A Generic Ancestry.com Family Tree (source: Ancesty.com Home)
Hello 2022
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Think about taking a break from new genealogical research. Respectfully, go back and review what already exists in your family tree(s). A re-evaluation of cited sources should be a major focus of the proposed family tree review. The frequency of error in public family trees is truly amazing, and this is particularly true with Ancestry.com public trees. Red flag questions should be considered where family tree profiles are based on other Ancestry.com family tree(s). Ancestry.com family trees are certainly not primary sources and frequently not even reliable secondary sources. At best, consider using data in public Ancestry.com family trees only where solid primary and/or several reliable secondary sources also are discovered. Of course, most veteran family genealogists likely hold a shortlist of very reliable family tree owners whose research they trust without much question.
Ancestry.com subscribers know that Ancestry management presents data in other Ancestry family trees as "hints" -- and sometimes the hints presented are single-sourced to other Ancestry.com trees. Using such Ancestry.com "hints" to make profile entries to your family tree is a prescription for error. Published family tree data provided by the self-proclaimed "Beginner Genealogists" is nothing less than an error-filled genealogical circular firing squad. Think about it.
So here's a challenge to veteran family genealogists. In the course of your research, search out and investigate cases where Ancestry "hints" are single-sourced to other Ancestry-based family trees or simultaneously backed by shaky secondary sources. Report these genealogy dangers to Ancestry.com management. The growing problem of misinformation caused and fostered by Ancestry.com management needs to be and should be arrested.
Ancestry.com's marketing philosophy actively encourages beginner subscribers to use the family trees they host as sources. It is not unusual to find beginner family trees abandoned after doing some trivial research, and such public trees are frequently inaccurate and out in the clouds for other beginner genealogists to include the error in their new family tree. And sadly, the beat goes on.
A respected professor Dr. Rockfeller in his computing class at Syracuse University nearly a half-century past made this statement: "...never put anything in an electronic communication that you wouldn't yell to your mother across a crowded room." Bottom line -- stop uploading disingenuous writings (aka: unsupported and/or wishful "facts") to the cloud. Of course, this bad public information includes data errors in family trees we generate that are unsupported by primary sources.
