Hi The biggest issue I find with public trees is the duplication of mistakes. Why would you put it up there if you did not want to people to use it? Granted, I have spent a lot of money on it, and granted, people should acknowledge you as a source, and it is polite and correct to do so, but my attitude is its not my research anyway- it belongs to everyone connected to it. It is their story. Many people freely gave of their research when I was getting started including giving me certified copies of certificates they had ordered, that I am happy to return the favour. Sometimes its not people's fault when they add your information: I have been contacted by people apologising for adding stuff which they did because it came up as a hint on ancestry, and they thought therefore it was automatically a 100% match, and were horrified when later they realised it wasn't. They didn't at first realise how ancestry worked, and are not very internet savvy, and are now struggling to remove the information. Remember also, that when you upload a photo or a media item to a public tree, everyone else with the same person, or sometimes a similar person but not the correct individual, will be TOLD by ancestry to add that photo. The whole public tree system is based on matching and sharing information, so if you don't want to do that then your tree definitely should not be public. However, everyone has errors in their tree. This is why I made mine private. This is my only reason for making it private, so that people have to contact me and discuss the information. Also, there are a lot of name adders out there and yes I agree THAT is not good - my concern about this only being that they are not going to get the information accurate, because they don't want to actually research. However, maybe we should remember how we got started? If we are honest, and if we were internet savvy when we started researching seriously like I was, that is probably how we started. We went online and looked for what information we could find and then later we started verifying it - so maybe some of those name adders with errors etc (and yes silly ones at that) are just newbies still learning. When I started researching I used what I could find in online sources and printed histories- I couldn't afford to verify a lot at that stage anyway as I was unemployed. Nor should we presume just because a person has a lot of names that they are only a name adder. Nor should you presume that if you contact a person and he cannot provide further information on that person that he is just a name adder. Hey, if you can provide further information on everyone in your tree then congratulations! You are the first genealogist in the world that I have met that can do so and I would love to meet you and learn your secret. I have close relatives even, I know they are there. Undoubtedly they are even parents or grandparents now, but we have simply lost contact. They don't appear in the phone book or electoral rolls- not everyone does (well at least not those publicly available)- and we don't have a clue a where they are as we have lost contact. Because they are living, it is more difficult, and we don't know where to start because these days they could be anywhere. One of those in my tree I recently found on Facebook (she was not there six months ago) living in Singapore! My tree is large- it came from 100s of different sources. I fully intend verifying as much as I can, and that is a process I will continue for as long as Ia m able. Hopefully, its a process someone will continue, and continue adding when I am deceased. I have recently deleted information I once thought was my relatives, but have no found is not. I also have information in their so I can rule them out as part of my family: I have enough information for example, on two non-related Beutel lines I have found that if a living descendant contacted me I probably could rule him out as being part of my line. We place people in our tree for many different reasons. Regards Chris On 17/04/2014 8:24 AM, Mark Feodoroff wrote: > I had my Ancestry tree publicly viewable to try and connect with others, and > have them avoid some of the 'pain' I went through. I've seen many trees > where I doubt very much the 'researcher' did this work, as the work I did > was tedious and involved a lot of input from others and visits from various > sources around the globe (I'm not saying they couldn't do it though), but > when there was no source citations and their research didn't include my > unpublished updates (from sources not available on the Internet) then I > stopped updating the published tree in its entirety. > > Last night I marked my tree as private. At least this way people have to > contact me for more information, and acknowledge in some small way the work > I have done. > > -----Original Message----- > From: aus-qld-bounces@rootsweb.com [mailto:aus-qld-bounces@rootsweb.com] On > Behalf Of D. Carmichael > > > Sadly we live in an era of cut and paste 'genealogy', where errors multiply > exponentially attaining the status of 'facts'. > > Ancestry's advertising spin has a lot to answer for on this front. > > -----Original Message----- > From: Jenelle McCarrick > > Very true Janet, or they don't reply or correct anything. > Jenelle. > > -----Original Message----- > From: aus-qld-bounces@rootsweb.com [mailto:aus-qld-bounces@rootsweb.com] On > Behalf Of Janet > > >From my experience as a volunteer at the local FHA, I now find that >> people > are not the slightest bit interested in research, only in having access to > Ancestry where they can copy other people's Trees, regardless of whether > they be correct or not. They only want to collect names and dates, and > depart an hour later saying they have done their Family Tree. > > Such a shame when research can be so rewarding. > Happy hunting > Janet > > > > > > > > --- > This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is active. > http://www.avast.com > > Please remember to snip most of the earlier message before you post any reply...... Thank you! > > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to AUS-QLD-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message