The most dangerous thing you can do to your Ancestry.com genealogy research is to be lazy. This may sound silly. How can that be the most dangerous thing? It is the most dangerous thing because you will end up with bad data.
Several years ago, as I was beginning my research on Ancestry.com, I found several trees that were similar to mine. Like every excited novice would do, I clicked and added those trees without verifying the data to my own tree. About a year later, I found myself deleting all my research and starting over because I was unable to trust anything there. I had found so many mistakes that it was easier to completely start over than try to clean them up.
Ancestry.com is a great genealogy website and, in America, is the biggest and best site there is. I completely and whole heartedly recommend buying a subscription and starting your journey of discovery. Ancestry.com is very powerful and this is where laziness is not the best option. Because Ancestry.com is so powerful, the user must pay attention to every file added to your tree. I have become incredibly selective in what passes my highest standards for acceptance onto my tree. I have grown to have a rule not to post anything without digital “paperwork”—if there is no visible documentation, there is no fact qualified. All this data feeds into the search functions of the site and is continually generating new connections as more records are added and new adjustments are made to your existing facts. If the facts are wrong, or applied to the wrong person, the hints provided will be based on that wrong data and you are growing more and more off course.
So, as you use Ancestry.com (and you should), be diligent to verify everything you see along the way.
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