Unauthorized changes to my tree.
How do eliminate them?
Best Answer
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On the FamilySearch site, there is no my tree or your tree. We have a single tree, meant for all to work on in collaboration.
The most effective way to keep others from editing profiles is to make the profiles as complete as you can, with detailed reason statements and attached sources.That method doesn't always work, but you can restore any profile to its previous state using the changelog. You can also communicate with almost any other user, via private message, just by clicking on the username.
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Answers
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You can also hit the "REPORT ABUSE" link in the TOOLS portion of the Individual Person Page if you think it qualifies as abuse. Not sure how effective that may be in your case, but worth a try, as it should draw attention to the matter and to the "offending" individual.
But please remember, just because you don't agree with the changes doesn't mean it is "unauthorized" or "abusive;" every change should be accompanied by a legitimate source that supports the change being made. Absent that, you have every right to "RESTORE" the original posting or challenge the person making the change what evidence they have to support their change, as the previous responder suggested.
Good luck.
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The bar for a change to be considered abuse is VERY high.
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Another option is to add an Alert to a profile, warning people to examine the existing carefully researched information in detail before considering making changes to it.
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Be sure and "Follow" ancestor entries that you want to watch, both for changes and follow up research.
As others have noted, the more contemporary sources you can find and attach to your person will solidify both their vitals and family; but preclude others from thinking they are somebody different.
Remember that family lore and history will get you started on the path; but that contemporary sources should normally trump 50-100 year old hand-me-down stories.
Also remember that there will be multiple lines back to a certain ancestor. They are not your great great grandpa/grandma only - but a multitude of people will be able to trace back to the same common ancestor.
FamilySearch's - FamilyTree is not any one person's tree; but rather the world wide tree of mankind. All we can do is clean it and make sure the information is correct by linking good sources to each entry and making honest connections between family members - even the bad memories along with the good.
For example, I've seen instances in a family (typically on a census) where there is the implication of an early illegitimate child due to a youthful indiscretion. A major upheaval to parental expectations in any time. Then see that same family on follow up census' and the whole family continuing on and growing successfully. It does give pause to the thought of a world ending event and the reality of the Atonement and forgiveness and life going on.1 -
Hello I've had similar annoying modifications occuring to that part of the tree which I'm particularly interested in (ok I know I can't say 'my' tree, and the open source notion I've totally understood, but it's the tree where my ancestors appear and for which I've done alot of work). I try and include in each and every section tagged sources and memories, and where none are available at least a reasoned explanation - time consuming but hopefully will reduce the joy riders in creating "errors". Equally everything is separately saved on my computer.
My real beef though is that FS have made it too easy to add, delete, modify, etc without having to provide a written reason and / or provide sources etc. FS wants the tree makers to be as accurate as possible, but then don't make the accuracy an obligation. Which makes you wonder how accurate all these so cousins are that we receive from RootsTech or so called relationships to past notables.
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I don't doubt folks are already aware of these RootsTech presentations relating to this… I'll share for those interested
https://www.familysearch.org/rootstech/session/tree-integrity-protecting-your-research-in-familytree
https://www.familysearch.org/en/rootstech/session/best-practices-for-working-in-familysearchs-shared-family-tree
I'm not confident the links will work but we'll see. Getting odd error messages
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@Mark McKenzie_1
Thanks - the links work.If you were getting "robots.txt" errors when trying to put the URLs in your message, I've been getting those for months, and have had no luck getting the problem escalated for correction.
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Yes, those were very good presentations. The links work just fine if copy and pasted. If you want to have a clickable link in your posts, however, you just have to change the formatting. Currently, if you just paste in a link, frequently that error will show up. However if you paste the link, click on the link to open the format bubble like this:
and choose the first option, you will end up with a live link:
»»» https://www.familysearch.org/rootstech/session/tree-integrity-protecting-your-research-in-familytree
That second option is to create a nice looking title for your link which the program creates by querying the webpage. In other words, it is supposed to convert this:
»»» https://www.digitalarkivet.no
into this:
»»» https://www.digitalarkivet.no
But for some reason, the majority of the time when community.familysearch.org queries familysearch.org, familysearch.org refuses to supply any information and you get the inactive link. You would think the programming could then just switch the format automatically to the first choice in the bubble but apparently it can't.
Regarding the topic here, there are indications that FamilySearch is working to cut down incorrect changes. The new merge screen has alerts all over the place. The data quality checker tries to impede editing of well sourced information.
This difficult task has immediately been met with criticism. "The birth years are only three years apart. Why is the merge screen forcing me to read an alert?" "The birth places are 200 miles apart but I know which one is wrong. Why is the merge screen yelling at me and telling me not to merge?" "Why do I have to click edit, read a warning that the name has a bunch of sources, then click edit again to edit the name? I know what I am doing. You don't have to slow me down, just those other people."
If we want good data preserved in Family Tree, we as users need to support FamilySearch in all their efforts to do so even if it means a couple of extra mouse clicks on our part.
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@Gordon Collett Unfortunately, most of the time of late, I get no option to choose the first option for a live link. It's either a text-only version of the link or I have to make a pretty title.
I comfort myself that at least we're not getting so many corrupted links with %3A scattered throughout.
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@Gordon Collett I've had trouble off/on making a 'nice' link But at least a 'raw' paste of the url 'works'.
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@Gordon Collett you state "If we want good data preserved in Family Tree, we as users need to support FamilySearch in all their efforts to do so even if it means a couple of extra mouse clicks on our part." Agree in principle but how do I actively support FS on this issue? I've already submited an idea around this subject but goodness knows if it went anywhere. Do they have a workshop on this subject where one can make comments and suggestions?
Regards
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@JohnBromby One good way to start is join all the groups that have to do with new features such as:
»»»
Improved Person Change Log
»»»
and spend time using the new features and giving feedback that is clear and direct with specific examples of what does and doesn't work right and, for your particular concerns, how these efforts can better support preserving and protecting accurate data. The developers of these new features actively monitor those groups and are very responsive to posts that are worth commenting on. That is, they usually do not respond if a post just says, "I don't like this," but do respond to "on profile XXXX-YYY I see …. and when I try … it get this result …. and this is going to be a problem because …. and it might be better to ….."
It can be a good idea to check out what new groups FamilySearch has created because that is sometimes the first indication that a new feature is in the works. Go to any group you already belong to and you will see at the top the path to that group:
Above, for example, you see Home > Groups > Improved Merge Experience. Clicking on Groups right there is the only way I have found to come to a very nice page that first lists all the groups you currently belong to and then has a section labeled New Groups.
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@Gordon Collett Thank you for those links.
Regards
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