Friday, April 19, 2013

Annual Fine Print

Before I get to the legal stuff, I wanted to proffer an explanation. I haven’t been writing much lately. That’s because I am dedicating large amounts of personal time to upgrading my genealogy skills.

This effort will probably consume a year of my time, so I ask your patience. I’ll still try to get in a couple of articles a week. That brings me to the next couple of weeks.

Don’t expect any articles.

I’m going to a conference! Then I’m going on a research trip!

I’m looking forward to town clerks and local historians and graveyards and librarians and vertical files and obituary collections and probate court clerks and court houses. And nice people… nearly all of them alive.

And now some stuff I like to remind you of every year, my annual “fine print.” You are welcome to skip the remainder of this article.


The Ancestry Insider blog is the unofficial, unauthorized view of Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org. The Ancestry Insider reports on, defends, and constructively criticizes these two websites and associated topics. The author attempts to fairly and evenly support both.

"Ancestry Insider" does not refer to Ancestry.com, but to the community in general. I don’t believe Ancestry.com owns or should own the word “ancestry” and I don’t believe anyone should use it synonymously with Ancestry.com.

I want you to know that my reporting is not completely unbiased. The Ancestry Insider may be biased by at least the following factors:

  • The Ancestry Insider accepts products and services free of charge for review purposes, including an Ancestry.com subscription. And free access to FamilySearch.org. Oh wait, everyone gets that.
  • The author of the Ancestry Insider is employed by FamilySearch owner and sponsor, the Corporation of the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. All things considered, I would rather not lose my job. And I try to maintain good working relationships with those whose work I am critiquing.
  • The author is a believing, practicing member of the same Church. Through and through.
  • The author is a former employee of Ancestry.com. I loved it there and would work there again (although they probably wouldn’t have me). I maintain friendships established while employed there.
  • It is the editorial policy of this column to be generally supportive of Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.
  • The author is an active volunteer for the National Genealogical Society. May I say again that you ought to strongly consider attending their conference next month in Las Vegas. ;-)

The Ancestry Insider is written independently of Ancestry.com and FamilySearch. The opinions expressed herein are my own, and do not necessarily reflect those of Ancestry.com or FamilySearch. I write on my own time with rare exceptions. One exception is national genealogy conferences. FamilySearch has asked that I attend and write about these conferences. It does not prescribe what or who I write about, so I write about both Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.

I reserve the right to republish email and comments posted on my blog. These may be edited for content, length, and editorial style.

All content is copyrighted by the Ancestry Insider unless designated otherwise.

For content copyrighted by the Ancestry Insider, permission is granted for non-commercial republication as long as you give credit and you link back to the original. You may copy articles in your newsletter if you are a non-profit genealogy society. Underneath the title, put “by the Ancestry Insider.” After the article put the address of the website (http://ancestryinsider.blogspot.com). Hot link the address so that clicking it takes the user to my website.


OK. I think that about covers it. Wish me luck. Don’t forget to register for the NGS conference Monday. Stay tuned…

4 comments:

  1. Would you consider sharing what you're doing to upgrade your personal genealogy skills? I know I tend to look at genealogy bloggers as knowing it all already, so I'd love to find out what you consider an upgrade.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I appreciate your annual statement and wish you great success in your personal and spiritual genealogy journey. I look forward to your writings whenever they come.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Unrelated question - When will the sources entered at new.familysearch.org be transferred to familysearch.org?

    ReplyDelete
  4. I hope for you a really great time at conferences and upgrading your skills! Thank you for your counsel and updating us all on the information highway Genealogy style. Whoops, I mean "Family History" style.

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.