It is a great privilege and challenge to be asked to take up Ancestry's Technology Column. Jake Gehring is a very hard act to follow. I hope you will enjoy reading future columns as much as I will enjoy writing them.
All hobbies have standards.
Model railroading has standard gauges of track. Coin collecting has standards for describing the condition of coins. As a hobby, genealogy is no exception. Research standards and standards of evidence continue to be an important topic for all genealogy researchers. Standards have perhaps become more important with the increasing popularity of genealogy.