User:Pwaldron

I have been searching for some time for a combination of Ancestral Quest/PAF (which I have used for genealogical data entry since 1987), Wikipedia (where I have been an occasional editor since 2005) and TribalPages (where I have been sharing my genealogical research behind a password since 2008). While GEDCOM is far from perfect, it is also essential that I be able to import data from my existing GEDCOM and export back to GEDCOM, with no limit on the size of the GEDCOM file. As of June 11, 2009, there were 32,257 individuals in my database, and a GEDCOM file containing all the information was approaching 14MB, too large for tribalpages.com which has a 10MB limit. It is also becoming too large for one person to update, and I would really love to delegate work on some branches to enthusiastic cousins.

On June 11, 2008, I found, registered on and explored werelate.org. I am very impressed by what the creators are trying to do.

In the past, I published my database with no password protection using GED2HTML. In 2001, however, I had a legal problem with a distant cousin who didn't like the information that his aunt had provided about him. During the time that my information was openly available, I was swamped with e-mails, the majority of them from people with no obvious connection to my tree. So I am not prepared to publish again without password protection and some control over who I allow to edit my work. And I am not prepared to publish my e-mail address for spammers and others to use.

I note at http://www.werelate.org/wiki/WeRelate_talk:Living_people that it is planned to allow people to create private wikis with links back and forth to the main wiki and to copy or move non-living people from the private wiki into the main wiki. I look forward to the promised coming to fruition in 2010 of both the private wiki idea and GEDCOM export.

Arising from talks that I have given to genealogical societies, some of my research on the O'Halloran and Parker families is publicly available.

If you wish to contact me, try using my talk page.