates they don't want to merge
• They don't know a lot about internet security therfor don't trust it
• They don't want others to have their valuable information without going through them
• They don't want their wife, husband, partner, boss, friend, etc to know they wiki
• They like to seem mysterious

 

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• They like to seem mysterious

Hm.  Does it work?   

<vanishes in a puff of internet anonymity>

Answer 1

Well, some people probably value privacy online. Especially if a relative is still alive. For example, my grandfather on my mom's side was alive when I registered here on Wikitree. He passed away a couple months ago and his page was still marked as private. I recently made it have the yellow lock.

But, if you are talking about people further back than that, then I have no idea. Why lock someone's page if they were born in the 1800s or something?

I can see people being private for security reasons mostly. The internet can be a scary place and some people don't want certain bits of info out there.

Comments

Thanks.  

Would it not work if the WikiTreer had their profile and family tree public but their living parents (and living grandparents) were private?

Those who value their privacy online could use an initial or Anonymous for their first (and middle) name.

It is hard to collaborate if you don't know the WikiTreers' relatoinship with their ancestry.

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Yes.

That's what I and a few other people do. That's how I found a connection with someone here, actually. She had a tree that connected a Carrabs brother who was my grandmother's uncle.  I was able to build a tree from there and contact a lady who is a Carrabs cousin of mine.

Another time, I found someone by researching some of my other grandmother's ancestors and found a cousin that way. He helped me and the tree kind of exploded from there. He also had the same set up I did. Private parents.

It seems to be the best way to handle things. And besides people on the current level are private here and on Geni. So, what's the issue?

Answer 2

I've always thought that the people who do this want to maintain control of "their" tree like they can on Ancestry and other places. And it's free. We are probably not the best place for them to have "their" tree.

Comments

Yep. But unfortunately wouldn't this create more duplicates than anything?

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Yes, it does. When they are kept private it's really hard to tell if they are duplicates. Unfortunate but that's the price we pay for having such a flexible privacy policy.

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I will say this. At least it's a lot more helpful here to make a tree than on FamilySearch. There are so many messed up trees over there. I try to do my best to untangle some messes when I come across them.

Some people had ancestors duplicated for parents when I knew they were incorrect thanks to sources. There was many as six people as parents for one person! That didn't make sense!

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FamilySearch Family Tree is like WikiTree in that it is one humongous tree. And, like you, I've given up trying to untangle some of the messes over on FamilySearch.

I prefer WikiTree's graduated levels of privacy.

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Me too. And the people seem WAY nicer here. =D

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Of course! :)

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When I encounter red locks in my ramblings I click on contributions and go back all the way back to the day the person started and start to check their peeps for dupes. Found quite a few that way and proposed many merges. When an obvious dupe merge gets rejected by Red Lock, I holler for a Mentor. (It's in my job description to pester and annoy ;-}  when possible)

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Huh. I was wondering why you were carrying that megaphone. ;)

Answer 3

You could always ask:

https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/477953/how-can-i-my-whole-family-tree-private-with-a-single-click

Answer 4

The concept of a 'private family tree' on WikiTree makes no sense.   Why speculate about people's motives?  Aside from living and recently dead people, private profiles represent departures from policy, or possibly Honor Code violations, and should be handled accordingly.  Some people just need a big bite of the fruit of the Nacho Tree.

Answer 5

I love this site and the fact that there are no private trees here. But I have a private tree on ancestry here is why:

My tree was public for years. Then I did the DNA test and excitedly found a few matches. But not many, as my ancestry are mostly pretty recent immigrants from Europe and Scandinavia. (My husband gets tons of matches with his colonial US ancestry). I would dutifully write to every private tree match asking for an invite based on the DNA match. I was lucky to get one reply out of 10 to 20 requests.

Well, I was pretty annoyed that all these people had full access to my tree but were unwilling to share their own, so I set mine to private. And it worked! I now get responses maybe 1 in 5 times. I always share my tree with anyone who asks (assuming they reciprocate if theirs is private). And I always invite people if they have a public tree and I am able to find a connection. I would much prefer all trees be public. And I'm all for lots of privacy protection. But the great bulk of info is long enough ago that I can't see it being a concern for most people.

Good question!

Comments

On Ancestry, I've only written to a couple of people who have private trees. I suppose this system works if you're the one doing the writing, but when it comes to seeking people out, I avoid people with private trees (unless I'm desperate to figure out the relationship--twice).

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I'm glad to hear that strategy works for you Susan.  My approach is more like J Crook's.  I've done solid work on my Ancestry tree, made it public and stand behind it. I don't mind people using it.

If other people choose to keep their tree private, for whatever reason, that's their right.  I won't bother them with questions and I won't answer theirs.  They are welcome to my published info, but they can't have any of my time.