Hello, I hope these interest someone out there or helps in some way. 1. If you acquire information from someone else, ask if you may pass it on, and whether the person wants their name attached to the data. If they say no, don't do it. If you then go out to the record repositories, i.e. courthouse, etc, and find it yourself with documentation, you can then compile that info and attach your name as the researcher. If the first person had helped you out and didn't mind having their name used, credit their contribution. 2. Don't send family trees to individuals or most especially not to lists, unless you have good documentation. It is common on lists today to see good people send family lists with a disclaimer at the top or bottom, stating that the data is not proven. It is a rare researcher who will remember that, once they see what they have been looking for, even if it turns out not to be true. They are well intentioned, just busy and hopeful. 3. If you send bits of data to anyone, send the documentation along with it. That way, you can decide if the documentation is adequate, and they can decide if it is adequate to them. Each is responsible for the documentation of their own data. If you receive data with no documentation, don't use it and don't share it. Try to find documention to prove it, and then share both. If you can't, share it only with close buddies, and make sure they feel as you do about preserving the data recorded on the old records. 4. Since we all receive a lot of data that is not documented, just save it until you or someone else comes up with documentation to prove it. Since it often gives clues as to where the true data exists, and you want to share that, just make sure to label it prominently as "go-with" data, not to be used as proven. Write that all over it. Of course, if you are the recipient, treat it as the sender indicated, just for clues. 5. Don't put a person or a fact into your primary family file on one of the gen. programs, unless you also record the source with all the information you have, to allow anyone reading it to go straight to the source to verify the data. For instance, if you say 1850 Census or 1850 Census of Pulaski County, KY, the reader must duplicate your own work in order to verify your data. Give the E.D., the household #, the township, etc. Help out a fellow researcher. We'll all have more time to break down brick walls with the time saved. You can always start any number of "working" files to use until you have enough evidence to move a fact or person over to your primary file. This is only my own method and others have found similar methods that work for them. 6. Think long and hard before submitting your gedcom to an internet site, free or paid. Choose one that allows you to update your data when needed. If you do otherwise, your data will end up misleading others, being attributed to you, and you won't be able to do a thing about it. 7. If you find inaccurate information attributed to me, be kind, and think that it is probably some of that early work and very outdated. I will be grateful. Thanks, Barb Temple