I spent some months on WikiTree and finally gave up on it. It's simply a mess. To achieve true quality control would probably require purging the entire database and starting over with tighter controls. I, for one, would hate to see THP caught up in that bedlam. Just my humble opinion.

On 5/29/2016 9:49 PM, genealogyofthewesternworld via wrote: > I spent some months on WikiTree and finally gave up on it. It's simply a mess. To achieve true quality control would probably require purging the entire database and starting over with tighter controls. I, for one, would hate to see THP caught up in that bedlam. Just my humble opinion. I share your opinion about WikiTree, Geni, and the like, and don't worry, I have no intention of making the Henry Project part of such a mess. [begin rant] There is now so much "raw data" out there in the form of newly available records and DNA tests that tremendous strides could be made if we only had the critical mass of well-educated genealogical scholars available to properly interpret it. Thus, it is unfortunate to see so many novices out there who spend most of their time copying other people's bad research, many of whom haven't even educated themselves to the point that they can distinguish good research from bad research when the two are set side-by-side. The really sad thing is that a significant number of these novices have enough talent that they could become excellent (or at least competent) genealogists if they just took the time to learn the basics of genealogical research and learned the ropes by concentrating on researching and carefully documenting a limited group of individuals instead of trying to discover their entire genealogy all at once. Some will say that even bad genealogy can provide useful clues for further research, and that is occasionally true, but in most cases it just gets in the way. I can't count the number of times I have done a Google search hoping to find something useful and instead got hundreds of hits copying the same falsehoods. If the useful site appears on page 8 in thousands of matches, I might give up before I reach it. This "too many worthless hits" problem is further exacerbated by all of the individuals who have the "my database is bigger than your database" addiction and import and combine databases containing obviously false "information" (such as a man marrying before he was born) which they apparently have never even read. I have often seen such information copied into hundreds of different databases. [Here, when I state that they have not even read the information, I am giving these individuals the benefit of the doubt by assuming that they are aware that a man cannot marry before he is born. I hope I am not wrong about this. :-) ] Some of these errors appear to be created by carelessly using automatic merge features, so some of the junk that appears has never even been processed by a human brain. [end rant] As for the proposed project that started this discussion, it sounds like what is being discussed is some sort of finding aid. The first thing that came to mind when I saw the original posting was Marshall's "The Genealogist's Guide" and the two later supplements of the same name. There was something similar but larger that was created by the now defunct Medieval Genealogy unit at the Family History Library. One problem I have had with these sources is that there is often no indication of whether or not the reference refers to the family of interest to me, so I often spent too much time chasing down references to different families having the same surname (especially with common surnames). Thus, if it is a finding aid that is being proposed here, I suggest that a primary focus might be to give the user enough information (time period, location, etc.) to decide if the reference is worth chasing down. As has already been discussed at length, careful thought needs to be given to quality control from the very beginning. Stewart Baldwin