Does this annoy anyone else?

[siskojnash]

I like the show. Of course, it didn't have anything to do with my researching my fiancee's family tree. We'd just been spending awhile cleaning the apartment and happened to come across an old family story and stuff from a couple family reunions. I just started by asking her questions and putting all that together into a family tree. It's going alot slower now that I'm actually searching for the people who aren't on the tree. I also began doing my own family tree, since she had been making me wonder about my own childhood and alot of stuff I don't remember about it. I haven't done all that much with mine though, since I had alot more information available about hers. Her family tree currently has about 280 people in it. I think mine has around 30 or so.

[carolinechurch]

Hey Johnny, if we can get the funding, let's do our own show!

That's the other thing that always cracks me up - the desperate need to find royalty or aristocracy in your background. I have come across web pages devoted to it. Having never felt the need to be connected to a load of chinless inbreeds I just don't get it...
Kind of like people who believe in re-incarnation - they are always Marie Antoinette or Cleopatra, never a regular 1940's housewife.

I do hope your wife loves NZ - if she wants any recommendations about what/where please ask.

[JamesBianco]

Having never felt the need to be connected to a load of chinless inbreeds I just don't get it...

But what you forget to realize is that by connecting to a Royal or Noble line, you are able to trace your ancestry hundreds of years beyond what would be normally possible. They were just so much better documented.

Then of course there is always the facsinating detailed stories of some of their lives, existing portraits and tombs, and impact these people had upon history and as a result our lives.

Dismissing them as chinless inbreds is a little harsh!

[carolinechurch]

Hi James, what I really meant was, the need some people have to latch onto royal blood, and who go out of their way to find a link, however tenuous.

Sure, if you are connected it is a marvellous bonus, but the majority of us are descended from normal working class ancestors.

The chinless inbreeds is irony, though you only need to look at the Windsors to get my point.

[choprjohn]

chinless inbreeds....thats too funny!

[JamesBianco]

The chinless inbreeds is irony, though you only need to look at the Windsors to get my point.

My grandmother's parents were 1st cousins, his mother, and her father were brother and sister! On top of that, her mother's parents were 2nd AND third cousins. All this from a smallish town outside Palermo.

Even Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip aren't related that closely.

I have 13 lines of descent from one man, Biagio Marciano.

Check out this descendancy chart of Biagio's descendants, all the yellow highlighted people were my Nonna's grandparents and great-grandparents some of them were the spouses of the other..

Descendants of Biagio Marciano

I should have two heads! lol

[maestra36]

I have read that, when towns were so small, the only way for marriages to take place was for relatives, even as close as first and second cousins, to marry each other. I understand though that dispensations were still required for such marriages to take place.

In my own ancestry, I discovered that my great grandparents from the town of Stigliano in Matera Province were fifth cousins of each other and therefore had common ancestry going back into the 1700s. Since they were fifth cousins and not closer cousins though, they were not required to get a dispensation to marry. Did you know that a dispensation to marry was even needed when a male married the sister of his deceased wife, as a kinship had been formed between them through his first marriage?

[maestra36]

Why do we have people **SPAM** items on this forum? I am finding it very annoying that most of us are doing Italian genealogy and are trying help others with it and now we have people advertising items for sale on this forum. These are the people who should be bounced off of this forum. Craigslist.org is the place to sell items, not here. Doesn't this bother anyone else?

[maestra36]

I don't understand why the word spam replaced the word **SPAM** in my entry?

[maestra36]

I did not use an expletive and don't understand why the word spam replaced the word which means "advertising items for sale"

[JamesBianco]

Why do we have people **SPAM** items on this forum? I am finding it very annoying that most of us are doing Italian genealogy and are trying help others with it and now we have people advertising items for sale on this forum. These are the people who should be bounced off of this forum. Craigslist.org is the place to sell items, not here. Doesn't this bother anyone else?

You have no idea how many of these sort of posts the other mods and myself remove each day. You don't see most of them because they are gone nearly as quickly as they appear. There are times we can't get to every single one right away, but rest assured we DO get them all one way or another, and the responsible poster.

[wldspirit]

The annoying pest that they are, have not only placed their intrusion into the forums in way of a new post, but have even gone so far as to tack them onto legitimate postings .....
It is an ongoing, daily battle.

[seabreezes1]

One of my motivations for researching my family was the proliferation of incorrect information from another site - and I mean some big ones, like saying a cousin was a brother. I, too, contacted the owner of that site. Unfortunately, the original creator, God bless her, had died and her family is keeping it in memorial.... with all the errors, confusions and mis-spellings. Ah well. I even had one person contact me with the "correct" DOB and DOD of two of my aunts who were, at that time, still living, but she had "documentation". We all make mistakes, and we do need to start somewhere. I generally trust a person who tells me their parents' DOB & DOD and the names and relationships of their siblings & spouses..... but I have found that even those can be wrong. I saw a gravestone where the first name and town of birth were badly misspelled! Still, the clues in incorrect obituaries invariably lead to an interesting story. Although part of me wants to correct everything I see that is wrong and have my own work "perfect" too, I realize that I get a lot of enjoyment out of the research and the struggle for meaning. Giving it to someone robs them of that pleasure. So I do my best for myself and try and not obsess about the noise out there. My Italian grandmother had a favorite saying. It almost seems blasphemous to use it in this venue, but it does add perspective, "A hundred years from now, what will it matter?"

[Squigy]

Hi, guys. What did you think of last weeks episode? I thought Brooke Shields just seemed like she was acting for the first part (when she was in NJ). I think the show was desperate to get some of that cheesy drama in, and frankly, I found the first 15 minutes of that episode to be annoying.

Anyway, the show's viewers are slipping

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Do_You ... _TV_series)#cite_note-episode2ratings-4

I must be honest, I'm glad it's not doing so well.

[johnnyonthespot]

It should be obvious that Shields already knew a great deal about her royal lineage becuase it has been reported for years (see my previous post). Therefore, the entire half (two-thirds?) of the program devoted to this side of her family must have been play-acting on her part.

It may be crazy, but the thing that most annoys me about this show is the not-so-sly "product placement" which they always mange to slip in to each episode. How many times are they going to cut to a closeup of a PC screen that shows the Ancestry . com logo at the top left while the data itself could just as easily have been presented without the need to show the PC at all?