I recently shared some hard won information with a far flung online contact who had previously been kind enough to share information and precious photographs with me. No sooner had I done so when the information was suddenly "published", complete with a few new "errors", in the online family tree of a relation of his that he obviously had permission to edit, but without so much as a "by your leave"! Sadly he has chosen not to respond when asked why he did this which makes me feel both disappointed and more than a little angry. Time to examine why and think about how genealogy throws up these ethical dilemmas from time to time.
This is not the first time this has happened to me. I had previously shared information with someone who seemed to share ancestors with me. Again this was published online but crucially she made assumptions about other events and published these too. So, now I have to remember to ignore her online tree because it's full of guesses. It does annoy me when people make mistakes and take diabolical liberties with my research but once it's out there, you have no editorial control.
However, I have to admit that early in my people puzzling days I was delighted to come across a huge family tree that seemed to contain many of my ancestors and gladly traded information with the owner. It turned out it was not his own original research but instead "copied" from a cousin (whom I have since met and is an outstanding researcher) and into which he had introduced errors and was not remotely interested in citing sources or evidence. In fact, he turned out to be what I have termed a "TD Genie" - not so much interested in the quality of his family tree but more the quantity - 10K plus names and rising in their ancestral Telephone Directories!
Now, myself and 2 other skilled genies are sat on a veritable goldmine of information that we have gathered for a particular surname in Ireland as we have attempted to unravel the bits that we think belong to our branches of the family. I want to share this information with the wider community as it is solid research that others may benefit from, but I'm feeling cautious about doing so.
I once read that family history reseachers are somewhat looked down upon by traditional historical academia as we are viewed as "selfishly" keeping our research to ourselves and not publishing it to peer review. But how do you keep control of your research in the free-for-all that exists with online family trees and stop it being misquoted and bastardised? I know people do use online family trees as a way of being able to access their data remotely, but perhaps we could lobby the companies that host the data to give us an option of labelling information as "estimated" or "copied" so that true original research can be clearly identified? There is an option to cite sources but so few people seem to do this.
I would just like to end with an uplifting story though. Ancestry usefully flags up other users who have looked at the same records you have viewed. Through this facility, someone contacted me to query my interest in a rather grand Russian emigre whom I had researched as part of my St Peter's Memorial Home project (see earlier post.) I was able to give her new information which enriched a chapter of her family history. So, I live in hope that one day, someone will do this for me, but I suppose that will only happen if I am brave enough to publish more of my research online and grit my teeth when others hoover it up unattributed and mangle it as they see fit. What do you think?
This is not the first time this has happened to me. I had previously shared information with someone who seemed to share ancestors with me. Again this was published online but crucially she made assumptions about other events and published these too. So, now I have to remember to ignore her online tree because it's full of guesses. It does annoy me when people make mistakes and take diabolical liberties with my research but once it's out there, you have no editorial control.
However, I have to admit that early in my people puzzling days I was delighted to come across a huge family tree that seemed to contain many of my ancestors and gladly traded information with the owner. It turned out it was not his own original research but instead "copied" from a cousin (whom I have since met and is an outstanding researcher) and into which he had introduced errors and was not remotely interested in citing sources or evidence. In fact, he turned out to be what I have termed a "TD Genie" - not so much interested in the quality of his family tree but more the quantity - 10K plus names and rising in their ancestral Telephone Directories!
Now, myself and 2 other skilled genies are sat on a veritable goldmine of information that we have gathered for a particular surname in Ireland as we have attempted to unravel the bits that we think belong to our branches of the family. I want to share this information with the wider community as it is solid research that others may benefit from, but I'm feeling cautious about doing so.
I once read that family history reseachers are somewhat looked down upon by traditional historical academia as we are viewed as "selfishly" keeping our research to ourselves and not publishing it to peer review. But how do you keep control of your research in the free-for-all that exists with online family trees and stop it being misquoted and bastardised? I know people do use online family trees as a way of being able to access their data remotely, but perhaps we could lobby the companies that host the data to give us an option of labelling information as "estimated" or "copied" so that true original research can be clearly identified? There is an option to cite sources but so few people seem to do this.
I would just like to end with an uplifting story though. Ancestry usefully flags up other users who have looked at the same records you have viewed. Through this facility, someone contacted me to query my interest in a rather grand Russian emigre whom I had researched as part of my St Peter's Memorial Home project (see earlier post.) I was able to give her new information which enriched a chapter of her family history. So, I live in hope that one day, someone will do this for me, but I suppose that will only happen if I am brave enough to publish more of my research online and grit my teeth when others hoover it up unattributed and mangle it as they see fit. What do you think?