I have a 2 stories to tell you! This first one might be about ANCESTRY, Inc. I was so upset that I don't remember and haven't pulled this site up again. I'm still very new at this and hopefully learning, however when I started I assumed there was some courtesy and etiquette to this on line game of genealogy. I assumed that you didn't put out any information unless you knew it was correct, that you didn't use other peoples material without giving them credit and various things like that. I have gone very slowly and contributed very little in the line of family information, hopefully what little I have put out I identified. (Maybe not good enough and if I put anything out in the future you can be sure it will be identified at length.) Mostly what I have put on line is talk, I do a lot of that. But I've learned much from this site and feel comfortable about almost all of it. But heres what happened. When I started surfing about for things on my Grandfather Whitney I popped his name (Arthur) in one night and came up with a site. His dates were very incorrect and so being very new and naive I sent a reply to the owner of the site telling them so. They replied and thanked me. Now the owner of the this site is very far removed from the Whitneys and I wondered why they wanted them on their site but left it at that. The other night after finding some troubling information on the family site I belong to on my Fathers family I decided to pull up this site again and see if they had changed the dates on Arthur Whitney. I did and they did. I thought well that ends that, but then I decided to check further. Sure enough they had my Mother listed as Arthur's daughter. Ok. Further it looked like she wasn't married! Not ok--further I found she had a daughter--ROSE WHITNEY! Well to put this on their site someone did a lot of guessing and they guessed wrong. So 100 years down the road someone will be searching out this family and will find Marion Whitney, never married, but she had a daughter--Rose--uh oh that means she was illegitimate! Some of you talk about the brick wall you come to, well this would be one of those. Now I don't mind going down in history as a Whitney, legitimate or not but I have a sister (actually I have several sisters) who would be madder than hops if she found out I got to be a Whitney and she didn't.! So people that is what comes of a guessing game. If you don't know don't put it on your site or in your tree. Now heres the next one: This one comes from World Connect under copyright of Roots Web .com Inc. I was looking at my Father's family and punched in my Grandfathers name. Up popped 3 sites. The first one I looked at had a grave error where my Great Grandmothers name was concerned. I knew this error was on another site because it had been brought to my attention earlier. I was puzzling over this when all of a sudden I realized the comments included were direct quotes from the book I published on my family. And it sure wasn't credited to me. I popped an e-mail to the owner of the site telling him this was direct quotes from my book and I wondered where he got his information. Of course I didn't hear from him. Last night I decided to pull up his site and look at it again, guess what--it wasn't there! I did print it out so know I wasn't dreaming. So I pulled up the other sites, both had the errors and one of them had the very same exact quotes. I haven't contacted that person yet but I'm sure I will. I have received so much help and kindness from everyone on this site but these things that happened on my other family site have rather disillusioned me. Because everyone has been so sharing with me I wanted to share to and not knowing much about Whitneys I haven't much to share, so I thought if I shared all the information on my Father's family that would make up for it. Suddenly I wake up and find that all this information has been put on line just like it was the property of one person and just like it was all her doing, right down to the quotes from my book. I'm sure if I look further the whole book is probably on somebody's web site. Well there's my story, sorry its so long, but as you have been warned about some of the groups using the information for profit, there are also those who use our free information I guess just for their own personal ego. I could live with that I guess because I really don't need any credit for it, but it would be nice if they didn't guess about it and put out so many things in error. I don't know if theres a moral to this or not, but I do have documented proof of what my name is and that I am legitimate, sad to say but my name wasn't Whitney. Pleasant dreams! Rose Zella

Hi Rose; Unfortunately, although copyright laws still apply, it is too easy to copy information in this electronic world. All it takes is downloading a gedcom or cut/paste to copy thousands of words of information. Most of the trees posted on public sites consist of huge gedcoms, without sources, that have been downloaded, merged, and uploaded again with no research done. The best you can hope for is that the person involved corrects incorrect data and/or removes copyrighted data. It seems that the person you contacted did remove the information although they didn't have the courtesy to notify you that they had done so. Hopefully the other people involved will be equally responsive. Actually, most genealogists will have some incorrect data in their data bases. Once we get more than a couple of generations back there are few primary records and we often make connections based on secondary sources or just plain "he was the only Whitney of the right age in that town so he must be the father" guesses. People are often lax in identifying speculation as such and crediting sources. We post the speculative data in the hope that someone will see it and add to or correct it. Unfortunately others will take it and republish it as gospel. Your "unmarried" mother was probably the result of laziness, not malice. When you plug data into a genealogy program and you don't know the husband or wife's name and you don't put in "unknown" or some similiar convention, the program will assume the person is unmarried. I have seen a lot of Ancestry bashing lately. There is nothing wrong with charging for information if you have "added value". Scanning information into CD's and publishing online can be very expensive. At least Ancestry does not charge for user uploaded information like genealogy.com does. A non-commercial site does not have the resources to take on projects of that magnitude. I think the fact that Rootsweb eventually sold to a commercial operation proves that. I hope you get all your problems sorted out. Please don't let a couple of bad experiences discourage you from sharing with the 99.9% of the people in this hobby who are really great. Regards, Bob On Sat, 14 Apr 2001 00:20:29 -0600, you wrote: >I have a 2 stories to tell you! This first one might be about >ANCESTRY, Inc. I was so upset that I don't remember and haven't pulled >this site up again. >I'm still very new at this and hopefully learning, however when I >started I assumed there was some courtesy and etiquette to this >on line game of genealogy. I assumed that you didn't put out any >information unless you knew it was correct, that you didn't use other >peoples material without giving them credit and various things like >that. I have gone very slowly and contributed very little in the line <<snip>> >Pleasant dreams! >Rose Zella