Invite the cousin with the shoebox, not your password
Genealogy is a family activity, and the second editor is usually a relative who has never used the software. In Leaves they get their own account, their own role in your project, and a view that already knows which of these people are probably still alive.
A role, described by what it lets you do
You invite somebody by email with a short message and pick what they will be able to do: look but not change, add and correct records, or add, correct and invite others as well. The names are there, but the screen leads with the sentence, because whoever is accepting has usually never seen a permissions screen in their life.
The project stays yours. Only the owner can delete it or hand it on, and an admin who can invite people still cannot do either. An invitation that goes unanswered expires and can be sent again, and removing somebody takes their access away while leaving everything they added exactly where it is.
Project · who has access
- Anneke Verschoorowner · can transfer or delete the project
- Pieter Verschooradmin · add, correct, and invite others
- Marieke Boseditor · add and correct records
- Jan de Witviewer · look, but not changeinvited
Owner · admin · editor · viewer
The living-person rule, in four lines
- No death date, and born in the last 110 years
- That is the whole rule. The 110 is a privacy threshold rather than a life expectancy: hiding three dates from a collaborator costs less than publishing a living person's address, so the number errs in the direction that is cheap to be wrong in.
- The name stays, the life does not
- A collaborator sees that the person exists, what they are called and how they connect. The events, the places and the files are withheld, so the tree still joins up and your cousin can still tell you that you have the wrong Hendrika.
- Nothing is stored to be kept in step
- The rule reads the dates already on the record. Enter a death date and the person stops being covered the same moment, with no second field anybody has to remember to change and no list to maintain.
- The owner is told what is hidden
- A restriction is invisible to the person who set it, so every screen that withholds something from a collaborator says so to the owner instead of quietly looking complete. Per collaborator, you can turn the details back on for close family who already know them.
What this does not do
There is no public tree, and no access to one branch
Leaves does not publish your research to the open web: there is no address a stranger can read, and sharing means inviting somebody to an account. Access is also granted per project rather than per person or per branch, so you cannot hand an in-law the Bakker side and nothing else. If your project is really two families, it is really two projects.
See it on your own tree
Create an account in the public beta. Start with one free project and import the research you already have.