What is your genealogy skill level? Are you a beginner? A pro? Somewhere in-between? Yeah...me too. I think I'm somewhere in-between. But I've been around long enough I think I can safely add this "pro tip" for everyone out there. Here it is. PLEASE avoid genealogy mob mentality. What is it? I'll tell you and why it is (in my opinion) the single biggest problem with modern genealogy.
The mob mentality works like this...
Many people start their research by looking at others' research. Perhaps it's not pure, but an easy way to get started on a particular family line. Now, when looking at Ancestry.com or rootsweb or any number of other sites that allow users to make their family tree public, you will often find many trees on many users' sites. Now, for instance, let's say there's 15 user trees that have information on this family. 14 are EXACTLY THE SAME. So, 14-1? I'm going with the 14...right? WRONG! More times than not I find (in cases like this) that the 14 are wrong and the 1 is correct. Here's why...
Chances are that ONE person did due diligence and researched this family. And perhaps they made some mistakes along the way. It happens. But they put the tree out to the public and left it for some time. They probably came back to it some time later and realized some mistakes and fixed them. However, in the mean time, someone copied the wrong information. Someone else copied that wrong information. And 12 more people copied that wrong information. So now we have 15 "bad" trees online when person 1 realizes their mistakes and fixes them. This is how you end up with 14 copies of wrong information and only 1 correct one.
Now, whether it "good practice" or not, I almost always start research on a new family by checking out what's out there already. Trust me when I say that when I come across a 14-1 scenario like this, I always start fact-checking the 1...not the 14. Like I said, more often than not, that's the one that's correct.
Regardless of what you're looking at, you MUST ALWAYS (always, always ALWAYS!) do your own research. I've come to know (via emails or just familiarity) hundreds of people on Ancestry. There's ONE and only one that I would trust to be right 100% of the time. But I still check her work out for myself. Not only is it the right way to do my research, but also I'm DYING to find a mistake in her work so I can consider myself as good as she is.