Help! - How do I Undo Someone's Errors and Stop Further Damage From Being Done?
A lot of folks including myself have put a lot of detailed work into updating information for the descendants of Nathanial Ely (who is no longer even showing in the Ely try so I don't have a link). Starting with John Edward Ely I LC6Y-NJ4 https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/changelog/LC6Y-NJ4 on 09/09/24 and 09/10/24 (today) someone has literally gutted various relationships, deleted individuals, created new individuals, added children birthdates after parents deceased, created random names with number/digits, etc. Help!
I don't even know where to begin or how to correct the damage being done as I type this...
I'm asking if an admin can look at the change logs, temporarily lock the account for an individual making these changes, review the changes, and if they agree that the changes appear to be random, unsubstantiated and destructive - REVERT the tree back to pre 09/09/2024 state!
Frankly it's overwhelming for me to contemplate trying to fix this mess and need some help.
I don't want to post the individuals ID publicly but can provide in a message perhaps.
thank you!
Answers
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@THornsby There is a Nathaniel Ely, who can be reached by going back through the change log and selecting Samuel Ely Sr https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/LTQC-LHQ and then his father, Nathaniel Ely. https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/LLCC-G2X. But his birth year is 1605, so I don't think that this the correct person to be John Edward's father. Could he be grandfather or is he unrelated ?
From a quick look at the data it's clear that a duplicate of Caleb, John Edward's son has been wrongly attached. This is the kind of thing that could happen accidentally by dragging a person into the wrong section of the linker. My instinct is that it wouldn't be a result of a merge, because 'I think' the merge routine would do some simple validation to check birth dates etc.
This other Caleb has now become his duplicate's grandfather, apparently displacing the correct person.
The change log shows that this all happened on 10th Sept and the sequence of changing John Edward's parents from Samuel and Mary to Caleb and Mary all seemed to happen in immediate succession, so it appears that it was the result of a merge after all. This seems to support the idea that the merge routine doesn't perform simple validity checks such as birth year of person is later than son. This is a great disappointment to say the least.0 -
@Re Searching, the merge routine does alert to some things, but it trains us to ignore those alerts by offering utter and complete nonsense most of the time. (For example, "these people may be twins" when it's Joannes versus Johannes.) And the alerts are passive: there's no dismissal mechanism, and they do not affect anything besides the display of the first merge step.
@THornsby, the way to ask for help from FS staff on gibberish input is with "Report Abuse" in the Tools box. I've never used it, so I only know from second-hand reports that the bar is high, and you'll likely need to argue your case, but it's worth a try at least.
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