So I’ve been playing about with a new tool for analysing your family tree and it’s worth telling you about now. It’s been around a few months and I’ve been a guinea pig user for the developer while they tweak and add new features.
Gedminer is free to use. You upload a gedcom file. It stays in the browser – not hosted on the site so your data is kept private. I tested it out with my full master tree, all 4462 people. It’s shown me all the places in my tree that need work and makes suggestions how to improve! Let’s take a proper look, which will expose just how neglected my tree is in terms of sourcing citations! The shoemaker’s children always go unshod, etc. It’s largely the fault of using Genopro as my personal software, which is a more visual than database format.
This section on the homepage gives all kinds of nice stats for your tree, along with upcoming birthdays, top surnames, etc.
The integrity section helps you work on areas that need improvement. Here’s a suggestion to add parents for my ancestor Johanna McGrath. Yes, I’d love to know their names but there are literally no records to help me here!
I also like the incomplete families section.
The census toolbox has info to help you to know what to look for. Here, it’s showing that there are missing census records for Ireland, so no point looking for them.
The Discovery section can actually build you a research plan.
The DNA features are shiny. I spent ages a few years ago working out the living Y descendants for my Bradley line. Gedminer works this out for every man in the tree.
You can use it to identify target testers for autosomal DNA too.
Once you’ve acted on your tasks, you can upload a new version of the gedcom. Overall, I think this is a great tool for people who’ve been working on their tree over a few years and need fresh eyes to spot the gaps, errors and places to improve. Try it now while it’s free – I can’t imagine it’ll stay that way forever.
Thanks Claire. What a wonderful piece of software. I’ve just tried it and very impressed. Lays bare what I kind of knew already. Basically ‘incompleteness’ built in since the early days when I was a lot less educated than I am now. Can probably generate mini projects to tackle when the energy levels are lower
Yes! I love the idea of just tackling one issue at a time. Much more manageable.
Clair, I’ve looked through it and it seems to be very useful and user friendly, and I can definitely see its utility.
However, the website is asking me to upload data, but it’s not actually telling me who is behind the website. It’s difficult to trust the assurances of a developer that their website is safe when they aren’t willing to identify themselves. They may be a professional genealogist, but I have absolutely no way to verify that this is true
I would love to use it, but that would require trust, and a website by an anonymous developer that asks for data is not the sort of thing that engenders trust.
Just to be clear, you do upload your Gedcom but it’s only in your browser, it’s not stored on Gedminer’s servers. You don’t even need to create an account.
I agree it would be better if the developer identified themselves publicly but they have reasons for staying private.