Why did you allow someone to wipe out my ancestor's name and replace it with someone not related to me?

System

This discussion was created from comments split from: Wrong ancestors put in my tree by others..

PamRuatto

Someone has interposed a person into my tree who does not belong there as an ancestor. This person is the third wife of my ancestor, she married my direct ancestor when he already had children by his first two wives. I have copies of marriage certificates and birth certificates that confirm that the woman listed now on my tree is NOT my ancestor, and which confirm the woman who IS, but I have no way to correct this here. Why is this allowed? Why did you allow someone to wipe out my ancestor's name and replace it with someone not related to me?

Gail Swihart Watson

PamRuatto I think you do not understand FamilySearch. YOU do not have a tree. The one world tree that exists is a collaborative effort by those who have accounts. If someone has put incorrect information on your ancestors, YOU are the one who fixes it. You can see who made the changes (by clicking "show all" under "latest changes on the right) and send them a message letting them know that you will fixing the errors. Some changes can be reverted, and if so, you will see "restore" on the right side of a particular change.

Julia Szent-Györgyi

As Gail says, "why did you allow ..." suggests that Pam has misunderstood the nature of the Family Tree on FamilySearch. This is not like the individual-trees sites: it is a single, collaborative tree, with the lofty goal of having one and only one profile per deceased person. It's open-edit, meaning that anyone can edit nearly anything, after logging in.

Unfortunately, Pam is not alone: it sounds like the person who edited Pam's ancestor may have been operating under a similar misunderstanding. However, the other possibility is that Pam is misinterpreting what the Tree is showing her. For example, if the other contributor added the third wife as a stepparent for Pam's ancestor, then the landscape and portrait charts may be showing that relationship instead of the biological one, with no differentiation between the types of relationship.

Whatever the case, again as Gail says, you can fix it. Because of the open-edit nature of the Tree, some things cannot just be straight-up deleted (because that could make another person's work disappear), but everything can be edited, and all errors can be corrected.