Question GEDCOM I, F and M numbering

I'm working on customizing a family tree platform for my community.  This platform will host multiple Family Trees, and a real person(who may be alive or no longer) may be present in more than one family tree within this platform.

In my community, it is usual practice for people to get married within the extended related people - usually not the same bloodline.  For privacy reasons, there is no attempt to create one giant tree, and we want interested community person to create their own family tree, and they can control the access.

Like Geni.com, when a person is present in another tree, is there a way we can link the same person in another tree?  Or can we maintain global unique numbering so that, down the line, there is a possibility of merging the same person across the trees to support the unique identity of the person within this platform?

 

no (afaik)

Regarding links, here's an old discussion on the topic:
www.webtrees.net/index.php/forum/help-fo...e-family-trees#85323

These identifiers (usually called XREF id's) all start with an X in webtrees, not the usual I or F etc. If you wonder why, it was extensively discussed before. It boils down to that the GEDCOM standards do not specify the exact format. It just wants them all to be unique within a file.

I think since webtrees v1.7.10 or there about, the XREFs handed out by webtrees are unique, even across trees. So in your first tree the generated default individual 'John Doe' will be X1. Rename him to yourself and add parents: these will be X2 and X4 (since I think X3 will be the family linking X1 and X2, but it could be that the family is created first)
If you then create a second tree, that will get a 'John Doe' by default as well, and I predict it will be then X5.

So in case you want to merge data, it's accounted for.

I would advocate for starting out everything in one tree nevertheless. In my experience it is very hard to get people to actively contribute. If privacy is a concern, you can adjust it per user so all living individuals are set to be private, except for directly related persons within n steps. So for example first cousins are accessible but second cousins remain private.

Especially if you expect there to be duplicates, that imho is all the more a reason to let them work in one tree. Except if you want people to have the experience of finding things out in sources and duplicating work is less of a concern.

I thought the idea of geni.com was that it's one big spaghetti cluster and duplicates should be avoided? Haven't really used it that much.

@BertKoor Thanks a lot for your input on the subject.

I received a few GEDCOM files from my community members in very old versions of the format, where indi records start with I and fam with F, etc.

How can I convert them to the latest GEDCOM standards before I import them? I plan to create multiple trees, i.e., each GEDCOM file would go into its own tree. Is this a good idea, or is there a way I can import various GEDCOM files into the same tree without overwriting the existing records?

For the reasons you mentioned, I prefer to upload multiple GEDCOM files into one tree; I'm not sure whether that is possible. This approach is fine as long as I can do some deduplication exercises with existing webtrees utilities, with the hope that the remaining duplicate records may need to be manually removed with human help.

BaskarIyer wrote:

For the reasons you mentioned, I prefer to upload multiple GEDCOM files into one tree; I'm not sure whether that is possible. This approach is fine as long as I can do some deduplication exercises with existing webtrees utilities, with the hope that the remaining duplicate records may need to be manually removed with human help.

I don't think it is possible to "upload multiple GEDCOM files into one tree" even if you have been careful to pre-process the data to eliminate conflicting Xref numbers.

There is already a procedure for creating one tree from multiple GEDCOM files:
1) Upload each GEDCOM file into a separate tree.
2) Go to Control panel -> Family trees -> Merge family trees which allows you to add all records from tree2 into tree1. (If some of the Xref numbers overlap, you will be asked to renumber the elements from one of the trees first)
3) Use Control panel -> Family trees -> Find duplicates to identify records for the same individual that were present in both trees
4) Go back to step 2) to merge the next tree into the target.

You should be able to load each GEDCOM you receive into their own tree and then merge one tree into the other.  Make backups of the trees before merging!  The process of merging is not automatic because you will need to review each merged record to make sure they are not duplicated in the two trees.  Sources will probably be the biggest nightmare.  You may also find that each tree follows a different set of conventions and record data differently.  If each tree follows different "standards" for data entry or was made from different programs the final tree may not look cohesive!  

I've not tried this myself, because webtrees is my only program at this time (and has been since its inception and also its preceding program as well).

You would need to load and merge each GEDCOM tree into one final tree!  This could be time consuming.  Don't worry about the letter that precedes the XREF these will be renumbered if needed or left alone if not needed.  The XREF number is something you should not have to worry about!