Re: When I die...
As to the first question, I don't really know for sure what Ancestry does with trees from expired accounts, but I would be VERY surprised if they remove them. It's in their interest to keep that data as it enhances the value of what they are selling.
W/re the second question, I uploaded my 5MB GED to Ancestry and it's pretty quick and painless. There are only a couple of gotchas.
1. All the sources will probably drop off because Reunion and Ancestry handle them differently. For this I wrote a little Applescript to massage the Reunion GED before uploading it to Ancestry. It's posted elsewhere on this forum.
2. Your notes won't get transferred. I couldn't find an easy way around that, so on some of the more important people I manually copied notes into Ancestry "Stories". Since it's so easy for people to grab your stories without crediting you for them, I recommend adding a line at the end with your name and contact information so you get credit for it when it's copied. (People don't usually bother to remove that when they copy the story.)
Mostly I submit to Ancestry to get contacts with others researching lines I am interested in. Not as much for long-term preservation of my data, although I suppose it helps that a little too.
You might also consider submitting your GED to the LDS church via www.familysearch.org. They managed to preserve my sources and notes just fine and they are all now available on their web site. I'm guessing the LDS church will be around a lot longer than Ancestry, they will never charge people to see it, and they probably keep it all backed up in a really safe location since it is so important to their church. (I am not a Mormon but I am certainly grateful to them for the support they give the genealogists everywhere!)
Don
As to the first question, I don't really know for sure what Ancestry does with trees from expired accounts, but I would be VERY surprised if they remove them. It's in their interest to keep that data as it enhances the value of what they are selling.
W/re the second question, I uploaded my 5MB GED to Ancestry and it's pretty quick and painless. There are only a couple of gotchas.
1. All the sources will probably drop off because Reunion and Ancestry handle them differently. For this I wrote a little Applescript to massage the Reunion GED before uploading it to Ancestry. It's posted elsewhere on this forum.
2. Your notes won't get transferred. I couldn't find an easy way around that, so on some of the more important people I manually copied notes into Ancestry "Stories". Since it's so easy for people to grab your stories without crediting you for them, I recommend adding a line at the end with your name and contact information so you get credit for it when it's copied. (People don't usually bother to remove that when they copy the story.)
Mostly I submit to Ancestry to get contacts with others researching lines I am interested in. Not as much for long-term preservation of my data, although I suppose it helps that a little too.
You might also consider submitting your GED to the LDS church via www.familysearch.org. They managed to preserve my sources and notes just fine and they are all now available on their web site. I'm guessing the LDS church will be around a lot longer than Ancestry, they will never charge people to see it, and they probably keep it all backed up in a really safe location since it is so important to their church. (I am not a Mormon but I am certainly grateful to them for the support they give the genealogists everywhere!)
Don
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