This might be a long one, sorry.
I started my Genealogy journey after having been handed a GEDCOM containing roughly 7500 connected South Australian's that my mother had put together from Digger data. Her request at the time was "don't let my work go to waste, put it online somewhere so that others can benefit."
I chose WikiTree because it aligned with both my, and my mother's, desire for openness and collaboration. It would not be the first place you would choose based on ease of GEDCOM upload - there is work to do to keep the tree correct and unique. It is also a place I fit into because of its emphasis on sources. As far as I'm concerned, unless it was written down by someone directly involved then it's a fairy tale - I will cite the source and I will state it as speculative. I have some profiles whose source list approaches the hundred mark, each of them viewed by me and considered relevant - I'm a bit obsessive about it.
Given the breadth of the original GEDCOM I find that I'm not always working on "my" family. I follow leads, I like puzzles, I answer questions. At any given time I can be anywhere. All of what we do contributes to the whole, mistakes are corrected, and we all benefit.
I recently transferred the supposed parents (AA and BB) from a WikiTree profile (CC) to FamilySearch in order to find more sources and to verify correctness. I was quickly told by another FamilySearch member (let's call them Smeagol - not their real username) that I was wrong. So I put together the family of AA and BB on FamilySearch and found that their daughter (DD) could not possibly be CC because she died in her home country after raising a family there. So I concurred with Smeagol and removed the incorrect parents from CC.
I then committed the grave error of questioning all previous research and searched for CC in South Australian records. I found one immigration record and one marriage record in the time period of interest, with the exact name, and in the correct order for them to be linked.
Smeagol had already performed this search, incredibly novel as it was, and come to the conclusion that the two events were irrefutably linked, because some acquaintance of theirs had given it a once-over and nodded their approval. This is despite the fact that tens of others with the same surname (and unknown first names) had emigrated before CC. I asked Smeagol what evidence they had that the two were linked. Any evidence....
My next crime was to further investigate other possibilities and then, unforgivably, ask G2G for missing sources.
I have now been accused of being "extremely disingenuous" and taking Smeagol's "research (and the research of others)" and claiming it as my own.
What? Are they serious? What research? Am I missing something here? This has, literally, kept me up all night.
My first thought was to add the following pre-amble to my G2G post:
"A possessive and insecure user that hides behind an anonymous username at FamilySearch would like everybody to know that they searched for this individual in South Australian records many years ago and has the shoeboxes filled with scraps of paper to prove it. All subsequent searches for this individual should include the acknowledgment that they are derivative works of said user and should not further question their infallible work."
But that would be petty.
Any hints? How do others deal with claims of "YOU ARE STEALING MY RESEARHC!!!?!!" when the "research" in question is so trivial a search as to be inconsequential?
