Just some thoughts from the dark side……! An Ancestry user! I agree that very, very many Ancestry trees are a mess. It is so frustrating! People guess at dates (without saying that they are guesses), claim people as relatives who couldn’t possibly be, etc……… That is all true. But it is also just as true of FamilySearch trees. So often I find appalling errors there, dressed up as facts. Exacerbated by the fact that people can alter information and add bad content to what were otherwise very good trees. But they can be valuable starting points (as someone did the other day did for Anna Crawford Moffatt).
The family history community contains people with a broad range of abilities and particularly at the lower end of the spectrum (the same is true in the branch of science in which I have spent my career). But some Ancestry trees are really very good (hopefully mine is one of those, but always a work in progress and incomplete). It has been interesting to look at “Anajeanette’s” Moffatt tree on FamilySearch, for example, to see the extent of the documentation that they have (and the photos). It remains that some of my biggest breakthroughs have come from finding things in other people’s Ancestry trees. Some of them have saved me a huge amount of time and effort – places I had never thought of looking, or transcriptions of wills for which I only had the Latin original. Even family photos. And I have made contact through it with relatives who I had lost touch with or never knew (e.g. a third cousin, just before Christmas). And a couple of people have noticed things in my tree that turned out to be wrong (there were actually two couples in the same (Essex) village with the same names (James and Mary Smith) and having children at the same time. I had missed that, as had other researchers, despite going through the original parish records and convincing myself that I had found the right person). Mutual exchange of information is a valuable outcome - to people like me - from being on Ancestry. And from being on the CoTyrone list. I also do not mind other people using my information or documents, as long as they ask nicely (which they often do): to me, that is part of my donation to the family tree community. Hopefully people will find value from the research that I have done. Yes, I did the hard work and it would be nice to have credit, but at least they will have got the right information (unless it was for the wrong James and Mary Smith!). My attitude is that I draw on many sources of information, primary, secondary and less reliable, never dismiss anything out of hand, sift the grain from the chaff, follow chains of evidence, always check and double check: never take anything for granted, even if it is from a reliable source (everyone can make errors and miss things). Those sources include Ancestry and FamilySearch trees – which can sometimes be very useful. I think I would be silly not to look at them. I never assume they are right, though they very often are! The other thing is that as an educator by profession, and an amateur genealogist who has benefited from the advice of many others, I see value in communicating with those who have made mistakes: people like us need to be prepared to help others (up to a point!). If someone with an Ancestry tree has clearly made a good attempt, I am happy to help them with tips to help them improve and to send them information that they had missed/got wrong. I do it very sparingly. Sometimes they are grateful; sometimes I have also benefited from the exchange. Roger From: Shirley Harper via CoTyroneList <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, 13 January 2022 3:43 PM To: CoTyroneIreland.com Mailing List <[email protected]>; 'Gordon Wilkinson' <[email protected]> Cc: 'Gordon Wilkinson' <[email protected]>; M L Jarvis <[email protected]>; Shirley Harper <[email protected]> Subject: [EXT] [CoTyroneMailingList] Re: Family Trees External email: Please exercise caution ________________________________ Please nobody rely on the “trees” you find on Ancestry. Many of them are now fictitious because of people taking them for their own and adding their details in. Some of the trees now there are a real mess. You could try Family Search www.familysearch.org/<http://www.familysearch.org> for better information. Advice. Do your own research!! Shirley Sent from Mail<https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=550986> for Windows From: M L Jarvis via CoTyroneList<mailto:[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, 13 January 2022 12:43 AM To: 'CoTyroneIreland.com Mailing List'<mailto:[email protected]>; 'Gordon Wilkinson'<mailto:[email protected]> Cc: 'Gordon Wilkinson'<mailto:[email protected]>; M L Jarvis<mailto:[email protected]> Subject: [CoTyroneMailingList] Re: Family Trees Perhaps a page with a table that lists members who have trees, where the trees are located (Ancestry, etc.), and key surnames and locations is all that’s needed? Then individual members could be contacted directly. We could also list GEDmatch numbers. And, yes, I can help create the table! Mary PS Ancestry trees can’t be changed by others unless they have permission to do so by having been granted ownership. From: James McKane via CoTyroneList <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Sent: Wednesday, January 12, 2022 5:22 AM To: Gordon Wilkinson <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>; CoTyroneIreland.com Mailing List <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Cc: Gordon Wilkinson <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>; James McKane <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Subject: [CoTyroneMailingList] Re: Family Trees Gordon - first, it is easy to eliminate living people when creating a Gedcom with most software so that is not an issue. Bill - while it seems like a good idea, there are a few issues on my end which would have to be overcome - 1) currently advertising revenues on the website have been dropping dramatically! It appears many users are using "ad blockers" to avoid seeing the advertisements. If this continues I'm not sure how we are going to cover ongoing expenses 2) to load Gedcoms we need to purchase software 3) we need the time to manage said software as I have experience in this area from a previous life......... it takes TIME 4) I would not wish to manage a "live" site where people can amend anything as it soon becomes so polluted ......... like FamilySearch and Ancestry trees are Jim Jim McKane Kitchener, Ontario On Wed, Jan 12, 2022 at 2:50 AM Gordon Wilkinson via CoTyroneList <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: An interesting idea, Bill, but my data base has info on so many living relatives and notes on many who value their privacy (DNA data, cupboard skeletons, &c), so I've actually shut down my family web site and only give the barest of information on the site now. Having said that, the most productive info has come from distant relatives who have found and contacted me through the the original website. Those inputs have been immeasurably valuable. I pondered the thought of stripping details from 'living' names, and editing the relevant pages, but the task got too big. I've got around 8,500 names covering the ancestry of my grandchildren and still more names to enter (proffered by one of those distant relatives.) when I get time. The original website still exists, of course, as a local entity (8Gb) and available only to select relatives. Gordon On 12/01/2022 7:37 am, Bill Young via CoTyroneList wrote: I have seen a number of mails on family tree research recently. Is there a move in this direction; and, if so, can we post family tree data to the site? Provenance and accuracy are always going to be issues but it may be worth hosting current versions of members’ GEDCOM files on the understanding that they are the responsibility of the individuals who post them, not of CoTyroneIreland. Best regards Bill J W (Bill) Young +41 76 391 6556 (WhatsApp & Signal) +44 74 2904 9955 (Telegram) ================================= Send a Message to the List - [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> List Archive - https://list.cotyroneireland.com/empathy/list/cotyronelist.list.cotyroneireland.com<https://list.cotyroneireland.com/empathy/list/cotyronelist.list.cotyroneireland.com> Join the list by sending an email to - [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> To receive the Digest version, send an email to - [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Unsubscribe by sending an email to - [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> ================================= ================================= Send a Message to the List - [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> List Archive - https://list.cotyroneireland.com/empathy/list/cotyronelist.list.cotyroneireland.com<https://list.cotyroneireland.com/empathy/list/cotyronelist.list.cotyroneireland.com> Join the list by sending an email to - [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> To receive the Digest version, send an email to - [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Unsubscribe by sending an email to - [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> =================================
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