How do I correct data that someone else put into my tree
How do I correct data that someone else put into my tree
Answers
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First: there is no such thing as "your tree" here. You do not have your own, individual tree on FamilySearch. None of us do. It is a single, collaborative, open-edit tree, with the lofty and distant goal of having one and only one profile per deceased person.
Second: the Family Tree on FamilySearch is open-edit. This can be a "good news, bad news" situation: the bad news is, anyone can change almost anything, but the good news is, anyone — including you — can correct almost anything. ("Almost" because there are some profiles with limited editability, such as those you enter for living people, which only you can see and edit, and read-only profiles, which require employee intervention for any changes.)
If someone has mistaken one of your relatives for theirs, and made incorrect changes as a result, you have two broad choices: let go, or change back.
If the mistake has resulted in a large number of incorrect-for-your-relative conclusions and relationships, it can be simplest to just let that profile be that other person now. You can detach the now-incorrect relationships and sources, attaching them instead to a newly-created profile for your person. This is what I ended up doing with my many-times-great-grandparents, when someone moved them to a different crown land and gave them a new religion and a dozen new children. Since I only had their names and a very broad idea of their time period, based on the one child I had found for them, it was simpler to create new profiles than to correct dozens of conclusions.
If the hijacked or mangled profile was detailed, with many residences and occupations and children and whatnot, then retrieving the original data using the profile's Change Log becomes the better path. The thing to keep in mind when doing so is that the Change Log works backwards (or upside-down) from what most people consider intuitive: you cannot undo changes. You have to find where the correct data was originally entered and restore it. If that original entry is buried underneath several layers of merges, then re-typing can be simpler, assuming you have the correct conclusion from its source.
Whichever path you take, you can try to prevent future mistakes by other users by attaching every source you have, tagging those sources to all of the conclusions they support, explaining your reasoning whenever it's not straightforward, and making use of FS's collaboration tools, such as Notes and Alert Notes.
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