Family Trees

Sheila L. J. Ross · September 18, 2022

I have noticed that other people are entering information onto my family tree without my permission. Why is this allowed and how can I stop it.

Gordon Collett · September 18, 2022

Family Tree is a wiki-style, open edit, one world tree that we all work on together. We do not have personal trees here. Everyone is welcome to work anywhere they can make a contribution. This is the fundamental design and philosophy of Family Tree. See: https://www.familysearch.org/en/blog/online-family-tree

This is both a major strength and occasionally a major headache. A major strength because anyone with any information about your relatives, including photos and other memorabilia, can add it to the tree, information that you may never been able to learn about any other way. A headache at times when inexperienced or confused researchers mix up who is who and add information to the wrong people.

Everyone has full permission to work in Family Tree because FamilySearch allows everyone to contribute to FamilySearch's expanding pool of information in FamilySearch's Family Tree.

Gordon Collett · September 18, 2022

One thing that many have found here is that if you put on every bit of information possible to find, source everything, attach every hint, and make the record as complete as possible, profiles tend to get pretty stable. Its those John Smiths born in New York with only approximate information that tend to cause the most problem with confused information and if you have one of those, it is important to follow him so that you get notified every time something is changed and you can double check to see if the addition was correct or if you have to reverse a change.

Sheila L. J. Ross · September 18, 2022

Thank you for your answer. Yes it is very frustrating to see someone else's name there. I just wish they would be more diligent in making sure they can verify the info and not just enter it because it looks right. The problem is that there are to many names, dates, and places that are identical. Thank you again. Sheila.

Sheila L. J. Ross · September 18, 2022

I know what you mean. What gets me is the father back you go the less certificates available to verify info with. The governments don't always help much either in releasing records. If they just understood how important it is. I realize privacy is necessary but the waiting period seems too long especially when your time is running out - I'm in my 90's. My son informs me I'm going to live to 100. We'll see. Sheila.