Correcting attached legal documents in which a person's name is misspelled or incorrect.
Over and over, I find in my family tree where attached documents (usually originals) or other attached information contain incorrect person name spelling and or where all the information is correct, but the person named may in fact be tired to someone else's family tree based solely on the same or a similar name or which has no evidence of accuracy, based on my direct family line, usually a family member or relative who I knew or know personally. The problem usually involves those submitting info who may not actually know or be related to a person, and they perpetuate incorrect name or other info that usually has verifiable proof of an error or direct knowledge about that which is correct.
The problem with Family Search is that there is often no comment box option (especially on a 'person' site or page) in which someone can verify or explain a correct name spelling or other information they know to be wrong, provide information about a unique situation, and / or challenge what is noted or frequently perpetuated in error by former and/or current submitters of information, be it a legal document or from a supposed reliable source.
Example: My Grandma Stone's first name was Odie (maiden name of Marshall), but because of how she wrote her name (she was a very uneducated farm girl with a grammar school education at best) or how it looked on some census, or back then, people spelling names based on 'how they sounded' over and over, even the person themselves. If there was some chance that she went by the nick name of Oda, In the name area and or timeframe, there may have been another Oda Marshall, and there is an Ida Marshall that people have continually attached with all the correct info to my Grandmother Odie, but this Ida Marshall had a different birthdate, birth place (even if the same or nearby geographically), different parents, etc. Others have also perpetuated other incorrect, but similar names or sounding names, and have attached those to my Grandfather, in error. There needs to be a place where one can 'take a stand' and correct the name or other info, and dismiss all others. I know that my Grandmother's name may appear to look like Oda or Ida on a census, etc. and she herself may have written her own name incorrect or to look otherwise, as in her early life, but it was Odie -- FINAL ANSWER. Similarly, my Grandpa Stone always went by Sam Stone, even if his real name was Samuel Stone. On a grave marker for a supposed son, it says 'Adam Stone, son of Samuel M. Stone, in a cemetery with other family / relatives, as one of my Aunt's pointed out to me, and she may have actually falsely been told this was Adam's gravesite. But it doesn't make since; my Mother and this one Aunt (of nine total children) swore to me that he did not have a middle name, and if it was M, they were clueless as to what the name was. There is no supporting birth, military, marriage, death or other record confirming any middle name that I could find. They were super young -- their first child lived only hours, and while the child was buried in an unmarked grave, there was no reported birth civil record, and I only knew about it from my Mother. This Adam Stone was born second, and he lived about five weeks; there was no logical or possible way they could have bought or afforded a grave marker (for Adam) that was over seven feet tale, a huge granite monolith. I believe this was a different Adam Stone, and that Samuel M. Stone was in fact a different person, but perhaps my Grandparents just told their kids that their second son was buried in this spot; there is NO evidence of my Grandfather Stone ever having a middle name, muchless one that started with 'M'. So I need a place to state or explain that that this grave marker is probably not that of my Grandparent's second son who lived only five weeks -- it does not make any sense, especially how poor they were as 17-19 year old farm workers in this extremely rural setting in a large cemetery where other family were buried. Because of my Mother, I was able to later do the temple work for these first two sons of their nine children, for which my Grandparents supposedly spoke very little of to their future children, and per my persistence in asking my Mother (my first baptism, not LDS till she was 38) over and over about family history when I was myself only between 15-17 at the time, a first generation convert from age 14. So again, whoever Ida Marshall, or Oda, etc., she was never married to my Grandfather, but she did exist about the same time and place as my Grandother Odie.
Answers
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Apologies: I didn't read past "There needs to be a place where one can 'take a stand' and correct the name or other info, and dismiss all others."
There is such a place: the Collaborate tab. You can even designate one of the notes entered there as an "Alert Note", which will cause a banner to appear across the top of the main page of the profile, exhorting users to read that note before doing anything with the profile.
There is also a "reason" box associated with every single conclusion on a profile, and a separate Notes section for every relationship.
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Regardless of the fact that this Samuel M. Stone is related or not, I would not consider an added middle name / initial to be a determining factor. I have examined records of many distant relatives who were born / lived in England for a time, then emigrated to the United States. In spite of never having been given, or used, a middle name before they left England, a fair proportion of them (identification established beyond doubt) adopted a middle name soon after arrival in the U.S. Why they did this remains a mystery, but shows that (for reasons of "status", or whatever) a relative can suddenly be found to have added that extra middle name / initial. Just an initial in the case of my relatives - and I have no evidence of what these initials represented!
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Please take a few hours and get better acquainted with Family Tree. It is far more powerful and flexible than you seem to have realized. You may want to work through this collection of help center articles about the various features of Family Tree: https://www.familysearch.org/en/fieldops/quick-start-learning-lessons-table-of-contents
Family Tree gives you all of the resources and documenting capabilities you are requesting in your post.
Regarding names, in history there is rarely any final answer. And part of the fun in history is seeing all the variations records can give in the history of a person and the person's name. That is why Family Tree allows us to include dozens of names for a person if we need to and gives us a spot right there as a Reason Statement to explain each variant.
I have a situation similar to yours. My father always said his mother's name was Effie. We've found a bunch of records where her name is spelled Effa. We found one fun record that has it spelled F. E. which I think is good documentation for how the person giving the information pronounced it for the person writing down the information. We have a post card she wrote where she spelled her name Effa. Did she misspell her own name? Was Effie a nickname and Effa her real name? Or vice versa? We don't know and never will.
In Family Tree I have the following on her page:
You will find it is far more helpful to include all signifiant variants and explain them rather than just dismiss them. It will add a richness to her history to see all the different ways Odie/Oda spelled her name or had it spelled.
Also, since the FamilySearch hints routine takes into account the name under Vitals and all the names under Alternate Names, you will have far more hints presented to you when the records have varying names for a person.
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