Musings of a Genealogy-Nut

A couple of days ago I read a message in a forum; a forum of scrapbooking friends...not even about genealogy.  This friend was complaining about how she had spent countless hours and a lot of money researching her family's genealogy.  A cousin, then published HER tree, and it was full of errors, undocumented links lifted from other trees, and no proofs.

My friend hit a nerve.  I go to several sites that archive trees of the members and allow sharing, notifying you when there are matches.  It is so easy to just grab those new branches on the trees, and if there is no proofs, oh, well.

Now I have started searching for discrepancies in my lines and found some "impossible" links.  My favorite multiple mistakes are women linked as mothers to children born after their death date.  In one case a man was over 100 years older than his child.

I am unsure whether to try and clean up my tree, or just start over.  Maybe I will do both...a carefully documented tree from scratch, but keep the old tree for reference.