Genealogy Chat

I have a tree on Ancestry as well as on Genes. Recently there came up a "match" with one of my close female relatives (deceased).
When I looked at the match in their tree I could see that they had the wrong parents for her; plus there were several other errors.
My question is, how can one tell someone they have made a mistake without sounding like a clever, arrogant know-all ?
Is there polite and accepted standard opening sentence for the start of a message?
David

Hi David,
The last time I had different details I said -
I see you have X with parents A ....... According to my information they were Z...
X is my relative.... and the datails were obtained from.....
Are we talking about the same person?

I got an answer back to say I was right.

B

As long as you have your information backed up by certificates then I would just say that you think they MAY have the wrong parents for this person and that you could send them a copy of the birth certificate if they would like you to so that they can check the information for themselves.

Then just leave it up to them. Some people will be pleased to be corrected and others will always think they have it right. At the end of the day as long as you are happy with the information you have then that's all that matters.

Kath. x

Thanks Bernie,
that seems a very good way to broach it.
The funny thing is that when someone pointed out a possible error on my tree they were quite abrupt, but I was only too glad to be corrected and ignored the language. But manners cost nothing and I have found most people in the Tree world to be both friendly and very helpful.
David

Kath,
you are right of course, one must be 100% sure of ones facts, but In this case it was about my Aunt who I new personally - so I was on safe ground this time.
David.

Make sure you have your facts to hand and be polite. Most people don't like being told they are wrong - its human nature - but over the years I have most are usually receptive.

A while back someone send me a 'correction' to one of the lines on my tree. When I looked at it in detail it turned out the 'correction' was an copy taken from an earlier version of my very own tree. What they didn't know was that I had found errors with that earlier version which I had subsequently corrected. They hadn't researched anything.....!

I wrote to someone very politely and pointed out that they had the wrong parents. I had certificates to back me up but they were absolutely sure they were right. So I thought - just get on with it then, They were so rude in their reply. Most people I have written to have been very grateful.
Phyll

Thanks for all the comments.
I did make sure I was polite, and slightly apologetically explained how I knew the facts about the person.
So far I have not had a reply but only a few days have passed since I sent the message.
I did notice that they had over 12,000 people in their tree - It has taken me about 10 years to get about 1500, perhaps I`m a slow researcher - although I suspect big trees must be more likely to have errors ?
David.

Funnily enough I was just having a search on Ancestry Trees for one of mine.....

There are 20+ trees for the father and mother of 'mine' with every child listed except 'mine'. Mine being a bit of a partial 'ink blot' in the actual registers and listed as J...., male on Family Search when it is actually Jane, female.

Every tree on Ancestry has, as the source for the Father, another tree on Ancestry (so 20+ trees sourcing each other!!!)......In the end I was tying myself up in knots going round and round the trees and never finding where the source actually originated :-S

At that point I gave up and reminded myself why I only rely on my own research :-D

Chris

i have found that a lot of the trees on ancestry, for my familys seem to copy one another. i recently thought i had found another "researcher", with information that could prove helpful to my search. but when i followed it up with several certificates found that they had my ancesters but someone elses decendants
b m d do help to point you in the right direction but only certificates proove the fact
best wishes all
zena