singhals <[email protected]> wrote: >Steve Hayes wrote: >> On Sat, 18 Jun 2011 09:15:09 -0400, Bob LeChevalier<[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> Steve Hayes<[email protected]> wrote: >>>> You see this list of trees that all have things like "10472 >>>> individuals" - so which one is the original and which ones are the copies? >>> >>> Why would it matter? The data is the same. > >I can't find the post where someone wrote the last line above. > >ONE of the reasons it matters is to trace the earliest >assertion to assess the potential accuracy. > >If a family in New Orleans says their daughter married Gen. >Benjamin Butler's son in 1876, they're only saying it >because it's true and they can't plausibly deny it. If the >General says it, same thing. But if the great-granddaughter >of the New Orleans girl married a Connecticutite whose >family history in 1995 says it -- probably wants looking into. In the case of online trees that are undated and that do not have the sources included, you won't be able to tell the earliest assertion. But that is true of most online trees, Rootsweb being the only exception I know of. With more recent ancestry trees, I can often tell a copy, because the profile in question lists another "ancestry family tree" as a source. But you have to actually look at the profile to see this (actually, I think that is true of Rootsweb dates as well - it doesn't list dates on the search results, only on the actual pages for the various people). lojbab --- Bob LeChevalier - artificial linguist; genealogist [email protected] Lojban language www.lojban.org