I have refrained from getting involved in this matter so far, mainly because I do not use Ancestry, I do not trust Ancestry and 90% of data linked through Ancestry I have found to be wrong or so incomplete as to be worthless. It does not help as the Ancestry site does not work reliably for me, often even the subscribe page does not load even, I have given up trying to fix this problem and so have Ancestry technical services. Cousins with trees of any sort on Ancestry know that they need to send me a Gramps XML file of their tree, or at worst a spawn of Satan gedcom file. My own tree is online on my own website where I have total control of who is included.
I did have a tree of several thousand people, back to 1500's before Ancestry came into existence but I did add a small group of people to try their service in the 1990's. I made a small mistake typing the DOB of my father, 4 days different, and corrected the date two days later, the whole tree was deleted a month later but the original date is still displayed in many places, other websites included, with the source given as Ancestry Family Trees. In many cases people with his data in their tree refuse to accept a correction even though they are not related to him and I have the original certificate. Most entries show him as still living, although I have his death certificate from 2000 but that detail was not placed on the Ancestry tree.
For several years I worked full time with Wikitree and later WeRelate, most of my time was in deleting data from Ancestry trees added by people with no idea what genealogy is. Obvious problems like the genealogy of King Arthur, a person who claimed to have proved his descent from Macbeth, the fictitious Shakespeare one not the historical one. In addition there are thousands of trees and copies of trees where impossible events are listed, people giving birth to their own father, marriages with children before people were 10 years old, or even before birth. I did come across one man who had 76 marriages, most concurrent, and something like 30 children, and that turned out to be true. I think there are more faulty trees on Ancestry than there are good ones, the only thing that makes Ancestry trees look good is the even worse familysearch one tree.
In short no tree on Ancestry is often better than the trees that are there, I assume that people on LC are genealogists and will all fall into the category of producing good trees but I still do not see why they would add their tree to Ancestry either public or private. Public might make contact with cousins easier if the cousins also use Ancestry. Private I see no point in, all it seems to do is suggest hints that are mostly incorrect and time wasting
I did have a tree of several thousand people, back to 1500's before Ancestry came into existence but I did add a small group of people to try their service in the 1990's. I made a small mistake typing the DOB of my father, 4 days different, and corrected the date two days later, the whole tree was deleted a month later but the original date is still displayed in many places, other websites included, with the source given as Ancestry Family Trees. In many cases people with his data in their tree refuse to accept a correction even though they are not related to him and I have the original certificate. Most entries show him as still living, although I have his death certificate from 2000 but that detail was not placed on the Ancestry tree.
For several years I worked full time with Wikitree and later WeRelate, most of my time was in deleting data from Ancestry trees added by people with no idea what genealogy is. Obvious problems like the genealogy of King Arthur, a person who claimed to have proved his descent from Macbeth, the fictitious Shakespeare one not the historical one. In addition there are thousands of trees and copies of trees where impossible events are listed, people giving birth to their own father, marriages with children before people were 10 years old, or even before birth. I did come across one man who had 76 marriages, most concurrent, and something like 30 children, and that turned out to be true. I think there are more faulty trees on Ancestry than there are good ones, the only thing that makes Ancestry trees look good is the even worse familysearch one tree.
In short no tree on Ancestry is often better than the trees that are there, I assume that people on LC are genealogists and will all fall into the category of producing good trees but I still do not see why they would add their tree to Ancestry either public or private. Public might make contact with cousins easier if the cousins also use Ancestry. Private I see no point in, all it seems to do is suggest hints that are mostly incorrect and time wasting
