Wednesday, March 28, 2012

What a year GONE looks like

I have not "blogged" about my research in over a year.
And to any/all of you, I apologize for that. Life does kick in sometimes; it happens.

I believe in the sharing of genealogical research, always have. To me, it is the ONE great gift of this vast internet. (oh the Internet brings so many other wonderful things... and so many terrible things as well. The Sharing of Knowledge and Research is one that I will continue to hold on to for some time... I hope). I remain optimistic that we are philanthropically interested... to give back.

In my year of not blogging, I have:
- responded to nearly 200 personal emails, mainly through my Rootsweb database or through my personal website
- fixed over 50 "postem's" to my Rootsweb database
- updated my Rootsweb database at least 6 times... I'll admit, it's now been a few weeks, but I'm trying to get back on getting my Most Recent Version ( I try every month, but... life happens)
- found an amazing HUGE number of ERRORs on my own, through post-ems, through emails

Errors... they're just awful.
I despise propagating incorrect information. I regret so much in my youth of being a bad researcher. I'd say nearly 95% of the post-ems and emails I get about corrections are not about my own line... but of lines that are in my database, that came from when I was a horrible researcher and didn't document anything as far as Source. It pains me that I have probably 1/4 of a database of legitimate, documented research... and the rest is really... "internet stuff".

Lessons learned. And once in the database, can I clean? NO. No, I have no choice but to upload the whole she-bang and hope that people communicate with me on my discrepancies.

So, I'm not blogging. I miss my blogger friends and my blogger world. I miss genealogy research as a whole. My TODO list is just unimaginable right now... but it is the way of it.

POINT BEING: I will respond to emails, comments, post-ems. I will fix. I might not be 24/7 online to blog about new research, but I'm still here.

"Thank you Jo for all you do and give back".... it's a statement recently said to me, and two things I note: that #1, you know I'm trying; and #2, you don't know my full name which means we haven't communicated over email or anything beyond this blog. And that is OK too! that both encourages me and gives me despair. I give back when I have the chance; and while that's not good enough... it's just how it is right now. I will continue to post everything I know on my Rootsweb. That will remain constant, every few months if not more.