Fed Up With Genealogy Tree Thieves

[tsumi]

Hi All ,To add my twopenneth worth,I will tell you my experience of tree purloining.
I was browsing on Ancestry family tree,s  when I came across my fathers name and birth date ,being that I was the only child I wondered who else in the family  was researching (his was an uncommon name) the tree.Imagine what I felt when I checked his wife and found not my mother but another person attached,well to cut a long story short ,a bit more delving and I found the lady who this person had joined with my father was born more than a 100 years before my father had married my mother,and the only reason he had joined them up was because his name was similar to the one he was looking for !
Well on to Ancestry I gets and tell them about the mistake and an email to him about his error and what proof did he have that my father born in 1908 had married this lady on his tree 60 years before he was born  ,guess what !!!!!!!!
Ancestry tell me to contact the tree contributer and there is nothing they can do ,I have yet to hear from the tree contributer himself or herself, but I don,t hold much hope there ,this happened around eleven months ago.
I have seen many mistakes on these public domain tree,s and am very wary of them to say the least,and as for GR well you get to recognize the genuine from the chance-rs and when you do get a  person contact you that has done their homework etc the feeling is it,s all been worthwhile and to heck with the freeloaders.

Cheers Tsumi

[Sylviaann]

I don't mind people having my tree but I would draw the line with personal notes.

What I don't like is when they change the information to fit with their tree.  As I mentioned before one of my ancestors has suddenly aquired 2 more wives and a whole new family in America when this is definately untrue.  His date of death is correct on Ancestry but the place has been changed from Norfolk, England to somewhere in America.  How will I find new relatives if this particular tree is so blatently wrong.  If the tree is in the public domain then it needs a great deal of checking to prove you are a descendant.  It's a shame for new researchers.

I don't know how long you have been researching Fishman, (I've been doing it for 20 years) but I hope you don't believe trees you find in the public domain especially if they are American.  That would mean you are not a serious researcher

As for GR, I have dropped out.  Any information obtained there has to be checked anyway and most people are new to research.

Sylviaann

[toni*]

i have to admit that i am one of these tree thieves! 
i was not aware that i was doing anything wrong as i had contacted the people and confirmed that we were def. connected and then incorporated their trees into mine, i saw it as a way of extending my tree and said to the people concerned that they were more than welcome to use the info. in my tree in the same way.
i began this method after i reached brickwalls and so began looking at siblings of direct relatives and then their respective families.
very sorry if i offended anyone it was all unintentional

[JAP]

I don't mind people having my tree but I would draw the line with personal notes

Simple answer if you are so terribly concerned.  Don't put personal notes in the public domain and don't provide them to anyone  

What I don't like is when they change the information to fit with their tree.  As I mentioned before one of my ancestors has suddenly aquired 2 more wives and a whole new family in America when this is definately untrue.  His date of death is correct on Ancestry but the place has been changed from Norfolk, England to somewhere in America.  How will I find new relatives if this particular tree is so blatently wrong.  If the tree is in the public domain then it needs a great deal of checking to prove you are a descendant.  It's a shame for new researchers.

New researchers are in a caveat emptor situation.  It will be a good learning situation for them to find out that people have incorrectly acquired more wives or that something is definitely untrue or blatantly wrong!
(Obviously you will realize that I think that accuracy is important  .)

FishMan, I find your comments very sensible indeed,

JAP 

[pjbuk007]

I made the mistake of having an Ancestry tree when I started, then realised (from discussions similar to this one) what could happen.  I also saw how cavalier people are in adding persons to their tree just because they have the same name.  One of my ancestors has mistakenly been added to many trees (especially American ones), with bizarre marriage dates which are completely wrong.  I researched this and realised how they had become confused due to taking the first name which occurred in Ancestry, when it was obviously someone else who they should have linked to, and who was easily found with an hour or so of effort and a bit of brainwork.

I therefore removed that tree and now do not post anything on the web.  I want to be as sure as possible that I have made the correct assumptions.  I have been sent sections of related trees from kind contacts from Family History Societies, but would not dream of adding them to my tree until I have replicated their research and fully documented all the sources.  Of course their contributions make this much easier.

There are many of you who have a different approach to this hobby, which is fair enough, but not for me.  I do think that anything posted on the internet is fair game to be taken/plagiarized/altered and thus if you decide to do this, you have to live with the consequences.  I think it is certainly morally wrong to add great chunks of someone else's tree to yours without acknowledgement, and to alter it at will.  But morality on the Net is as broadly defined as those who use it.





  

[Stewart R]

Would you show of your new Ferrari claiming it was yours, knowing that you'd just nicked it?..................................Answers on a post card.

Nuff said!!!!!!!!!
 
Stewart

[wheeldon]

Toni, don't worry you haven't done anything wrong and I'm sure you haven't offended anyone. 

A huge and enjoyable part of our hobby is to share information.

It becomes a problem when information is just 'copied and pasted' and not backed up with any reliable sources.  The incorrect information floats around the Internet and some people who are just name catchers take it as fact, which can cause offense if it involves ancestors who we still remember.

Most serious researchers do have an unwritten code of etiquette and also would not take any info as fact without a reliable source.  It's just so annoying when you have put in so much time and money for someone to just put the info on a website and claim the research as their own.  Also, a fellow researcher may contact them instead of you, when you are the one with all the sources.

It's an absolute joy to share information, pool resources and research a line together 

[JAP]

...  I do think that anything posted on the internet is fair game to be taken/plagiarized/altered and thus if you decide to do this, you have to live with the consequences.

Yes indeed, pjbuk007!

I think it is certainly morally wrong to add great chunks of someone else's tree to yours without acknowledgement, and to alter it at will.  But morality on the Net is as broadly defined as those who use it.

pjbuk007, How very very well said indeed about morality on the Net!!

Certainly one should post on the Internet (or perhaps - sadly - convey to others) only what one is prepared to have copied or used (or even misused) elsewhere.

And this is surely relevant not just to words but also to photographs and photographic restoration/colouration/prettification/etc (topics of recent threads also) ...

To think otherwise is to be less than realistic.

And anyone who wants to be self-righteous about what happens on the Internet would probably be well-advised to save their breath to cool their porridge.     

Such is life 

JAP

[Inchworm]

It's still that "copy & paste" brigade that are the worst offenders! 
If only they checked the info. and were not intent on having the Worlds Biggest Family Tree.
Are they trying to get into the Guiness Book Of Records?
They are also so removed from some branches, that  the new relatives they aquire are quite meaningless.

Inchworm