{"id":2985,"date":"2016-07-13T22:29:46","date_gmt":"2016-07-13T22:29:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/?p=2985"},"modified":"2016-07-13T23:30:59","modified_gmt":"2016-07-13T23:30:59","slug":"a-few-random-thoughts-on-trees-being-a-required-part-of-a-search","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/?p=2985","title":{"rendered":"A Few Random Thoughts on Trees Being a “Required” Part of a Search"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m still thinking about how I feel about trees being a “mandatory” part of an exhaustive search.<\/p>\n

Here’s a few random thoughts:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. I’m working on the wife and mother of a John Rucker who died in the early 1740s in the Orange County, Virginia, area. There are hundreds of trees on John with a variety of names for his wife, but most have names that were admitted to be incorrect by the “initial” author years ago. The majority of these trees repeat these errors. Is it worth my time to muddle\u00a0through all these trees? I’m tempted to think it is analogous to wading through every book ever written that mentions Abraham Lincoln in order to be certain I’ve gotten everything there is on him if I’m writing a new biography.<\/li>\n
  2. My time and resources are limited. Is it better to search in as many “original” records as possible instead of wading through online trees that are repetitive and “extremely derivative?”<\/li>\n
  3. If I do muddle through the online trees, shouldn’t my research process be a part of my search results? Should I include what parameters I used to eliminate certain trees from consideration?<\/li>\n
  4. If I only use online trees that “agree with me” isn’t that stacking the deck in my favor and cherry picking sources to utilize those that are consistent with my theory instead of looking at everything?<\/li>\n
  5. If I say that I’m doing an “exhaustive” search and including the trees as a part of it, do I really know what an exhaustive search is?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Just some thoughts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I’m still thinking about how I feel about trees being a “mandatory” part of an exhaustive search. Here’s a few random thoughts: I’m working on the wife and mother of a John Rucker who died in the early 1740s in the Orange County, Virginia, area. There are hundreds of trees on John with a variety […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[242],"class_list":["post-2985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-trees-in-an-exhaustive-search"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2985\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}