Flag fake people in Family Tree
Sometimes (ok, most of the time) I look for unreal people on the familysearch website (not that it matters if I'm on the website or app I'm sure). Once, I even found a small family of Sesame St. characters. Here's proof that they're fake:
There's proof that the're related and that the're from Sesame St. If you can't see it, then The Red Elmo's ID is GD78-DFC. I want to make a feature that lets users identify fake people and then it goes to multiple other people to check it or something. This may make it so people stop making false people and there will be less gibberish and distracting results.
Comments
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I'm not sure it would be worth the effort to slow down the entire process to stop someone from adding an Elmo chair. Nobody's going to be tricked into thinking it's a real person. The real problem is the ones that are less obvious--but those would likely slip through the cracks anyway. For example, not everyone would be able to identify Atticus Finch as fake on their own.
(Out of curiosity, I just searched, and was pleasantly surprised to see that he is not in the tree.)
Anyway, something that is happening that you might like: If you head over to FamilySearch Labs, you will find a project called Profile Quality Indicator, where the goal is to have an AI go through and warn users of any possible errors in the page, as well as any missing information. It also gives each applicable profile a quality score of Low, Medium, or High, based on what it finds. I haven't used it much, so I don't know if it actually works well yet, but I think the idea is good. No, it won't stop this kind of abuse, but it may prevent the more convincing ones from tricking people.
P.S. If you find obvious fakes like these, just report them.
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You can report abuse and have the fakes removed. Perpetual abusers receive warnings and may have their FamilySearch privileges restricted or revoked.
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