Top Secret

I am still alive and working day and night on the second edition of Henry the Immigrant, which has become rather long. I'll let you know when interesting things arise.

In writing the second edition, I have become increasingly frustrated in efforts to collaborate with others, by two things. The proliferation of erroneous, may I say stupid, information on the web by copiers I have already discussed (see blog of Sunday, 3 Nov 2013). The second is the amount of information stored on Ancestry.com, FamilyTree, and other places marked "private." It becomes almost impossible to discuss possible relationships, connections, family stories, and data sources with others when the relations, connections, stories, and data are kept secret. I can see why someone might wish to keep information on still living people, particularly younger people, private (though I believe this is overdone), but why in the world should relationships, stories, DNA connections, etc. be kept private for people who have been dead for hundreds of years. Can someone tell me what the privacy concerns are? I personally would like to see genealogical websites refuse to accept trees, histories, etc. marked “private,” but of course, this will never be done.