Thank you, Ruth, for mentioning this.  It's particularlay important for the new researcher. Fortunately I learned of "bad trees" early before making any drastic mistakes (like blending someone else's tree with mine) when I looked at a Thrasher tree someone had put on Ancestry that was riddled with errors.  That tipped me off that not everyone is as meticulous as maybe they should be about what is added to a tree. Unfortunately, I learned the importance of VERIFYING after I had about 500 entries.  Have since have been working on making that right but all (most) entered afterwards have a good deal of documentation (not my favorite thing to do, I must confess but oh so important).  Cousin Linda attended a genealogy lecture early in our research and "Verifying Sources" was the theme and one of the gems she shared with us. It does bother me a little that some use another's tree as "documentation". 

It does bother me a little that some use another's tree as "documentation". I whole heartedly agree with you Chere. Possibly one reason new people working on their family history use others trees as their "documentation" is that they assume the other person has verified the data and they don't need to; or are lazy; or just don't know to verify everything. (note that I didn't say new researchers, because not all people doing their family history are RESEARCHERS. Just "gatherers" of names.) Ruth