What can be done about uncooperative people?
Some folks make changes to people without citing any sources and they ignore the existing sources and Life Sketch in the process. They also ignore polite Messages that state why they might be mistaken and asking for further clarification and justification for their changes along with their sources. When you give them a few days to comment or reverse their changes, they ignore you. When their changes are reversed, by me or someone else, they come back a few days or weeks later and make the same changes and the process repeats itself. There should be a process for blocking these people from making changes. They should have to sign a pledge to collaborate with others and provide sources in the future. Without collaboration, this whole thing will collapse.
Answers
-
It can be frustrating when you develop your part of the Human Family Tree and others make changes that affect your part of the Tree, here is a link which may help you.
How can I prevent other people from making inaccurate changes to Family Tree?
JBPurdie
0 -
I have found people NOT related to me or my ancestors making incorrect changes to my tree. Why can't you stop this FamilySearch???
1 -
It would be great if the suggestions in your linked article could really "prevent" people from making inaccurate changes to individual profiles in our family tree, but there is no enforcement mechanism. Too many people rely on Ancestry family trees or information handed down from an earlier generation. They do not read Life Sketches that debunk what's contained in other unsourced trees. They do not look at your sources or care to provide any of their own. They don't even provide a reason statement for their changes. They just "know" what is true and nothing will get in the way of their sharing their truth with the rest of the world. When you try to collaborate, they ignore your messages. I've gotten very nice feedback on the quality of my research from many people, but those who don't care to do any research except to copy and paste from someone else's tree are not swayed by the quality of your research. There needs to be a mechanism to at least temporarily shut down people who continue to make changes that are not supported by any facts or logic. Otherwise, folks who actually do research before posting will no longer support this very worthwhile enterprise of creating a single family tree.
1 -
I appreciate what you said and you are right it can be frustrating as I have found while trying to develop and add to my branch (twig ) of the FamilySearch Family Tree.
We can only do our best and add our sources and respect others while they try to develop their branch of the tree.
Also follow the guidelines from the article I mention in my last message.
0 -
I firmly believe that in some cases, inaccurate information is very beneficial. For example, if 2 men were born the same year in the same city with the same name - except some times the name has a middle initial and sometimes it doesn't, are they the same person? If no immediate evidence is available to know the answer, I recommend putting both names as "children" and indicating what source has the MI and what source does not. Also a note indicating the conundrum for future researchers.
I work that way myself and I usually do not have time to fully research such situations when I come across them. Thus, I like to leave the evidence for myself (or someone else) so the issue can be resolved in the future. Doing the full research before posting information is really a pipe dream. Very little will get added.
1 -
So, you "do not have time to fully research such situations," but you make changes to a profile anyway. "Doing the full research before posting information is really a pipe dream. Very little will get added."
I rest my case.
1 -
you make changes to a profile anyway.
Yep. So do I. As James Tanner has said very eloquently in numerous webinars (available on YouTube), perfection is not the goal. The goal is progress.
Perfection is the enemy of achievement.
In a collaborative work environment, efficient and effective work often involves "mess" being seen by others. I spend much of my time on Family Tree fixing the messes other contributors have brought along as far as they could, then left for someone else. With rare exceptions I welcome and appreciate their efforts, even if they did leave a mess. I have left messes too, sometimes.
2 -
BillPruiett Ah, so you believe that every researcher should keep secret the new information they run across if it is a puzzle and all the pieces are not clear. You don't want anyone sharing such information. Interesting. And yes, I am glad YOU have the time to pursue random points of research and NEVER are YOU in FamilySearch with a specific goal in mine that has a deadline to complete! I'm happy for you.
0 -
@Gail Swihart Watson and @dontiknowyou
If this approach is common among Family Tree users, no wonder I have so much work to do in sorting out the mess created by "busy" users!
If you don't have the time to establish the facts, please do not attach individuals and sources to IDs to which you acknowledge they cannot belong - e.g. two children of the same name, but of similar identity, or two different sources for births - just because one of them is likely to be correct.
Following such work, others (including me!) have to spend hours (time you apparently are not willing to spare) in clearing up the mess., by:
(1) Finding the correct parents for at least one of the incorrectly added children.
(2) Removing / reattaching sources from / to the correct individual / parents.
(3) Removing the irrelevant custom event / other information detail that populates the Person page following the adding of an (incorrect) source.
I put it down to inexperience or pure carelessness when I find other users "hedging their bets" by adding multiple sources in the expectation that at least one of them will probably be a match to the individual / family concerned. This proves to be of particular trouble when more than one census record (for the same year) is added. Only a few days ago I had to remove additional children (carried over in the source linking process) because another user had appeared to believe that the two families (of very similar identity) could be living in two places at the same time.
I don't know who you think you might be helping by these practices - certainly not someone like me, who is willing to spend hours (even days) in sorting out the true identities of families of really similar identity. When I totally fail the solve the puzzle, I simply add an item in Collaboration, titled something like: "Identity of John Smith - ID xxxx-xxx" - explaining why it is (currently) impossible for me to differentiate between him and a John Smith yyyy-yyy.
I know we are all entitled to adopt our own methods of working within Family Tree, but indeed collaboration is the key factor here. Adding items (especially when you are short of time) is only causing extra work for your fellow users - by their having to sort out the mess you have possibly created. Believe me, it is far easier to start from scratch than to figure out the true home for individuals and sources that have been placed against a wrong ID.
No wonder @BillPruiett is exasperated by both what he was originally complaining about and the subsequent response.
1 -
Paul W First, the situation I described is one I came across, left by someone else, and I rather quickly resolved it. Guess what, I did NOT remove the child with the MI (who turned out to be a different person and not in the family group). I make it a point (as I have posted elsewhere) to never remove other people's work. I annotate what I believe is wrong. I leave all the evidence for people to see.
If you willie nilie remove people and detach sources, I feel that is rather destructive if you were not the one who attached them.
So I want to hear you say this: "if you come across new information and are not sure how it fits into a family group, please keep it to yourself and do not mess up other people's idea of a pretty picture. It is very disturbing to those of us who want order and not a complete picture." You want order not truth. You want a pretty picture, not all the evidence available if some of the evidence is of uncertain value. You do not want collaboration. Fine. We agree to disagree. I have a direct ancestor who is a fairly big mess, and because 2 or 3 collaborators have indicated some of their opinions but not gone on a destructive streak to remove sources and spouses they don't like, I have a future project waiting for me when I have time. I love that. Clearly you would be disturbed to the max.
0 -
@Paul W, thanks for making my points more eloquently than I did. @Gail Swihart Watson and @dontiknowyou, one thing missing from your responses is whether you have the time to read the Life Sketch, biographical information (Vitals), and sources before you make a change to a profile. Do you read the "reason" statements before adding another wife or child or changing the date of birth or death. If you don't have the time to do the research, then I assume you don't have the time to thoroughly read about the person you are editing. If you tell me you thoroughly read the material amassed on a person before you add the information you were unable to research, then I will at least give you props for that. My issues arise when someone finds an Ancestry tree with another set of parents or children for one of my ancestors and I know (and have thoroughly explained) why that information is wrong. It's particularly a problem with my Colonial era Pruitts. There were four or more distinct Pruitt family groups in Virginia and Maryland in the late 1600s and early 1700s. Y-DNA has proven these pockets of Pruitts were not related in the last 4,000 years. Past researchers randomly grouped husbands, wives and children because they had little to go on. This resulted in thousands of trees on Ancestry over the years. We now know, based on Y-DNA, that they got a lot of things wrong. These family trees on Ancestry have propagated relationships that are nonsensical from a Y-DNA and geographical standpoint. I feel like I'm in a constant battle to delete the same information from profiles because someone decided an unsourced family tree on Ancestry was better than my thorough research. These people sometimes just add another set of parents, but more often they delete the parents I have thoroughly researched. Sorry, but I can't keep doing this. I believed that getting into the FamilySearch family tree business would be helpful in starting to correct the record on these relationships, but instead, I keep running into people who feel sources/research are not necessary. I believe people should use the collaboration tools, particularly messaging, instead of making changes willy-nilly. I answer all my messages, but I haven't found that to be the case for others. So, thanks for engaging with Paul and me on this, but I'm still looking for a mechanism that will keep people from changing profiles because they think Ancestry family trees trump all other sources.
0 -
The garbage on Ancestry.com is part of why I build trees here. I do surname studies, so I understand your situation with multiple Pruitt lines in Colonial America. My work here very often is copied by others over to Ancestry.com, so I am having an impact there, effortlessly.
I don't know why other contributors are doing the kind of damage you describe to parts of Family Tree you work on. @Paul W has similar complaints. I have added about 30k profiles to Family Tree, and merged away far more. I have attached over 240k sources. I follow 5000 profiles with issues I haven't yet resolved and I have few complaints with other contributors' changes, so I am mystified why your experience is so different.
Would you like to share some PIDs so we can see?
0 -
I follow 5000 profiles with issues
To get above the 4000 profile limit on my Following list, I use placeholder profiles to gather tree fragments.
0 -
If you willie nilie remove people and detach sources, I feel that is rather destructive if you were not the one who attached them.
I only remove people and sources when I am convinced they have been attached to the wrong IDs. If there is any doubt I do leave things as they are, with a note / notes explaining my theories.
I feel it is totally wrong to allow proved errors to stand - especially as those misplaced sources need to be attached, as evidence, to the individual to whom they really do belong. Indexed sources (with their unique URLs) can only be placed against one ID, so how can it be justified to leave them against the wrong one?
The same with "children" - how can you possibly leave a child against the wrong parents, just because placing them there was another user's error? Again, if in doubt leave the child there: otherwise, the relationship should be detached immediately and, assuming the correct parents can be identified, the child be placed with them, not some strangers.
Whilst I do what I can to avoid upsetting users with a closer relationship to an individual / family than I have, even close relatives often have their "facts" completely wrong (as I have previously illustrated with the example of my own family and their differing views about my grandfather's birthplace), so they do not have exclusive rights to edits.
1 -
Paul W What you said about removing incorrect sources is completely reasonable. However I find myself very reluctant to remove sources and connections that someone else added. I will add a comment saying something to the effect that "This source is incorrectly applied to this person. Someone who died in 1858 cannot have a Civil War pension; it is likely his son, and I have added this source there." If the source is connected to a fact, I also put a comment there. I don't want to assume everyone knows to check the change log to see my comments if they find a source or a person missing. In fact I think many don't know about that at all. I have only experienced two incidents of true "hate mail" directed at me in messages, and I like to avoid that as much as possible.
In my research, I will certainly add spouses and children when I have their names mentioned in a new source. I do that a lot in my lineage research, but when I come across a hot mess, I am too chicken, especially when the lineage is not my ancestry. Offline I was able to sort out and prove the lineage of 3 cousins born in the same decade (1840s) in the same place and given the same first name. They all had the same surname as the 3 fathers were brothers. However, in FamilySearch the lines were so tangled (still are) I decide not to intervene, and left it a hot mess. I had enough on my hands lining up the multigenerational evidence for the lady and her family to prove the lineage they thought they had was not correct. So I'm not sure how many of you will feel that omission is cringe worthy, but you will be partly right. However, I do not like the "people not related to me are making changes on my tree" appearing with my name next to it ... LOL.
0 -
BillPruiett Thank you for your thoughtful response. Yes, I actually love reading the notes, the discussions, the life sketch and all the comments associated with sources or facts. I often add to them starting off something like "Edit by Gail Watson. The family listed below is incomplete. See the addition of xx daughter who has birth and death certificates in her sources. She is a daughter of these parents too." To be honest, I have rarely found comments that prevent me from adding new information. The trees on Ancestry I hardly ever look at. Their errors don't bother me because I the owners pay for their own subscriptions and can do what they like. What I will do when researching a specific person of the past is to see what sources the various trees have. Ancestry lets you see that pretty efficiently, and I take advantage. I hardly ever find sources I don't already know about, and sadly, I frequently have sources no one has yet attached, but I almost never reach out. I am not out to correct or improve other trees. I am in Ancestry to research. Besides, my own Ancestry tree has evidence of the days when I was a beginner. LOL
DNA is bringing a new slant for sure. People DON'T always understand it. My husband's Germans from Russia line is similar to your Pruitts, I suspect. A lady who just got her DNA results in the past month is convinced there is a relationship with my husband and his sister that DNA somehow missed. LOL. She is a 5-8th cousin to my sister in law and no DNA connection to my husband, which is statistically probable for DISTANT relationships. She is convinced she shares gg grandparents with them and wants me to change the tree I have for hubby's family. I understand your pain, Bill, but it gets worse when there IS a source. What then? DNA lets you say things like "the marriage record you found is problematic because the DNA relationship you have with my husband and sister in law does not support it. You are NOT third cousins. Remember, there were no orphanages in the German colonies in Russia. With DNA we can state for sure that the groom is likely not the birth child of the parents listed, or this is a record for another marriage." (The marriage record also has the surname in parenthesis for the groom. Not sure what that means, but I can't rule out that it means adopted name.)
You may be motivated to write a book on your Pruitts? I think that would be a great addition..
0
