I’m a user who only uses TreeShare for hints. For that reason, I use the approach of delete, disconnect, and re-upload periodically. There is one downside to this approach. Namely, your history of which hints are approved or are rejected or are not yet addressed is lost after a cycle of delete, disconnect, and re-upload.
I’m a sample size of 1 and other users may disagree. But I ultimately decided that the hint history wasn’t actually very important to me. Let’s see if I can explain. When WebHints were first introduced into RM, I thought they were the greatest invention since sliced bread. I planned to use them as a new “to do” list to supplement my existing “to do” lists. My concept was that I would chase down every hint to the bitter end, either accepting it and adding the data to my RM database or else rejecting the hint, I would leave no hint unprocessed and my goal was a hint free database because I would have processed them all.
But I discovered (or at least my opinion is) that hints cannot be managed in that manner. You can’t search for them or color code based on them or make groups based on them or anything like that, simply because they are not stored in your database. Rather, they are ephemeral, appearing only for the people who are currently visible on your screen, and then only if the Internet is behaving well at the time and only if the servers for the hint providers are behaving well at the time.
I still love the WebHints and I still use them a lot. But they are not the center of my genealogy world the way I initially thought they might be.
Another issue with TreeShare is that I would like to use it to make a public tree on Ancestry. But I would only want my public tree to include well researched people who are no longer living. I don’t trust Ancestry’s privatization protocols. Plus, my production database includes a lot of people who are not well researched. There are a lot of good and valid reasons for this. For example, they are not well researched yet. Or they have surnames that I research and they are buried in cemeteries that I research but they are not actually connected to my family. Or this, or that, or the other. There are lots of reasons. So if ever I want to publish a public tree at Ancestry, I’m probably better off doing it with GEDCOM where I can choose and manage the people I publish. When you publish a tree on Ancestry with TreeShare, you are publishing your entire database, warts and all. And you are trusting Ancestry’s privatization protocols.
I’m probably not as fluent with TreeShare as are users who use it every day to keep their RM database matched up with their Ancestry trees. But I have been using TreeShare heavily in the last few days to investigate my problem where certain people are not being added to Ancestry during a full upload of my RM database.
In the process, I have learned (or perhaps relearned because I had forgotten) the following.
During an initial upload, there are options to include or not include media and sources and notes.
During normal maintenance activity thereafter, there are no options about including media, sources, or notes. Rather, you can approve or not approve copying media, sources, or notes on a case by case basis when a person already exists in both RM an Ancestry.
However, if a person exists only in RM and needs to be copied to Ancestry, there are no options. TreeShare copies everything for the person, including media and sources and notes.
This does does not seem to me to be a good design. It’s surely not a limitation in the Ancestry API. Rather, it surely is just the way TreeShare is designed.
Yes, it’s not a good design. You can’t add a new event either, without it including the media and source. I would be perfectly fine just adding my people, since it’s only for me. I ran into some duplicate issues with sources as well, where when looking at only changed person, it shows a record that’s already there, as having a new source, but if you sync it, it duplicates.
That seems to me to be worthy of submitting a trouble ticket with the RM folks to see if they can replicate the problem using your database. They would need to test with a Mac to match your environment.
If past posts are to be believed, Rooty has already done this. It seems as if the issue was resolved for sometime when he changed internet connections…now it seems to suddenly have reappeared and again it is somehow Rootsmagic’s problem because it times out connecting to Ancestry.
Mine didn’t work either with media and sources attached. Only about 1/3 of my tree synced up. I have a gigabyte connection. I deleted my tree this morning and tried it again with no media or sources, and every single person uploaded. This is a RM thing, not an internet hiccup,.
Jerry: this is an old issue with RM for me on mac and support seems to feel I have the “vapors”. FTM always has uploaded and synced fine but RM is very sensitive to internet speed (timeout issue) and also has another problem when speed is 1GB down/up. FTM just hums along in both cases. I can get a people only tree uploaded if I exclude sources and media which is functional.
I have only tested a few limited cases – but essentially the same tree (via GEDCOM ) will upload to Ancestry from FTM (19 or 24) but not RM. This is curious.. maybe something to do with the batch process of RM and the method FTM uses. Since I use Ancestry Treeshare is the same manner as Jerry (just for hints) and upload a new tree couple times per year – this matters less for me. That said – wondering if Sources and citations going through GEDCOM vs straight from Database has something to do with things.
I sent my backup file to support this morning. Since my tree is still under 500 people at this point, and I’ve entered a limited amount of sources so far, it should be easy for them to look at, as I was told it’s likely an issue with the sources.
Has there been any progress on this problem? I don’t have an issue uploading with sources (unless that has something to do with why some people won’t upload). The only thing that hangs my upload is when I include media. It does not get past 99% media. I sent my tree to RM support back in early August with no solution.
good diagnosis - I guess one could argue “mis - designed” – though having to approve which was to be sent to RM might be a complicate UI. Though a global setting for “Never sending media” might be a work around
This post was in my drafts folder and was never submitted. Ugh. More info, clues, on why treeshare fails. See Reset treeshare tool - #7 by jateas or here is the post:
I am following all of this with great interest. Basically I had a large tree over 500,000 people that had been linked to treeshare for several years. For reasons I can’t remember, I decided to disconnect my tree and re-upload it. I wish I had never done this. I have not successfully uploaded the tree; it gets stuck while uploading media … sometimes early, sometimes at 99%. I have not gotten past that point so unsure if I have a similar problem with sources. However I noticed one thing that no one else has mentioned. I ran Media – Set Primary Photo for Persons #media#update several months ago and just noticed that some people have multiple media checked as primary photos. Hmmmm….. If I remove all the checks and attempt to check multiples, RM does not allow it, as it should. I am wondering if this might be the reason my tree freezes during the media upload? Does anyone else have multiple pictures checked as primary? I am going to copy/paste this post onto the SQLite Tools for RM page. Maybe all I need is a new script to uncheck all media.
