Hopefully we are not rejecting Ancestry Sources in other Profiles?

Question

On 13 Jun 2021 Mary Gresham wrote on Truitt-67:

Just because some profile managers do not have subscriptions to Ancestry is not a reason to not include them as references. Many people do not belong to Family Search, My Heritage, Rootsweb, etc but we include them as sources. Thanks, Mary

Answer 1

Hi Mary! I agree with you that we should not remove, replace, or reject valid sources from Ancestry.com. What we need to keep in mind, though, when we reference a source which can only be found on Ancestry is that we need to provide as much information as we can from the source and provide a very complete source citation so that people who are not Ancestry members will be able to find the source elsewhere. When possible, we also need to provide the "sharing" link for the source so non-members can have some access to the source, even though it is limited. Ancestry "trees," however, are of very limited and often even dubious value. I may mention something from them occasionally in research notes but explain that the information is not sourced.

Comments

The files kept on Ancestry's data base are often much more complete than on other free sites. If you have never used Ancestry you wouldn't know that.

Everyone knows that the Trees on Ancestry are prone to errors and are never considered a "source" written in stone, however, the Gallery section on each profile on an Ancestry Tree holds much useable information. That is the treasure trove that offers photos of plat maps, family research, old photos, stories and biographies that can give valuable clues to every researcher. To think that a free site should be used instead a paid site is just ignoring the wealth of material contained on Ancestry. Family Search and Ancestry are not the same at all.

I always try to link the sources on Ancestry directly back to those records when possible. Sometimes Ancestry will not allow you to copy and paste items due to copyright issues, but the place where the record can be found, volume, page, etc is always provided. The link to an Ancestry Tree can only be placed down in the Sources Section on WIKI but it should only be a way for a researcher to go to the Tree to look at every bit of data available on each ancestor's profile. I can't imagine not being able to do research without it although I use Family Search, My Heritage and Rootsweb. I find more errors on the "trees" on those sites than on Ancestry. Always look at the length of time a person has been a member on Ancestry. Those older trees are the least error prone due to the ethics of genealogy research that were used "way back then" and the newest folks are not careful and slap anything and everything on their trees. The end.

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I have been an Ancestry subscriber for ages. Ancestry says 2000, but I know for sure I was using it before I moved up here to Georgia and we bought this house in 1997. I know it was before they had every census imaged and indexed because I remember waiting anxiously for the next census "installment." I work on my Ancestry tree every day in conjunction with the work I do here on WikiTree. Yes, sometimes there is good info in the family trees there, but I find so many unsourced, with incorrectly attached sources, or sourced only with other Ancestry family trees that I would say I ignore the trees far more than I ever find anything useful. But I always look first. You just never know when you might find a treasure. :)

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Exactly. I have found many treasures in the Gallery section of individual ancestor profiles located within Ancestry Trees.  I always use the actual record as a source never just an individual's tree due to the errors.  Comparing an Ancestry tree with a WIKi Profile gets you something much less error prone. When someone's Ancestry Tree Link is provided in the Sources section of WIKI, it is just a way to go over and view all that is available for research not that the Ancestry Tree itself is a source.

Answer 2

My understanding is that Ancestry sources are allowed though sources from free sites are preferred. The following links may be helpful for anyone using Ancestry sources:

Instructions for creating a link to a free image are here.

Here are the Instructions for creating ancestry templates.

Answer 3

My own personal view that it's essential to allow/include other sites, having discovered a record that was mistranscribed on FamilySearch.

Answer 4

A membership to FamilySearch is free. I would guess that most profile managers probably don't have ongoing ancestry subscriptions; there is no reason to ever use a paid source when a free one is available.

Comments

The free sites are not nearly as comprehensive as the research available on Ancestry. If you have never used it you wouldn't know that.

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You're rude, aren't you? I have in fact used Ancestry; the sources (especially censuses and birth, marriage, and death records, for the USA, at least) are largely available from FamilySearch. If by "research" you mean user trees, those are not valid sources, unless they cite underlying sources (like censuses and other records), so one may as well link to those sources directly.

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I am direct and some people may find that rude but it is not my intent.

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FamilySearch has the disadvantage that a lot of its data is unindexed.  Finding things can be arduous.

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Agree. Most of the links on WIKI back to Family Search just go back to the individual's tree not the actual source.

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Famiysearch unfortunately contains quite a lot of mistranscriptions and inaccuracies. Ancestry, FindMyPast etc are not perfect on transcriptions either, but often offer alternative transcriptions of BMD records done by people who are more expert, and often have images of original records which enable one to check the transcription is right.

Particular problems arise with records from before our current calendar year got adopted as the basis for dating, and with the interpretation of Quaker dating for earlier Quakers. There have been a very large number of occasions on which I have had to correct dates that WT members have - innocently - added on the basis of what is on Familysearch.

The main subscription sites often give access to more detail than is on Familysearch.

What is important, where information has been found on a subscription site, is to ensure that the relevant data is placed on the WikiTree profile. The current WT guidance steers people to do that.

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Michael,

Good advice.

Thank you,

Mary

Answer 5

A source is a source, whether behind a paywall or not.  Some are better than others in that they consist of original document links, others are derivative.  One should respect them, whatever the case may be.  As far as I am concerned, the more sources the merrier, since we don't all subscribe to the same things.  Of course, if it's only a tree then it needs to be called that.