Any recourse against repetitive GEDCOM uploads?
The change log for L5Y1-VLZ shows I've merged duplicates into it 11 times in the last 9 months, but that doesn't even count the number of times I've merged multiple GEDCOM duplicates together before merging them into the existing profile. It's part of another user's error-ridden GEDCOM that they keep uploading. I've tried contacting them but never hear back:
"Hello, I noticed you keep uploading the same GEDCOM saying this woman died in Minnesota in 1690. During that period, there was very little European activity in area now known as Minnesota. In fact, your Priscilla Elaine Verplank, wife of Glendon Anthony Schuster, appears be a based upon L5Y1-VLZ, who did live in Minnesota and marry a Glendon Anthony Schuster (just 300 years later than your file suggests). Could we work together to determine where we could make necessary changes to the existing FamilySearch profiles, rather than repeatedly uploading the same GEDCOM?
Thanks, hope to hear from you soon! Have a great day!"
The upload frequency has increased in recent weeks and it's starting to feel like vandalism. While I'm not a fan of GEDCOM uploads in general, I feel like users who repeatedly abuse the ability should have that option disabled.
Answers
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Perhaps he/she thinks she's putting it in a CET? Or has never actually twigged this is a collaborative tree? (Is this junk on Ancestry or MyHeritage also? Maybe they might be more responsive on another site.)
Whatever, I would have thought this should be well into Report Abuse territory, since they are doing damaging and repeated bulk uploads. I know the bar is crazily high, but might be worth a try.
I can't see an alert on the profile concerning this, that might be a good step to take also.
I cannot see how gedcom upload to FT has ever been a good idea, personally, especially when partner solutions like RootsMagic make it easy to update FT entries one by one, and far more safely, without re-keying.
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Unfortunately, the "enabler" here is FamilySearch for allowing (and in some cases encouraging) GEDCOM files to be uploaded in the first place.
That makes it hard to be able to prevent the experience that you have had, and may continue to have in the future. Good luck.
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I'm having the very same issue with the exact same person uploading those GEDCOM files. Multiple ones over and over. And, yes, I have tried to contact them and politely ask to work together and never hear back.
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Thanks for your responses!
@MandyShaw1 I'm not sure of the user's intent or knowledge level. In examining Ancestry .com member trees during my recent visit to the library, nearly two thousand of them contain a version of this woman supposedly dying in Minnesota in 1690 (which is not entirely surprising, since the platform encourages users to mindlessly copy one another). I did skim through the first few dozen search results to see if any of their user names suggest they are the same user entering this nonsense on FamilySearch, but didn't identify any close matches. Incidentally, the second highest tree result (with only ~80 copies) represents the actual woman, who was born about 300 years later, but did live in Minnesota. Since the user is using GEDCOM upload to add these to FamilySearch and not actually looking at the existing profiles in the shared tree, I'm unsure what an alert in the profile would accomplish. Additionally, some of the details in their GEDCOM are so far off (+/- 300 years), that I doubt the tool to identify duplicates when uploading has any effect.
@dlmelville I agree with your assessment. The speed and scale at which GEDCOM uploads can alter the shared tree is problematic. While I'd still be annoyed if a user were manually making these nonsensical changes, at least I would be better positioned to manually undo them. Like I said in my original post, I feel like users who abuse the ability to upload GEDCOMs should have that ability suspended.
@Calliej27 You're not the only user to message me in the last week to mention that they're experiencing the same headache with the same user. What can be done?
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You're right that an alert won't really help, sorry.
Maybe try posting in the Data Quality group? Perhaps the project team there might be able to take this up the chain.
The CET group might also be a good place to engage. They are working on a thing called Tree2Tree, it seems. What we /really/ don't want, I suggest, is yet more bulk uploads to FT through that route...
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There are over a dozen family trees in MyHeritage which include a Clarence Verplank born 1600. A couple even have an E as a second initial.
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