Ancestry.com reps held a blogger meeting yesterday afternoon at the NGS conference here in Raleigh. I threw a cover over 
my exhibit table and spent a couple hours learning more about the latest endeavors at this genealogy giant.
The thing that most impressed me (and I was impressed by a number of things) was that member-use of Online Trees at Ancestry.com has now surpassed the use of the census – and that’s not because the census side of the equation doesn’t continue to grow ( up to around 900 million names – from 700+ million names in early 2006).
As you probably know, users can attach records found within the Ancestry databases directly to their family trees on Ancestry. Since the last blogger’s meeting in January, attached records are up to 217 million from 170 million at that time. Now that’s growth!
I’ll continue to blog about Ancestry, what’s up and what’s coming in the days ahead…
It would be great if Ancestry came up with a way to notify us of who has “merged” information from our tree with theirs. We could then contact them via the Ancestry messaging service and collaborate on our research. It just seems to be the right thing to do- let us know how our tree is being used.
That is why, Sharon, when Ancestry.com married Rootsweb, people grabbed their trees and ran because they knew Ancestry.com’s intent was to make oodles of $$ from their hard work. They stood to receive no benefit whatsoever. Personally, I think sticking someone’s data in my tree electronically, is akin to buying my term paper from a paper-monger instead of writing it myself.
What concerns me is that too often the infomation is not correct and then you are tied up with someone that isn’t your family. I am helping someone who had a family member, distant, that got info that way and insists that info is correct and I have primary info that proves it isn’t.
So many people have searched the census that a lot of times, the information you need has already been searched and published. As Jodi points out the main problem with this is that people don’t check each entry against the source and adds to the error by just copy and past. Ancestry should put a warning by each tree.