General Chat

Thank you all for your replies. It looks like I will be contacting a few people over the next week. I will let you all know how many positive and negative replies (if any) I get.

Don't make the mistake that I did once - someone who was related to me by marriage asked me to send them a gedcom of my entire tree, saying it would be easier to copy the few names he wanted off that. So I did. He put my entire tree onto his! Luckily at the time it was only in the low hundreds. But, he then put the whole lot onto the familysearch site without asking and I've since found a few errors on it!
Maz

I would rather be told if I've made a mistake with my tree and then be able to put it right. Some on Ancestry have my great grandparents with wrong marriage date (I have certs) and wrong children. I have informed them of correct details but been ignored.

Hi Mi8ck, how are you doing over the ditch in Oz? No more fires or floods I hope.

Huia.

I am still finding errors that morons who copied my research into the IGI made 30 years ago! I am getting less and less polite with my comments!


xxxx mi8ck

Only 48 morons with that error! You are lucky Janey. The ones with my sister m to Methusalahs son (b1723) must number almost 200 by now.

Huia.

You spurred me on. ;)

I have just got about half way through adding comments to the 48 TREES at Ancestry that have my greatx4 grandparents in a little parish in Cornwall in the mid-late 1700s as the parents of somebody born in Tennessee.

48 morons. Unbelievable.

Oh Please, if I am wrong on my tree, tell me! I don't want a fairy story, only the truth. be glad if someone corrects me at anytime.
Phyll

This as just happened to me I was grateful that i was told that my great Granddads mother, on my tree was his grandmother, & daughter was his mother, I had my info off 1901 cencus never went for birth certificate thought I did not need to
makes my tree a lot more intresting finding out more marriages
I would tell if I saw a mistake, because I thought I had done everything right we all make mistakes,
Mabel

I am going to remove my trees from view as I am fed up with a person copying off my relatives, andadding them to theirs, where there is not the remotest connection, polite requests for explanation ignored !

Hi,

I would definitely want to be told. In fact I am wondering at the moment if I haven't got a wrong name and am barking completely up the wrong tree with one of my lot.

Susan

Most of them probably didn't spend more than the time it took to click their mouse to accept an Ancestry "hint".

After all, that's all you have to do, right? Fork over your money and type a name in a tree, and bingo, little leaves will sprout all over and you'll have canned family tree to dine on.

I still make a habit of asking rather insistently that people remove my entire line of people from a little parish in Cornwall from their trees, because no matter how much Ancestry thinks their surname looks like the surname of your ancestor born in Tennessee in the 1700s (hey, in my ancestor's 5-letter surname, yours only has two different plus a spare ...), *they are not remotely related* you moron ... okay, I try to be a little politer than that ... but how hard would you have to hit somebody over the head to get through the kind of stupidity that produces that garbage ...

hi all
i did tell someone they had the wrong info and they were really pleased that i had told them

lorraine

Heather, I have found out when I have tried to give them correct data - the majority do not want to know. That is their loss. One researcher concentrates on a one-name study and number crunching but when I contacted her and told her some years ago that she had the wrong children she told me she was happy with her research. I know she is wrong as they are gfather's siblings!

She turned up on GR and did not recognise me and yes - she still has the wrong info and posting it.

It is how you find out the serious researchers - no one is perfect and I would rather have a correct version.

Ancestry is worst offender I think as new researchers appear to enrol there and accept everything as true.

I tried to tell a lot of people on Ancestry that my sister did not marry a man b in 1723. Some of them were quite abusive, some insisted they were right, even though they had our dad correctly b in 1899. A small number thanked me. But still the copying of the incorrect 'info' goes on.

Huia.

Keep it to yourself, safe in the knowledge, that your tree is correct.

Not everyone is pleased to find out they are wrong, and some will stick to their own because Granny said it was true etc.!

They don't buy certs and copy from each other, hence the confusion !

Hi Heather,
I usually point it out to them, especially if I can supply the right information!
People are normally gratefull because they have often come to a halt in their tree because of their mistake! Try it, the worst they can do is ignore you!
Maz

I wondered what to do when one discovers that people have added non-relatives to thier family trees?
Not just one or two people, but lots.
Should I tell them that the people they claim to be part of thier family are not correct, and that the hours they spent "researching" have been an utter waste of time? Or do I keep quiet knowing that thier mistake is being copied by others too lazy to do thier own research?

Which ever way I look at this scenario I look like the bringer of doom and gloom, especially as some trees have over 50 non-relatives that have been incorrectly added.