That response seems illogical. RM passes data from its database to the API so surely RM has control over what it passes to the API. If it passes no media path and name to the API, the API has no media file to upload just as if it is given a broken path.
TomH makes a good point. However I suspect that as was stated to me it is an all or nothing. So if you do not tick the “Upload Media” during the upload process than this is no media path is passed and that also excludes the "personal photos that have been added as well as the files downloaded from Ancestry?
What would perhaps be better is to have more than one Media location in RM 8, one for the files you want to upload and the other for the “Ancestry created ones” and during the upload you get to chose whether you want to upload from location, 2 locations or to upload no Media.
Like Jerry,
“I just do it manually…[and] name the downloaded images the way I want them named. I can store the downloaded images in the folders where I want them stored. And I can create sources and citations using my own source templates that look like I want them to look.”
And Like Terry,
“I don’t use Treeshare. Every item of data in my database is entered manually…I do of course download media which I save into my media folders/subfolders renamed as per my standard naming format.”
I assume at least some RM users maintain family trees on additional web sites beyond Ancestry, like MyHeritage or FindMyPast, and that the difficulties with Ancestry described in this thread also occur on those other sites.
If I were just using RM for myself I wouldn’t bother trying to deal with online trees at all. But to share my work with other family members and encourage them to contribute information, I’ve posted my tree in multiple locations. So far I’ve done so on JewishGen, Ancestry, MyHeritage/Geni, and GEDMatch.
For me the least stressful way of dealing with the complications of multiple formats has been to upload a GEDCOM to each site, and then, when I’ve accumulated a meaningful amount of new data in RM, I delete the tree from each site and upload a new GEDCOM.
I’m open to suggestions for doing things more efficiently, as long as I don’t have to use SQL (a skill I lack).
[BTW, in the same spirit, I’ve tested my DNA at FamilyTree (y-700, mt full sequence, autosomal), 23&Me, and Ancestry, and also uploaded the results to MyHeritage/Geni and GEDMatch. As I’m sure most of you know already, genetic matching has a whole other universe of complications.]
And who said “genealogy” was a hobby - perhaps creating “ghost trees” is a work-around but it only goes part way to solving my conundrum. Thank you for your thoughts.
Cheers
I have received a response from Rootsmagic regarding the issue that I hadwith the “Changed List” not actually showing changes. This was not as a result of my original question but one that I raised in the question about uploading media
I looked it over and the “Changed List” for TreeShare can actually be triggered by Ancestry simply moving things around in the background. We’ve seen trees have all the people showing as Changed when nothing was actually changed. So it’s hard to say sometime what triggers people being added to it. There are a few things on the RM side that we do not trigger the changed list. One is place name changes. If you happen to clean your place list everyone using that place will not slow up on the TreeShare changed list. We initially had that update the change list but it made the Place List extremely slow to the point it was unusable.
Sources are another one. If you modify an existing source it also won’t show on the change list. The Ancestry API and website for that matter doesn’t handle updating source citations. It’s better to delete the source and add it again if you need to change it.
Media should show as a change, but if you added it on the general media or Person row on the Edit Person screen it won’t trigger it to show on the Change List. It won’t even show the primary media as an option to upload if you added it to someone. You would need to uncheck the primary media box to make it appear. So media can be a little difficult depending on where you have it added. We can add primary photos to everyone when creating a new Ancestry tree.
So it appears that the change list is not actually very comprehensive and by the look of the statement "So it’s hard to say sometime what triggers people being added to it" it appears to be a little bit random!
I will await further developments from RM but I think my stance of not trusting the Changed List and uploading fresh trees is prudent. Perhaps a health warning needs to be added to the Changed List?
I may be remembering incorrectly, but I remember the problem slightly differently. I don’t remember the Place List itself being slow when the change list was being updated. Rather, I remember the problem being the hundreds or thousands of people needing to be approved for upload to Ancestry on a case by case basis after any kind of Place cleaning operation.
Agreed. That’s another odd statement coming from Support and definitely inaccurate. Who signed the support response?
Not sure I understand the issue here. Finding a census or other document on ancestry I just click Review, scroll down to View the original and click the tools icon. Then click Print AND choose Include transcript and source citation. You end up with a downloaded pdf file with the original, transcript and source citation in one painless swift bundle. Then I Ignore that hint in ancestry.
The issue has to do with which direction data is flowing between RM and ancestry. If you only have data flow from Ancestry to RM as in your example, that is one experience. If you only have data flow from RM to Ancestry to, that is a different experience. If you have data flow in both directions between RM8 and Ancestry, that is a still different experience. And if you disconnect and RM8 database and an Ancestry tree and then make a new Ancestry tree from RM8, that is yet again a different experience.
This thread is about data flowing from RM8 to Ancestry. The RM8 tree was created from Ancestry, but now is flowing the other direction from RM8 back to a different Ancestry tree. The question is how to avoid all the images that flowed from Ancestry to RM8 from flowing back to a different tree in Ancestry. The Ancestry API and the TreeShare interface to the Ancestry API only know that the files are the same files so long as the same RM8 database remains connected to the same Ancestry tree. As soon as you disconnect an RM8 database from Ancestry and then upload to a new Ancestry tree, the whole process loses the connection of the images being the same between RM8 and Ancestry.
In FTM 2019 you control which way data flows up to ancestry or down to your tree. I guess RM8 lacks that ability to avoid auto contamination of your database from ancestry. I work ancestry hints and manually download any valid finds only syncing up to ancestry later.
RM’s TreeShare feature allows you to copy data in either or both directions. It’s just that it doesn’t flow automatically in either direction. When you use RM and Ancestry together, you start out by copying an entire RM database to a new and empty Ancestry tree, or by copying an entire Ancestry tree to a new and empty RM database. Thereafter, nothing flows. You must manually approve each individual piece of data that is copied in either direction.