Issue 30.11
MyTreeItis is a condition peculiar to many family history participants, amateur and professional. This disease is characterized by symptoms such as its mine; you’ll have to make your own copy. I’m right and you are wrong. I need to remove or change that horrible data someone added to my ancestor. No one had better touch my data.
New FamilySearch came in and put everything into one big tree. We had to change from thinking “my tree” to thinking “our tree.” It’s ours, we need to work together. Let’s see what the evidence shows. If there is evidence that I don’t have, I’m glad to get it and make our pedigree better.
One of the things that caused a problem in our tree was that old Ancestral File submissions were included with perpetual errors and no sources. About half of the Pedigree Resource File submissions were included which too contained errors that needed to be corrected. The design of new.familysearch org was that if you didn’t put in the information, you couldn’t fix it. That is about to change.
The solution is large and will not be implemented all at once. The changes can be divided into basic categories such as: Place much more emphasis on sources and citations. Create a family tree that allows the genealogical community to collaborate and identify the most accurate pieces of information to be shown on the tree.
Consistent use of sources prevents errors and minimizes contention among researchers working on the same lines. To place emphasis on sources, the information in the tree will be separated into sources, conclusions, and opinions. This division will help you identify which pieces of information are reliable and supported by sources.
You will add sources with a new sources feature. This new feature will let you upload a scanned document, enter a citation that identified where it came from, and link the scanned document and citation to individuals in the tree. If you do not have a scanned copy of the source, you can submit the complete citation without the image. You will be able to save this source and reuse it as needed.
For more information, contact Shanna Jones shannasjones@msn.com (435) 628-4900.