[APG Public List] Geni, "breaking family news, " and a test of your skill as a genealogist

[Jeanette Daniels]

Elizabeth,

If I happen to be "J," I don't necessarily find this humorous but totally sad.  
My guess it that someone did the merge on the New Family Search and is an 
idiotic when it comes to understanding that research is supposed to be done 
first before anything is merged together.  New Family Search is not working 
obviously!

I'm afraid that many LDS think wrongly that if they can make connections to 
deceased persons on New Family Search, that everything in there is correct.  
There is no concept of actually looking up records or verifying information.  I 
personally don't know how to explain this to those who want a "quick family 
tree" whether they are LDS or not.  The Internet, in a way, has spread the 
concept of being able to find anything quickly but whether it is correct or not 
is another story.

Much of the really old dates for genealogy come from the old Family Group Sheets 
that many LDS family organizations paid money to have researched.  Sadly, many 
of the older genealogists made a good living from gullible LDS families 
interested in getting their temple work done.  I don't have statistics on how 
many of these Family Group Sheets are fabricated, but I know the number is 
extremely high.  Old Family Group Sheet information was then put into the 
Ancestral File by people not aware of all the mistakes, fraud, etc. in them and 
then after the Ancestral File became too fragile to handle more information, the 
Pedigree Resource File was created and now New Family Search.  All contain the 
old garbage from almost 100 years ago.  


Jeanette Daniels
Heritage Genealogical College




________________________________
From: "eshown at comcast.net" <eshown at comcast.net>
To: APGPublicList at apgen.org
Sent: Thu, December 2, 2010 12:04:01 PM
Subject: [APG Public List] Geni, "breaking family news, " and a test of your 
skill as a genealogist

<SPAN id="misspell-7" class="mark" >Geni</SPAN> - <SPAN id="misspell-8" 
class="mark" >Everyone's</SPAN> Related
I’m trying to see humor in this. Maybe you will, too.J
 
A genealogically inexperienced relative started a “Geni” tree for us last year, 
then accepted a “merge request” from someone who had a 
same-name/different-person ancestor on a peripheral branch of the tree (totally 
unrelated to Showns)—a merge request that she says she can’t undo, created by 
somebody who apparently has nothing to do but merge trees and add celebrity 
names. 

 
Since then, every few few days, a “Shown Family Newsletter” comes into my box 
“alerting” me to his additions.  Here’s the first gem today:
 
“[name deleted by esm] added his 16th great grandmother's husband's second great 
aunt's husband's grandmother's husband's niece's husband's 19th great grandson's 
wife's sister [name deleted again]and 4 others, NNTarwid, NNKondrodski, 
NNKondrodski and his 16th great grandmother's husband's second great aunt's 
husband's grandmother's husband's niece's husband's 20th great grandson's wife 
Elise Ashworth« less to the tree”
 
Wow!  Can anybody chart that in 5 minutes or less?
 
Elizabeth
 
Elizabeth Shown Mills, CG, CGL, FASG
Tennessee


      
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