Garbage entries filling up change logs - Bug report
Beginning on June 11, 2025, sometimes multiple times per day and sometimes multiple times per week, there is a change log entry that a source record has been updated by a particular user. You can see this at Judith Maupin (1756–1831) • Change Log • Person • Family Tree
Because of the frequency of this event, it has completely junked up the change log, making it quite tedious to find any meaningful changes being made to this person's profile. I have contacted the user, [redacted], and she claims that she is not doing anything with the indicated source record. Based on our conversations I think I believe her. In fact if you look at the particular source record being changed,https://www.familysearch.org/en/tree/sources/viewedit/36RX-F9M?context you will note that the last time the source has been updated was back in 2021 by me. In spite of this, "updates" that are not real continue to be made to this source record.
A similar situation is occurring for this profile: David Epperson Jr (1754–1778) • Change Log • Person • Family Tree
but for a different source. In this case the changes in the log have been continuously made by the same user (even though nothing has changed about the source since July 2025), as can be seen here: https://www.familysearch.org/en/tree/sources/viewedit/Q21V-CCQ?context
What I am asking support/engineering to do:
1) Determine why these changes that aren't changes continue to be made on a several times per day or week basis, and fix whatever stimulus is causing them.
2) Cleanup the change logs for these two persons to omit all the spurious "Source Updated" messages that make it very challenging to find real changes being made to the profiles.
Comments
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@EarlMarshall if it isnt documented it didnt happen thank you for bringing this to our attention. I have submitted a bug report.
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@ShelleWells - excuse the frivolity but submitting a "big report" is perhaps an appropriate Freudian Slip given the amount of data! 😉
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@EarlMarshall if it isnt documented it didnt happen Thank you for the feedback. A ticket has been created to look into this.
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This is happening on a number of profiles I follow. For one, Gilbert Sweat 9KBJ-ZL2, there were 89 change notifications with no apparent changes made in the last month alone - and new change notifications continue to come regularly.
I wrote to the user whose name was associated with Gilbert Sweat’s changes and asked what she was doing. She responded, “I just went to task and checked off the things needed.” Going “to task” doesn’t explain 89 change notifications with no actual changes being made.
See also Mary Ellen Perkins LJK2-M71 where the same user I wrote to is associated with over 100 “changes”, some multiple times a day.
Other profiles I’ve seen this on are
Nathan Perkins 9NQY-7FK
Sarah Celestine Drake K2T4-JW7
Robert Sweat LH7Q-2DN
I hope you are able to fix this. As the OP said, these junk notifications are making it hard to see actual changes being made to profiles.
Thanks!!!
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