A New Resolution For Active Family Genealogists

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 only to other Ancestry.com trees -- and many of these trees are NOT backed by primary sources (they could be classed as "wishful thinking").  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 only to other Ancestry-based family trees and/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 marketing management should be arrested.

Ancestry.com's marketing philosophy actively encourages beginner subscribers to use the family trees they host as valid information sources -- such trees are not always reliable -- many trees are very weakly sourced!  It is not unusual to find beginner family trees abandoned by their owners after doing some very weak and trivial family research, and such family trees are frequently found out in the public cloud where other beginner genealogists may include these errors in 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 that are unsupported by primary facts and/or using or uploading "wishful assumptions" to the public Internet cloud.  Of course, this bad public information includes data errors in family trees we generated that are unsupported by valid primary sources.