Mistakes on Read-Only Pages for Joseph Hewes
Over the last 3 years I've complained twice about the read-only page for Joseph Hewes LCYM-ZXW. Hewes was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. The page on Hewes is in a sorry state. Each time I pointed out a mistake the revision that resulted made it even worse.
On the main page two different dates of birth displayed. Under the Vitals section you will see that the citation for his 23 Jun 1730 birth date refers to find-a-grave.com which provides a July 9, 1730 date of birth. There are five other mistakes here. Mercer county was created in 1838 so he wasn't born in that county. There are no "Quacker" records. Hewes does not have a headstone -- p.s. its one word. The Colonialhall.com reprints the Charles Goodrich bio which is full of errors. It should never be used as a source.
As I count them there are 12 errors in the FamilySearch pages on Hewes. It's odd that only two sources are cited on the page and both are secondary sources when much better primary sources are easily available. For example, see the wikipedia article on Hewes and you'll find an abundance of sources including lots of primary sources. (Warning: I wrote the article.)
I've detailed the mistakes with screen shots of the Hewes pages on FS with explanations in a webpage I've assembled. https://testfamilygenealogy.com/History/Hewes/0-FamilySearchReadOnlyJosephHewes/JosephHewes.html
Answers
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We can understand your frustration. Thank you for the correct information. It will be sent to a specialized team to resolve. If they need more information, they will contact you.
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RobertTest / DebDT
thank you both for elevating my understanding of the growing challenges and potential "baby step" solutions for this open edit, one unique profile per person, one world family collaborative family tree (FT).
Just a committed user to the aspirational goals and tools of the family tree....and board lurker dropping in on the community boards to understand broader direction and yet more specific tips and best demonstrated practices.
RobertTest, agree with your thought that collaborative, open edit, endeavors such Wikipedia and in same spirit, Family Tree and Wikitree, are "subject to revision, which is necessary condition for improvement, when new knowledge becomes available". To many of us, this fits both the granular in Joseph Hewe's case, as well as the broader challenges of the relative infant platform and concept of Family Tree. I've bookmarked your profile points webpage as an aspirational example to help me be better at sharing my own ancestor's life stories when disparate information or sources need elevation, checked or updated.
DebDT, can see both sides of the argument for limited "locked" or "read only" profiles and appreciative that at minimum, a process is in place to handle new compelling knowledge.
Our thanks to the volunteers and contributors and for those church decision makers in the position of tweaking, keeping FT open, free and improving.
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Harvest8
Thanks for your comments. The point is well taken that there are two "sides of the argument for limited "locked" or "read only" profiles and appreciative that at minimum, a process is in place to handle new compelling knowledge."
I glanced at Wikipedia's protocols for handling the problem of "vandalism" and handling controversial subjects that attract partisan disputes over content. Wikipedia has instituted a multi-faceted policy of different levels of protection. At the lowest level edits aren't posted until they've been approved.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Protection_policy
Some of the protections are temporary -- once a good strong unbiased article had been created I suspect the editing battles calm down significantly enough to lower the degree of protection.
Wikitree users can join research projects, e.g., "The American Revolution Project" or a Family Project (and then the project places people who participated in the Revolution under the protection of that project. I guess you have to join the project to edit the files of those people. It's easy to join a project you just click a box. It seems to work.
No process is perfect. I agree with you the volunteers and staff at FamilySearch, who I suspect are over-worked, deserve our thanks. The one-family tree paradigm is a great way to share and develop a family history.
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Again, the point I have raised elsewhere is that I find it completely baffling as to why some IDs should be locked, whereas others (including Jesus of Nazareth and Elvis Presley) remain open-edit. If FamilySearch insists on keeping this practice of keeping selected IDs as read-only, surely they must have a set reporting procedure so that matters such as reported here can be promptly addressed by an administrator.
(I see the disrespectful "Quacker" reference was inputted in September 2020, was reported, but still remains unchanged.)
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This link will explain how you can have information in Read-only records corrected.
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