Treebard's Privacy Policy (rant)
Jun 3, 2020 1:41:10 GMT -8
Post by Uncle Buddy on Jun 3, 2020 1:41:10 GMT -8
Many of the best genealogists and/or most fervent genealogists are known to be overtly detail-oriented, nit-picking perfectionists who happen to like dead people more than they like living people simply because dead people don't do annoying things. Privacy issues mostly come up when dead people ruin the perfectionist's fantasy world by doing something annoying anyway, like starting two families in different towns at the same time or getting drunk on their wedding night and burning down their new mother-in-law's whole village. These historical disappointers are known to genealogists as "skeletons in the closet". Genealogists of the past, easily embarrassed that they were, believed that it's better to lie or leave things out than it is to pass on true information that they find embarrassing.
The reason I'm telling you this is that Treebard is made for everybody, not just people who are so easily annoyed that they like dead people more than they like living people, and who then proceed to build a fantasy world where dead people did all the right things and lived happily ever after. If our ancestors were dreamlike super-people who lived happily ever after, we wouldn't need genealogy; you could just phone up your great-great-great-great-grandma and ask her whether or not she was really married at the age of 13. And why. And she'd be happy to tell you, because, what the heck, that was a long time ago and it doesn't matter anymore. But since our ancestors didn't live in a fairy-tale world where people did all the right things, we have skeletons in our family closets.
So there will be genieware users who wonder what's right or wrong when it comes to sharing compromising information about people who are no longer around. I think you can guess what I'd do. If genealogy is all about spreading a LACK of information, I doubt I'd have gone to the trouble of putting Treebard together, at the expense of having a life, for the past several years. But I'm just the lowly developer of Treebard, whereas Treebard the computer program has no opinion about this. So users can hide any event from the public eye and all living people as well as anyone less than 100 years old will be automatically classified as private entities. As for right or wrong, Treebard just doesn't have an opinion.
However, if you tell lies in your tree or change the facts in any way to try and make your mortal forbears appear more than mere mortals, you will ruin the fun for everybody by reducing your family tree to trivialities unconnected to a true story about real people. In a case like this, the Great Spirit of Genealogy might have to ride down from the sky in his Chariot of Truth and smack you on the back of your typing finger.
Point being, tell the story your way but don't lie about it. And if researchers want you to share information with them, then put yourself in their shoes instead of having weird paranoid fantasies about their motivations and qualifications. Share, don't hoard. With Treebard you don't even need a GEDCOM file since the program is so easy to use and portable; just share the whole program.
As someone who can get interested in searching for facts about anyone's family, I've run into many individuals in genealogy who don't share my philosophy of openness. There seems to be a strong thread of something similar to snobbery running through the social milieu of this pursuit (which is supposedly just a hobby, like working crossword puzzles but more... personal?), but as a proponent of more openness in genealogy I don't want to make the mistake of accidentally giving the impression that I'm angry, disgusted, bored with, resentful of, or contemptuous of those truly sincere hoarders of dead people who don't realize that they simply don't like living people as well as their own dead ancestors. Note the emphasis on "own". A word I'm tired of.
I mean come on. I'm as anti-social as the next guy, but... hoarding information about history? Who started that trend? Well never mind. More importantly, who's going to stop it? I'm trying to reach those researchers who are sitting on the fence, undecided whether to be friendly and generous, or paranoid and greedy with information. Don't participate in this trend of snootiness.
The world today is a crowded place and it's getting scarier by the day (unless you meditate, which I think maybe is what I should be doing instead of writing computer code). We're somehow being trained to view each other with suspicion by default, to expect a stalker behind every bush. Not so many generations ago, we were all so much more related and reliant on each other than we are today. The word "stalker" once referred to a person who was better at finding food than other people. A stalker was a good thing, back when we knew what food was because we knew what hunger was. Is personal control of dead peoples' privacy a need, like food, air, or water? Or just one of those cheap thrills we spoiled moderners think we can't do without?
In our complicated times, it's sad that we don't know the difference between a happy hobby and a good reason to be rude to someone. By far the worst thing about genealogy is the number of rude people you meet while trying to do it. (I was rude to someone once and I'm still embarrassed about it.) And contrary to popular belief, ignoring someone is in fact rude. The belief that ignoring people is a mark of strength or personal power was invented by a cocaine-frazzled 32-year-old yuppie CEO of a bankrupt Sugar-Coated Nothing factory on May 30, 1999, and for a variety of reasons mostly connected to overpopulation and a desperate lack of anything else to believe in, this belief managed to grab hold and catch on.
My opinion is that we're all related, and the history books would be completely blank if no one could research someone else's family without first providing credentials showing that they're some kind of minor deity. Or a 16th cousin. But that's just my opinion. Treebard doesn't care. You can use Treebard any way you like. Because there are so many people contacting you wanting you to share your hard-won research results, Treebard's developer has made it his moral imperative to make the sharing process easy and natural.
Just share the whole program.
The reason I'm telling you this is that Treebard is made for everybody, not just people who are so easily annoyed that they like dead people more than they like living people, and who then proceed to build a fantasy world where dead people did all the right things and lived happily ever after. If our ancestors were dreamlike super-people who lived happily ever after, we wouldn't need genealogy; you could just phone up your great-great-great-great-grandma and ask her whether or not she was really married at the age of 13. And why. And she'd be happy to tell you, because, what the heck, that was a long time ago and it doesn't matter anymore. But since our ancestors didn't live in a fairy-tale world where people did all the right things, we have skeletons in our family closets.
So there will be genieware users who wonder what's right or wrong when it comes to sharing compromising information about people who are no longer around. I think you can guess what I'd do. If genealogy is all about spreading a LACK of information, I doubt I'd have gone to the trouble of putting Treebard together, at the expense of having a life, for the past several years. But I'm just the lowly developer of Treebard, whereas Treebard the computer program has no opinion about this. So users can hide any event from the public eye and all living people as well as anyone less than 100 years old will be automatically classified as private entities. As for right or wrong, Treebard just doesn't have an opinion.
However, if you tell lies in your tree or change the facts in any way to try and make your mortal forbears appear more than mere mortals, you will ruin the fun for everybody by reducing your family tree to trivialities unconnected to a true story about real people. In a case like this, the Great Spirit of Genealogy might have to ride down from the sky in his Chariot of Truth and smack you on the back of your typing finger.
Point being, tell the story your way but don't lie about it. And if researchers want you to share information with them, then put yourself in their shoes instead of having weird paranoid fantasies about their motivations and qualifications. Share, don't hoard. With Treebard you don't even need a GEDCOM file since the program is so easy to use and portable; just share the whole program.
As someone who can get interested in searching for facts about anyone's family, I've run into many individuals in genealogy who don't share my philosophy of openness. There seems to be a strong thread of something similar to snobbery running through the social milieu of this pursuit (which is supposedly just a hobby, like working crossword puzzles but more... personal?), but as a proponent of more openness in genealogy I don't want to make the mistake of accidentally giving the impression that I'm angry, disgusted, bored with, resentful of, or contemptuous of those truly sincere hoarders of dead people who don't realize that they simply don't like living people as well as their own dead ancestors. Note the emphasis on "own". A word I'm tired of.
I mean come on. I'm as anti-social as the next guy, but... hoarding information about history? Who started that trend? Well never mind. More importantly, who's going to stop it? I'm trying to reach those researchers who are sitting on the fence, undecided whether to be friendly and generous, or paranoid and greedy with information. Don't participate in this trend of snootiness.
The world today is a crowded place and it's getting scarier by the day (unless you meditate, which I think maybe is what I should be doing instead of writing computer code). We're somehow being trained to view each other with suspicion by default, to expect a stalker behind every bush. Not so many generations ago, we were all so much more related and reliant on each other than we are today. The word "stalker" once referred to a person who was better at finding food than other people. A stalker was a good thing, back when we knew what food was because we knew what hunger was. Is personal control of dead peoples' privacy a need, like food, air, or water? Or just one of those cheap thrills we spoiled moderners think we can't do without?
In our complicated times, it's sad that we don't know the difference between a happy hobby and a good reason to be rude to someone. By far the worst thing about genealogy is the number of rude people you meet while trying to do it. (I was rude to someone once and I'm still embarrassed about it.) And contrary to popular belief, ignoring someone is in fact rude. The belief that ignoring people is a mark of strength or personal power was invented by a cocaine-frazzled 32-year-old yuppie CEO of a bankrupt Sugar-Coated Nothing factory on May 30, 1999, and for a variety of reasons mostly connected to overpopulation and a desperate lack of anything else to believe in, this belief managed to grab hold and catch on.
My opinion is that we're all related, and the history books would be completely blank if no one could research someone else's family without first providing credentials showing that they're some kind of minor deity. Or a 16th cousin. But that's just my opinion. Treebard doesn't care. You can use Treebard any way you like. Because there are so many people contacting you wanting you to share your hard-won research results, Treebard's developer has made it his moral imperative to make the sharing process easy and natural.
Just share the whole program.