Find a way to filter 'political' regions from ethnic origins

CGPlishka

I will use my latest "walk the streets of your ancestor's homeland" message as an example.

It is very clear that my family origins are Ukrainian and I have attempted to follow the standard geographical location, but that results in a distorted 'history' for them.

Austria was the political region at the time my grandparents were born in Galicia (Western Ukraine); they had Austrian passports. However, they were not Austrian and nothing being shown about their 'homeland' is accurate.

The standardization of villages also at times resets to Polish place name spellings, but my ancestors were not Polish either.

My point is that all this effort to broaden the 'experience' of family history can at times be distorted and incorrect. At this time I don't have a suggestion, other than allowing a researcher to edit the 'homeland' reference.

Paul W

I have opted out of receiving these messages, so am naturally unaware of the exact wording or the manner in which your ancestors' origins has been linked to their assumed homeland (e.g., Austria instead of Galicia / Ukraine). But, given this detail has been "personalised" for you by a computer, I imagine it would be very difficult for it to assess your family origins from the details inputted in Family Tree.

In any case, depending on how two people personally relate to their ethnic origins, only one of them might be unhappy about "FamilySearch's" assessment. For example, some people prefer to say they have Polish ancestry, even though their ancestors were born when Poland was part of the Russian Empire. Others would possibly prefer to be identified as having Russian origins, in spite of generations of their ancestors being born in the same town or village.

In fact, Russia is probably a good example of how difficult assessing ones "ancestors' homeland" must be. The current war in Ukraine illustrates this, with many in the east being proud to be called Russian, whilst others fiercely defend their Ukrainian heritage.

In summary, how is a computer (or even a human) supposed to be able to work out your "true" origins, or the land / ethnic group with which you wish to identify your ancestry? As you comment, even you don't have a clear solution for the problem. My way of dealing with this is by unsubscribing to such emails - which I know I would find to be far more irritating than enlightening!

The internet provides so many alternative sources for such information that I do not find any need for FamilySearch to provide this kind of detail for me, so choose to ignore it. Others must find such information quite agreeable, which is why - I assume - they continue to subscribe to receiving it.