1) Setting changes take effect immediately. The only research activities currently shared for private trees are saving historical records or saving photos and stories publicly shared by other members. As soon as you change a tree from public to private those are the only activities we share in the future. Also, anyone who had connected to your tree when it was public should get a message that the tree has been made private and would not be able to view the details of the tree.

If you change your activity preferences to not share your research activities with others (which you can do whether your tree is public or private), that will take effect immediately and will apply to all future research activities.

2) We currently don’t have a way to view who has connected with your tree or to block specific individuals (other than the overall settings mentioned already). These are suggestions we’re looking into.

3) As mentioned above, the only research activities currently shared for private trees are saving historical records or saving photos and stories publicly shared by other members. This is so that other members who have saved the same records or who added the photos you save can know about you (without knowing any details from your tree). You are likely researching the same individuals if this is the case, and could potentially both benefit from contacting each other.

1) If a tree was public at some point, and then was later made private and preferences were changed to not allow any research activities to be tracked, anyone who had “connected” to the tree when it was public can still see what records are being added to the currently private tree?

2) Is there a way to see who is “connected” to our trees so we can choose to allow or block the connections when a tree is made private?

3) Are CUSTOM EVENTS and CUSTOM SOURCES that are added to private trees made visible for “connected” people to attach to their trees or is it only document items housed on Ancestry that are attached to a tree? Currently, if a tree is private, you can still see if that person has added stories or photos, but only the titles are given and you have to request viewing permission in order to see the information.

Also I would like to draw your attention to the Administers information board within the web page for the board they administer eg, my own board. Board name, surname MASSEY. my e-mail onelayperson@googlemail.com is displayed with the dropdown box “board information”. I believe that this box can either be removed or in place of the e-mail contact address should be replaced with a link via there user name onelayperson to the internal online Messages feature. This would allow a punter to contact the board administrator without seeing there e-mail but also ensuring the safeguards of the board administrator. I also not if the key to a members e-mail is not showing the e-mail is displayed.

I take on board all the issues you have shown in the blog and agree this is the problem that are associated with the message boards.

It is very difficult to protect intellectual property on a public information website. Not everyone will be going to your tree to view the original copyrighted information if you keep your tree private.

My opinion is that it is up to each of us to do what we feel is right to protect or not protect our information. That is not a burden we should put on ancestry.com.

As you said, the snowball effect could happen very easily. One person takes the information and passes it on without copyright information. How would anyone know that the first person had a copyright on the info? It really is up to the owner.

If you have taken the time to copyright your material, then obviously it is yours. And is not open for just taking. Maybe an edited or shortened version for a public site.

Put that type of thing on your own webpage. Then you can use source code to block or at least have a pop up box that says “don’t take – copyright protected”.

I have done that and it works very successfully. Then, there is no worry about anyone using my info. My family members leave me personal notes and messages that I do not want shared. We also have great stories about our upcoming events and our kids “home runs”.

You have to actually be related to get our family web address. No, of course it is not perfect, there is always someone who will abuse it. But, my family likes it and enjoys both the public and private family pages/sites.

For ancestry.com; those that are related, great, the info is there for you. Not related, well it sure seems like a waste of good time to be gathering mostly useless information for you.

But, I have only put on the public site information that can be gotten from any number of places on the internet or research sites. It is there because I want it shared.

I know several people that have family web pages, as I am sure you do. It really seems, in my opinion that your purposes would be better served by making yourself a really spectacular family webpage. And you wold be better able to protect your information.

If ancestry were to block all copying; that would completely defeat the purpose of belonging to a site based almost 100% on public information; which is, sharing of that public information and building our family trees.

Member connect is just one of the many great features available to us for building those family trees.

Why even have a way to ask permission to copy. Ancestry should simply not allow coping of *anything* from one tree to another-period.

If someone wants to take the time to download/edit out copyright notice?and then upload to their tree there isn’t too much that can be done about that but most namegatherers won’t take the time.

If Ancestry did dis-able the copy function most peaple really interested in genealogy would praise them. The namegatherers would, of course, set up a howl that would shake both heaven and hell,..and that would *not* be a bad thing imho.
*GRIN*