Hi Tim,
Catley trees are not the only sufferers, I have seen several instances of
such errors. Only yesterday I spotted a person of interest added to a tree
so decided to find the connection.
The researcher obviously checked nothing, proudly quoting 6 sources which
just turned out to be census returns. Baptism dates were quoted as birth
dates. Wrong birth date & place attributed to several people despite the
information being shown more or less correctly on a census. Sometimes one is
not even appreciated for trying to help, so now I just add comments.
Derek Miller
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tim Cattley" <felis(a)mypostoffice.co.uk>
To: "catley @rootsweb" <catley(a)rootsweb.com>
Sent: Saturday, December 22, 2012 12:05 AM
Subject: [CATLEY] Public trees available on research sites
I presume that I am not alone in being concerned by the errors to be
found
in other peoples attempts to record Cat*ley family trees that crop up on
internet research sites?
All too often I come across peoples work which has been made public but
contains fundamental errors caused by assumption, speculation, or worse.
It is interesting to note that in all instances the authors (in my case)
are not Cat*ley tree members but way off members of other trees connected
by marriage events which in many instances, took place less than 100 years
ago but the authors see fit to chase back up each surname in a frantic
effort to bag as many names as possible and then proudly post the results
as multiple tree compilations, presumably on the grounds that "bigger is
better" ?
It is also obvious that many of these erroneous efforts are brought about
by a certain amount of cribbing with classic (known) research mistakes
being repeated and compounded. Had the authors done their own original
research work, it is probable that such mistakes may have been avoided.
In my case, there are numerous instances where would be genealogists have
managed to merge two different Yorkshire Catley trees in to one by
mistaken attachment of a Normanton tree male Catley with a Garforth tree
female to create a hi-bred pseodo tree!
It is very easy to take umbrage when seeing such errors taking the view "I
am not having our tree misrepresented" and assume the role of policeman by
making contact with the perpetrators and attempting to get them to make
the necessory changes to get the genealogy correct. However such actions
invite a considerable amount of time investment with no guarantee that the
author will make adjustments not to mention the possibility that certain
web sites do not seemingly offer the facility of modifying/editing
information already contained.
What are your views on the subject, does one leave things alone or attempt
change?
Tim
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