Accuracy
How about you verify the data you give people - I have just logged on and seen my very basic ft ( 3 generations) - don’t know who provided the information but it is complete codswallop.
This is how inaccuracies get repeated and magnified when transposed to other genealogy sites by people who do not check their facts. Gives me no confidence in actually using family search.org to go further back.
Answers
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You need to explain further where you are finding this inaccurate information - specifically, if it is within "Family Tree". If so, please understand that Family Tree works on an open-edit basis, whereby any user is allowed to input / change any details they feel to be (in)correct.
Yes, this does frequently lead to conflicts and users getting upset when they find false detail against their close (and distant) family members. But all detail is editable, so you can make the necessary changes to correct any relationships or event details (wrong birth / marriage dates, etc.) you know to be incorrect.
This is an advantage over trees you find in Ancestry (and even the "Genealogies" section of FamilySearch), where incorrect information cannot be edited, whereby these errors will continue to remain unless the original contributor takes them down.
Working in Family Tree can present a challenge, in ensuring other users don't mess-up your carefully researched work. However, for me, the advantages outweigh the downside, as I have found relatives I would never have been able to trace elsewhere and (as commented above) am able to keep my relatives' details accurate by the editing ability that, sadly, sometimes does see them having seriously incorrect detail added to their profiles.
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Caution: Before you do any kind of editing to your very basic ft, STOP! You need to figure out why you are seeing what you are seeing. Don't be the cause of inaccuracy in the tree.
Keep in mind that Family Tree is a single, universal, world-wide tree in which we all work together.
I am taking your comment that you "just logged on" to mean you have just created a new account. If that is not what you meant, let us know. Now I have not seen anyone create a new account for a long time so am not familiar with the current practice and would be happy to have anyone correct where I am wrong. But what I think the process is, is that you create your account then start entering information about yourself to create your living profile that only you can see.
Next I assume you are asked for your father's and mother's names. When you put those in, you are given a list of couples with similar information from the general tree. If you pick one of those couples and they are not actually your parents, then you have just put yourself in the wrong family. Of course all the information will be wrong!
If that is what happened, you do not correct the problem by changing someone else's relatives' correct information to be your relatives. Around here that is referred to "hijacking" people. You correct the problem by disconnecting yourself from the wrong parents then entering your correct parents, then grandparents, etc. At some point you will run into correct relatives and instead of entering duplicate people into the tree will want to hook into those correct family lines.
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I have just logged on and seen my very basic ft ( 3 generations) - don’t know who provided the information but it is complete codswallop.
Sounds like that bit of the tree is not your family.
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Gordon Collett has already gone a long way to explaining the problem.
In a nutshell, you should not be surprised to find that some who work on family trees are less eager to ensure accuracy than they are to populate trees.
Some of us work hard to ensure we have sources that are correctly linked, that names, dates and places are supported by them, and to ensure as much as we can that we resolve problems caused by lack of attention to detail.
The likelihood of errors creeping in increases with the number of generations from the present one.
To highlight 3 typical examples that I have encountered:
A married couple in Norfolk, England had a child born in July. The following year, in August, they had their second baby. It was about 1750. There's nothing wrong with that so far. But then somebody added them being in America and having a baby born in March, which meant they must have somehow returned to Norfolk to have a baby five months later. And this was in the days when all ships had sails and a voyage from England to America took more than one month.
If that seemed improbable, there was an ancestor who had a child when she was 12. Her child then had a son when she was one year old, and twins when she was 10 years old. Not only that... her grandfather died at the age of about 65 years but somebody thought it quite OK that he was not buried until he had been dead for more than 120 years.
If that is not enough, sources with images of originals that clearly state Ancaster, Lincolnshire, England have been transcribed as Ancaster, Ontario, Canada. Manchester, England transcribed as Buxton
It's hard to contemplate using a tree on FS as a primary source.
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It has never been the intent, because by any definition it would be impossible, for a tree on FamilySearch to be a primary source. Family Tree is a compilation of collaborative research conclusions and those conclusions are only as good as the attached supporting sources. Anything in FamilyTree is subject to revision based on new sources and improved conclusions.
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