Finding inputs / changes by username
I am raising this issue "again" as unfortunately the thread / similar idea under the General Questions category has now been closed.
It has been suggested that an ability to search for records added / changed by a particular user might infringe privacy rights, although I don't quite see that: we still would not know the identity of that individual - only an administrator could establish that.
I feel the discussion at https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/comment/530159#Comment_530159 shows how useful it would be to be able to trace certain inputs that FamilySearch policies do not regard as "abuse", or for which there is the will or the ability to assign sufficient resources to deal with such matters.
As illustrated by @LFarrier, there are certain users who are consistently causing damage to the tree through their inputs. When I come across some examples during my daily work in Family Tree, I can obviously clearly see the username attached to such work. However, I often wonder what I am missing - i.e., what other damaging work are they doing elsewhere in the tree, even to branches that include my own relatives. (Naturally, I can't keep a regular eye on them all - via my Following list, or otherwise.)
I know my argument is partly flawed by the fact (as illustrated in the other thread) that a user can adopt multiple usernames (I have previously expressed a wish for this to be more tightly controlled, too), but I really wish there could be an easier way to locate the work of "serial offenders". If FamilySearch would be willing to get more involved here I would not feel such a need to monitor the work of these individuals - some of whom have be proved to even have serious mental health problems, so not meaning to be too harsh on them personally, in relation to their damaging activity in Family Tree.
I am happy to acknowledge (as above) the flaws of a "Search by username" option - perhaps a vindictive user could deliberately target the genuinely correct inputs added by another user, just because they had had a disagreement on one issue. So, I guess I am desperately looking for any better ways of stopping this tiny minority of users from wreaking havoc with our Family Tree.
Comments
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See also the example raised by @LFarrier at https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/152213/napoleon-bonaparte-93xk-7ht-where-are-these-fs-records-coming-from#latest. A look at the change log of Napoleon Bonaparte's record makes me concerned about how much damage one particular user is doing elsewhere. How is anybody to know whether this is just isolated "bad work", or if this has been replicated across many branches of Family Tree?
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Sound's like a reasonable feature to have. It would just be an expansion of what we can already do using our Following list. Going there I can use my browser's Find feature to type in part of a user's name and quickly find all the changes that user made:
But there certainly could be concerns about revenge. I assume there are FamilySearch people with administrative rights that are able to see everything we do. Maybe what is needed is a designated team of people whose sole responsibility is to police the tree and be able to quickly respond to reports of abuse as well as mediate disagreements between users. They should not be tasked with deciding which user is "right" but just with forcing two people to work together nicely.
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Hmm. Having been fairly enthusiastic about this idea, after some thought, I fear that the problems - specifically "revenge" attacks - outweigh the benefits.
I'm not even sure of the benefits - if we find that user "ANIdiot" has made a series of sabotaging updates - what do we do with that data? If FamilySearch will not commit to a policing function - whether by FS employees or by nominated moderators - how can we (ordinary users) do anything useful that reverts the existing nonsense and prevents further abuse?
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It's worse than just odd profiles being given garbage data... See that Napoleon thread on https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/152213/napoleon-bonaparte-93xk-7ht-where-are-these-fs-records-coming-from
And take a look at these source records (also copied to that thread)...
How have these source records been created?
I list some questions on that thread in the hope that someone can sort out the origin of this data.
Can I say that I can cope with idiotic profiles of Donald Duck etc? (Indeed, let's face it, there must be plenty of people in real life with that name). But a determined sabotage of source records, where I can't check the image, strikes at the very foundation of FamilySearch's usefulness. If a genealogist can't trust the source records, what is the point of FS?
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