Rootsweb
Posted by on Monday, December 5, 2011
I have had a few comments and questions about the large family tree posted on Rootsweb, so I will try to answer them here.
About ten years ago I researched my family tree going back several centuries, and kept it on my computer for my own use. But as I started talking about it online and in other forums, people were requesting copies to include with their own trees. So I posted it on Rootsweb, and thought nothing more of it.
Over time, I started having distant cousins e-mail me their own family trees, which I merged into my own and included on the website. At one point the tree exceeded 50,000 individuals!
Unfortunately there were two very big problems with maintaining this family tree publicly. The first was the volume of correspondence I started to receive. My e-mail account became flooded with over 200 separate messages each day, and trying to read and answer them began to interfere with the rest of my life and responsibilities, so I had to put a note on the website asking people to refrain from e-mailing. Many people ignored that message, so I finally had to block a lot of the e-mails from being delivered. I will still communicate though with people who have a relatively close family connection (ie first, second, or third cousins).
The second problem was that I quickly realized not everyone who gave me information was as careful in their research as I was. One tree in particular had several thousands entries that had wrong dates, wrongs places, and wrong names. Sometimes they add entire fictional families it would seem. And so I had to put a second note on the page explaining that I am just passing along other people's work, and can not verify if it is accurate or not. Over time I have been removing the false information, but since it is not even my family I have a lack of interest coupled with my ongoing lack of time.
So in summary, the site is provided as-is. I haven't had anything to do with it in at least five years, and have no intention of working on it again. Use it as you will, but remember it is not necessarily accurate, and I no longer maintain it at all.
About ten years ago I researched my family tree going back several centuries, and kept it on my computer for my own use. But as I started talking about it online and in other forums, people were requesting copies to include with their own trees. So I posted it on Rootsweb, and thought nothing more of it.
Over time, I started having distant cousins e-mail me their own family trees, which I merged into my own and included on the website. At one point the tree exceeded 50,000 individuals!
Unfortunately there were two very big problems with maintaining this family tree publicly. The first was the volume of correspondence I started to receive. My e-mail account became flooded with over 200 separate messages each day, and trying to read and answer them began to interfere with the rest of my life and responsibilities, so I had to put a note on the website asking people to refrain from e-mailing. Many people ignored that message, so I finally had to block a lot of the e-mails from being delivered. I will still communicate though with people who have a relatively close family connection (ie first, second, or third cousins).
The second problem was that I quickly realized not everyone who gave me information was as careful in their research as I was. One tree in particular had several thousands entries that had wrong dates, wrongs places, and wrong names. Sometimes they add entire fictional families it would seem. And so I had to put a second note on the page explaining that I am just passing along other people's work, and can not verify if it is accurate or not. Over time I have been removing the false information, but since it is not even my family I have a lack of interest coupled with my ongoing lack of time.
So in summary, the site is provided as-is. I haven't had anything to do with it in at least five years, and have no intention of working on it again. Use it as you will, but remember it is not necessarily accurate, and I no longer maintain it at all.