Recently I discovered my Father-in-law’s line had been torn apart. I hope you will be able to help me and see if I can get my work restored.
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Hello Sam Sulser,
I hope you will be able to help me. Recently I discovered my Father-in-law’s line had been torn apart. Robert Russell Mellalieu, 1920-1988, LDQK-R55. My many hours of research collecting vital records, census records and documents going into the next generation are gone, and my original records in 1912 are in place. Not only that, Robert and two sisters cannot be brought up on Search, Records, all being born in Toronto, York, Ontario Canada. I did manage to get records in England in the fifties. There were no merges to find out what happened, but under changes I did see Volunteer Project. To top that off, my Collection of search records have been roughly the same, very low. I believe the Volunteer Group is responsible, or one like it that is not transparent, which is not right. I have been doing Family Search for over 30 years and this has left me ver disappointed. I have had this happen last year to a line when just my contributions were eliminated from Sources, I had resubmit all my sources over. Whoever is doing this has been working on the technical aspects of FamilySearch program, I do hope you can find out what happened and if I can get my work restored. I was the only one working on the line.
Thank you.
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Unfortunately, there is no visible evidence to back-up your claims. The change log only contains actions by yourself and the one "Volunteer Project" contribution I could find was against Robert Russell's father.
There are also a number of records / sources waiting to be attached to Robert and his sisters and I believe adding these might help prevent any future changes to their profiles by other users.
I would be surprised if any "in-depth" examination by the engineers would reveal any "hidden changes" that might have been made by other users, as - from my memory - such a matter (items mysteriously disappearing from the change log) has not previously been reported as an issue.
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@rickfaulkner2698453, like Paul, I cannot find any evidence of anyone besides "rfaulkner2698" doing anything to Robert Russel's profile (most of it three years ago or more), and the only "volunteer project" contribution I can find is on his father's profile, where the volunteer was actually successful at associating one of the many misappropriated place fields with a location in the Places database -- quite the opposite of malfeasance.
(The text imported in 2012, "Spent time in Manitoba and Saskatchewan", was associated by the volunteer with the location "Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Canada".)
The source of changes attributed to "volunteer project" is the improve-place-names activity (https://www.familysearch.org/tree/improve-place-names/), which is accessed from a button (still labeled "new", after several years) on the old home page.
I have no idea how the activity is meant to be accessed by users who have switched to the new home page.
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my user name is jamesgsII not "rfaulkner2698". you need to contact Sam Sulser with this information about Robert Russell Mellalieu, 1920-1988, LDQK-R55
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@Jamesgs yes, we know you are not @rickfaulkner2698453. That contributor topic jumped your discussion topic and a moderator has not yet split if off to its own discussion topic.
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I also looked to see what you were reporting and did not see it. I looked very soon after you posted, so there should not have been time for a behind-the-scenes cleanup. Could you be looking at a duplicate or at a data set in a 3rd party software somewhere else?
@Paul W and @Julia Szent-Györgyi :
I can attest that FamilySearch staff do scrub clean Family Tree profiles including change logs, as well as Community. They do this when a contributor has significantly violated the FamilySearch Terms of Use, usually the Code of Conduct.
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@rickfaulkner2698453 I am looking into this. Sam
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@rickfaulkner2698453 I have scoured this record in the background and I don't see any of the issues you reported. There have only been 4 sources attached to his record. There haven't been any added and then removed. I also don't see any contributor called Volunteer Project. At least on Robert's record but that may not be the case on other family members. I didn't look into the details of his family.
You said you couldn't find a few family members. I believe you were referring to finding them in records but I'll address 2 scenarios just in case. There are several family members that appear as living (that you can't see). If you are trying to search for them in tree, you won't be able to find them as the living aren't searchable there. If you are trying to search for them in records, they will come up if they are in a record collection and can be matched to what you search. Living people only appear in our record collections when we are legally allowed to share them.
Also, I did a little research of my own. I found a marriage notice on Ancestry that comes from Newspapers.com. It showed a marriage for Roberta. Since both sites are paid sites, I can't share the info with you but you should go look for it. I'm certain it's her based on the info given in the article. You can access Ancestry for free at any Family History center if you don't have a subscription.
Let me know if I can be of further help. Sam 😊
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