{"id":11981,"date":"2010-12-08T10:00:20","date_gmt":"2010-12-08T17:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.geni.com\/blog\/?p=11981"},"modified":"2010-12-03T13:51:46","modified_gmt":"2010-12-03T20:51:46","slug":"sources-addiction-and-aha","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.geni.com\/blog\/sources-addiction-and-aha-11981.html","title":{"rendered":"Sources, addiction, and aha!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\" Today’s post was written by Grant Brunner<\/a> of Macgasm.net<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

A few months ago, I came across this quote from Janet L. Baughman on People Stories<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“There are ladies who lunch and gentlemen who golf. Then there are others who find excitement in the world of genealogy, but beware \u2014 genealogy can be addictive.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Anybody who has ever spent the better part of their Thursday evening looking through census records will find truth in that quote. Once you go down the rabbit hole of genealogy, you won’t be coming back out of it. You’ll end up spending a substantial portion of your free time looking for data that is hidden away in some 200 year-old document \u2014 looking for your next fix.<\/p>\n

This need that many of us have to keep adding to our tree, I believe, relates directly to the feeling we get when we have a big breakthrough. One might call it an “Aha!” moment. Unfortunately, that can also lead to erroneous information being added in search of that feeling. Nobody wants bogus information in their tree, but our judgement is sometimes clouded as far as what should be added.<\/p>\n

How can we fix this? Well, we could require a source for everything you put into the tree. That leads to the question \u201cWhat is a valid source?\u201d Is a family bible a valid source? What about family interviews? Census data and birth certificates? There are countless differing opinions in the genealogy community about what exactly should be considered a proper source of data. Frankly, it\u2019s impossible to narrow it down to a hard and fast list of \u201cGood\u201d and \u201cBad\u201d sources.<\/p>\n

In my opinion, the best way to go about making sure we don\u2019t go too far down the wrong path in our tree is to clearly mark any profile of questionable integrity. If we\u2019re overly restrictive about what we add to the tree, it stops being fun and engaging. Having unverifiable profiles is inevitable when dealing with a tree as big as ours here at Geni, but that doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s the wild west out there. With that in mind, here are some tips for labeling dubious profiles:<\/p>\n