Lock on Indivuals in a Tree
I suggest that a lock be placed on every individual in a tree, where you need to contact that person via email who added the information!! I am having terrible problems of people getting on family search, not doing the research, then either deleting my information and added their information without doing the research!! It would prevent having to go in and delete all their inputted information!!
Thank You for giving the option to place a suggestion!!
P Cady
Or they add inaccurate information to my individual, ex: Lewis C. Cady, b. 1839 in Tioga County, PA
Comments
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I am a volunteer researcher for a lineage society and I spend a lot of time researching and adding sources to people on the tree if the sources are not already added. If I had to contact someone prior to adding new sources I find, I simply would not add the sources. You would simply never know about the information. I do so much research and this world tree is a great place to add my new information so that others can find it.
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Mod note- @P Cady your post was edited to remove your full name and email address. Please see the code of conduct for more details. https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/article/community-code-of-conduct
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Hi @P Cady
You can you the undo / see latest changes menu to navigate and potentially reset what was changed to your previous input.
More on this, more suggestions and responses here: https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/146886/stop-people-from-changing-my-correct-tree
Similar posts through search:
In summary, FS are building one tree that holds everyone. If you want something private, do use a different platform, like ancestry.
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After spending literally hours undoing/correcting completely mistaken and unsourced changes to people in my line, it is really tempting to support P. Cady's "lock" suggestion. However, locking an individual would make it very tedious for people to easily collaborate on the tree. Instead of a lock, maybe it would be more useful to require that any change must be accompanied by a source citation, or at least an explanation of why the change is correct. Personally (vent, vent, vent) I'm kinda sick of people changing information without putting in any kind of citations or explanations, especially when it is obvious that the info they enter doesn't even match the dates of the person!
I've started adding a "bio" in the notes section summarizing the important events, dates, etc. and preceding the bio with a statement that all dates, facts, etc. have been properly sourced from reliable, legitimate databases, newspapers, etc. and I enable the "Alert" so a banner appears at the top of the person's page directing the reader to look at the notes before making changes.
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lcpearce I agree, and I think many would. I would add one edit: "... must be accompanied by a source citation, or at lease an explanation ... " OR a memory. Memories can be the source of new information regardless if they are a screenshot from a book, image of people, letters, inherited official documentation, you name it, all of which can contain information which could motivate the creation of new facts on the details page. I could do a very deep dive into the amount of new information I have gained from the pounds and pounds of papers and images I have inherited, but I suspect that would be preaching to the choir (so to speak).
Also consider that making an explanation field mandatory will not necessarily do what you want. Someone can always beat the mandatory explanation field by pressing the space bar and moving on.
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Very little to disagree with in your comments, except that there would always be the problem of enforcing such practices. Careful, diligent users of Family Tree will already be practising most of what you suggest, but getting others to work in this way is a problem unlikely to go away. With no one to monitor the work of those who take a "It's my tree" / "I'll do what I like" attitude, such individuals can always get around anything that becomes "compulsory". (As Gail suggests in a way of "getting round" a mandatory reason statement requirement.)
Even I would be at a disadvantage in having to add a Memory item (I rarely add Memories) or a source citation (some of my notes were taken thirty-odd years ago and I'm afraid I didn't record an exact reference back then, even though I know the source was reliable - probably an original parish register).
Finally, adding any amount of sources and other detail still does not always prove this applies to the individual concerned. I could still be attaching items / statements that apply, say, to a cousin born within months of the other person - having parents and wife who all share the same first names and place of residence, etc.
Of course I don't want to react negatively about perfectly good suggestions, but I've yet to come across any suggestion that will ensure the many thousands of users who have carried out, and continue to carry out, shoddy and damaging work within Family Tree can be forced to change their ways.
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To accomplish: Genealogy is supposed to be fun and inviting. I am seeing the same frustration in so many complaints. Mine is the same. Hours and a lifetime of work and study for correct information then having someone come in and change it is heart wrenching.
With technology today, we should be able to copy from other's work and not be able to change someone else's original work.
This should stop backbiting and frustration let alone heart ache. We are all suppose to be at peace and brought together.
Please help us!
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If you prefer the individual-tree structure, then you should be using one of the individual-tree websites. There are many of them, many more than there are single-tree options.
My impression is that the worst damage to FamilySearch's collaborative tree is done by people who assume that FS is exactly like all of the genealogy sites that they've previously encountered. Even if they read the things about it being a shared tree, they interpret that as just another description of what I call the error-propagation model: you enter a few people, the site finds those same people in other people's trees, you copy those other people's trees onto your own. That's sharing, right?
Impeding collaboration by locking profiles is not the way to encourage collaboration.
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Many of us have to put up with our carefully researched work being completely undone by a careless or inexperienced user - though rarely, it seems, a truly malicious one.
Family Tree has been around over ten years now and throughout that time there have been constant suggestions that records should be locked. However, if there has been no movement in this direction by this time, I doubt FamilySearch managers / developers have any intention of doing so in the future.
Whilst I obviously hate the damage that has been done to my hard work, equally I like the idea that I can edit the work of others when I find evidence their hard work has brought them to the wrong conclusions.
Overall, I am happy that Family Tree will remain an open-edit, collaborative project. Like many others, I choose to keep my family tree in personal software (Family Tree Maker, Ancestral Quest, etc.) that rests on my home computer, where nobody can carry out any changes.
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If you support the lock suggestion @Terri Melgoza, why create a new thread? That's the point of upvoting on a suggestion - to show you agree. Making a new thread to say you agree defeats the purpose and dilutes any agreement.
And, like Paul, I doubt seriously that FamilySearch would seriously consider any lock features, no matter how many suggestions are posted.
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Mod note - two discussions were merged here
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