Confused, Can anyone explain why this source
- https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:NTPY-R8H -
and a few others by the user [removed]
are attached to, G82Q-V1X, G36J-55G, 9KCH-QQ8, GMD5-H8S, G328-4DN, G9J6-G4X, G7W7-SVT, G79R-BS9, and many many others. Dates range from the 1600s to the 1800s
Best Answers
-
Someone was certainly highly confused: that one innocent little baptism is attached to so many different profiles that the page stops loading their identities by the time you get to the bottom of the list.
If we had a means of contacting the programmers/engineers, I think this would be worth their attention, because it simply shouldn't be possible to attach a single index entry to this many profiles. (The list on the index detail page shows 500 attachments.)
4 -
I know there was a recent fix pushed to the app to avoid a single record being attached to multiple profiles. But, I'm not sure that's the issue here. In any case, tagging @Alan E. Brown to make sure he sees this one.
0
Answers
-
Have you tried contacting the contributor through the messaging system?
0 -
I'm guessing that is someone to do with the site.
If so excellent. At least they have been informed.
0 -
Cecily is the issue - linked to too many men/women. She is not these men/women
Delinked, reloaded, delinked another man/woman, reloaded, delinked another man/woman, repeat it until all delinked.
At least I cleaned it up with patience.
I pinpointed the problem - mass linking through "England Births and Christenings" dated 10 July 2018
I managed to detach at least 50+ from this, and still more than 150 to go.
0 -
Cicely's entry still lists 500 profiles in the "attached to" list, despite whatever WD and I have done to detach them. This leads me to two conclusions: the index detail page has a limit of 500 "attached to" profiles to display, and Cicely's entry is attached to more than 500 -- probably multiple thousands.
The "contributor" of the attachments has been the same person on all of the ones that I looked at, but the dates have varied; they've all been in the 2020-2021 range. Has this user been spending all of his time on FS attaching this one source to every profile he touches, for years and years? It sure seems like it. (Yes, I have sent a message via FS's system, asking for his reason for attaching it so many times.)
Given the variation in the dates, it seems more likely to be systematic user error (or malfeasance) than a system glitch, but I still think it would be good for the engineers to have a look: if the index detail page has a display limit, then surely the index entry itself could have an attachment limit, or at least some sort of flag/warning prompting a look from someone who could stop such nonsense before it grows further out of hand?
4 -
Julia, still a lot more.
And I noticed something else, certain family surnames than others while I had been detaching the particular source.
27 Jan 2023, [user removed] did the same to this same person, too. Her attachments are found at the end of the list. Already detached 30 in 15 minutes.
Update: detached total tonight 75. Still hundreds to go. No logic as to who were attached, except what seems to be the Lancaster family from 1600s all the way to 1900s. Not limited to England, also Canada, Australia and USA.
To detach the best route
- click each name to new tab.
- scroll down to Sources
- Click "Sources" to open in new column
- Scroll to "England Births and Christenings"
- click the words
- Click "detach", no explanation needed
- Close that tab
- repeat each name. Volunteers are needed to detach. I discovered one of my ancestors was in there.
0 -
There is a bit faster routine that works. In step 5 above, instead of clicking "Detach," click "View." Then over on the right under "Attached To" click on "Show All" to come to this page:
Then just click "Detach" which opens a pop up where you need to click "Detach" a second time. Then the page refreshes and you have the next person down on the list at the top. Takes about two seconds per person.
Looking at the source, I think I have a theory about what happened. Notice that this source has a globe instead of a tree icon in front of it. Checking the Change Log on the source you see this:
It looks like user took a FamilySearch indexed source and put a copy in his Source Box, gave it a generic title, then attached it to everyone he could find born in England thinking this was just a reference to the entire database and not realizing it was in the background still associated with the original indexed source.
Looking at one of these people, it looks like he did this with a second source:
But if I click on that Church of England Records source, and check view, it claims that source is not attached to anyone! So I'm not sure what is going on there.
2 -
Actually, I may not have given that view page for the Church of England Records time enough to load. There are so many people attached it can take the View page about 30 seconds to actually open.
1 -
Gordon
always welcome any way the faster route to detach so many.
I see others are stepping in to help detaching too because I noticed the first person listed as of this minute was not the same as last night.
0 -
Careful reviewing of the names listed in the method mentioned by Gordon, they're valid ones. The problem is Cecily Lancaster has too many attached to her in error.
Closer examination - a user made a modification to the citation, that looped in so many in error.
How many left still attached to Cecily Lancaster?
0 -
Looking farther. Since this is a user created source derived from copying an indexed source into the source box, the source is completely editable by anyone.
I am pretty sure that just deleting the URL from the source will remove every singe name linked to the indexed record all at once. Deleting the citation that refers to Cicely will also remove all mention of her from the sources on all those other people and leave them with a useless title-only source.
Anyone daring enough to try?
If this works, it should also be done with all the other sources that this user treated in the same way, that is copying an indexed record to his source box, editing the title, then attaching them to everyone he saw.
1 -
Gordon,
Too much work. Already tried that approach. Easy to do - detach those particular ones Stacy did without realizing how her edit affected the ones Denis attached. Every one has specific dates of attaching.
Here's the problem - see Elizabeth Esther Green G7G9-5Y3
None of these sources has anything to do with Elizabeth! ZERO.
Hence the need to detach.
0 -
Not only that, the exact same for Elizabeth Esther Green, also repeated in every one attached to Cecily Lancaster. (that's 500+)
And I decided to do what Gordon suggested, I deleted web link and deleted citation.
Now all of 500+ attached names are gone
2 -
Gordon's idea of deleting the URL and citation from the mass-attached source, which W.D. implemented, appears to have been effective, insofar as Cicely's index detail page (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:NTPY-R8H) now only shows it as being attached to Cecily Miller (last year, by @RTorchia).
However, digging down to the mass-attached source's details/view page (https://www.familysearch.org/tree/sources/viewedit/91FK-N52?context), and clicking "show all" in the Attached To box, one can see that it is still attached to (over) 500 profiles. (Do CTRL-F on the word "Detach" and your browser will tell you that it occurs on the page 500 times.)
Can anyone get through to Mr. Lancaster to alert him that what he's doing is worse than useless? And independently of that, can the mass-attached source be made at least semi-useful on the thousands of profiles that it's attached to? I mean, I could go in and edit the URL to point to the collection landing page (https://www.familysearch.org/search/collection/1473014), and perhaps add something in the Notes/Description telling about the misguided user and the thousands of profiles affected, but I'm worried that this would just confuse people (further). I already got a message from a descendant of one of the 121 profiles that I detached Cicely's source from, asking why I had detached it; the Change Log makes it very, very difficult to see the details of source attachment and detachment, so the descendant couldn't tell that the source had had absolutely nothing to do with her relative.
0 -
Julia
Aargh!
I an seeing the end of the list now.
0 -
That source still shows as attached to all those people because it is. Just as if I had created a source called "Encyclopedia Britannica" with no other information than that title and attached it to everyone in the work. That is what the Source Box is for and how it can be misused. Yes, the source is useless but now, at least, it is harmless in that it does not create problems on the original indexed source.
The real solution is for Mr. L to delete the source. That would remove all traces of it.
But for now, other than creating clutter on those people's source pages it is not causing any other trouble and I would just leave it to people who come to those profiles in their families to detach them as they find them.
Note to any moderator looking at this: Could you please still let the engineers see this and consider not letting a user created source loop back to a historical record source page and not be included in that "Attached in Family Tree to" listing?
1 -
Good riddance!
All gone.
What I think is the user made an error in first place. Weblink was all identical, and citation all identical. This is a big no-no.
What should have been done, go to "Attach to Family Tree",
- "Create a Source" Change Source Title, by inserting specific individual at the beginning of the line
- Select correct individual with parents if listed
- describe the reason
- Attach
This ensure duplicates will not show up enmasse.
0 -
The fundamental error is that he took a FamilySearch system source based on an indexed historical record, the type with a FamilySearch icon next to it on a list of sources and which should never be attached to more than one person, and copied it into his source box. Then he used his source box copy as a "source" for everyone born in England between 1835 and 1975 he ran across.
1 -
@W D Samuelsen contact me please said: "All gone"
Well, maybe for the one source. But unfortunately he used this same technique on at least two other sources as well:
Church of England Records 1538-1975: https://www.familysearch.org/tree/sources/attachedto/SSC9-FZH
England, Bishop's Transcripts 1813-1911: https://www.familysearch.org/tree/sources/attachedto/SCVY-VD6
0 -
So what can be done to prevent this situation (or at least make it substantially less likely)? There are a couple of suggestions in this thread. Before I address those, note that the basic capability of creating a source, putting it in your Source Box, and attaching it to multiple profiles is indeed useful. I really doubt that FamilySearch would remove that capability altogether.
@Julia Szent-Györgyi said "it simply shouldn't be possible to attach a single index entry to this many profiles." To do this, some arbitrary limit would have to be chosen. That limit would have to be high enough to allow proper usage. What could that be? 100? 200? Any number high enough for proper usage would allow a lot of improper usage as well. I suppose that some sort of limit could reduce misuse, but you could still have a lot of misuse.
@Gordon Collett suggested: "consider not letting a user created source loop back to a historical record source page and not be included in that 'Attached in Family Tree to' listing?" I think this could be a possibility.
- Is there a good argument for allowing a user to create a source that has a URL that points to an indexed FamilySearch source? I'm hard pressed to think of one. FamilySearch could simply refuse to allow a user to create a source like this. That would have prevented the particular technique that Dennis Lancaster used. But what would happen to all the existing user-created sources that point to a FamilySearch source? Who knows how many of those currently exist? Nonetheless, the existence of problematic sources is no reason to continue to allow them to be created.
- And what about the fact that actual FamilySearch sources can be in a person's Source Box and then be attached to any number of persons in Family Tree? That needs to continue to be possible for unindexed records. But for indexed records, one could argue that attaching a particular record (for a person mentioned in the record) to multiple persons in Family Tree should not be allowed. Gordon proposed that earlier as well: " a FamilySearch system source based on an indexed historical record, the type with a FamilySearch icon next to it on a list of sources, ... should never be attached to more than one person."
- I don't quite understand the part of the suggestion to "not be included in that 'Attached in Family Tree to' listing?" It seems like all attachments should always be shown. The real goal should be to prevent improper attachments.
Some of the above could help, but it would just create some marginal improvements. Users can still create their own sources (pointing to unindexed FamilySearch sources, records other than FamilySearch sources, or to no record at all) and use their Source Box to attach them to large numbers of persons in the Tree. By saying that I'm not arguing against doing something, but simply pointing out that there is no obvious solution to fix all related problems.
2 -
@Alan E. Brown, I think Mr. L's other two sources were created "fresh", that is, they're not connected to an index entry -- they have nothing in the URL and Citation fields. They're therefore correctly-formed, or as close to it as an "it's (somewhere) in the Encyclopedia Britannica"-type source can get.
What I'd desperately like to know is what possible utility Mr. Lancaster (or anyone else) believes that such a source could possibly have. What earthly purpose is served by saying, on thousands upon thousands of profiles, that these collections (or something vaguely like them) exist on FS?
("Church of England Records" doesn't bring up anything in the Collections listing on the main Search - Records page. The year range of 1538-1975 brings up the births & christenings collection that Cicely Lancaster's index entry was hijacked for. "England, Bishop's Transcripts" brings up nine different county collections, but no collection [from anywhere] corresponds to the year range 1813-1911.)
---
The main "use case" for multiple attachments of a single index entry is indexing errors: it's one of the ways to work around twins being indexed as one birth/baptism, for example. Given that I don't believe we will ever be able to correct every error in every index on FS, I don't think the ability to replicate a source like this should be taken away.
It's an inexplicable characteristic of FS's sourcing setup that we cannot connect the things we want to be connected (such as group sources that aren't in our source box, because someone else created them), while things that we'd prefer to be unconnected (such as copies of an index entry) are inexorably connected. But I do wonder if better labeling would help? If people could tell at a glance that it's part of a connected set, they wouldn't try to hijack it quite as readily. Perhaps.
1 -
@Julia Szent-Györgyi said: "I think Mr. L's other two sources were created "fresh", that is, they're not connected to an index entry -- they have nothing in the URL and Citation fields. They're therefore correctly-formed, or as close to it as an 'it's (somewhere) in the Encyclopedia Britannica'-type source can get."
Thanks for that clarification. So those two sources would be more resistant to detection. I agree that it's incomprehensible why someone would think it's helpful to attach such a meaningless source to so many people.
The term "Bishop's Transcripts" appears in collections found on multiple sites (FamilySearch, Ancestry, FindMyPast), but every example I find is for a particular county or other place -- none refer simply to the broader place of England. Perhaps Mr. Lancaster used that title to combine references to multiple counties, but in that case, it simply makes the reference more vague and thus even less meaningful.
I don't have any great ideas for how to prevent (or efficiently correct) such strange usage. Obviously if Mr. L would delete those sources it would clean up the situation very easily. But someone who spent so much effort attaching all these sources is unlikely to be easily persuaded that it's not helpful.
1 -
I just got a reply from Mr. L: "We didn't attach these sources. We don't know who did. Sorry."
The head-scratching continues.
0 -
@Alan E. Brown , you stated "I don't quite understand the part of the suggestion to "not be included in that 'Attached in Family Tree to' listing?" It seems like all attachments should always be shown. The real goal should be to prevent improper attachments."
What I was referring to, is that while the source record page showed in the top right hand column that this FamilySearch system source was attached to all 500+ records:
in reality, only one of them actually was. All the rest of the profiles had the user-created and edited copy of this source which is a different source than this one attached to them.
Would it be possible for that copy to not add people to this "attached to" listing? That is, to only show profiles to which this original source is attached to?
1 -
Alan E. Brown
The marriage ones - they are indexed, something that wasn't in Births and Christenings. Bishops' Transcripts I have to see if they are already indexed without images.
0 -
Hey guys. Please don't use other user's names in your future posts. Technically, I'm supposed to remove them and that can be a lot. Thanks.
2 -
Julia advises, above:
I just got a reply from ..... "We didn't attach these sources. We don't know who did. Sorry."
Surely the important matter here is (if the user is denying responsibility for this) the issue should be escalated to FamilySearch security, to investigate if someone has hacked their accounts? Even if there is nothing sinister here, the whole issue needs to be investigated by the engineers, to see if something can be implemented that might prevent other users engaging in similar damaging work (especially on this scale).
1 -
I think I got all the remaining bad links from all the bad records detached.
In this particular case anyway.
0
