If you ever googled for lists of genealogy software, you’ve probably come across Louis Kessler’s Genealogy Software Links. It is a huge list of genealogy software, organised into several categories. For each program, the list contains the product name, the company or persons behind it, a brief description and a link. It even includes links to online reviews.
The list of genealogy links is just one of Louis Kessler’s site, which is largely about Behold, his genealogy program. Behold has been in development for years, and is still in beta. Louis blogs about about the development of his program.
Some months ago he decided to redo the entire site. When he was done he announced that he was going to change the software links page into a software review site. Today, he finished that conversion. He announced this on his blog and explicitly asks his reader to not review Behold, but let the site fill up with other reviews first.
After more than a decade, Louis Kessler’s Genealogy Software Links page is no more. If you try to visit it, you are redirected to GenSoftReviews. Its byline is "All the genealogy software, reviewed and rated by you ".
GenSoftReviews is a place where anyone can review genealogy software. You just pick your program from the list and type away. You are unlikely to discover that the product you want to review isn’t in the list. There are 355 programs in the list already. Still, there is a suggest page just in case.
You do not need to write. You can just read. You can sort the programs by license (free, purchase, subscription, unsupported), platform (Windows, Mac Unix, Handheld, online) and type (All Types, full featured, utility, builds website, Auxiliary) and you can sort by latest review or most reviews, by how much reviewers enjoy it or use it, by how easy the input is, how useful the output is, or by overall rating.
GenSoftReviews is like a comparison shopping site, or rather a consumer review site, but a consumer review site with just one product category. Unless single-category consumer review sites become a hot new trend, the big sites have nothing to fear.
There is an obvious advantage to a specialised site; it is easier to use terminology like GEDCOM and Ahnentafel without wondering whether your reader understands what you are talking about.
One is that the site demands that you turn JavaScript on, for no particular
reason whatsoever.
It is a PHP-based site, so it does not need JavaScript at
all. I gave temporary permission to try it, and even when JavaScript allowed,
the site does not work yet. You need to allow JavaScript for snap.com as well,
and then it still does not work. You need to turn on JavaScript for
for ixmp.com as well. This need for so many domains sure invites suspicion of
cross-site scripting, exactly the kind of technique that is so often used to
harm your computer. Even when I allow ixmp.com as well, it still complains that
I need to turn JavaScript on. Whatever this site is doing, it is not doing it
right. Besides, proclaiming that "There is nothing inherently malicious about
Javascript" does not make me feel better and certainly does not make me trust you more.
You do not need to sign up. That makes it easy to type away, but that also makes it easy to spam the site, and for sock-puppets to write "review" after "review" about how great the product of their employer is, how it changed their life, invigorated their genealogy research, improved their productivity, and broke down every brick wall.
Just one sentence from a real user is worth more than ten ostensible reviews.
The links to external reviews are gone. That is not as big a pity as it may
sound like.
Many of these were not just old, but also little more than rewritten
press releases or three paragraphs of platitudes masquerading as a review.
Just
one sentence from a real user is worth more than ten ostensible reviews.
I would like to see the external links return, but with a twist. I would like have users to have ability for users to rate those links on a scale from "press release" and "press release rewrite" through "bunch of platitudes" and "15-minute review" to "real review", "thorough review" and perhaps an "fantastic" or "overwhelmingly informative" that can be rewarded to just one review per program. On that scale, this text would itself be a 15-minute review of GenSoftReviews.
One important feature that many review sites have, but that is missing from GenSoftReviews is the ability to decide that you do trust "RootsBlogger" but do not trust "SockPuppy", and then have the system show reviews by most trusted authors first, and least trusted authors last.
Most of the GenSoftReviews features and limitations are not Louis Kessler’s doing at all. He converted his blog to use WordPress, a open source PHP-based blogging platform, designed for use with the MySQL database system. Once that was done, he created GenSoftReviews using WPReviewSite, a WordPress plug-in for the creation of consumer review & rating sites.
One nice feature of this review site is that it has an RSS feed. You can subscribe to GenSoftReviews using an RSS reader, to read new reviews when they appear. You can subscribe to the entire site, to receive all reviews, or just pick the feeds for the programs you are most interested in. I imagine many vendors will be subscribing to the feed with reviews about their own program, but the best vendors will read them all.
There are almost 300 reviews, so what do people rate highest? I decided to have a look; GenSoftReviews overall rating.
GenSoftReviews now lists more than 400 genealogy software applications.
Copyright © Tamura Jones. All Rights reserved.