What does Mutual Trust mean to you

Question

When you read the Honor code page this line is near the top

This grand project requires mutual trust and a common understanding of how the community works.

What does that mean to you?

Some have told me that unless they can check my sources they would not trust my work, but what about sources that can not be verified? I have Death certificates for people that can not be found on line and state, on the document, that it is illegal for me to reproduce them. Others can not check them without spending hard earned money and proving that they are related so does that mean that they are not valid sources?

I am a volunteer for the familysearch indexing project and worked on the 1940 US census. You can see the result of my work and on that census and at least see the document but what about the index records that you could not see an image without paying another site? are you just going to write off the work of other hard working people just because you can not see the actual record yourself?

There are good works out there and bad works out there but unless you at least give those who post sources on here the benefit of doubt that they are working to provide accurate sources then you will be spinning your wheels trying to check out every source that others have provided.

I have added several sources that had names spelled differently and even dates that were off by several years, but rest assured that I have a very good reason for including them and it is not just because they "could" be correct.  On those profiles I will eventually add my reasoning and will do that with any profiles I work on from now on, but it will take me a long time to go thru all the profiles on my watchlist.

Answer 1

I am not saying that every source on WikiTree is good but I trust that the person who added the source thought it did apply and unless I have another reason to doubt their work I will trust them. Yes I have found bad sources, as an example someone used the 1900 US census as a source for a person who died in the 1800's. Yes I removed that source, but unless there is a good reason like that I will always trust that others are trying do build an accurate tree.

Answer 2

To me "mutual trust" means there is a level of acceptance that the majority here are doing their best to provide accurate sources. The world tree won't be assembled in 5 months or 5 years or even 50 years. I think it's important to realize how small our little part of the tree is compared to the whole. To accomplish this massive project we have to have mutual trust or just give up all together. If we put a protective fence around the profiles we have added how will we find new information. I have often went off in a direction using what I thought were appropriate sources only to find I was following a duplicate surname and eventually had to redirect my steps in a totally new direction...but isn't that what makes this so much fun...we are history explorers. As we chart the waters and accept direction from people more familiar with the area the map gets clearer and more accurate.