33 ms·

As someone who is interested in genealogy it's a bit frustrating to have so many different services competing to hoover up various data sets and hold them in th

As someone who is interested in genealogy it's a bit frustrating to have so many different services competing to hoover up various data sets and hold them in their private fiefdoms, each of which requires a fee. FamilySearch is the one major exception, mostly I believe because of their deep religious obligations. The Mormons microfilmed a staggering collection of data over the decades and it has all been getting digitized. The problem is, some of their digitized collections are now no longer available because the custodians of the original records seem to have signed deals with some of the private genealogy services. Ancestry and companies like them, do provide the service of indexing many of these records which is no small task, but most of these documents are public records, and I don't understand why they shouldn't be available to anyone. I know for example FamilySearch has digitized images of all the Scottish censuses back to the 1841 but you can't look at the original records any longer. There are many other examples like this... original WWII draft cards for the US used to be available there, now you have to go to Ancestry and pay a fee.

bitbckt 6y ago
Surely there must be a solution to this problem which involves neither privatization of massive amounts of personal data nor vicarious baptism.
- ksenzee 6y ago
  The vicarious baptism is going to happen regardless.
  - hinkley 6y ago
    You will 1) be dead, so probably not care, and 2) in the unlikely event that you do still care, they believe that you have the opportunity to opt out.
    - function_seven 6y ago
      Yup. I very much want the Mormons to posthumously baptize me! I mean, it will probably do absolutely nothing. But, if it does have an effect, I will be eternally (literally) grateful for their help in the afterlife.
      - pottertheotter 6y ago
        I got your back. I'll be on the lookout for function_seven and take care of it for you!
      - thaumasiotes 6y ago
        > I mean, it will probably do absolutely nothing. But, if it does have an effect, I will be eternally (literally) grateful for their help in the afterlife. This is Pascal's Fallacious Wager, the idea that (as you've instantiated it here) Mormonism is the only religion that might potentially be correct. Either the Mormons are right, or everyone is wrong. But if you believe the Mormons might be right, you have no way to exclude the possibility that the Mormons are wrong, but somebody else is right. In which case the baptism might cause you eternal harm.
        function_seven 6y ago
        This is close, but not really Pascal's Wager. For one, I do not currently practice any religion. But if I did, I'd have to pick one exclusively, to the detriment of the others. So of course his wager is a weak argument. But with posthumous baptism, it is someone else doing the thing. And multiple different religions can all claim me as their own. There can be overlap, maybe. (Or maybe not, who knows? We're in angels on the head of a pin territory here) So, if the Mormons baptizing me causes me eternal harm, then both of the following would be true: 1. They do have supernatural powers after all. (i.e. Mormon rituals have an effect on souls, deities, etc.) 2. But their belief system is wrong. I guess one can construct a system where both #1 and #2 hold, but I don't see it as being nearly as likely as either one in isolation.
        curiousgeorgio 6y ago
    - ksenzee 6y ago
      Well - not me personally. I'm already in the system. (The one way to be sure Mormons won't have you baptized after your death: join up beforehand!) I didn't mean to imply that proxy baptism is a bad thing. I just meant it's going to happen regardless of any other data-extraction schemes any other organizations come up with.
- plumeria 6y ago
  I think this is an application where Google could help. Google Ancestry. Archive digitalization like Google Books plus genealogy tree generation (it could build diverging trees and people could help to fix them like in Google Maps)
hinkley 6y ago
Ex-mormon and ex-partner of a (secular) genealogist reporting in. Every bit of non-archival information the Mormons have should be annotated with [citation needed]. There is an appalling amount of wishful thinking and supposition in their genealogy data. You are in effect looking at research on a par with a high school research paper. It's all sourced from people who have been doing this for a short time and are seeking out indications that they are done, not that they are correct. Though I do agree that anyone who is willing to build a bomb-proof archival facility is worthy of a degree of respect. (Those salt dome film archives we have in the great plains are amazing too)
- jjeaff 6y ago
  What non-archival information are you talking about? Everything I see on familysearch is primary documents or text indexed directly. Anything else are simply trees that others have created. And I definitely wouldn't trust that info blindly because users do really get overzealous in trying to trace their lineage. But family search allows you to attach primary documents to all names so you can easily confirm whether that info is valid or not.
  - tosser0001 6y ago
    Yes, I agree here. The beauty of FamilySearch is that they've done an amazing job archiving and cataloging the primary documents they have. Ancestry does have some good stuff too, but FamilySearch can feel more like an online research library. I know they do auto-generate some tree information which can be incorrect, but that can largely be ignored or used as hints, etc. I get the sense that not many people realize just exactly how much stuff they have actually accumulated. It's truly amazing for the areas that I've been looking at which are primarily US, Canada, Britain and Ireland. I tend to think of it as one of the pillars of online data collections along with things like, archive.org and, say, Google Books. It's incredible the amount of material that is at our fingertips now. The one biggest missing pieces for me is the staggering number of microfilmed historical newspapers that have yet to be digitized. I know the library of Congress has put a lot on line but there are still 10s of thousands of rolls of microfilm that haven't been processed and I'm not sure if there is any push to do it.
messick 6y ago
Ancestry.com was founded by BYU grad students and is based in Provo. It couldn’t be more “Mormon”.
curioussavage 6y ago
I’m pretty sure my Dad has worked at the records facility where they are scanning that microfilm for almost 30 years now. He’s not an engineer but he actually helped with their assembly line and designed modifications to the fancy scanners they use. He’s always bragging about the huge amount of bandwidth they have. But last time I heard him talk about it they are still decades away from having all the information scanned and uploaded.

bitbckt 6y ago

Surely there must be a solution to this problem which involves neither privatization of massive amounts of personal data nor vicarious baptism.

ksenzee 6y ago
The vicarious baptism is going to happen regardless.
- hinkley 6y ago
  You will 1) be dead, so probably not care, and 2) in the unlikely event that you do still care, they believe that you have the opportunity to opt out.
  - function_seven 6y ago
    Yup. I very much want the Mormons to posthumously baptize me! I mean, it will probably do absolutely nothing. But, if it does have an effect, I will be eternally (literally) grateful for their help in the afterlife.
    - pottertheotter 6y ago
      I got your back. I'll be on the lookout for function_seven and take care of it for you!
    - thaumasiotes 6y ago
      > I mean, it will probably do absolutely nothing. But, if it does have an effect, I will be eternally (literally) grateful for their help in the afterlife. This is Pascal's Fallacious Wager, the idea that (as you've instantiated it here) Mormonism is the only religion that might potentially be correct. Either the Mormons are right, or everyone is wrong. But if you believe the Mormons might be right, you have no way to exclude the possibility that the Mormons are wrong, but somebody else is right. In which case the baptism might cause you eternal harm.
      - function_seven 6y ago
        This is close, but not really Pascal's Wager. For one, I do not currently practice any religion. But if I did, I'd have to pick one exclusively, to the detriment of the others. So of course his wager is a weak argument. But with posthumous baptism, it is someone else doing the thing. And multiple different religions can all claim me as their own. There can be overlap, maybe. (Or maybe not, who knows? We're in angels on the head of a pin territory here) So, if the Mormons baptizing me causes me eternal harm, then both of the following would be true: 1. They do have supernatural powers after all. (i.e. Mormon rituals have an effect on souls, deities, etc.) 2. But their belief system is wrong. I guess one can construct a system where both #1 and #2 hold, but I don't see it as being nearly as likely as either one in isolation.
        curiousgeorgio 6y ago
  - ksenzee 6y ago
    Well - not me personally. I'm already in the system. (The one way to be sure Mormons won't have you baptized after your death: join up beforehand!) I didn't mean to imply that proxy baptism is a bad thing. I just meant it's going to happen regardless of any other data-extraction schemes any other organizations come up with.
plumeria 6y ago
I think this is an application where Google could help. Google Ancestry. Archive digitalization like Google Books plus genealogy tree generation (it could build diverging trees and people could help to fix them like in Google Maps)

hinkley 6y ago

Ex-mormon and ex-partner of a (secular) genealogist reporting in. Every bit of non-archival information the Mormons have should be annotated with [citation needed]. There is an appalling amount of wishful thinking and supposition in their genealogy data. You are in effect looking at research on a par with a high school research paper. It's all sourced from people who have been doing this for a short time and are seeking out indications that they are done, not that they are correct. Though I do agree that anyone who is willing to build a bomb-proof archival facility is worthy of a degree of respect. (Those salt dome film archives we have in the great plains are amazing too)

jjeaff 6y ago
What non-archival information are you talking about? Everything I see on familysearch is primary documents or text indexed directly. Anything else are simply trees that others have created. And I definitely wouldn't trust that info blindly because users do really get overzealous in trying to trace their lineage. But family search allows you to attach primary documents to all names so you can easily confirm whether that info is valid or not.
- tosser0001 6y ago
  Yes, I agree here. The beauty of FamilySearch is that they've done an amazing job archiving and cataloging the primary documents they have. Ancestry does have some good stuff too, but FamilySearch can feel more like an online research library. I know they do auto-generate some tree information which can be incorrect, but that can largely be ignored or used as hints, etc. I get the sense that not many people realize just exactly how much stuff they have actually accumulated. It's truly amazing for the areas that I've been looking at which are primarily US, Canada, Britain and Ireland. I tend to think of it as one of the pillars of online data collections along with things like, archive.org and, say, Google Books. It's incredible the amount of material that is at our fingertips now. The one biggest missing pieces for me is the staggering number of microfilmed historical newspapers that have yet to be digitized. I know the library of Congress has put a lot on line but there are still 10s of thousands of rolls of microfilm that haven't been processed and I'm not sure if there is any push to do it.

messick 6y ago

Ancestry.com was founded by BYU grad students and is based in Provo. It couldn’t be more “Mormon”.

curioussavage 6y ago

I’m pretty sure my Dad has worked at the records facility where they are scanning that microfilm for almost 30 years now. He’s not an engineer but he actually helped with their assembly line and designed modifications to the fancy scanners they use. He’s always bragging about the huge amount of bandwidth they have. But last time I heard him talk about it they are still decades away from having all the information scanned and uploaded.