29 November 2012
Drive-by genealogists should learn a few rules
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| Source: http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~clermontcountyohio/genwwork.gif |
Sharon Tate Moody posted an article
with this provocative title in the Tampa Tribune recently ...
She
states ...
The genealogy world is cluttered with materials that purport to be the
writers' family histories. Too many of them are nothing more than lists of
people with unproven dates of birth, death and marriage, and in many cases the
people on the list aren't even related.
The individuals who created those lists are the same ones who believe
the television ads about how easy it is to click on a few links and find your
entire family. People who believe those ads are sort of the joy riders of
genealogy: They steal the family car and have a grand old time for the weekend,
racing around the Internet and leaving a mess for someone else to clean up on
Monday morning...
Read
the
full article. And, as always, read the comments! A really neat feature of the blog format are
the comments posted by others, whether they agree or disagree they are often
entertaining and frequently enlightening.
And,
since this post, there has been a “response” post from another genealogist, Amy
Coffin, titled Time to Pop a Cap in the Term "Drive-by Genealogist"
Today I read an article about “drive-by genealogists.” Apparently this
is a label now.
My issue isn’t necessarily with this article in particular; it’s the
message in it that I keep seeing. This piece just happened to be the last place
I saw it.
There’s a baffling backlash toward those just discovering their interest
in family history. I don’t believe anyone is anti-newbie, but there’s this
bizarre assumption that their first efforts are automatically flawed.
Beginners are barely in the door of the Church of Genealogy
What
are your thoughts? I think it’s a really
tough situation. We were all newbies
once and we did get better with time and guidance. On the other hand, it is frustrating to have a
lot of not-documented information out there that then gets repeated ad nauseum!
Though, it is typically easy-enough to
quickly tell if some online information is substantive or not and move on ...
Dare you weigh in on this? Happy to hear your thoughts!
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