Lazy Research

[SmallTownGirl]

I saw a post (elsewhere) a few weeks ago from someone who reckoned to have got back to the year 200 with her own tree.  Someone challenged her for the source of the info and she replied that she'd got it from the Millennium Tree on Ancestry.  Doh! 

[clairec666]

It's worth bearing in mind that some people use online trees as a place to keep notes of possibilities.  They may not have had time to explore them all in depth.  Many have a stop-start approach to family history, and only work on it occasionally.

For these people, it's a work in progress and not the finished article.

That's a fair comment. People keep online trees for their own research, not for others to come and pick them apart. I don't keep my tree online, but there are plenty of people on it who might be related to me, but I haven't proved it, I keep them there to research later.

[coombs]

I have to disagree with putting trees up which are not the finished article and people add their "possibilities" without confirming them (such as they know it is only a possible but they add them anyway without saying "a possible") as that is a dangerous path to tread as people will take that as gospel. I never add someone who I don't know if they are the right person.

[Guy Etchells]

I have to disagree with putting trees up which are not the finished article ...

 

Is a tree ever finished?

I inherited a tree that my grandfather had been working on for at least 50 years in 1955 and have grown and expanded it ever since.
When I kick the bucket I hope one of my children or grandchildren will take up the baton and so on forever.

I can not visualise a complete tree.

Cheers
Guy

[Mike in Cumbria]

I have to disagree with putting trees up which are not the finished article and people add their "possibilities" without confirming them (such as they know it is only a possible but they add them anyway without saying "a possible") as that is a dangerous path to tread as people will take that as gospel. I never add someone who I don't know if they are the right person.

I have various trees on Ancestry, some of which I believe to be 100% accurate. Others, however, are just there for testing ideas and relationships. They are labelled as such, and the metadata clearly tells anyone who reads it that they are unconfirmed and will almost certainly contain errors. If someone doesn't bother to read the health warnings, and takes them as gospel - that's their problem, not mine.

[coombs]

I have to disagree with putting trees up which are not the finished article and people add their "possibilities" without confirming them (such as they know it is only a possible but they add them anyway without saying "a possible") as that is a dangerous path to tread as people will take that as gospel. I never add someone who I don't know if they are the right person.

I have various trees on Ancestry, some of which I believe to be 100% accurate. Others, however, are just there for testing ideas and relationships. They are labelled as such, and the metadata clearly tells anyone who reads it that they are unconfirmed and will almost certainly contain errors. If someone doesn't bother to read the health warnings, and takes them as gospel - that's their problem, not mine.

If I do find a possible I add a note under the name of the ancestor on my tree, for instance it has their name, then I add a little note saying "A Thomas Whale wed Eliz Balaam in 1784, a possible". It is so I do not forget that I had found a likely marriage or baptism.

[groom]

I have to disagree with putting trees up which are not the finished article and people add their "possibilities" without confirming them (such as they know it is only a possible but they add them anyway without saying "a possible") as that is a dangerous path to tread as people will take that as gospel. I never add someone who I don't know if they are the right person.

But surely it is up to the people who copy from that tree to check, not the owner's responsibility to make sure it is 100% correct before adding it to their tree? If someone is just going to copy from a tree then they have to realise that it could be wrong. I have a few people on my tree that I was certain were the correct people, however as other records have come on line, I have realised that they are not correct and have removed them. I'm afraid I'm not going to stop putting my tree on line just in case some one copies it when there may be mistakes in it - that is their responsibility, not mine. Of course, the other alternative is to always keep your tree private!

[clairec666]

I think it's fine to keep a "work in progress" tree on Ancestry. Part of Ancestry's "service" is to provide a place to store your tree while you work on it. As groom says, you shouldn't take responsibility for others who copy from your tree. But if you set up your own website to present your tree to the world, you should take care that all the details are correct and annotate with references. Well that's what I think, anyway.

Is a tree ever finished?

Nope

[panic]

I think it's fine to keep a "work in progress" tree on Ancestry. Part of Ancestry's "service" is to provide a place to store your tree while you work on it. As groom says, you shouldn't take responsibility for others who copy from your tree. But if you set up your own website to present your tree to the world, you should take care that all the details are correct and annotate with references. Well that's what I think, anyway.

So the onus is on the the person putting up the "source" tree rather than the lazy researcher copying it? You can easily have two people adamant that their tree is right (such as seen in the Chilton thread on the Shropshire subforum) so it may not always be that people are intentionally not checking, but maybe not thorough enough. My mother once told me about a genealogy conference she went to in the 90's where the professional genealogist giving a talk described how he had to lop off a whole branch of research when he found that an ancestor had died in childhood and not grown up to have offspring.