What do you think about adding sources from a site that doesn't show the source but invites you to pay?

Question

I am wondering about adding a source from a site that instead of showing the source, directs the viewer to a payment screen. To me a source should be accessible to all so you can check the accuracy and not be an advertisement. What do my fellow geneologists think? I know it takes more effort to find the root source but if you can't see the source, is it a source?

Answer 1

We should be aware, too, that Ancestry and its various other sites (FamilySearch for one) publish "International Birth and Death (and Marriage) Records" based upon their data bases, not true records. While these sound responsible, they should be used with caution.

Answer 2

Hi Theresa,

Good question.  When I am cleaning up a profile that lists a pay website as a source, I try to include a link to the page that I guess is of direct interest.  This is because a lot of folks here use the pay sites, even though I don't.  I don't just delete the whole biography because someone did some research to find that information (even though it is not useful to me.)  So, I save the most likely link and delete all the gobbledy-goop advertisement stuff.

Then I do a bit of my own research on free websites such as:  https://familysearch.org/search/,

 http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gs&,

 http://services.dar.org/public/dar_research/search/?Tab_ID=1 and

 http://patriot.sar.org/fmi/iwp/cgi?-db=Grave%20Registry&-loadframes; and a google search for husband's "firstname surname" + wife's "firstname maidename".

If you need other ideas, please check out the links on Kitty's Library: http://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Space:Kitty%27s_Library&public=1 These are free, direct links to research records, databases and books.   

Answer 3

There are two types of sources here, the ancestry records such as census or bmd data and the links to family trees or millenium cd files.

You can usually rely on the link to the individual data records as being correct, even if you cannot see them yourself. It may be preferable to add open sources if you can so anyone cab check the facts.

The links to family trees etc. are often completly useless, they may give clues for further research but are not sources. If the profile has other sources or you can add better ones then these nonsources can be removed, in many case even people with more money than sense who pay ancestry cannot see the data supposedly a source as the file has been removed, or the data has changed and the profile has different data to the supposed source.

Comments

I try to find an alternate source to records from collections on Ancestry, FindMyPast and other pay sites like the various local and state governments that zing you for looking at an index. FamilySearch is getting to be a really useful resource for alternates.

However, I never use another family tree as a reference. I'll try to reproduce their work but if I can't I'll ignore it and make a note to review later.

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Rhian,

    You must brush up on your American.  The pun is more dollars than sense(cents)!

   You can't say pounds either, more pounds than pence just don't work!

 

 

 

 

 

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Answer 4

While I agree with the general sentiment to use verifyable-for-all sources, I do run into problems with this with French Canadian secondary sources: Tanguay is rather unreliable with the earliest records, and the best-sourced entries in Nos Origines almost exclusively cite PRDH as their source. So if you have a discrepancy with Tanguay or you don't want to use a "free" website that refers you to a pay-site for their sources, the only option left is to quote the pay-site yourself.