RootsWeb.com Mailing Lists
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    1. [PABUCKS] RootsWeb/ancestry.com/census records
    2. Thera
    3. The thing I hate most about RootsWeb having been bought out by ancestry.com is that ancestry.com took my database I had posted on RootsWeb and put it on One World Tree. That wouldn't have upset me except that they changed my data, creating errors, and those errors have been picked up by others and posted on RootsWeb. I've written to two people so far who had definitely gotten their material from my database--one had a bad e-mail address so the bad information remains posted on RootsWeb, the other responded that he would correct errors I pointed out. Examples of my data changed by ancestry.com: every individual in my database with an event in York Co, PA is shown on OWT as being born/married/died/etc in York, England; every individual in my database with an event in Cumberland Co, PA is shown on OWT as having been born/married/died/etc. in Cumberland, England; for every individual in my database with an estimated date range for an event (born between 1840 and 1860, born before 1860, etc.) the range or qualifier is dropped and the event is recorded on OWT as having occurred in the first year of the range or the year without a qualifier (in the case of the above examples the OWT shows born 1840, born 1860--making the date of birth off by as much as 20 years!) There are more, but you get the idea. Ancestry.com is supposed to be all about genealogy, but they CREATE erroneous data then perpetuate the errors by posting them on-line. I'm incensed and have done everything I can think of to get these things corrected, but to no avail. They haven't updated OWT since 2004!! How many of you haven't made changes/corrections to your databases in FOUR YEARS?! I don't have a problem with ancestry.com charging subscription rates. I can't afford them, so I simply don't subscribe. For those who primarily use the site for census records, I recommend you get a library card. With that you can access your library's website from home, click on their link to Heritage Quest, type in the 14-digit number from your library card, and have access to census records for FREE. There are a couple of drawbacks to Heritage Quest--they don't index the census records, and are missing 1850 and 1930 records (don't know why 1850, but 1930 will be available one of these days.) Thera

    03/17/2008 11:28:04