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 Post subject: just an observation..
PostPosted: Sat Mar 12, 2011 4:35 pm 

Joined: Sun Aug 16, 2009 6:41 pm
Posts: 37
I noticed today that somebody in the USA has attached a person and a photo of one of my family to their tree on ancestry.com, so decided to have a look at their tree. Not only is the person nothing to do with their tree, a differently spelt surname, their research appears tenuous at best, but they also have over 1400 ancestors on their tree! I wonder how much of their tree is wrong. I mean, you find a lead and you double check it, cross check it etc. If I'm not 100% certain then it doesn't go on the tree until I can verify it. Do you think some people are so dumb that they are just googling and searching and clicking left, right and centre on anything? I have politely messaged them, drawing attention to the error. :wink:


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PostPosted: Sun Mar 13, 2011 9:51 am 
Spider Lady
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Joined: Thu Mar 01, 2007 9:23 pm
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Location: Staffordshire
Dumb is definitely the word! :lol:

I don't use these online systems for that reason....Genesreunited, Ancestry, Findmypast...all the sites that claim to find your ancestors or connect you with your distant relations. It really winds me up! The only site I do use, because there is little or no room for error, is Lostcousins. It only finds matches based on census reference and you can only enter relations. Only human error can cock that up...entering incorrect census.

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PostPosted: Mon Mar 14, 2011 7:28 pm 
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Joined: Mon Aug 10, 2009 6:00 pm
Posts: 335
For some research I'm doing, I downloaded someone's life's work a few weeks ago. A 32,000 one-name search. I found a dozen faults with it in the first day or so of looking at it. They hadn't seem to have even heard of the IGI, or footnoting. It was bizarre to think they'd spent so long working at it, yet it was all an absolute waste!


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PostPosted: Mon Mar 14, 2011 7:32 pm 
Spider Lady
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Joined: Thu Mar 01, 2007 9:23 pm
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Location: Staffordshire
Not that the IGI can be relied upon....lots of errors there too! Unless the source is the church records and not a church member of course!

Can't believe the time (& money?) some people have wasted on research.....though they probably never bought a document in their lives or they might have more accurate info?

Only last week I was told about someone who had traced their husbands tree back to 1650 using only Freebmd, Freereg & Freecen. Nothing else at all! The someone is the kind of person who has been absolutely everywhere and done absolutely everything and it was all done 100 times better than you or I ever could :roll: You know the type :lol:

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PostPosted: Tue Mar 15, 2011 9:17 am 
Natural Geek

Joined: Mon Aug 10, 2009 6:00 pm
Posts: 335
Mel,

I don't think there's much harm using Free BMD (its % completion rates from 1837-early 1920s are enviable!) but FreeReg and FreeCen - whilst they will be very useful at some point in future - are almost embarassing with their emptiness!

Stephen


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PostPosted: Tue Mar 15, 2011 9:31 am 
Spider Lady
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Joined: Thu Mar 01, 2007 9:23 pm
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Location: Staffordshire
I'm not saying it's not a useful resource but what I was getting at is that there is no confirmation of parentage. The research this woman did was all based on guesswork. I find cross-referencing Freebmd with sites such as LancashireBMD or StaffordshireBMD (or any sites under the UKBMD umbrella) extremely helpful, particularly when trying to match spouses for a marriage. Also, the UKBMD sites are now adding mothers maiden name to the birth indexes so that makes matching a child easier where the name is a common one. Deaths also more useful than on Freebmd as the pre 1860ish provide an age unlike Freebmd.

Freebmd (or the Free*** network) is an excellent resource but not one that you could use alone to trace a tree reliably back to the 17th century as this woman claims to have managed!

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