When I search the WorldConnect family trees I often notice the same people listed in more than one family tree and wonder whether the researchers realise. My GEDCOM file has some 2000 names, so searching the names individually for matches would be extremely tedious. I wonder, therefore, whether there a simple way of running a search on all these names and getting back some sort of list of which names have strong matches in other trees?

In a word- no, there isn't a way, for which I am *very* thankful.

Far too many people spend too much time looking at other people's trees and then copying what is there rather than doing actual research for evidence and actual documents.

In another word - Yes.

You'll find several gedcom comparison utilities here -
http://www.cyndislist.com/gedcom.htm

I've also heard of people having some success using OpenOffice Writer, with the Edit>Compare function, although I haven't tried it.

I agree. It makes one a little ticked off when the information you have worked on for months perhaps years, not to mention the cost to ones purse, having been uploaded to someone's file with no credits to the researcher, and treated as their own findings.

I was a bit surprised by two of the replies which seem a bit negative. Surely if you don’t want anyone copying your data it would be better not to share it on the site in the first place?

My initial point was that I wanted to know who might have the same people in their GEDCOMs as I have, so that I can get in touch with them to exchange information, not just to do a mindless download. What might be a minor ancestral line for me, which I haven’t spent much time researching, might be a major line for someone else, on which they have a lot of information, or vice versa.

For example, I’ve had great difficulty establishing the exact connection between a known cousin of my grandfather’s. I then found some of the family I was investigating in someone else’s GEDCOM in WorldConnect, with a few snippets of information that I hadn’t found, suggesting that he might have family papers or further information which might help me. Unfortunately, his email address turned out to be dead, so I’ve been unable to contact him. There might be many more examples like this, but I would need to search individually on several hundred names to check for matches, which is why I would like to see a method on the website for doing it.

The GEDCOM comparison utility mentioned is fine no doubt for matching two GEDCOMs but not all the GEDCOMs in WorldConnect at the same time.

Sorry, I guess I did come across a little negatively. I don't mind people downloading my information but it would be nice if they would acknowledge your site as the source of the information. That would be courtesy, don't you think? after all the work that went into the research. I know when I first started out there was information that helped me immensely, however I noted where it came from.

Now that it is clear what you want to do, I'm afraid I've never heard of a way of doing it.

I can think of a way it could be done but it is so involved and would take so much time and computing power it really isn't even worth considering undertaking the project.

This WorldConnect utility:
http://wc.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/ss
provides a way to identify WC databases that have high concentrations (counts) of the same group of surnames. You can also use the boolean option to exclude certain surnames (smith andnot jones) as well as run more complex searches (smith and smythe andnot(jones or solfasson).



There is also this utility:
http://wc.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/us?
which, as the description says "searches database name, email address, submitter name, title, heading, footing, homepage title, name count and updated on fields." from the WC database.



To round out these little-known tools, the WC Gedcom Analyzer:
http://wc.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/analyze.cgi?
is useful in spotting some types of errors in your gedcom (or anyone else's). The analyzer also sometimes provides submitter contact information directly from the gedcom header.
To use the Analyzer, just append the above url with db= and the database name you want to view; i.e., add
db=jameslawler after the ?

Thanks for the 3 utilities, which I didn't know about. I'll obviously have to wait a bit for a total (name/date) matching utility!