Stop trying to add to my tree
Everytime I open FamilySearch to work on MY TREE, I find that people I don't know are being added to my tree.
This is very time wasting and frustrating.
Your everyone on one tree is a good idea, hoever, the people actually should be related. not just added to show how fast a tree can grow. Get rid of the weeds, please.😠
Answers
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I concur. No need for distant or possibly unperceivably related persons to be 'putting their oar in' where they lack knowledge or could profitably spend their time elsewhere.
Hopefully FamilySearch is working on solutions (MyTree announced at Rootstech 2023) - which might be able to keep your tree in order while helping others not to attach mistaken profiles into your tree?
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I'm afraid that if you believe that you have your own, separate, proprietary tree, then you're on the wrong website.
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The FamilySearch family tree is a collaborative family tree - this is similar to working on a sand castle on the beach. While you are there and working, the creation is yours alone. However, because the tree was created to be a group project, as soon as you walk away, others will likely work on your tree.
I keep a private tree on Ancestry and in Family Tree Maker for my own record-keeping and then work on FamilySearch when I have something to share.
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As a volunteer researcher for a lineage society, I "put my oar in the water" and add sources to people all the time who are not my ancestors. My area of focus for the research is Colonial Era (mid 1700s) through the early 20th century. I find quite a few documents in the non-indexed collections or recently index collections that contain new information. I will also add Ancestry sources using the shared function when there are sources there which are not found in FamilySearch. People would know a lot less about their ancestors if not for me.
I have inherited a collection of newspaper clippings from the Civil War through the 1890s which include a few obituaries but mostly biographical sketches of people's lives when they were still living. These are not ancestors of mine, but friends or business associates of ancestors of mine. Several people have messaged me thanking me for the new information. One person used it to break through a brick wall on her ancestors and another was able to get the first concrete information ever about his immigrant German ancestor who had all daughters, and thus his name ended when he died. All he knew previously was what had been verbally passed down. The newspaper clipping I had documented this man's life (including his childhood in Germany) and was a watershed find for this man. I was quickly able to find 6 or 7 more clippings about him as that county started newspapers in the 1830s. Most people don't know to look for newspaper collections (they are not usually in FamilySearch).
For me to not share all of the above information by putting it on the FamilySearch person records would be considered selfish by many. And yes, if the sources specifically list an additional child or two, or name the spouse which has not been created, I create them and add the source to them as well.
This idea that you have to know me or know that I am closely related to you for me to edit your ancestors makes no sense. The purpose of the world tree is to SHARE information. People I don't know put information on my ancestors all the time, and I have made interesting new acquaintances that way. Yes, most of them are distant relatives who, like me, are interested in research, but not all.
If there is wrong information, then fix it. And by the way, let's talk about that. Are you SURE it is wrong information? Do you check? A woman once accused me of usurping her grandmother. To paraphrase her message, I "added people she didn't know to her tree". I would suspect many people would immediately take her side because we KNOW our grandmothers, right? Because she "knew" her grandmother she put in her message she knew I was wrong. Turns out she didn't bother to look at MY sources, which were quite solid, just like hers. Puzzled, I did a little research and was able to tell her that 2 women lived in the same town at the same time with exactly the same name, and that we are both ok with our sources, parents, spouses and children. Because I wasn't nasty with my response, we actually collaborated on some additional surname research after that. I suspect many people lack vigilance after finding something new and jump right to being angry without checking.
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Assume everyone in your recent generations had a doppelganger that lived in the same town, married the same person, named all of their children the same name, etc. You can't disprove it - right?
If you do know your grandmother - and bother to look at non-matching data - then hopefully you can determine if she had a doppelganger or not.
Thankfully both of my grandmothers had such unique names - that I don't need to investigate too far to know if someone has the correct person - name alone does this for me.
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