Colin - while I agree with your view that early publication is beneficial - I suggest that, in doing so, one accepts that many viewers will treat it as "rock solid" no matter how many caveats one places around it. Personally I place my trees online as soon as I have them. Many, many of the assumptions I make - for example that if a person is named as a son in a census that he is a son - are not validated. I leave it to the viewer to decide on the validity based on seeing the sources and drawing their own conclusions. I have seen too many on-line trees with errors that are obvious when one looks at the sources. While I would hope that most of mine pass that initial scrutiny, I am sure that many of the assumptions would be disproved if only there were a few more documents out there giving independent views of what reality actually was. One benefit of publishing is to enable people to challenge one's findings. Mind you, no one has challenged anything I've put on line over the last twenty years - which is very disappointing. Chris -----Original Message----- From: goons-bounces@rootsweb.com [mailto:goons-bounces@rootsweb.com] On Behalf Of Colin Stevenson via Sent: 03 January 2015 16:34 To: goons@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [G] when is a tree good enough to publish? It depends on why you want to publish the tree. If you claim it is the definitive family history you need to be very certain of your facts. At the other end of the spectrum if it is published as a work in progress with appropriate caveats then it is a useful research tool for you and others. Personally I think there is more to gain from 'early ' publication rather than striving for accuracy. I can see no harm from publishing a speculative tree provided it is described as such. Colin Stevenson (Cavie & Monnington) _____________________________________________ RootsWeb lists - surnames, regions, software, etc http://lists.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to GOONS-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message