This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Author: MichaelCharlesWight Surnames: Classification: queries Message Board URL: http://boards.rootsweb.com/surnames.wright/6416.1.1.1.1.1.2.1.3.1/mb.ashx Message Board Post: Herb, I also wanted to thank you for your help with Melanie's questions. You and I have been at this long enough to know that the Internet is both a useful tool and a dangerous purveyor of misinformation, and not just in genealogical matters. Experienced researchers need to step up and be helpful when someone like Melanie asks for help. You do that, and I think that is just the greatest! Melanie is new to the genealogy of Wrights and among the most vulnerable of persons to the sorts of misdirection that have become part of the Internet store of genealogical information over the last 10 years. And it is not that people are deliberately posting bad information. It is out there mostly because people are not able to update their previous posts to reflect new facts as they have been sorted out of the original speculations. Time, money and manpower all are in short supply all the way around. I am sure the Footprints.com group would agree with that! In fact, the Internet storehouse of knowledge is in many ways no different than traditionally published works. In both, a speculation may be proposed as a solution to a vexing situation lacking documentation, then this is referenced in abbreviated form in later publications (usually without the acccompanying discussion of caveats), and eventually the speculation migrates in the public domaine to a position where, if you are not reading the original work, it presents as though it were fact. If you are like Melanie, and have no extensive history of being involved in the ongoing effort to sort out such issues, it is easy to get sucked into a false understanding of the situation at first. Those of us who have been mucking around in this for a while owe it to people like Melanie to make some genuine attempt to help them to an understanding of their genealogical issue in light of the existing arenas of controversy they are entering. Over the years I have observed your work on the Internet to be of the most helpful and generous sort to researchers of Richard Wright, Sr. That is why I urged her to contact you about her Zachary Taylor Wright. There are so many areas of genealogical research where there simply is no known or available documentation. Hence, we are very often relying on well reasoned arguments in favor of some speculated connection or other usually after some lenghty discussions on the Internet. Were we to be truely diligent in fixing all these half-baked published discussions and opinions each time a new piece of the puzzle fell into place, we would have no time to move on in our current efforts. So, there they sit forever, waiting for someone new to the work to find them, misunderstand them, and maybe waste countless hours of their time rediscovering the nuances that lead them eventually to a good understanding. I think we would all like to be more helpful, but there are limits to what each of us can do, so what it really takes to help someone join our ranks quickly is a community of helpful, seasoned Wright researchers willing to lend a hand to each other and to someone new whenever the need is apparent. Thanks, Herb, for being a supporive and helpful part of this forum on such a regular basis. Your example has encouraged me to try to be more helpful, too. Mike Important Note: The author of this message may not be subscribed to this list. If you would like to reply to them, please click on the Message Board URL link above and respond on the board.