Why do people add a ton of records that don't even match the profile they are attached to?
For example-historical person Sir Henry Cromwell LBMP-C1G. I just went through and deleted many records that were added today. I went through each of them and found most did not apply to this person who lived in England in the 1500's but had things like jail records from Washington, USA and other American records as well as records for completely different names. I see this ALL of the time-why are people doing this? I think I saw someone once refer to it as an "Ancestry Bomb".
Answers
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Probably the same reason that they merge individuals of the same name who never lived within hundreds (or even thousands) of miles of each other. I doubt if there is a single explanation that would categorise the type of person involved in these practices - some are probably totally inexperienced and others possibly do have some malicious intent. Perhaps there is a common explanation attached to most of these actions - although probably only a psychologist would be able to provide the correct term if there is some kind of specific condition involved!
I believe part of the problem involves a lack of understanding of the "shared" aspect of Family Tree. Many users just don't think of the fact that others will be viewing their work and believe they are gathering sources to an ID in a personal space, from where they can be moved across in future. In your example, when they eventually find the "correct" Henry Cromwell to whom the sources rightly belong they can detach from LBMP-C1G and transfer them to the other ID(s). However, if this is their intention they obviously don't get around to revisiting the IDs where they decide to place these collections of sources, so they remain there indefinitely.
(There was an individual who once admitted here that he created a ID specifically for the purpose of adding hundred of individuals (as "children") for whom he was unable to find a correct place on the tree. As he found their true identity, he detached them from there and added them to the correct family branch. Maybe some people do something similar with sources.)
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And, in some cases, it's the result of poor hints. I regularly decline loads of hints that could not possibly belong to the profile. But, novice users may think the hint algorithm must know better and click.
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