How cross would you be, or am I over reacting?

[les_looking]

about a year ago someone contacted me via Ancestery and then i saw he had my grandparents
and my Dad and siblings and his link was that he had added a sister to my father

i told him and he said thanks etc, a year later he still has this "sister"
i had abviously looked at the person he had added in case it was a secret sister lol,
then found the person he claimed, was born and died the same year, he had her born married and dying,
so all i have done now is added comments to his public tree, so anyone looking will see the info' is wrong,
i havn't been nasty about it, although miffed he would think he knows better than my family,
so would be a good idea if you do find info and can't get any joy from the tree holder, add some comment ie

JUST WANTED TO LET YOU KNOW THAT THIS PERSON IS NOT BLAH BLAH
HAVE TRIED TO CONTACT YOU, BUT IN CASE YOU HAVE NOT SEEN, AND YOU AND ANYONE ELSE
MAYBE FOLLOWS THIS WRONG INFORMATION ETC ETC

and if needs be attach it to all you think is wrong
the annoying thing is he must have gotten that information from someone who has the links
and then for some reason added "his" person

[danuslave]

I think les_looking's response is probably the way forward.  At least then you disassociate yoursef from the 'duff' infomation and give anyone looking at the offending tree the chance to make their own decisions

We have to accept that some people just don't care enough to check their information - but we can try to discourage them from spreading the problem 

Linda

[Lee_T]

I'm not too fussed if somene steals 'my' tree and adds the people on it to their own. My ancestry.co.uk tree only contains basic information anyway. Sure, if someone was to write a book and/or financially profit from 'my' information that I have amassed then I would be a bit peeved, but, if it's just copying names then I've got bigger things to worry about.

The thing I value about my tree is what it's contents it means to ME[/b].  1,000 people could copy it, bits of it or all of it, but that wouldn't affect it's intrinsic value to me, which goes beyond the time invested in it or the cost of an ancestry subscription.

[youngtug]

Sometime ago a cousin did a lot of research on a branch of our family and put on a tree on ancestry, but she made the mistake of not getting a birth certificate for our gtgrandmother and assuming that the only marriage that shows up on bmd search was the right one, although 8 years after the childrens birth.When I found a document with the real mothers name, all the research/names were removed from the ancestry tree. Now I keep finding these names being linked on other trees with the present , correct people, but they just add it, they dont check it. it is growing out of control, and will present a problem to anyone who connects to it. My problem is the hints I get. I am happy for others to use my information, I just wish they would get it right.

[Nick29]

Yawn.  Same old, same old.  Over and over again people put their genealogical data out in public and then complain that it has been taken and used in some way they don't like.  To console themselves, they then dismiss the thieves as mere "name collectors" who have missed out on the real rewards of research.

This comes so often that RC should have a board specifically dedicated to the topic.

Yes, I couldn't agree more !

Maybe we could have a "sticky" containing some pertinent information ?

Like....

• You don't own your ancestors
• Don't put online what you don't want to share
• People research family trees for all sorts of reasons, and in all sorts of ways
• You only see stuff on Ancestry and GR because other people gave up their time (often for no reward) so you could view it online

I do get really fed up with this sort of selfish stuff month after month.  I'm happy to share what I know with anyone who wants to know, and I don't really care what they do with it.  However, if we all took a selfish attitude, and didn't share what we know with others, then sites like Ancestry, FindMyPast, and GR would not exist, and this forum would have to close.

I'm not worried about people who have 80,000 names in their tree.  I'm more worried about people who want to get stuff from everyone else, but who don't want to share it with others.

[Annie65115]

I was miffed when someone copied and pasted my tree which I had opened to them, not because of the work I'd put in, but because they never even bothered to mail back once they'd seen it, to say thankyou or to offer any more info to me.

Had they done so, I'd have been happy to share lots more about our mutual ancestors - photos etc - after all those ancestors don't belong only to me! And I like helping people with their research just as I have benefitted from other people's generosity in helping me.

It's not about ownership, rivalry or even about including living relatives since I've hidden those. It's about plain bad manners, and sometimes it's about people being so idle they can't be bothered to check anything for themselves. And I don't appreciate bad manners.

[les_looking]

As a few have said if you have a tree the minute you give some one else access to it,
whether you have it private or not then its open to whoever, as the person you gave access you may think is like minded, then they may give their treee access to joe bloggs then etc etc,
so not a lot of point in getting stressed over it, it is annoying when wrong info then finds its way onto it, but its a bit like thousands watching a football match you know that they will all have a different view, and then read different papers and you wonder if it was the same game you watched, the most important memory/view is the one you have,
Family history is the same, you add your information add your notes mostly for your own benefit, and then sooner or later someone else will have their own interpretation and hence posts on here start to appear.

Some people do get fixated with numbers others have and think they can't be right, for example One of my Grandmothers was one of 20, and then if you follow her siblings etc believe me that soon mounts up,
not that i have thousands, but that line alone could add about 100+ people, others just add parents grandparents and leave it there, but if you look at a tree and think because someone has say 6 thousand names it can't be right you maybe missing out on loads of helpful info'
MY opinion is someone who has a couple of thousand, maybe like myself has gone via the cousins and grandparents siblings and found brilliant information that otherwise would be lost forever, yes if you find wrong info' try and let them know it's wrong, if not move on and don't let it colour your view of the vast majority who do it for the right reasons

[hume]

Perhaps some should consider that the end of the family history community will not come with a lack of sharing or "selfishness" when it comes to information, but rather a certain rudeness when replying to peoples' posts on forums. Of course there has been similar threads on the subject but with a forum so large and diverse as this one, do we really expect everyone to have seen them before posting their own experience or query? I'd suggest that if we "yawned" at every post we didn't agree with or had seen before, new members to the hobby would abandon it and move onto something else.

hume

[Nick29]

Since there is a post along the same lines just about every month, I don't see how anyone could miss them.