Not trustworthy

HollyKing5

A few months ago my tree expanded back to BC times. You can imagine my confusion when Jesus Christ himself was listed. I reached out a couple times and was advised that there are folks who post “hypothetical” or who they “think COULD” be in lineage. Since then I’ve completely lost trust in your site. You really need to stop people from posting anything but substantiated fact. It was extremely disappointing.

Gordon Collett

Part of the trouble, I think, is determining what is substantiated fact, what is hypothesis, what is speculation, and what is spurious. I'm pretty sure that for any history beyond a certain century of your choice you will find serious, professional, academic historians who disagree adamantly on what is proven fact and what is pure speculation.

Just take a look at King Arthur's wikipedia page at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Arthur then google "Did King Arthur exist." You can spend days reading all the articles.

Personally I take as a cut off about the year 1500 and consider anything earlier than that "non-substantiated fact". Mainly because that is where everyone starts arguing. My favorite example is Charlemagne's Family Tree page. His change log is miles long and people make changes to his pages daily because no one can agree on facts regarding him.

Take Family Tree for what it is: a user generated world-wide tree that is only as good as the care its users (not FamilySearch) take and the sources and documentation the users (not FamilySearch) provide. Feel free to work on your lines and when you come to speculative connections either prove or disprove them and help improve the tree by fixing it with as complete documentation as possible. Family Tree is not FamilySearch's work. They just provide the platform. It is yours. All 1.7 billion people in it.

Áine Ní Donnghaile

The FamilySearch Family Tree (FSFT) is completely open-edit in format. Anyone can sign in and add or change connections within the tree. It's not FamilySearch, the organization, making those connections within your family. If you view the ChangeLog, down the side of each profile within your family, you can see who made those connections/changes, and by clicking on their username, you can see the relationship and even send that person or those persons a private message.

You can also change/correct those connections.