Is it possible to get a "FICTITIOUS RECORD" function within the tree
I have used WikiTree in the past, and I've noticed that they have a FICTITIOUS PERSON ALERT that they place on certain records within their shared tree. Sadly, there was a period of time in the 1900s when many faked pedigrees were created (for financial gain) and dishonest researchers created many fake names with dates and locations and essentially "sold" them to unsuspecting customers who were genuinely interested in learning their own family history. With no way to verify the pedigrees they were given, these unsuspecting customers then shared the faked pedigrees with family members and even submitted them to the Utah Genealogical Society or FamilySearch. I've seen entire sections of the current tree that have been verified to have come from these professional hoaxes. I do not want to leave them connected to my family lines, but I also don't want to delete them out of the tree because I'm certain uninformed patrons will just reenter the false information. I currently have put alerts on these records to warn people that these are fictitious persons (which is what I've seen WikiTree is also doing). This means that when a patron tries to add a fictitious person to my family line, the preexisting entry with the FICTITIOUS PERSON warnings will come up and alert the patron to the problem.
So that's my personal approach to the problem.
However, I feel like this is enough of a widespread problem that it would be very helpful if (similar to WikiTree) FamilySearch could create a FICTITIOUS PERSON ALERT that could be permanently applied to these records and make it so that the record could be found in a search, but could not be attached to any actual persons. Basically, the record would be locked, and it would have a message explaining that the record represents a known forgery or hoax and should not be used within the tree.
Is there any chance someone could make that happen? I'm not talking about cases where I just disagree with my cousins, I'm talking about known forgeries such as the ones mentioned in this article: https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Fraudulent_Genealogies
I could also add the James Gardner/Louisa Sellers hoax to the list. LTBF-BZC. I don't think regular patrons should be allowed to place the FICTITIOUS PERSON ALERT, but I think Support should place it when they've had information submitted to prove the hoax. However, if Support doesn't have time to do this, then I would say allowing patrons to place it would be better than doing nothing.
Comments
-
The Alert Note feature of the new person page should help, at least a little, but I think that unfortunately, well-meaning but clueless users would get around a read-only status the same way they do "regular" read-only profiles: they'd just create a duplicate. (It's Published! In A Book! It Must Be True!)
One advantage of the Alert Note over a generic label is that the note can include the specifics: if the well-meaning newbie sees the author and title of the Must!Be!True! book that he's using, he has a higher chance of realizing the error in his assumptions.
0 -
The problem I'm running into is that even with alert notes (and going against the rules and writing "this is a fictitious person" in all caps on the top of the life sketch, and giving all the evidence in other notes (because there's too much to fit in the alert, it has a limit of 3000 characters... Even with all of that, just last night someone connected the fictitious family back into the tree and didn't bother to give a reason statement or anything--which says to me that this is a newbie (as you said, "clueless user"). The pedigree is extensive, though, and while I could see the newbie uploading it again as a GEDCOM, I don't picture anyone taking time to type that entire thing in while the duplicate "fictitious" persons keep popping up. At least if there were an official FICTITIOUS PERSON ALERT, I could more easily refer the patron to that alert and they might accept it as a more official piece of information than the book. The name FamilySearch currently commands some respect (more than my own name does).
0