How trees work here (important)

Family Forest uses a sovereign tree model. It's worth one minute to understand, because it's a little different from other sites.

Everyone owns their own tree

• You get your own tree when you join. You're the only one who can edit it.
• Reads are open family-wide — you can browse everyone else's people and photos freely.
• Edits go into your own tree. When you name a face, add a relative, or fix a date, it lands in your tree — never in someone else's.

Think of it like everyone having their own notebook, but everyone can read each other's notebooks. Nobody can scribble in yours, and you can't scribble in theirs.

So how does the family stay connected?

Two ways, and they're the point:

• Hints. Once a night, Family Forest looks across every family member's tree and finds the same people. If your cousin adds their kids, those show up in your Discoveries as hints — and you accept them to pull the person, their facts, and their photos into your tree. (See “How hints work.”)
• Photo comments. Anyone can comment on any photo — that's the shared conversation (“that's Aunt Betty, summer '75!”).