This is from Rootsweb Review. You might find it useful if checking out online family trees. Checking Trees and Branches Online By Robert J Becraft It is wonderful to have researchers all over the world contributing their genealogies to RootsWeb and Ancestry. However, I recently noticed that the same contributors have multiple copies of their files on these services. In addition, the two sources have been cross-indexed so that the contributions on each show up on the other. What happens is you may find up to 20 or 30 entries from the same researcher. Multiply this by the number of people they may have in their GEDCOMs there could be more than 50 percent duplicated data online. In one instance, I found a researcher had submitted the same GEDCOM file seven times with a different "title" on each submission, all within minutes of each other. My suggestions to researchers who are submitting family tree material to the online sites: --Submit a current version, remove any old contributions --Beware of software that makes these submissions easy to submit, but hard to manage and remove --Make sure submissions are accurate, comprehensive and useful to other researchers (many GEDCOMs contain spurious references and data that make no material contribution to the collection as a whole) --Make sure that your contact information is up-to-date and keep up with changes that might occur --Source [cite or reference] your data -- many times the question comes up as to where a bit of information was found. Perhaps there is another bit of information in that source that would assist a researcher with their own brick wall --Look at what has been contributed before, if your work is a subset or a copy from already published content, maybe it would be kinder to all to not muddy the water with more of the same --Consider splitting out common data and only submit the unique data from your research --In all instances, do not publish any data on living persons. In general, these suggestions would greatly enhance the ability of researchers to find the data that they seek. It would also create a more comprehensive, up-to-date repository of data for us all. [Editor's note: If you upload your GEDCOM to WorldConnect at RootsWeb, it is not necessary or feasible to upload it also to Ancestry. At WorldConnect when you upload a new or revised GEDCOM to the same account that you've created, it will overwrite the older version and does not create an additional tree as happens at Ancestry.com <http://ancestry.com/>. The latter is one of the reason for multiple copies of the same, or nearly the same, trees being online there. You can have all the accounts for various GEDCOMs that you wish at WorldConnect -- an option that is handy for many researchers who prefer to keep their various trees separate. Identifying Where a Tree was Uploaded Each family tree has a unique database number (also called a user code), which appears after the db= string of characters in the URL (address) of the family tree. For example, "cleadus" in the addresses shown below is the database number for that family tree. http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?db=cleadus http://awt.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=cleadus&id=I281 http://awtc.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=cleadus&id=I114 http://wc.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=cleadus&id=I00210 Trees Uploaded to Ancestry If the database reference number begins with a colon (:), it indicates the file was originally uploaded through the Ancestry site. Database numbers that begin with a colon followed by an "a" indicate that a file was uploaded through the Ancestry World Tree (for example, db=:a09876) before a system was in place to allow users to edit or remove files. These trees cannot be updated, removed, or changed in any way by those who submitted them. In cases such as these, a submitter needs to contact Ancestry's technical support (Member Solutions) department directly, which can be found by going here: http://ancestry.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/ancestry.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=560 If there is not an "a" after the colon, it was uploaded through Ancestry's Online Family Tree (for example, db=:012345). This means it was submitted after a system was in place to allow contributors to edit their own entries online. Trees submitted to WorldConnect can be updated, edited or deleted any time: http://wc.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igmuser.cgi]