security in merging two GEDCOMs
saurabh9
I maintain a small gedcom of my family using PHPGEDView. Recently a
person contacted me wanting to merge his tree with mine.
My question is, how do I ensure that once we define a relationship
between atleast one of his individuals with my tree's individual, how
do I ensure that he is not able to edit any individuals in my part of
the tree?
Hugh Watkins
do not do it
ask him to send a gedcom and merge it yourself after a thorough edit
retain control
Hugh W
Kerry Raymond
>> between atleast one of his individuals with my tree's individual, how
>> do I ensure that he is not able to edit any individuals in my part of
>> the tree?
>
> do not do it
I agree with this. This is a problem with any "shared via the WWW" system
for genealogy. You have to completely trust the judgement of the other
people as they can change "your" data (well, it's really "both of your" data
or why else are you sharing it).
This means that faced with a set of evidence, that you trust them to come to
the same conclusion you do. And frankly when the evidence is thin and/or
inconsistent or comes from unreliable sources, two people may quite
reasonably draw different intepretations/conclusions from it. For example,
my German great-grandfather immigrated with his uncle, his uncle's wife, and
his uncle's children. From the immigration records and BMD certificates, the
name of uncle's wife and/or mother of his children is different on just
about every record. Did the man have several wives, who separately had each
child? Did he have just one wife who went be many different names? Are we
just seeing corruptions of German names when written by English-speaking
clerks? Different members of my family have drawn some very different
conclusions from the same information. What happens if they all start
updating the same shared tree with their interpretations of the number of
wives that existed and which child is assigned to which wife? Do you trust
all of them to enter their sources and their reasoning? (Many people don't
bother).
Your database represents not just the evidence/clues but more importantly
your reasoning, your interpretations and conclusions. I personally would
choose to remain the gatekeeper over my interpretations and conclusions. I
am happy to let others *see* my evidence, my reasoning and my conclusions,
but I am not so happy to let them change it. I think such relationships are
likely to end in tears, no matter how many good intentions there are on all
sides at the outset.
Kerry
Wes Groleau
> I maintain a small gedcom of my family using PHPGEDView. Recently a
> person contacted me wanting to merge his tree with mine.
Tell him to install PhpGEDView, and then you can both remote link to
each other. You can each decide which individuals to leave to the
other, and you may both decide to keep separate copies of some, i.e.,
overlap.
> My question is, how do I ensure that once we define a relationship
> between atleast one of his individuals with my tree's individual, how
> do I ensure that he is not able to edit any individuals in my part of
> the tree?
You could also give him an account on your site with edit privileges
but not admin privileges. That way, you accept, ignore, or delete any
changes he tries to make before the rest of the world sees them. And if
relationship privacy is enabled, he can neither see nor edit any living
person he is not closely related to.
--
Wes Groleau
Pat's Polemics = http://Ideas.Lang-Learn.us/barrett
DiMa
Di
"Hugh Watkins" <hugh.w...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:6dprr1F...@mid.individual.net...
saurabh9
> Dont do it - get them to send you their information.
>
>
> news:6dprr1F...@mid.individual.net...
>
> > saurabh9 wrote:
> >> Hi,
> >> I maintain a small gedcom of my family using PHPGEDView. Recently a
> >> person contacted me wanting to merge his tree with mine.
>
> >> My question is, how do I ensure that once we define a relationship
> >> between atleast one of his individuals with my tree's individual, how
> >> do I ensure that he is not able to edit any individuals in my part of
> >> the tree?
>
> > do not do it
>
> > ask him to send a gedcom and merge it yourself after a thorough edit
>
> > retain control
>
> > Hugh W
Very very valid points, but at the moment my tree just has about 70
individuals, and his has more than 500 people. I think then one way
forward would be to try and convince him to give me his gedcom, and I
would grant him admin on his gedcom. So finally on my site, i will be
hosting two gedcoms related by some common individual.
bi...@harrisongenealogy.co.uk
via a set of match parameters and displays them side by side.
Very useful when someone sends you a GEDCOM file and you wish to see which
of your members match etc....
Loads of choices for printouts etc.
regards
Bill
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