I guess that the only thing we can do is to take each hint with a hefty grain of salt but at the same time they shouldn't be discounted all together, which is what some here seem to saying.

In my own case, most of the hints that I have received seem to be clustered around only a few particular ancestral families on my tree. I don't think that I should assume that all, or even a majority of the people who claim to descend from those particular families are all wrong, especially since these particular families have been pretty throughly documented by several people over the years.

The trees that I would tend to view more skeptically would be those leading back to famous people such as Pocohantas, of which I have a few among my matches, but at the same time, I can't say that they are all inaccurate, especially since there have been several books detailing her descendants. If you can show a clear relationship to someone within those books, that should count for something. Since I do not have Pocohantas in my tree, I wouldn't ever have her identified as a common ancestor through a hint, but hopefully you can see my point.

To use a couple of cliches, when it comes to hints, let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Trust, but verify.

Michael