How do you go about deleting a person's incorrect information?
I signed up for "changes to people" and periodically click on to see whats been going on to the people in my tree. I just found a person from the Democratic Republic of the Congo changed my husband's father and grandfather's information. These ancestors are from the slavic area of Europe, have never set foot in the congo. The "interesting" thing he changed for both men were: URL, title and source and my husband's grandmother's maiden name. Also, interestingly, those URL's are for both mens social security information!
I tried to report this ABUSE to Family Search, but received an email back from them saying this was not abuse. Before I go into Family and try to destroy all of my information in it, can anyone offer up any suggestions about how I can get this resolved?
Answers
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The Family Tree on FamilySearch is open-edit and fully collaborative. It sounds like this other user simply mistook your family members for people with similar details that he found in the indexed historical records (namely, the U.S. Social Security files that have relatively recently become available).
There are people who spend most of their time on FS attaching sources to profiles, without regard for their relationship (or lack thereof) to the people those profiles are about. Some of these people are careful and thorough and their contributions are welcome. Others are ...less so.
As a first step, I suggest using FS's internal messaging (now called "chat") to try and contact this user. Point out the errors he introduced, and ask him why he made those changes. Perhaps he will be willing to undo them, or at least stop and think a little more next time.
Regardless of the other user's response (or likely lack thereof), you can restore the profiles to their correct values using the Change Log: go to the profile's Details page, find the Latest Changes box in the right-hand column, and click "Show All". Keep in mind that the log does not have an "undo" function. Instead, you need to find where the correct conclusion was added, and restore it. This may involve a lot of scrolling, although you can use the filters to shorten the task.
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Thank you for your information. I think I am more furious with Family Search in that they do not flag users with obvious incorrect information and just let them post whatever. Is that the basis for having an area for us to look at for changes to people? Do they know its incorrect, let them post it and then have us see it and try to correct it ourselves? This isn't the first time this has happened. I have persons who have relatives with the same names and viola! They insert their information on my pages. It isn't easy to get it removed. I'm tired of this and am seriously thinking of deleting everyone and every bit of information, including pictures. I'm done.
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@LittleMac You might wish to view this thread touching on the same subject: https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/comment/535635#Comment_535635
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@LittleMac, there is no authority -- at FamilySearch or anywhere else -- that magically knows which inputs are correct and which aren't.
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He was actually changing my URL's....that isn't magic to know that all of a SUDDEN the URL is changed? And, it isn't weird that he is changing just for social security? And, adding names that are the same but the dob is much different? I started this FS account years ago. Why would I just pick up the old laptop and start adding and changing?
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URLs are data just like anything else. They might need to be changed if a website rearranged, for example.
Yes, the software could/can be programmed to "notice" that the names are the same but the dates are different -- but how can it know which of those is correct? Do you want it to prevent you from correcting dates when needed? Or would you prefer the names to be unchangeable?
No, it's not really weird that he's just attaching Social Security records. As I said above, they're relatively recently published, so a lot of them are not yet attached but showing up as hints. He may simply be going through such hints and taking the computer's word on all of them. Unfortunately, a lot of people think that if the hinting algorithm suggested it, it must be true, even if there are glaring differences.
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Oh, like someone living in the United States for all of their lives and deceased for 75 and 34 years, and a person in the Congo sees changes in social security on November 22, 2023 which I didn't know they had social security in the Congo, and he says, oh wow, look, these people are my relatives, I need to change their URL's to social security. When you make a change, Family Search asks you why you are doing it, I respond with the answers to those questions. And, yes, the dates do make a difference. Thats how you know that someone is trying to make their information "fit". And, if the persons are truly your ancestors, those dates of birth and death and everything inbetween are fact not fiction and they don't change every other year or so.
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We are not all necessarily working on our ancestors or close family. I'm often helping someone, in one of the Genealogy groups I admin, search for their family.
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Search for whose family? I know my family, I don't have to search for them.
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You may know your family. But how would a cousin, or second cousin, or third cousin... find those same profiles? They 'search' for them.
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As well as I "know" my family, I don't know every record for every person. We search and evaluate records.
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this post has absolutely nothing to do with searches. It has everything to do with changing your information without you knowing why. How would you feel if you logged in one day to find someone was hard at work changing your ancestors information?
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Millions of people contribute to Family Tree with different skill levels and motivations. When working on a world-wide collaborative tree, it's helpful to have some humility, be kind, and give others the benefit of the doubt.
I'm grateful for the Community Members here who generously donate their time to help others; they deserve to be treated with respect.
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LittleMac In order to lessen the chance of this happening again, you need to heavily source you and your husband's parents and grandparents. I have got all census records, their birth and death records, obituaries, many city directories, all their job related documentation available to me, many photos uploaded with their children and parents tagged. I make sure all sources which span several generations are attached to all generations. I have had very few incursions on those close generations. I recommend you spend the time beefing up the sources and memories.
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mod note - Several posts have been edited to comply with the Community Code of Conduct. For more details, see https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/article/community-code-of-conduct
For another discussion about Hints being attached by volunteers, see https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/153737/sources-being-added-by-missionaries
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