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There are various sites for posting trees. I have one on Rootsweb. Sometimes I use the tree sites to get the basic info for that tree and then I try to do my own census and records research to add to it or back it up. However, sometimes you do have to take their word for it. Ancestry trees seem to have the most obvious errors (like a child being older than a parent or too much age difference between parent and child). I rarely see errors like this on Rootsweb or familytreemaker.genealogy.com. And often Ancestry has different information than the other sites.
Are Ancestry trees generally more messed up or is this mostly my imagination?
If Ancestry trees are more incorrect I wonder if their trees are just harder to work, there's more copying, and/or more of the users are newer to online trees. Rootsweb for example, is not your tree itself. You make the tree on another program (I use the Family Tree Builder from myheritage.com) and then export a GEDcom, so it does take another step. My family tree has too many people to post it free on MyHeritage or Ancestry. That makes it even more puzzling that Ancestry trees would be more inaccurate because you have to pay for most things on Ancestry.
I know copying trees can cause problems. I don't care if anybody gets anything off of my Rootsweb trees, but I don't guarantee it's correct, and if somebody sends me a note about it I fix it.
It just seemed that Ancestry trees usually had more obvious errors, especially in dates.
Last edited by STLCardsBlues1989; 07-07-2013 at 07:01 PM..
Anywhere: the trees are as good as the posters are careful.
What he said^^^. Information in the tree is only as good as what the information provider has entered into the tree. It's always a good idea to try and verify it by doing some research yourself.
Definitely a ton of misinformation out there, not all of it in the form of user trees but that is where you see it most often. I've seen "bad trees" on pretty much every site I have come across but I think Ancestry gets somewhat of a reputation because it is so popular with the general public.
The one thing with how Ancestry is set up, which unnerves me is the fact they make it so easy to copy information to your tree from another using the "hints" [leaf in the corner]. That alone is responsible for a massive amount of misinformation getting passed around by those who do not use due diligence.
I've seen some of that bad info. make it into blog articles even.
There are online genealogy site users and then there are researchers who actually take the time to seek out and verify the information they collect; many trees are not even sourced. Personally I rarely pay attention to other user trees and I keep mine semi-private (that is you have to be invited by me to see all of its contents). I do keep earlier generations open to the public to see so I can be contacted by those wanting to collaborate on certain people more than 4 generations back (mostly those born before 1870). They can be helpful but you must use caution when refering to them; when I do I look for the ones that are updated regularly and are heavily detailed and cited with multiple, respectable and verifiable sources.
It's just your imagination. Ancestry trees are no better, or worse, than trees on any other site. One advantage I find to Ancestry trees is, I can see if it has records attached or not (only 1 is usually a sign it's referencing another tree).
That gives me an indication that the submitter has actually researched them, and not just uploaded it and gone away.
I use Ancestry now but I agree that those little green leaves with hints make it easy for someone to just attach information without verifying it. Also, the way Ancestry advertises makes it sound like you just go there are build your tree by copying off others. I don't know about other sites but they probably have mis-information too.
Ancestry gives you the option to turn off "hints" from other people's trees (it's in site preferences). I have done that because I have found too many tree "hints" that were a repetition of what I had or simply wrong. My tree is also private. I have had a few people contact me about my tree and I was happy to exchange info with them. I've also exchanged info with folks posting in the forum who were researching the same people as I was.
The fact that others may not properly research their trees or simply copy erroneous info from other trees is really irrelevant to me. Enrico and Austin are right, there is sloppiness everywhere and you can only control what you do with your own tree.
I've found errors at different sites too. I don't mind sharing, but I admit When someone copied a relative of mine to their tree I checked theirs to see where that person fit in their tree and every person they had on it was private, so I have no idea if we are really related. I wrote and they never responded. Really I was mainly disappointed, we may have relatives in common.
I have considered having different trees for the same family. One with all the speculative ancestors that don't have great paper trails. One that has good paper trails. And one that is backed up by DNA (a much smaller one).
Even a good paper trail can't prove that someone in your tree wasn't adopted, or the result of an extra-marital liaison. Genetic genealogy has shown that the rate of NPE's is higher than what most people thought. So chances are very good that you have some branches in your tree that really aren't your ancestors, no matter how carefully you've researched it.
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