JW needs to learn how to keep his tallywacker in his pocket.
As stated, he’s dead now.
Thanks for sharing the awesome story, Melody! I doubt there is anything as scandalous as that in my own tree. The only thing I’ve confirmed so far is that one great uncle died after being hit by a train.
After re-reading the emails and pondering some, I think I know the problem: They are reflexively defensive. They have a couple good reasons for this, and a few stupid ones, all of which are too boring to get into here. There are many other stories of these family members lashing out at the slightest of affronts, even at other siblings. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that my project backfired. The consensus agreement here seems to be that my project was about 95% inoffensive, and that missing 5% was enough to hang me.
Whatever, I’m over it. In fact, I’m kind of glad I figured it out now before I had hedged some serious project on them.
Thanks for all the opinions, everyone!
There is a history of my mom’s family, that spans the early 1500s to my mom’s generation, posted online for the world to see, except they have my father’s name spelled wrong. This was put online by a library doing a state-endorsed project about “founding families” (our family came to the new world with the Conquistadors). No one asked for permission because everything was public information available to anyone who bothered to look it up.
I would say that the primary objection is probably a technophobic one. Your name is online? :eek: Identity theft! You use a message board? :eek: Sexual predators will show up at your door! Etc. I would venture a guess that Pullet’s family has no idea that there names are already online with their addresses an phone numbers and that you an look at their rooftops from space, and look at their front doors with Google Street View.
And if you are like my SO, will find out that you were evidently the only person in the parking lot home that day when they took the photo - showing the make & model of your car!
Your family seems weird. Ignore them.
…
I expect more respect from a family member than a stranger. It would have been polite to ask. melodyharmonious’ way seems the right way to me.
The usual rule, I think, is that living persons’ information should not be exposed; dead people are fair game. I don’t know about the website you mention, but many genealogical websites will, in public-access mode, suppress all information (except surname) for anyone in their database who lacks notation of death or burial. (U.S. census data is made public after 72 years.)
That’s my plan 
Any online tree I have tried out does this. Most also have it so you can lock down your tree so only invited people can see the tree. If you have not entered any information under death or burial who are under 100 years old, the only thing that shows up at all for the person’s name is “Living <Surname>”. The family members who are invited will be able to see ALL records, everyone else sees either little or nothing. Just because it is on the internet doesn’t make it public.
If you were using geni.com - nothing was exposed to the public on the internet.
Their website states:
Geni is private. Only the people in your family tree can log in to your tree and your profile. Geni will not share your personal information with third parties. We will not sell your email address or spam you. Users control which communications they would like to receive from us.
If that is where you had your tree, tell your freaked out family member(s) that they are wrong.
No you weren’t a jerk, had you refused to take it down you might have been (even then it’s “iffy”).
The thing is people get nervous when they see their name pop up in a Google search. Once I found my Amazon.Com wishlist came up in a Google Search with my name. I swore I filled it in so my real name wasn’t revealed. But I missed one box.
The bottom line is you did something someone didn’t like. You apologized and rectified the mistake. That makes you NOT a jerk.
And realize, even if you were a jerk so what, everyone at some times is a jerk, even me.
Another data point, in which I’ll also agree that the OP is very much NOT a jerk for doing this.
We used to do a family calendar: birthdays, holidays, reminiscences, photos, family trivia questions, that kind of thing. We printed it out at our expense, bound it, sent copies to my cousins and aunts and uncles, all of whom were in it.
But the time and the expense got to us, and so we decided to do an online version a few years back. Those who wanted a print version could print it themselves. And everyone had a computer. So we sent out a couple of emails as usual asking for pictures, info, etc, and mentioned that we were going to be posting this online this year. No one blinked.
Then after it had been up for three days, one branch of the family complained. Loudly. Identity theft was one issue. Childsnatching was another. “Anybody” could waltz in off the street, check out the calendar, and hatch a convoluted plan to … well, to identify that toddler pictured on the August page as the person with a birthday given on the February page and a cryptic note as to the child’s state of birth on the September page and then make plans to kidnap said toddler, or steal the identity of the person named on the January page and…well, you get the idea.
The thing is, both members of the couple were skilled with the internet, and the one who was complaining most vociferously was EXTREMELY internet-savvy, no question about it.
We took the calendar down, though I must admit we couldn’t resist the temptation to get in a couple of jabs along the way. (The site was not password protected (we hadn’t said it would be) but it wasn’t listed on google or on the directory of the site host, so it was effectively invitation only. Guessing the random alphanumerics in the address, I calculated, was about as likely as guessing the random sixteen digits in order of a credit card. I assume this means that the family will never allow their children’s pictures to appear in the local newspaper, will never allow their school to list them in any kind of class list/directory with first and last names; I assume it means they won’t do any purchasing online, or allow mail to be delivered to their door, or ever fail to shred a credit card receipt. But I ain’t holding my breath. --I didn’t say it in quite that way, but a couple of my cousins weren’t so circumspect.) Another relative offered to organize and pay for printing and distributing it, and thus ended the affair of the calendar.
All of which is to say that I’m not at all convinced that internet awareness plays all that much of a role in the OP’s case. What bothered my relative about this really, I don’t know. But I don’t think it was just, or perhaps even mostly, the posting of the calendar on the web. Sometimes people are just jerky.
Sorry!