From: G6JPG-255@255soft.uk   
      
   I thought it would be an interesting discussion to how people go about   
   two (or more) people working on the same database.   
      
   This is regardless of which genealogy software is in use.   
      
   I suppose one way is to store (or at least share) it in the cloud   
   somewhere; personally I don't like the cloud, (a) because I don't   
   consider it reliable, (b) I'm not too sure who has access to it, but   
   even if you _do_ do that, you need to agree who is working on it when;   
   if, say, two people are working on different parts of it (they're   
   pursuing different lines, maybe because they're in different parts of   
   the country [or world!]), they need some way of combining what they've   
   found/added. By cloud, I include general cloud (such as dropbox), and   
   specific genealogy ones (such as an Ancestry tree).   
      
   Brother's Keeper has the facility to compare two similar databases (or   
   versions of the same one), and highlight differences, allowing you to   
   move/merge/whatever facts and people from one to the other; I presume   
   some other softwares have something similar. This does mean both   
   participants have to go through this process, though, and presumably   
   they'll still end up with different databases: if, say, they each start   
   with 100 or 1000 people, and each add 5, then in person A's case, he   
   will have his additions as numbers 101 to 105 and his co-worker's   
   additions as 106 to 110, and person B will have the opposite.   
      
   I know moderately distant cousins won't _necessarily_ consider this a   
   problem: they probably are extending the database - at least, the modern   
   end - differently anyway, not being _that_ interested in their cousin's   
   close family. But say a couple of brothers (or siblings) are both   
   working on different lines of their common tree: say they both take   
   their holidays around the same time, but go to different places, where   
   they research the line that is in that locality. How do they merge their   
   results.   
      
   I _suspect_ it's an intractable problem, especially where (or at least   
   more so where) the two (or more) participants use different software.   
      
   I don't have a solution; I just thought it'd be an interesting   
   discussion to have.   
      
   [I don't have the problem _much_ myself - my brother lets me do it all   
   for our family. And other cousins keep their own, different except where   
   we overlap, trees.]   
   --   
   J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf   
      
   "Usenet is a way of being annoyed by people you otherwise never would have   
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   - John J. Kinyon   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
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