WHAT IS ABUSE?
I have a person who has gone onto FamilySearch and deleted all the sources that I have spent hours putting on a particular family. This has gone on for 4 weeks. I put them on she takes them off. This week I did not put them back. i called family search and the person I talked to told me it is abuse and to report it. After reporting it I got an email back from family search today saying that what she is doing is not abuse. I ask you. How would like to spend hours putting sources on and research and copy and pasting information to support births, marriage etc and then someone goes in and deletes them all. I have tried to contact her and ask her nicely why she is doing it. No answer. I am so upset with family search and this woman.
Julia
Best Answer
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@Julia Peck We have done a further evaluation of this reported abuse and have determined that this definitely needs to be investigated. I will personally follow up on this and get back to you about it. Thank you for bringing this to our attention.
-Stephanie😊
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@JuliaPeck, this situation is very concerning. Just to make sure...you know that FamilySearch is 100% open edit. Do you also keep your tree information on your own genealogy software (Legacy, RootsMagic) or cloud (Ancestry, My Heritage) based tree? You definitely want to do this. Situations like this to occur. And you want to protect all your hard work.
@Shannon Potter Wilcox do you have any suggestions for this issue?
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Can you post the ID of one person she has done this to? I can only think of a few possibilities such as she does not want more than one copy of a source (sometimes the same record will be found multiple times on FamilySearch), or she does not think your sources are "real" sources, or the two of you have different opinions on who a person is (you are putting sources on your cousin and she is taking sources off that are not for her cousin). Seeing an actual example might clarify exactly what the problem is. Only then will a real solution be possible.
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Thank you so much for responding. The person she is affecting is Matilda Hilda Cornish and her siblings and parents. She is on my Mother's side. My Grandmother was Eliza Cornish Hammacott. The ID # is GWH6-CVW. I just went in to get the ID # and the other user went in yesterday apparently and she removed Matilda Hilda Cornish's parents. She just dumped the whole line. I can't believe that she would do something like that. I am calling family search again. I don't know what they consider abuse but as far as I am concerned this is abuse. There were no duplicate sources added to her ever. The user had 2 sources on there. She left them and deleted all of mine. I added 2 more yesterday because she added their children without sources so I added their birth records from findmypast. I am sure as soon as she sees that she will delete their sources as well. Isn't this abuse? I do have my tree on ancestry. I put my main tree there and on Roots because of the changes that anyone can make. I am always happy to see other people adding sources. I am also happy if I have made a mistake and people let me know. What recourse do I have if family search will do nothing.
Julia
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@Julia Peck I am sorry to hear how frustrated you are and that you have contacted the person who made the changes to no avail. FamilySearch is a community family history website meaning people can add to and remove from the tree as it belongs to everyone in your tree. With that in mind, that is why FamilySearch would not consider it abuse. It would be very helpful if people would collaborate with others in the tree and see sources before deleting or merging a person. The best advice I can give you is have your family history information on a internet family history site that you can make private like Ancestry or a program on your computer where no changes to your information can happen. Sharing the information on FamilySearch makes it useful to all those in the tree. Consideration and collaboration makes it a very useful site for all. I know this won’t help with your frustration, but I do understand.
Kind Regards,
Shannon
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I do have my tree on ancestry and roots. I have non member cousins who are not members of the church who I am trying to get involved in setting up an account on family search. It doesn't help when someone is changing my parts of my line. Not to mention things related to the church. What she is doing comes over as very vindictive. I can't imagine anyone who is a member of the LDS church would just arbitrarily delete parents and change a whole line. Someone tried this kind of thing on my line several years ago and I happened to be at the Family History Center and asked to speak to someone about it. They had a man come and talk to me that dealt with these kind of problems. He must have done something about it because the man that was following along after me and deleting and changing things never did it again. I am going to try to actually get through to a person who will help me in the same way. My husband had a stroke this year and I was in a bad car accident right after his stroke and we also had a major family problem so this last year has been one of the worst years of my life. Family search has been a refuge for me from all the terrible things that have happened. I don't need a her deleting my family relationships and following after me and deleting everything that I have put on family search. Now when I go into Family Search it says I am not related to Matilda Hilda Cornish. Now when my daughter wants to find a name to go to the Temple that part of my line is gone.
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I've looked a bit at the change log for Matilda and see a couple of strange things.
She created the record for Hilda Cornish on July 15, 2020, quickly changed her name to Matilda Hilda Cornish, and did a bit of work on the record. Then you and another users made some additions. And then there were all the source issues you talk about.
She then created a new record for Hilda Cornish on Dec 2, 2022 that you soon after merged into Matilda Hilda Cornish.
I would guess that she is trying to work "in her own tree" and is sitting there quite frustrated that people keep making changes "in her tree."
If she won't talk to you, then, while I'm not sure about this, probably the best thing to do for now is let her have her copy of Matilda/Hilda. It doesn't look like she gets into Family Tree all that often so her copy probably won't get a lot of attention as long as it is not touched.
Then go ahead and create a new profile for "your" Matilda Hilda Cornish and put all the research have done and sources there. You will probably have "her" copy quickly show up as a possible duplicate. Just mark it as not a match.
I would stress this is far from an ideal solution and I would suggest this only rarely. The two of you talking to each other would be much better but there is only so much you can do if she won't collaborate.
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@JuliaPeck I think Gordon makes a really great point. Although not the best solution, I think it makes perfect sense to make a new profile for her. This would allow you to add your sources and hopefully be able to do your temple work moving forward. The only glitch might be if there are duplicates trying to submit for temple work then that might become an issue of merging. I am sorry there isn’t an easy answer to this.
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Thank you for all your suggestions. I am not sure that making a duplicate of someone is a good idea. I am sad that it has come to this. I had added a source with her marriage information and a direct link to Findmy past to see the original marriage record. Her birth registration showing her Mother's maiden name etc. It would mean that I would have to duplicate her husband and children as well. I can't imagine this would be a great solution. I was a director of a family history center here for 6 years and to me it just goes against the grain, against everything I believe in. I think I will put her back with her parents and reserve the Temple work for her and her parents. I will do it later in the week. It is sad that family search does not care that people do things like this. I think I will still try to talk to someone in Salt Lake next week.
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Well, I just went in to look again. She has unattached the famlly back 3 generations and has left Matilda's siblings out on family search on thier own. She left my 2nd cousin that I am in the middle of doing Temple work for and has her sitting there with no husband and no children. She is going to take this whole line apart. no matter how many times I try to put them on again. I am not making duplicates for all of them so she won't touch them. I am going to write to the man that is in charge of family search in Salt Lake. I have all his information so I never thought about writing to him but when I went in and saw what she had done that is the end of trying to be reasonable. This is destroying a major part of my Mother's line. She has probably starred them and if I try to put them back together again she will just take them apart.
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Actually if you look at the marriage record the birth & christening record and the birth registration record that I added, I did copy and past and it showed all of the details about the christening birth & baptism dates, marriage (even with the witness to the marriage were listed. The Father's name's are listed. The Father's occupations are listed )and the mother's maiden name on the birth registration. The url links allow the person to go to the actual record on the other sources if they want to see the original.
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Stephanie,
Thank you so much. I have taken a picture of each family just so I could prove what she did. David added back her parents after he looked at things. He did not know the marriage as it was deleted by Yasmine. She originally deleted the parents as well. She deleted their son that died in infancy and then she deleted Priscilla Ann Broome my second cousin who is the wife of Robert James Cornish. These are Matilda's Grandparents. (When I say deleted she is obviously not deleting the people but deleting the relationships.) I was so discouraged when I received the email from family search saying it did not constitute abuse. The way things are now I am not related to this family at all. I know how to put it back together but I don't want to do it because I know that she will delete it again. I will do it after I am sure she will not touch it again. I have seen Yasmine before on my line and I am not sure what prompted her to be so nasty about it all. She has never responded to my 2 messages. I guess her deleting the relationships was her response. When she first started deleting all the sources that I put on, I just put them all back and sent her the message below. She deleted them again. I tried to be nice about it but obviously I was not happy. I called Family Search and told them what was happening and they said it was abuse and to report it. I sent her another message telling her that I had reported her and asked her to stop doing it. I have never been nasty about it and tried to be as nice as possible. I was going to write to the head Temple Department in Salt Lake and ask him why something like this is not abuse but I will not do that as long as the problem can be solved without bothering him. I can't tell you how happy I was to get your message. The thing that also was a worry to me is that she might be doing this to other people on my line that I do not receive notifications about.
"You detached this source that I added. It is an actual birth & christening record for Matilda Hilda Cornish. It lists her birth and her christening and it is the original record. Please do not delete any sources that I add from Find my Past. "
Thank you so much
Julia
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