Gobsmacked

[Kiltpin]

A long story, shortened.

An ex-colleague of mine (who I knew had been adopted) lived in my village. He mentioned to me that I should come and see 'his tree'. He lives in an early Victorian town house. His adoptive parents are dead.

I turn up and expect something on paper or on computer. But no. One whole wall of the study is a beautifully painted fresco. There is a miniature painting of every member of his family going back generations. He started to tell me the story of his family - practically every one of them was a 'somebody', or was responsible for doing 'something of note'. I was impressed.

I asked some questions and it transpired that he had found interesting people and included them. From what I could ascertain, hardly anybody (if any at all) on that beautifully painted wall was related to him.

He knew that his birth parents had to have been white Europeans but other than that, he had no idea. So he invented a family to be proud of and had the wall painted.

He had only included his adoptive parents, because there were living people in the village who had known them.

Any time I feel tempted to cut corners, I think of him.

Regards

Chas

[jbml]

many people now copy and paste anything they find online and think they are researching

They may not actually be doing this.

As I have related before, I once tried to build an online tree; but quickly found that the way the software expected me to work was very different from the way in which I wanted to work. I couldn't make the software conform to my ideas, and as I don't believe in allowing tails to wag dogs, I therefore abandoned the project.

HOWEVER, when I was still trying to record my tree online, the computer would periodically show me a part of somebody else's tree and ask "is this a match?" or some such. If I looked and thought that that person had identified the same ancestor as me and appeared to have the same family surrounding them, I would say "yes".

I had and have no idea what the software actually did when I confirmed the match; but from time to time even now, many years later, I get automated e-mails telling me that new material has been added to my tree. Well, I'm not adding anything! So I can only assume that when somebody whose tree I confirmed as a "match" adds something, the software automatically assumes that I want it added to my tree and does so.

Are all of these people good researchers? I doubt it.

Will it look to anyone chancing upon it as though the compiler of "my tree" is just "copying and pasting anything they find online and thinking they are researching"? Probably.

Is that which is ACTUALLY happening? Certainly not!

[davidft]

A long story, shortened.

And a very good one. Thanks for sharing.

[davidft]

I had and have no idea what the software actually did when I confirmed the match; but from time to time even now, many years later, I get automated e-mails telling me that new material has been added to my tree. Well, I'm not adding anything! So I can only assume that when somebody whose tree I confirmed as a "match" adds something, the software automatically assumes that I want it added to my tree and does so.

Are all of these people good researchers? I doubt it.

Will it look to anyone chancing upon it as though the compiler of "my tree" is just "copying and pasting anything they find online and thinking they are researching"? Probably.

Is that which is ACTUALLY happening? Certainly not!

An interesting question. I am currently trying to redo my tree on a well known site. It makes suggestions of matches and if I check them out and agree then I confirm them as correct. However, I had never thought that in the background they might in future surreptitiously add further matches because I had previously agreed to one of their matches. I would be totally against this and it would make all online trees an equivalent of the familysearch one world tree where I believe anyone can add or amend entries made by anyone else with predictable results

[Stanwix England]

On Ancestry you can set your tree to 'private' and you can exclude other people's trees from your search results. This at least stops you adding other people's errors by accident.  I've never had the experience of them adding anything without me knowing about it.

It still gives me some really terrible hints and it's easy to make a mistake if you are not super careful, I've been taken in by them in the past.

Sometimes it's very persistent in insisting that a person is a different person altogether, with the same name just in a different location. Even if you've confirmed all the major details, birth baptism etc, it will still show you hints for others with the same or similar name.

[iluleah]

I think my point was in writing 'copying and pasting', regardless of if a person is doing it  or computer software is doing it for them, really is irrelevant. It is not researching and proving.

Copying, collecting information or clicking a key is adding it blindly to a tree and regardless of how many times you see the same information doesn't mean it is real and only researching records to prove any information yourself so you prove and cite each person.

The internet is a wonderful 'tool' but no computer 'researches' the software just matches a criteria put into it so only the individual can research, prove and cite. As a tool only, no one would use one tool to eg build a house, you wouldn't get very far only using a screw driver.

[barryd]

For those of us who are non-English speaking Gobsmacked is ................

so surprised that you cannot speak

[lizdb]

How refreshing Iluleah, to read that last paragraph and find someone saying the same as I am always saying, but I usually feel like a lone voice!
i.e - the internet is a "tool", yes a very useful one. It is to be used alongside other tools.
 
Unfortunately the world sees it more and more as it Master, not as a tool.

"The internet says ....., so it must be right" ,  or "I cant do xx because the computer wont let me", sort of things. Rather than I will research xxx and will use the internet as one of many tools to do so, or I can do xxxx and I will use the computer where appropriate to help.

[Rosinish]

The internet is a wonderful 'tool' but no computer 'researches' the software just matches a criteria put into it so only the individual can research, prove and cite. As a tool only, no one would use one tool to eg build a house, you wouldn't get very far only using a screw driver.

Iluleah,

That's a great way of explaining & very true 

Annie