Before you publish to any shared tree.

Use this checklist for one statement or relationship at a time. Keep your working notes open beside the source. If a check fails, leave that statement in your private research notes until you can address it.

Professional genealogists work to a set of rules called the Genealogical Proof Standard. In short: search widely, note every source exactly, compare what the sources say, settle any disagreement, and write down why you reached your answer. Read the explanation of the standard. These checks help you apply that discipline before another researcher sees your conclusion.

Step 1. Inspect the source

• Open the source yourself. An assistant’s description does not count as your inspection of the evidence.
• Record whether you saw an index, transcript or original image. Each gives a different view of the underlying record.
• Compare the statement with the exact wording. A date or relationship added during a summary needs its own support.
• Save the collection title, reference and page or entry details. Another researcher needs a way to locate the same evidence.
• Add the source URL and your access date. A link alone can lose its meaning when a website changes.
• Mark unreadable words as uncertain. Filling a gap with a likely name creates evidence that the document did not supply.

Step 2. Check the person and relationship

• Compare more than the name. Dates, addresses and associated people help distinguish candidates who share it.
• Keep competing candidates visible. Selecting the most appealing one does not explain why the others were rejected.
• Check each parent-child link separately. A sound biography cannot repair an unsupported connection to your family.
• Separate residence from parentage. Living with someone does not by itself make that person a parent.
• Preserve approximate dates as approximate. An estimated year cannot justify an exact day and month.
• Check the identity of any pictured person against the full caption. A resemblance may fail when the complete name key appears.

Step 3. Test the conclusion

• Give each statement its two marks: how we know and how sure. The marks must describe that statement, not your feeling about the whole branch.
• Explain every worked-out statement in plain words. Readers need to see how the evidence supports the conclusion.
• Check whether apparently separate sources copy the same record. Repetition does not create independent support.
• Keep contradictory evidence beside the preferred conclusion. Removing it makes the problem invisible without solving it.
• Write what would change your mind. This gives your next search a way to test the favoured answer.
• Record a failed search with its terms and coverage. No result in one search does not prove that no record exists.

Step 4. Protect living people

• Remove living-person details from anything you plan to share. A deceased person’s record can still identify someone living.
• Check the file you intend to publish. A private note or caption can travel with an otherwise suitable document.

Step 5. Decide what is ready to share

• Keep unproven parent links out of a finished family tree. One wrong join can attach a whole unrelated branch.
• Distinguish a source’s statement from your accepted conclusion. A faithfully copied entry can still contain an original error.
• Explain a correction where an earlier version circulated. Quietly changing your own file leaves other copies uncorrected.
• If an AI helper was used, say so, and say what you checked yourself. The coalition’s disclosure principle asks for this.
• Check the source’s conditions before sharing an image. Access to a record does not itself establish permission to republish it.
• Save the checked version and its review date. You need to know which evidence supported the version you shared.

If the evidence remains unresolved, write a research note explaining the question. Leave the conclusion open. You have still recorded useful work.

Want to hear when a new guide is published? Get an occasional email.