I finished watching the TreeShare video this morning, have spent some time searching this forum, and I am still unclear on notes sharing.
I understand that if I don’t want a private note shared, it must be attached to a private fact.
But if, before I upload my tree for the first time, I uncheck include notes, does that mean NO notes will be shared, ever? Including research notes in citations? Person notes? Fact notes? @rzamor1 ?
are you referring to Ancestry? or Family Search? or both?
also I use TreeShare in reference to both but I think technically it really means for Ancestry only
Kevin
After the initial TreeShare upload, there are not really any options about what to share. When you go into TreeShare’s dialog to do a “manual sync” (it’s not a true automatic sync), you will be shown the differences between RM and Ancestry on a person by person basis. You can see these differences either for every person, or only for recently changed persons. After an initial TreeShare upload, there is nobody on the recently changes list. But as you make changes in either RM or Ancestry, people are added to the recently changed list.
Persons get on the recently changed list based on their change date in RM and Ancestry, not on whether their data is actually different. In fact, immediately after an initial TreeShare upload, you are likely to have people whose data is actually different but who are not on the recently changed list.
After people get on the recently changed list (or even if they are not on the recently changed list and you notice some differences), you as the user look at the data and decide if the data is actually different or not. For each item that is different at that point, you make a decision about what to share and what not to share, and in which direction to share - RM to Ancestry or Ancestry to RM.
Also, suppose on the initial TreeShare upload that you choose some categories of information not to share. People with those categories of information will therefore be different between RM and Ancestry. But they will not be shown on the list of people with recent changes. If you look at such people with TreeShare anyway, you will see the differences and you will still be offered the opportunity make the people the same. The initial upload options are not remembered in any way. Instead, you have total and manual control of the changes after the initial upload.
There are a number of discussions about these kinds of issues. Here is one such discussion. There used to be a very good summary somewhere that describes the differences in data model between RM and Ancestry which in turn describes which data will not transfer cleanly between the two. But at the present time, I cannot find the link to that summary.
Ancestry. I don’t think you can technically TreeShare to FS? I’m aware you can upload facts.
Thanks, I think I grasped all that from the video, and searching this forum. I’m still completely unclear on notes transferring. I don’t want them too. Selecting to not transfer notes on inital upload is not clear if that entails ALL notes.
And subsequent syncs… assuming (which I hate to do) that NONE of my notes were included in the initial TreeShare, are those people now considered to need an update? Because my RM people have notes, and my Ancestry ones do not?
This is incredibly confusing, and I’m left concluding that every single fact would have to be private for those notes attached to the facts not to be flagged as unmatching?
I need to clear this up, so I can decide if I want to maintain a synced tree, or simply re-upload mine a couple times per year.
RM to FS
or RM to ANC
not FS to ANC or vice a versa
I could be wrong but I believe this is a case of semantics. While RM uses APIs to exchange data with both FS and Ancestry, I believe they only use the term “treeshare” in reference to Ancestry. The labels used to describe the FS API seem to be “FamilySearch Central” and “FamilySearch Person Tools”.
yes– but often users often are not clear which one is really being discussed and even myself may sometimes use wrong technical term
I suggest that you create a simple tree, 2 or 3 people, with sample data. Flag a few facts private, use the {private} tag in other places. Upload the tree to ancestry selecting different privacy options, one option at a time. (After the upload, review the tree, disconnect your RM tree from Ancestry, delete the Ancestry tree and then upload again with different options.) Repeat until you are comfortable with what gets uploaded and what doesn’t.
I haven’t done this in a while, but my findings were that the “Upload notes” setting controls ‘Facts Notes’ (ie everything in the Note column of the ‘Edit Person’ window).
If you haven’t done so already, I also suggest doing a similar exercise with source/citation fields to understand how RM citation data and field notes will show up in Ancestry, which fields map and which don’t, etc. I suggest entering the field label as the citation text for each field, using the source templates that plan to use in RM. (ThIs makes it easier to figure out where the data came from when you view it on ancestry. )
Back to your questions, I think you’ll find that RM’s privacy controls are very, very basic compared with modern concepts of data privacy. As Jerry noted, the upload settings only apply to the initial upload. After the initial upload, I am not aware of a failsafe way to prevent sensitive data from being accidentally uploaded to Ancestry. While you can mark a fact “Private” in RM, it is still eligible for treeshare. There is simply a ‘lock icon’ next to the fact to provide a visual indicator that you’ve marked the fact private. It can still be treeshared.
Treeshare to Anc is between your own computer and website tree. Familysearch just dumps your data into one massive tree that any idiot can and does change with no justification. MFT auto upload just makes it so much easier for moronic input.
