Relationship added in spite of alert notes - contributor vs FamilySearch
Hello.
An erroneous parent-child relationship was added to my grandmother on March 23, 2025.
See the following:
Vivian Hastings Female17 January 1897 – 1 December 1977•KWZD-NZN
and
Nancy Ellen Lemmon Female12 August 1874 – 28 April 1908•LQRQ-LRT
Nancy Ellen Lemmon has been added as a parent of Vivian Hastings Kerr numerous times over the past year or so. Nancy Ellen Lemmon has NO parent relationship to Vivian Hastings Kerr and I have had to repeatedly remove her as a mother, with very clear explanations. I added alert notes to both profiles.
This recent addition was by "(username removed)" on March 23, 2025. When I go to Latest Changes, the item says it was added by "FamilySearch." As with the instances in the past, there is no way to "chat" with or contact "(username removed)." I believe that these additions are being made by young people. Thus, the inability to "chat" with them.
My question is, why do I see that FamilySearch made the change in the Change Log, but on the Latest Changes snippet on the detail page I can see that the relationship was added by "(username removed)?"
Secondly, how do I get messages to these young people who continue to add this erroneous relationship? There is absolutely no excuse for this mistake, as there is no record whatsoever that ties Vivian and Nancy together as daughter and mother and the alert notes are obvious. Additionally there are abundant sources and documentation for Vivian Hastings Kerr relating to her family relationships.
Thank you for considering my questions.
Answers
-
Puzzled re the Change Log info you are seeing, this is the most recent change I can see there that was made by the FamilySearch user:
Perhaps you could do a screenshot of the entry you're seeing?
Re the alert note being ignored, I suppose it's possible (to be very charitable) that the other contributor is using a 3rd party program (or some sort of 3rd party hint) to do the updates and that alerts are less obvious (or absent altogether) there (another, wider, problem in itself). But I doubt it - 'That's my great-gran's name! Gotta be her!' seems more likely.
The only other person called Vivian Hastings anywhere on FS (and in her case it's her married name) appears to be this lady: LKB7-N75, who doesn't match your grandmother in any other way that I can see.
0 -
On 23 Mar 2025, looking at KWZD-NZN
and looking at LQRQ-LRT
0 -
Aine, I was previously using the non-Labs Change Log, which showed the other contributor's name, not FamilySearch (and 24 March not 23, but that's just a US vs UK problem no doubt).
I have just switched on the Labs Change Log and guess what?
This would appear to be a bug (or possibly a non-contactable person privacy feature??) in the Lab. I will post in the Lab's feedback group with a link to this thread.
0 -
Looks kind of strange. That relationship has been added eight times since Febuary 25, 2023 by eight different users as can be seen in the current version of the change log, not the new one. Seven of those have the notice that you can't chat with them. Is that seven different users that are too young to chat with or blocked for some other reason? Or one user with seven accounts? You can chat with the user who added it January 10, 2024. You might want to try contacting that user and see if you can get any information as to what is going on.
0 -
@MNuttall Mod note: Your post was edited to maintain the privacy of a living person. Please see the Community Code of Conduct for more details.
1 -
@MNuttall An Alert Note doesn't stop someone from making a change. It only helps if the contributor reads and heeds it. We can lead a horse to water, but we cannot force it to drink.
0 -
Has this somehow got included in some sort of youth training exercise perhaps?
0 -
I checked in Ancestry and My Heritage and there are no trees for Vivian Hastings with mother Nancy Ellen Lemmon on either of those sites. So it is probably not a problem with syncing from either of those sites.
Another item that is also a bit strange, using my browser's find command to evaluate the change log, as far as I can see, none of 2 to 8 users, depending on how many duplicate accounts these user names represent, have done anything on either profile other than to add the mother-child relationship.
Sounds like this is a job for an administrator to check each of these user names, see how many users actually stand behind them (if the seven that can't be contacted are all the same user that would be a concern), and see what else they have been up to in Family Tree. They are so blatantly disregarding what is among the best documentation I've seen to stop doing this, you have to wonder what other trouble they are causing.
@Ashlee C. , can you pass this on to someone who can do some investigating?
4 -
Yes, I will send this to be looked into. It might take some time to figure out what's going on, so thanks for your patience.
1 -
Thank you, everyone, for looking into this and for the comments and suggestions you've made.
I'm going to see if I can get a screen shot, but the moderator removed my reference to the contributor — and that's what would be shown on the screenshot?
When this first happened, I vaguely recall "chatting" with someone who admitted that it was one of her children making the change and she assured me she would make sure it didn't happen again — but every time it has been a different username.
Fortunately, the following feature alerts me to these kinds of issues.
0 -
I can't get a screenshot of the detail page Latest Changes snippet for either Nancy Ellen Lemmon LQRQ-LRT or Vivian Hastings Kerr KWZD-NZN showing the contributor "S——M—-" adding the erroneous relationship because there have been other changes made to both these profiles, thus "pushing" down the March 23rd entry.
0 -
Yes, you need to avoid any screenshot with the contributor's name on it (I shouldn't have implied otherwise, sorry). But the FamilySearch user vs contributor issue appears to be in fact an inconsistency between the current and Labs change logs, see above, with the Detail page obviously using the current Change Log version. I have reported it on the relevant Lab feedback Group.
0 -
Thanks, Mandy. I am using the Labs, and didn't connect the issue with that. I appreciate you reporting the inconsistency.
1 -
Okay, I went back to my messages and found that I spoke with a cousin on February 28, 2023. She told me it was her daughter who was adding Nancy Ellen Lemmon as a mother to Vivian Hastings Kerr and that she would not allow her to use her account until the problems had been resolved. So, that was two years ago and the problem continues. I sent another message to this cousin to see if she had other children who were getting involved. I will see what her response is.
1 -
I hate to be that person, but she needs to understand that she should never share her account with anyone.
0 -
Hi everyone- this is a known issue and our engineering teams are actively working on a resolution. Thanks for your patience as they do so!
0 -
@Stephanie V. I assume you mean the change log inconsistency is a known issue, not the weirdness with Vivian Hastings' relationships?
0
