deleting my relatives
what can I do when someone is deleting my relatives from several years work? First they only added a few sources for person with same name, same locations, & a few years difference for birth, then changed person's fact's info. Also changed mother's maiden name. All my sources were still attached with alternate info at that point. I did some digging & found we were each referring to different person with same name & location. I also posted note for this person to see informing her of two individuals found with same parents names (different maiden names for mothers though) and different birth dates even though same birth location. Further research needed to be done to separate the two. All the sources I'd attached, and the recently attached sources with the alternate info by this person were all attached at this point. Today I return to find all my sources have now been deleted for the person I'd originally added, except census records I'd added, and this other person left those attached (married person with same name also, so the census records would work for either one of these two individuals). Deleted any source/fact that conflicted with theirs. And somehow, the note I'd added about this being 2 individuals is no longer there. I'm so upset. Several years work down the drain. Sources, everything. I thought we were supposed to work together here, not just railroad everything to what we alone think it should be. I could have done the same thing to them, but I instead looked for answer to our differences in info by studying the sources attached (at that time) - that there each of us were following seemingly identical people. I also did not delete and of the sources that had been added, so we could determine, together, where each should be in the tree. So how can someone come along and in one fell swoop change years of research, delete numerous sources, keeping only those which add new info to what they believe to be the correct person (their version), and with no more sources to support their reason for their belief than had originally been attached to this person?
Answers
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Basically, people often do this because.....they can! (Of course, in some instances changes might be made due to a genuine belief by the other person that they have the true facts.) The open-edit format of Family Tree makes it possible for just about everything to be changed or removed, except items you have created under the Discussions heading in the Collaboration section.
Fortunately, all is not lost - as you can carefully reconstruct any affected profile to its previous state. This might involve a fair amount of patience, lengthy and hard work - largely in having to sift through the change log(s) in order to reinstate names, relationships and sources.
However, you don't want this to be wasted effort, as an obstinate or vindictive user might well then revert all your corrective work, to read the way they see the "facts". Try, if you haven't done so already, to communicate with this user (through the internal messaging system) in an effort to get them to agree to your evidence relating to the intended / correct identity of the individuals in this branch.
I'm sure others will add other suggestions as to how best to proceed from here, but these cases can sometimes be very difficult to resolve (if there can be no agreement with the other participant), Sadly, FamilySearch administrators will rarely offer assistance with such a case, unless you can prove these actions represent a deliberate abuse of the system by the other person.
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I think that most often, people do this because it's the only thing they know how to do. After all, it's how it works on every other genealogy site or program they've ever used.
As Paul says, the good news is that everything is still there, somewhere, in the change log.
When it happened to me, I abandoned the hapless couple to their ignominous fate, disconnected them as parents from my ancestor, and created new profiles for my ancestor's actual parents. In my case, this was the simpler tack, because I had only done the most basic work on that branch: they only had the one child and the corresponding baptism attached, whereas the hijacker had attached something like a dozen children for the other couple.
In your case, it may be slightly less work to create a new profile for the other user's person, transfer all of the sources and conclusions known to be his, then disconnect his relationships and restore the sources and conclusions for your person. You'll probably also need to create (or perhaps find?) profiles for the other person's various same-named relatives. And who knows, perhaps the process of doing all of this will turn up new evidence about which guy is which.
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Try adding a Note in the Collaboration section with the Alert Note selected. Explain why the information is correct and make sure you add good sources. Source to someone tree in Ancestry or anywhere else is not a good source.
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I always add valid sources and also upload also photos of actual media - even when I've paid for the source, as I want to share this info with others (many I've added which I purchased from scotlands people, which includes actual media files, also uploading their copyright info, so it won't get removed.) .- and I hate when someone types in added source as Ancestry, and no actual source, because as already stated, that's not really a source.
And although I did not mark my note with ALERT (posts note at top of profile page for person in red, so not to be missed) as I was afraid it would seem pushy, nonetheless, my note did state info regarding this being 2 people (not one) and which sources to look at as proof, it somehow is no longer there.
I am trying the creating new profile, but for my original person, but am not finding all the sources I'd had attached prev, though, so I suppose I'll keep looking for them.
I'm expecting this person to delete this info again, though, so maybe I shouldn't even bother?
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@cjspry, as we've said, all of your original conclusions and sources should be somewhere in the change log. You get to that by clicking "Show All" at the bottom of the Latest Changes box in the right-hand column of the Details page.
If you'd like someone else to take a look, you can post the PID for the hijacked profile here. The change log is not easy to parse under the best of circumstances.
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