Here's what currently happens: obit links get passed around among friends, family, loved ones. Anyone who catches wind of a death and is remotely interested in family history/geneaology is going to archive it and plug it in somewhere. Such as Find-a-Grave, ancestry.com, etc. Ancestry themselves should be actively indexing all these obits and such.
Digital obits will last so long that you will hate them forever, and curse the day they wrote yours.
Because here's what's going to happen next: every "data point" in those obits will be plugged into databases. Family Trees, Find-a-Grave Memorials, personal ancestral files. Those will be indexed, searchable, and every single factoid will be repeated and reduplicated and copy-pasted in perpetuity.
Unfortunately, anyone who reads obits and knows some family history also knows that obits are riddled with errors. Sometimes they're deliberate! Sometimes they misdirect or protect the innocent, minors, whatever. Sometimes they're spiteful and sometimes they're simply papering over scandal with something anodyne.
So you've got a 95% true obituary that's being traded and scraped and plugged into databases, and those 5% falsehoods are going to multiply like a pernicious cancer.
Once I delved into my family tree, I found that most of my effort and resources were in disproving connections, removing sources, and reconciling conflicts due to inept researchers who didn't check anything. I hacked off entire "trunks" due to false bloodlines (usually to Revolutionary heroes, nobility, notables, etc.)
Let's get real here: obituaries were published in newspapers! Newspapers are periodicals designed to last only as long as you read them, and then you wrap fish in them and toss them on the fireplace! Don't get so precious about these fleeting words. Because many people will care far too much, preserve them with undue care, and we'll be worse off than before.
You only live as long as the last person to remember you. Now the internet is going to make us all immortal as our descendants research the family tree.
> inaccessible to future generations
No, it's not going to go down this way.
Here's what currently happens: obit links get passed around among friends, family, loved ones. Anyone who catches wind of a death and is remotely interested in family history/geneaology is going to archive it and plug it in somewhere. Such as Find-a-Grave, ancestry.com, etc. Ancestry themselves should be actively indexing all these obits and such.
Digital obits will last so long that you will hate them forever, and curse the day they wrote yours.
Because here's what's going to happen next: every "data point" in those obits will be plugged into databases. Family Trees, Find-a-Grave Memorials, personal ancestral files. Those will be indexed, searchable, and every single factoid will be repeated and reduplicated and copy-pasted in perpetuity.
https://m.xkcd.com/2106/
Unfortunately, anyone who reads obits and knows some family history also knows that obits are riddled with errors. Sometimes they're deliberate! Sometimes they misdirect or protect the innocent, minors, whatever. Sometimes they're spiteful and sometimes they're simply papering over scandal with something anodyne.
So you've got a 95% true obituary that's being traded and scraped and plugged into databases, and those 5% falsehoods are going to multiply like a pernicious cancer.
Once I delved into my family tree, I found that most of my effort and resources were in disproving connections, removing sources, and reconciling conflicts due to inept researchers who didn't check anything. I hacked off entire "trunks" due to false bloodlines (usually to Revolutionary heroes, nobility, notables, etc.)
Let's get real here: obituaries were published in newspapers! Newspapers are periodicals designed to last only as long as you read them, and then you wrap fish in them and toss them on the fireplace! Don't get so precious about these fleeting words. Because many people will care far too much, preserve them with undue care, and we'll be worse off than before.