As I started to compile my Friday Finds list for the week, I realized that this find required an explanation well beyond the confines of a simple blurb about the find.\u00a0 Be forewarned, this is a \u201cbare-it-all\u201d post.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Armchair Genealogist<\/a> encourages us to think about how we share our online family tree with a list of pros and cons for both public and private trees in the article Online Family Trees, Public vs. Private<\/a>.\u00a0 I generally agree with all of the pros and cons provided, but thought I\u2019d share with you my rationale for why I choose to have my online family tree private.<\/p>\n I must say that before I added my tree to Ancestry, I gave it a lot of thought, as The Armchair Genealogist suggested, pretty much weighing the same pros and cons presented in the article.\u00a0 My 3-year-old decision to go with a private tree was primarily based on my experience level at the time, but other factors figured in as well.<\/p>\n Oddly enough, this ties into another blog post I was going to include in my Friday Finds post for the week, but am including it here instead.\u00a0 As much as it pains me to say this, I have to admit that when I first started exploring my roots, I played the Genealogy Video Game<\/a> as James Tanner discusses over at his blog Genealogy\u2019s Star<\/a>.\u00a0 At the time, I was really only interested in finding out if the family stories were true, that we were somehow related to Noah Webster.\u00a0 I had a family genealogy in my possession (unsourced of course), which only provided the direct ancestors of my paternal grandmother\u2026no Noah Webster was found.\u00a0 Not knowing any better, I started to review all of the \u201cpublished\u201d information in online family trees and such, including FamilySearch (Ancestral File, Pedigree Resource File, and International Genealogical Index) and Ancestry (Public Member Trees, OneWorld Tree, and World Tree Project).<\/p>\n Determining that Noah was somewhere in my own tree (albeit determined via poor sources of compiled data), I downloaded PAF to manage what I had found in order to figure out the relationship, inputting the data acquired from the sources noted above.\u00a0 (Wow, it really hurts to be admitting all of this, but live and learn!!).\u00a0 It is through this experience that I realized how interesting these people (albeit \u201cassumed\u201d to be my relatives) were and thus began my genealogical journey into all the branches of my family, not just the ones tied to the Websters.\u00a0 At the same time, being a researcher by nature, I wanted to know how on earth these people \u201cknew\u201d the information to be true.\u00a0 I began to realize that the \u201csources\u201d I had come to rely on weren\u2019t really sources at all, thus leading to my quest for sound genealogical research.<\/p>\n Okay, so this was a long-winded explanation to the point about poor data and online family trees.\u00a0 But the story does illustrate the point of my own poor data, and my not wanting to \u201cpublicly\u201d share my tree online.\u00a0 Much of the one family line is poorly researched, AT THIS TIME.\u00a0 I am working to correct that, using the information I acquired originally to serve as clues to assist in sound research.\u00a0 It is because of this that I don\u2019t want to share my tree for others to duplicate what could be (and likely is in some cases) incorrect information.<\/p>\n With the above said, a private tree allows me to be found by other researchers and at the same time allows me to choose what I want to share with those who contact me.\u00a0 In cases related to the above, I can direct researchers to the compiled tree(s) I originally used if I have not done any of my own research yet.\u00a0 This way, I am not sharing all of the information that I initially \u201cborrowed\u201d from others.\u00a0 Instead, I am directing them to and crediting the trees I used.<\/p>\n In cases where I have done only some of my own research, I make the researcher aware that some of the information came from online trees (which are noted and sourced as such) and that some of the information is a result of my own research and that these particular conclusions are based on \u201creal\u201d sources, adhere to the Genealogical Proof Standard, and are sourced accordingly.<\/p>\n Another aspect to of control relates to living relatives.\u00a0 Depending on the researcher and their connection to the family, I can choose what information I am comfortable sharing about any living relatives.\u00a0 While I am not one to air my living relatives\u2019 vital statistics to the whole world, there are some people I feel comfortable sharing certain information with, particularly more immediate family.<\/p>\n Additionally, the online family tree is not my primary database.\u00a0 I do research almost daily and record all of my findings in Legacy on my PC.\u00a0 Therefore, the online version is not a current version of my research progress.\u00a0 By forcing people to contact me, it allows me to provide them with my most up-to-date research findings.<\/p>\n While I illustrated above that I myself was at one time guilty of this crime, I did learn from my mistakes.\u00a0 Having transitioned from a below-amateur to a beyond-intermediate genealogist, I do understand how much time, effort, and money goes into sound research.\u00a0 That said, when I do consult a compiled genealogy (online or offline) I make sure to give credit where credit is due and only use the information as clues to conduct my own sound research.<\/p>\n Having a private online tree makes it hard for others to simply steal my hard work (and in some cases, as already indicated in my story above, the hard work of still others).\u00a0 They can\u2019t simply download the information and import it into their own tree.\u00a0 And in fact, when I do share information, I am a bit of a scrooge and provide a PDF genealogy of the portion requested (with sources)\u2014not a GEDCOM file that they can save, import and move on.\u00a0 This forces the researcher to actually (I would hope) analyze the information and draw their own conclusions before manually inputting the data into their own database.\u00a0 I realize this may seem hypocritical, since I admitted to being guilty of \u201cborrowing\u201d information myself.\u00a0 And in a way, it is, but as I\u2019ve already stated, I have corrected my research practices with regard to compiled genealogies.<\/p>\n Whew!\u00a0 This was a hard post to write (not because of the migraine I have, or the fact that I should be working on a journal article that is due in a few days), but because it was hard to admit some of my former bad practices.\u00a0 What started out as an interesting \u201cfind\u201d for the week, turned into a \u201cbaring-it-all\u201d blog post.\u00a0 But I am one to admit when I\u2019m wrong, and if it helps just one person not make the same rookie mistakes I made, then it was worth it to share.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As I started to compile my Friday Finds list for the week, I realized that this find required an explanation well beyond the confines of a simple blurb about the 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post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-how-to","category-genblog","cat-27-id","cat-25-id"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3HcLI-ba","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=692"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3557,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692\/revisions\/3557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Poor Data<\/h6>\n
Control<\/h6>\n
Prevents the \u201cStealing\u201d of Information<\/h6>\n
Final Thoughts<\/h6>\n