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Although I've often wished such a thing existed, you run into a significant set of problems with accuracy. For example, the Mormons are big on genealogy; many
by dstorrs 17y ago
Although I've often wished such a thing existed, you run into a significant set of problems with accuracy. For example, the Mormons are big on genealogy; many of them are extremely reliable sources, but many are not--e.g., their genealogy files contain "Noah" and similar figures.
On the other hand, if the information is accurate, it raises major privacy concerns. Most reliable sources will not display the backgrounds of living people to the general public. If this were world-write, what's to stop someone from adding my grandparents, parents (thereby giving away my mother's maiden name), and myself without my knowledge? I might not want pieces of this information known--for example, if I were 1/8 $RACE and I lived in an area with a strong prejudice against $RACE, I would not want that fact known. I might not even be aware of this lineage myself--it could come as a real surprise, and possibly an unpleasant one.
- Jakob 17y agoNot to mention how unpleasant would be the fact that another man adds one as his son (and he's not lying).
- derefr 17y agoUsing your mother's maiden name as a secret should have died out a long time ago. Public geneaology is an argument against it, not the other way 'round.
- dstorrs 17y agoUnfortunately, some places still either require this information, or treat it as some sort of reasonable evidence for your identity. My solution is to give my provider's my mother's maiden name when required, but to deliberately misspell it. This solves the first problem but not the second.