Great Aunt Georgiana Syndrome

Technological tools have broken down one set of walls in family history work, but another wall remains. Great Aunt Georgiana has already done most everything, or so we sometimes believe. We know that some work remains, but we aren't sure what it is. Besides, it took Georgiana decades to get to know the family tree. You can break down that barrier to entry, without putting in the same effort, because FamilySearch is now crowd sourced, or as some describe it, “your family tree meets Wikipedia.” An essential feature that helps ensures the accuracy of Wikipedia is the “needs citation” flag that any user can raise. FamilySearch has a similar mechanism, so don't be afraid to use it. If your eight-great grandpa has a birth date but no reference for it, raise the flag to tell Aunt Georgiana to attach the picture of his birth certificate. It's easier to supervise than to dive in, and it breaks the wall as well.