Barking Up the Wrong Tree: Won't Stop Believing

01 July 2013

Won't Stop Believing

Comments after the jump.

Lady Maud FITZHUGH
B: 1428 in Ravensworth Castle, Durham, England
D: 17 Oct 1466 in Durham, Durham, England

SPOUSE & CHILDREN
Sir William BOWES (1415-1466)
✿ Margery Bowes, b. 1430
✿ Sir Thomas BOWES, b. 1453
✿ Lady Catherine BOWES, b. 1461
✿ Richard Bowes, b. 1470

ⓑⓐⓡⓚⓘⓝⓖ ⓤⓟ ⓣⓗⓔ ⓦⓡⓞⓝⓖ ⓣⓡⓔⓔ

Quite simple today. Lady Maud gives birth at the age of 2 to her first child and 4 years after her death she brings her last child into the world. The father of the youngest child had also been dead 4 years.
While some of Ancestry.com's advertisements encourage the clicking that produces trees filled with profiles like this one, I'm sure clickophile trees would exist even without them, just not to the same extent. There are, after all, people who believe:

if it is online then it must be true.
if something is published in a book it is fact. Gustave Anjou means nothing to them.
going back 9 centuries in a year isn't unrealistic. After all, every tree on Ancestry has been thoroughly researched.
having a few "breaks in the lineage" doesn't affect their tree. They are positive the undocumented, unsourced, fantasy driven jump from their peasant farmer ancestor to the French royal line is absolutely correct.

The video below, made in response to this Facebook post, immediately brought to mind clickophiles. A "you must watch this before creating a tree" video making light of clickophile trees might prevent more of them from being created in the first place.

Warning: Video contains frank talk about bodily functions.

Of course I am bowing to the scriptwriter's use of humorous condescension and snark. Beautifully done!

Thanks to Linda for the link to today's profile ;-)
If you have a profile to suggest please send a link to buwtree(at)gmail(dot)com.

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2 comments:

Ida's GenealogyMonday, 01 July, 2013
That was so funny!!! I can visualize so many videos we could put together on tree's like the one above. We could be a YouTube sensation. lol
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Blog Reviews

Barking has been "deemed offensive to [Ancestry.com's] brand" and is banned from their Facebook pages. In Ancestry's "Community" comments with links to Barking are censored.
Dear Emma, Hannah, Jemima, Mary Jane, and all of her other personalities agree that I use "the banner of 'education' to actually mock, deride and laugh at [Ancestry's] own customers" and I "can make [my] point concerning tree inaccuracies & cock-ups and their effect on our 'hints' system without being downright unpleasant and sarcastic about it."
Allen says, “your cute little blog is a waste of bandwidth at best”
Ann thinks I'm "...copying and pasting mistakes on trees and calling it a blog" and that my readers are "mean-spirited people...who like to have a laugh at the expense of others."
Sue was really offended by the “...continual stream of sarcasm and constant poking fun...What a nasty taste in my mouth your blog left me with. Unpleasant, sarcastic and jeering at people who you obviously see as your intellectual inferiors. Won't be reading that again.”
And finally from Les, "You truly are a horrible woman, pointing out mistakes is one thing but blatantly laughing and taking the p is completely out of order."

Why?

Researching our family histories we are bound to make mistakes. Hopefully we are quick to correct them. Unfortunately some people refuse to read or think before adding information to their family trees. Some trees have been abandoned so the errors are there for eternity. Here we will laugh, mock and shake our heads at the carelessness, stupidity and/or ignorance of those errors.
All examples are taken from trees published online.
I'll also post tips occasionally, though the messed up trees are a great example of what NOT to do.
If you have an online tree to suggest for a future post please send me a link: buwtree(at)gmail(dot)com

The Fine Print

1. Copyright: Barking Up the Wrong Tree is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License and is owned and administered by Loretta Gillespie.

2. Content: Barking Up the Wrong Tree is responsible for the content of this site, not including visitor comments. Barking Up the Wrong Tree reflects the personal views and opinions of Loretta Gillespie.

3. Credit: Credit is not given to tree owners to protect the clueless. A tree owner who discovers their tree on this site should correct their mistakes so no one else realizes they were once a clickophile.

4. Accuracy and Validity: While there are helpful pointers on Barking Up the Wrong Tree a majority of posts are intended to be humorous. The disastrous trees are copied exactly as they appear on Ancestry.com. These trees are being used to show others what NOT to do.

5. Images: Attempts are made to source images used despite the fact that the trees they are taken from do not include source information.

6. Comments: Barking Up the Wrong Tree will exercise its right to delete comments which are deemed to be spam, offensive, childish or just plain stupid.

7. Liability: The content at Barking Up the Wrong Tree is not to be taken as fact nor absolute. Barking Up the Wrong Tree contains posts that are humorous and posts that are research tips. Barking Up the Wrong Tree is not responsible for anyone who cannot tell the difference between the two. The sites that Barking Up the Wrong Tree links to via hyperlinks are not under its control. Those sites are responsible for the content of those sites. If you do not find the humor on Barking Up the Wrong Tree to your taste then stop reading. If you choose instead to send an email to the owner it may be published on Barking Up the Wrong Tree and mocked publicly.

Thanks to Thomas MacEntee for allowing the use of the GeneaBloggers terms as a template.