Ancestry's new feature my tree tags is out of beta and that means all of us can take advantage
of this tool that can help us filter our tree according to themes or
research status but the blessing can soon become a
curse if we're not all on the same page. Let's talk about
that next.
Howdy, I'm Devin Noel Lee with Family History Fanatics where
we try to help you keep the fun in family history by
understanding genetic genealogy, helping you climb
that family tree and make sure that you capture and preserve
your memories along the way. So, in a previous video, I
talked about my tree tags and the good, the bad, and the ugly
of this new service. I really do like it and think it has
possibilities what all of those tags mean and how can we all
work together to tag our tree the most effectively. As I
stated in a previous video, not everybody is taking advantage
of my tree tags and it's not as visible as I would like it to
be but what if we all began understanding what the tags
were so that when you come across my tree and I stumble
across yours we both speak the same tagged language. To begin
understanding my tree tags, let's hop on to my tree to
someone I haven't tagged yet. In this case, we're going to go
to Martha Gordon. When we click on Martha, you can see that she
is my second great grandmother and then right next to my
relationship, there's this opportunity to add a tag. When
your work space pops up, we have all of these available
tags. All I have to do in order to add a tag to a person is
click that terminology and then if I don't want it in the
future, I can click on view save tags and then go ahead and
hit the X to make it disappear. The other thing I want you to
point out to you before we start going through the tags is
the little question mark. This is a help field. It is designed
to help us know what do these tags mean. Well, come back to
that in a little bit and we have what are called universal
tags and I put it in air quotes because they should be
universal but you'll soon realize why some of them are
universal and some of them not so much. Let's start with the
tags that are the easiest to understand. Research tags. If
you are actively researching someone. Like you really are
actively searching out hints and strategies and stories and
records for this person then go ahead and attach that to your
tree. You are not active researching 10000 names on your
tree. It's impossible. So only tag the people that you are
most interested in right now. And then if it changes remember
then you can switch that off. What is a brick wall Ancestry a
brick wall Ancestry that person as far back as you can go but
you're not having any further success. That is your brick
wall. It's nice to flag those because when you filter like we
said in a previous video you can quickly get to your brick
walls and start working on them again or if somebody comes to
your tree and sees that you have them as a brick wall
either they can collaborate on that same person and provide
you new information or they know they'll be stuck as well.
Remember these tags are supposed to be universal. The
next one isn't very universal. Complete. What does complete
mean to you? Let me know in the comment section. To me,
complete means I've researched all I can research. There's
nothing more to use. What does Ancestry say? Ancestry says I
have am confident that I have executed thorough searches to
help answer my question. Said sound very similar to how I
think of complete. Now, other people who have taught about
how to use my tree tags say that complete to them means I
don't want to research them anymore. Well, wouldn't that
really be inactively researching, meaning I really
don't care about this line. I'm kind of ignoring this line. So,
we need to use the terms as they're intended in the tree.
Now, the other problem with complete is that you have
verified. The complete definition, I'm confident that
I've executed these searches sounds a lot like the
definition verified. I've done my best to verify the facts of
the ancestors life. Doesn't that sound the same? So, why do
you need both? It creates more confusion and for genealogists
who seek after a genealogy proof standard, this becomes
confusing. So, I would love. I would love if we could have
complete if it's meant to be I have I'm not really actively
researching this person, have a label that says inactive
researching or actively ignoring. That would be kind of
fun but not have complete and verified. The other problem
with verified and unverified is that in Andy's mind, verified
means that you have had somebody peer review your
research, kind of like the videos that I've talked about
before, the importance of peer reviewing someone else's trees
to him verified means period viewed research. So, what's the
strategy? The strategy is try to rely on the definitions that
are provided here on Ancestry so that we're all using the
tags in the same way and then maybe we need to use the
feedback form to tell Ancestry have some terms that are just
too similar. The one tag that I really like in addition to
actively researching in brick walls is hypothesis. Although
hypothesis and unverified are very similar. Watch. So,
hypothesis, testing a theory to if it works with the tree in a
tree context or the DNA evidence and verified. I've
heard this information or saw somewhere but haven't done
anything to prove it. Doesn't it sound the same? So maybe
this time less is more. I do like hypothesis so that you can
mark it as this is a theory. I'm just trying to figure it
out. It's not verified. Don't take it as the gospel truth. So
research status tax. There is understand and yet they're
confusing right now. So, let's start talking about
relationship tags. Relationship tags are really useful and yet
confusing at the time of recording this video. So, when
you tag someone in that person is tagged on your tree. So, if
Martha was adopted, I can tag adopted into this family or out
of this family. Unfortunately, the into and outer part becomes
very confusing on the tree. I would just like to have adopted
and let it go. Now, bonus tip, let's say you do have an
adopted person in your tree. You go up here to edit, edit
relationships. This is where you change the adopted because
then when that person shows up on the family tree, when they
are in the profile with the biological family, they will be
biological. When they show up in the family where they're
adopted, they'll have it Tag that says they're adopted. I
don't mind the tags adopted but it would really be nice if we
just had one tag rather than both. Now, in a previous video,
we talked about how people used to name fields to put no child,
died young, no issue, all of these things. This is where you
can put that information. Let's say that Martha died young.
It's not true. I'll take it off in a minute but I can put died
young. Universal, easy to understand. Let's see this is a
direct Ancestry
on there. Multiple spouses. Now my husband often says why why
would that matter? Wouldn't it show up here multiple spouses?
Let me go find someone who has multiple spouses really
quickly. So this is one of my direct line ancestors Andrew
Nelson Smith and he has multiple spouses. So, I could
tag him as having multiple spouses. What is the advantage
of that? Now, I don't believe in having a tree of 50, 000
people. If I want to have a tree of 50000 people, I'll go
use family search because invariably, I'm only working on
2000 people or less. So, the beauty of having multiple
spouses here as let say that Marietta is not my direct line.
She's the stepmother, I could come in here and delete her out
of the tree and then when I see multiple spouses, it tells me,
hey, you've got the parents, you have the spouse, you have
the child that you are directly descended from but he has
additional wives and you can either go find them on Ancestry
and add them back in or you can go over to a platform like
Family Search and then it's a one-well tree and you can go
visit the relatives over there. So, that's one of the
advantages of multiple spouses but I really like the
definition that multiple spouses say Ancestry adds, the
person had either multiple consecutive or concurrent
spouses. So, this could be polygony. It could be someone
who's not obeying the law. He has multiple or she has
multiple spouses and people don't actually, the two
families don't know the death taking place but it could also
be divorces and it could be widowers who married multiple
times. So, if you wanted to say multiple spouses and then add
polygamous relationship or divorces, then, you would have
to go up here and create a custom tag but you can also add
never married, no children, and orphans. Very self explanatory.
I really like your relationship tags even though the adopted
one I'm not a big fan of as it currently stands. As far as
universal tags go with life experience tags, Ancestry
hasn't given us very many. But these are generated on commonly
appearing demarcations users have used in order to label
their tree. It comes back to those flags and flowers from
the previous video I mentioned. So you if Martha was an
immigrant I can tag her as an immigrant. Universal we all
understand what that means. If Martha served in the military.
I can go ahead and say she served in the military. She
didn't but what would happen if she wasn't with the WAC, the
Women's Air Corps or what if she was in the Navy or the
Coast Guard? Well, then I'd have to come up here and create
a custom tag in order to differentiate the branches of
service and then, of course, we have royalty and nobility and
that is self explanatory but then, we come to probably the
most confusing tags there are and these are our DNA tags.
Now, personally, I find the DNA tags far more confusing than
another tool, the color coding available on your DNA match
list. Let me show you really quickly what I'm talking about.
So, very quickly, we're over here on my DNA match list and
you can see that I've added some of these color dots and
these dots mean that these people are related to me down
these line. I'll have a video about using certain tables to
color code your family tree in the future but for now, it's so
much easier to come in here and use these color codes to
differentiate my ancestors that are genetically related to me
and how they are related to me. Now, I know Ancestry is trying
to get the tools to have people are being creative with how
they label their ancestors on the tree side of things rather
than the DNA match side of being a way to converge but
this is when we get into problem. The universal tags in
the DNA section are a bit of a misnomer. They are universal in
terms of we can all kind of understand what those terms
mean but remember when we start searching each other trees the
common Ancestry and your DNA matches will be common for you
but it won't really go across trees really easily so what do
these terms mean well according to Ancestry your DNA match is
anybody on your match list so these are probably going to be
living people and sometimes recently departed individuals
they're not going to generally be at least this is ways
Ancestry explained it. They're not going to be people all the
way up your tree. The next group you have are your common
DNA ancestors. Maybe these are your brick walls or the end of
your lines or the people that your matches typically connect
into. Martha is one of those common DNA ancestors but
there's people right above her. So, which one should I tag as
common? Martha or her Parents. So, when it comes to my trade
types on
Ancestrytreetags2
really is a lack of use in universal terminology.
Remember, verified and complete Ancestrytreetags2 similar and
people are applying those terms dissimilarly which is going to
create more confusion in the future. So, what are some best
at practices? Use the universal tags as they are intended. So,
look at the pop ups from the question marks beside the tags
and make your choices based on that that's a good fit. Only
create useful common custom tags. So again you wouldn't put
Beauty Pageant Queen unless you have a lot of Beauty Pageant
Queens. Use something that's going to be applicable to a lot
of people in your tree but not everybody. So something like
Civil War veteran, American Revolution Veteran or people
from a particular town that you want to filter to very quickly.
What question do you still have about my tree tag? Do you find
that you have the right kinds of tags? Are you using them in
a way you're not sure if it makes any sense? Are you just
as confused about the how to apply the DNA tags? Let me
know. Let's have a conversation and maybe we all can develop a
lot of best practices on the platform. Thank you so much. If
you have any further questions, I'm Devin Noel Lee with Family
History Fanatics. We want to help you have fun in climbing
your family a tree and most of our videos come from questions
from viewer like you. So, get a hold of us using the
information in the description or dropping a comment in any of
our videos.