Tracing back wrong info on Ancestry

[Rosinish]

Hmm, well...

I have a 'bit' of a tree on ancestry but I haven't included my 'sources'!!!
I found out the hard way, I pay & others prey!

I have found several 'wrong' trees with a lot of my info. which I have 'sourced' (although I don't show where sourced) as well as info. added which doesn't add up i.e. how does anyone find out where that info. was from?

At the moment I have a 2 x g g/mother (who was widowed when she married my 2 x g g/father), who had (genuinely) between both marriages, 9 children (all sourced) yet on at least 1 tree she has 15 children, some of who were born to my 2 x g g/father prior to her marrying her 1st husband 

My 3 x g g/mother had 5 kids to her 1st marriage yet only 3 of those appear on said tree with only 2 with 'almost' correct yrs.

She had 4 kids with my 2 x g g/father (all sourced) yet on said tree they had 12 kids 

I may now send a message to owner of that tree as I'm flummoxed as to where the extra kids were found as they certainly aren't on any Parish Records or Census' & maybe, just maybe, I'm missing vital info. which up until now was/is unknown to me   

Annie

[Finley 1]

Yes for an evening of fun..

Follow a tree copier on Ancestry.. it is fascinating sometimes how --- a tree can be copied / copied / copied.  so much so that each wife is added and each family
One chap ends up with triplicate identical  families and the poster doesnt seem to realise..

Why  cos they dont even check - just go along ticking boxes..

I am glad that Ancestry seem NOT to offer the trees on the side now whereby you just tick a box and say yep that will do its nearly the same....

that used to happen..

It is ridiculous

[GUT]

There are also family stories handed down that get taken as gospel, till research shows it is wrong.

Almost every line of my family has two brothers arriving in Australia and settling in different parts, (qld and NSW) but in reality the NSW branch traces to Manchester the Qld to Devon. Back to 1600s no link found.

And I’ve traced my gg grandfathers siblings to their death in England.

But both families have that same story.

[jaybelnz]

And there's always the story of an elderly friend of mine for whom I started a tree!  Sat down with her and talked to her about the danger of accepting any hints that she may get from other people's trees, and how to verify or accept them to add to her tree! Three weeks later she phoned me, said she had finished her tree, and added in all her hints!!   

I had a look at it, what a hilarious tree it was too!!  I didn't try to change it, she was happy! No point really, but I really feel for anyone who got hints passed on from that tree!!

[JAKnighton]

I believe the original question is about when Ancestry trees cite other Ancestry trees, and then you end up with a loop of trees all citing each other. I can say that yes, if you follow them all, sometimes you can find the 'original' but nine times out of ten no source is provided at all. On top of that, often the original tree has long since been deleted or altered.