Proud Programmers Blog :: Domino WikiGeno -or- Anybody has experience with collaborative, online, genealogy tools?

Tags: Question Thoughts

Several members of my family are interested in genealogy, and sometimes need to pass over genealogy-data to each other. The integration is often conveyed via GEDCOM files, and thus each user has to import and maintain their own genalogy databases on each computer. Has anybody experience with such tools?

Of course an ideal tool would be Domino based, with the following top features;

Utilize Domino's strong security features to assign responsible persons for their own families within the complete person-hierarchy. This means that my uncle can be responsible for his familiy and any decendants, while my aunt can be similar responsive for her familiy and decendants. This will spur collaboration and ownership of the family data "near you". This would be much better than sending off some GEDCOM file to the authorized Genealogy-nut in the familiy which may or may not add your data.
Present the familiy data in cool, web 2.0'ish ways, created with DoJo or Ext.ND or similar. I foresee person, familiy and tree-views.
Wiki-like editing possibilities for authorized persons. This means that changes can be reviewed, acceped and rejected. All edits are saved.
Blog-like interface about edits in the database. RSS-feeds are important for some
GEDCOM export. Authorized users may export the data as GEDCOM files for other usage - such as report generators. GEDCOM import. Authorized users may import GEDCOM to start off a family-tree
Good image support. I will be willing to offer free usage of my Import Image 2 Lotus Notes (II2LN) for such tools! (BTW, Blogsphere users already have this possibility, see here).

One day - perhaps several, independent familiy trees can connect and we thus have the start of WikiGeno - see who you are related to?

Comments

1 - The only experience I have with this is through a friend. He has all of his data in a custom MS Access file. He hired someone to create the database. He did all of the research, does all of the reporting, and continues to add to it. The problem, other than the MS Access file, is that if something should happen to him, no one will know what do with the data. Moving it to something like you propose would be an excellent idea.

In this particular case, an import Wizard would be nice. Emoticon

I was never really into genealogy, until I saw the results of his research. And my father's. It is pretty cool and provides the kids (and adults) with a link to the past.

This is an excellent idea.

Posted by Gregg Eldred At 15:17:44 On 14.01.2009 | - Website - |