Unless you live in a time paradox and your great grandma Elizabeth was born in both Massachusetts and overseas in England, you probably would be alarmed to find two online records of Elizabeth with mostly identical information. Since most of the non-CS population is completely unaware of the intricacies of data integrity, many people happily sign onto family history websites to input their family information only to inadvertently duplicate an already existing record. Features exist on these websites to suggest possible duplicates, but in no way can those features detect all of them. I am most definitely pleased that so many people are passionately researching their family history, but I also believe that people who use family history websites should carefully search to see if their ancestors' records already exist in the website's data before submitting new records. This way, we can make sure that we can complete more family trees instead of continually reinventing the wheel – or rather – reinventing the tree.
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