If you've read this magazine for any time at all, you've probably absorbed numerous warnings about the risks of misinformation in the shared family trees found in online pedigree databases. These collections of GEDCOM files—the universal genealogy computer format—seem to let you download whole branches of your family tree, with somebody else doing the research for you. But as we frequently caution, the sad truth is that no one officially verifies any of these ancestries: It's not the responsibility of database webmasters, and there's no telling whether the submitters have bothered to look into their data. An online pedigree file may connect the dots for your family history all the way back to the 10th century—but without proof, you might as well just make it up yourself. In a genealogical court of law, in other words, online pedigree files wouldn't be admissible.

So why bother with these databases—such as Ancestral File and the Pedigree Resource File on Family Search <www.familysearch.org> and RootsWeb's World Connect Project <worldconnect.rootsweb.com>? What's the point?