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That the microfilming was accomplished is invaluable - and I understand that the typical offer to various records-keepers from the LDS family history folks was:

by dmckeon 14y ago

That the microfilming was accomplished is invaluable - and I understand that the typical offer to various records-keepers from the LDS family history folks was: "We'll pay to microfilm your records, you get a copy to keep, and the LDS gets a copy to use." Win-win. The transcription of records for indexing is also valuable, but less so, given that volunteers were working from projected microfilm copies of (usually) hand-written records (some in beautiful but dated hands). OCR in the 1980s was not adequate, but Soundex indexing helps a lot, and if you need to search a small area exhaustively, you can see many of the microfilm copies of records through a site like ancestry.com or from the digital media available for use at local LDS family history centers. The LDS was also strong in producing the GEDCOM data standard, which is widely (almost universally) used for family tree exchanges, and the PAF software package (which now has many competitors.) Note that research into ancestry has an interesting network effect - while people have 2^N N-parents, once N gets over 4 or 5 it can become challenging to trace individuals - but the chances that some other active researcher shares some of those 2^N N-parents start to increase - and ancestry.com has done well at providing links to other researcher's public trees when they become available. This pattern has the effect of encouraging subscribers who have already found most of their ancestors out to level N, for whatever N, to continue to subscribe in hopes of finding a new link from another researcher, or perhaps a new clue in a newly digitized document set. It will be interesting to see how the decreasing cost of genome analysis affects family history research - perhaps helping find distant cousins, or perhaps revealing surprising differences between a presumed history and the biological record.

rmc 14y ago
The LDS was also strong in producing the GEDCOM data standard, which is widely (almost universally) used for family tree exchanges And of course, since they are bigots, they don't let 2 men be married in their GEDCOM standard, or other non-traditional family structures. Get your politics out of standards.
- resplin 14y ago
  Calling people bigots does nothing to promote civil discourse about important issues such as homosexual marriage. The standard was drafted in 1984, long before efforts to redefine marriage. It isn't very fair of you to project your 21st century politics back on the creators of a 30 year old standard. You apply the label of bigotry to exclude from the conversation those who differ in opinion from you. That isn't how democracies are designed to function. Nor does it recognize the complexity of the issue. Religious people can desire a standard of public morality without espousing hatred for those who don't share that standard. Calling that bigotry makes it harder to identify true prejudice.
  - wpietri 14y ago
    Aw, that's precious. Defending the Mormons against charges of bigotry by saying it's the gay rights people who were trying to redefine marriage. coughpolygamycough And you're talking as if marriage hasn't been under rolling redefinition since Gutenberg. Women owning property, being allowed to have a profession, and having the right to vote changed marriage way more than allowing two women to get hitched and have babies. Also, I don't think the campaign against gay marriage can be anything but bigotry. It's exactly analogous to the campaign against interracial marriage: Religious actors try to use the power of the state to stop people from doing something they think is icky. And they're doing it on the basic of intrinsic characteristics, and with absolutely zero demonstration of harm to anybody. Irrational devotion to prejudice against a group is precisely bigotry.
    - resplin 14y ago
      You citing a number of examples of marriage evolving and being redefined only serves to clarify how the process is continuing today and how people of all backgrounds have an interest in those issues. Your demeaning tone and labels doesn't serve your supposedly tolerant position. I agree that everyone should be treated with respect and decency. But I also believe that there is a standard for morality that should be honored in order to promote the greatest mutual happiness. Advocating a standard of public morality in marriage is the same as in drug control, pornography, hate speech, or any other area. We might have different opinions on what standard will bring the most happiness. We don't have to agree, but mutual respect smooths the democratic processes around reconciling those differences. We are a bit off topic here, so I'll stop derailing the conversation.
- dmckeon 14y ago
  Not my politics nor bigotry, thank you. I'm just thankful that some entity came up with a generally usable standard, rather than 20+ competitors in the software market all rolling their own incompatible or non-exportable data store. I haven't checked recently, but for a while there was one vendor marketing family tree software in big box stores that used a proprietary and non-exportable data format. People would buy the simple package, work on their tree, and want to migrate, only to be put off by: "you'll have to re-enter your data." As for non-support of non-traditional family structures, I'm not surprised that a conservative religious entity motivated by research into historical vital records tends to focus on the typical needs for its own users. Many of the rest of the user population benefit from a generally usable (and I'll agree, imperfect) data standard, without which this field would be less interesting and less profitable. There are a bunch of challenges for software developers in regard to traditional family structures of many kinds, generally showing that real life is often more complicated than simple tree-oriented data-structures might suggest. Divorce & step-parents are fairly well handled, but consider how to store, display, & represent explicit and implicit relationships among: unmarried persons living together adoptive parents egg donors surrogate mothers I expect that software and standards will evolve as real life does, but I don't expect the LDS to be putting their effort into areas that they likely do not see as benefitting them, or that they see as controversial for many of their members. On the other hand, an entrepreneur could produce a set of patches or extensions to GEDCOM that addressed the more complicated areas, and provided export into and import from GEDCOM or an extended format.
- GnarfGnarf 14y ago
  You are incorrect - GEDCOM supports same-sex marriage, there is nothing that prevents the recording of same-sex partners. You are confused with Personal Ancestral File, the Church's free genealogy program, which does not allow the entry of same-sex marriage. Many other programs do, and can export these marriages to GEDCOM.
  - rmc 14y ago
    Honestly, I haven't looked into it too much. However I have seen several references to it not supporting same sex marriage ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEDCOM#Support_for_varying_definitions_of_families_and_relationships http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEDCOM#Support_for_varying_defi... ).
- Evbn 14y ago
  There is a wonderful StackOverow post about the problem of cycles in family trees.
  - rmc 14y ago
    It can happen without incestuous relationships. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Im_My_Own_Grandpa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Im_My_Own_Grandpa
- mseebach2 14y ago
  Since it won't be producing offspring, homosexual marriage is fairly irrelevant for the purposes of genealogy.
  - rmc 14y ago
    Firstly, many users don't just use genealogy software to track their DNA ancestors, people use it to record details of their family tree. If a relative died without leaving any offspring, that person isn't deleted from the tree, they are still there. Likewise, people may want to record same sex marriage in their family trees, even though there might not be any off spring. People in same sex marriages might want to track their own family trees. A man might want to include his mother and his mother-in-law (his husband's mother). Secondly, yes, some same sex marriages can produce children. From adoption, to artificial insemination/surrogacy, to one partner having a child(ren) from a previous marriage, which the other adopts, etc. Thirdly, it is possible to have genetic children from a same sex marriage. Some countries have gender recognition law which allows trans people to legally change their gender and get a new birth cert. Depending on the law, they may still be in the original marriage, and still legally have children. (Yes there are people who start living as a different gender and their spouse still loves them and stays with them.) Yes, these are new issues, and a lot of genealogy deals with stuff in the past, but this is only going to get more common as time passes. Blanket statements saying essentially "This is nothing to ever be worried about at all" is false. (As an aside, bisexuals et al. can enter into same sex marriages, it not just 'homosexual marriage')
drumdance 14y ago
Many years ago -- 1980? -- I visited SLC and looked at some of these microfilms. They had tax records from the turn of the century that included info about my grandfather. It was like going back in time.

by dmckeon 14y ago

rmc 14y ago

The LDS was also strong in producing the GEDCOM data standard, which is widely (almost universally) used for family tree exchanges And of course, since they are bigots, they don't let 2 men be married in their GEDCOM standard, or other non-traditional family structures. Get your politics out of standards.

resplin 14y ago
Calling people bigots does nothing to promote civil discourse about important issues such as homosexual marriage. The standard was drafted in 1984, long before efforts to redefine marriage. It isn't very fair of you to project your 21st century politics back on the creators of a 30 year old standard. You apply the label of bigotry to exclude from the conversation those who differ in opinion from you. That isn't how democracies are designed to function. Nor does it recognize the complexity of the issue. Religious people can desire a standard of public morality without espousing hatred for those who don't share that standard. Calling that bigotry makes it harder to identify true prejudice.
- wpietri 14y ago
  Aw, that's precious. Defending the Mormons against charges of bigotry by saying it's the gay rights people who were trying to redefine marriage. coughpolygamycough And you're talking as if marriage hasn't been under rolling redefinition since Gutenberg. Women owning property, being allowed to have a profession, and having the right to vote changed marriage way more than allowing two women to get hitched and have babies. Also, I don't think the campaign against gay marriage can be anything but bigotry. It's exactly analogous to the campaign against interracial marriage: Religious actors try to use the power of the state to stop people from doing something they think is icky. And they're doing it on the basic of intrinsic characteristics, and with absolutely zero demonstration of harm to anybody. Irrational devotion to prejudice against a group is precisely bigotry.
  - resplin 14y ago
    You citing a number of examples of marriage evolving and being redefined only serves to clarify how the process is continuing today and how people of all backgrounds have an interest in those issues. Your demeaning tone and labels doesn't serve your supposedly tolerant position. I agree that everyone should be treated with respect and decency. But I also believe that there is a standard for morality that should be honored in order to promote the greatest mutual happiness. Advocating a standard of public morality in marriage is the same as in drug control, pornography, hate speech, or any other area. We might have different opinions on what standard will bring the most happiness. We don't have to agree, but mutual respect smooths the democratic processes around reconciling those differences. We are a bit off topic here, so I'll stop derailing the conversation.
dmckeon 14y ago
Not my politics nor bigotry, thank you. I'm just thankful that some entity came up with a generally usable standard, rather than 20+ competitors in the software market all rolling their own incompatible or non-exportable data store. I haven't checked recently, but for a while there was one vendor marketing family tree software in big box stores that used a proprietary and non-exportable data format. People would buy the simple package, work on their tree, and want to migrate, only to be put off by: "you'll have to re-enter your data." As for non-support of non-traditional family structures, I'm not surprised that a conservative religious entity motivated by research into historical vital records tends to focus on the typical needs for its own users. Many of the rest of the user population benefit from a generally usable (and I'll agree, imperfect) data standard, without which this field would be less interesting and less profitable. There are a bunch of challenges for software developers in regard to traditional family structures of many kinds, generally showing that real life is often more complicated than simple tree-oriented data-structures might suggest. Divorce & step-parents are fairly well handled, but consider how to store, display, & represent explicit and implicit relationships among: unmarried persons living together adoptive parents egg donors surrogate mothers I expect that software and standards will evolve as real life does, but I don't expect the LDS to be putting their effort into areas that they likely do not see as benefitting them, or that they see as controversial for many of their members. On the other hand, an entrepreneur could produce a set of patches or extensions to GEDCOM that addressed the more complicated areas, and provided export into and import from GEDCOM or an extended format.
GnarfGnarf 14y ago
You are incorrect - GEDCOM supports same-sex marriage, there is nothing that prevents the recording of same-sex partners. You are confused with Personal Ancestral File, the Church's free genealogy program, which does not allow the entry of same-sex marriage. Many other programs do, and can export these marriages to GEDCOM.
- rmc 14y ago
  Honestly, I haven't looked into it too much. However I have seen several references to it not supporting same sex marriage ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEDCOM#Support_for_varying_definitions_of_families_and_relationships http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEDCOM#Support_for_varying_defi... ).
Evbn 14y ago
There is a wonderful StackOverow post about the problem of cycles in family trees.
- rmc 14y ago
  It can happen without incestuous relationships. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Im_My_Own_Grandpa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Im_My_Own_Grandpa
mseebach2 14y ago
Since it won't be producing offspring, homosexual marriage is fairly irrelevant for the purposes of genealogy.
- rmc 14y ago
  Firstly, many users don't just use genealogy software to track their DNA ancestors, people use it to record details of their family tree. If a relative died without leaving any offspring, that person isn't deleted from the tree, they are still there. Likewise, people may want to record same sex marriage in their family trees, even though there might not be any off spring. People in same sex marriages might want to track their own family trees. A man might want to include his mother and his mother-in-law (his husband's mother). Secondly, yes, some same sex marriages can produce children. From adoption, to artificial insemination/surrogacy, to one partner having a child(ren) from a previous marriage, which the other adopts, etc. Thirdly, it is possible to have genetic children from a same sex marriage. Some countries have gender recognition law which allows trans people to legally change their gender and get a new birth cert. Depending on the law, they may still be in the original marriage, and still legally have children. (Yes there are people who start living as a different gender and their spouse still loves them and stays with them.) Yes, these are new issues, and a lot of genealogy deals with stuff in the past, but this is only going to get more common as time passes. Blanket statements saying essentially "This is nothing to ever be worried about at all" is false. (As an aside, bisexuals et al. can enter into same sex marriages, it not just 'homosexual marriage')

drumdance 14y ago

Many years ago -- 1980? -- I visited SLC and looked at some of these microfilms. They had tax records from the turn of the century that included info about my grandfather. It was like going back in time.