Trees created by non-relatives
Hi all. A member has created a family tree from my mother upwards. They claim to be a 4th cousin of my mother through her 4 times grandfather. But he is not showing in the tree that has ben created. I stumbled upon this by complete accident when I started to create my tree (official) and saw that there was a potential match with incorrect information. It seems like phishing and I haven't disclosed personal information. So, my question is - how (or even why) is someone able to create a family tree for a completely different family line?
Answers
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@John73300 What you have found is quite common when viewing the collaborative Family Tree on FamilySearch. A particular family line in the Family Tree may have been started or imported many years ago and over time been added to or edited by many different individuals.
Now fast forward to your 'my tree' that you started. The FamilySearch algorithm takes what you created and looks thru all of the existing lines in the Family Tree and came up with a possible related line already in existence.
Just like records may or may not be properly associated with an individual, same thing goes for family lines being associated to your family. You have to make a judgement, hopefully after reaching out to the contributors of the 'other' family line, as to how to proceed.
Collaboration can really accelerate your research by leveraging off of other contributors' knowledge [hopefully backed by Sources]
Nothing nefarious going on with what you've experienced.2 -
Not sure what you mean by 'official'? While obviously much of the work done on the global collaborative Tree is done by relatives of the relevant profiles/relationships, anyone can edit any deceased person's information on the Tree. It is always advisable to Follow profiles of interest to you, for this reason.
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@John73300 One point that a lot of users have trouble with when they first come to Family Tree, is realizing that aside from the relatively small number of living people we might add, we are not working in any kind of private or personal tree. Family Tree is a one-world, wiki-style, universal, open edit tree in which all users have equal editing rights to all profiles in the tree. We are not working on "our" trees. We are voluntarily working on FamilySearch's tree of the entire human family in which there is to be one and only one profile for every person who has lived who can be documeted.
Since there is to be only one profile for your mother, all of your 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc, cousins of any remove should only work on that one profile that you have been working on. It doesn't matter who originally created it and if there are duplicates they need to all be merged.
Living people's privacy is protected so you will never see any profiles for living people in Family Tree. That is why you can't see a profile for that other user.
Deceased people have no privacy so any and all information about them can be added to the tree.
There are two great advantages to this open edit tree we are working on together.
The first is that when we find incorrect information on a profile we are interested in, as you are with your relatives, then we can correct it no matter who originally entered it. We are expected to defend our corrections with sources and reason statements.
The second is that if you have a bit of a sticky genealogical question, say trying to work out the correct families and relationship for four different Mary Smiths who were born the same year in the same small town who all had fathers named John Smith and mothers named Jane Jones, it can be very helpful to create profiles for all four Marys, that is the one you are related to and the three you are not related to, so that you can carefully work out their proper husbands and children and get the correct sources on the correct people. Then when the relatives of those other Marys start working in Family Tree, they don't have to repeat your careful research and won't accidentally get confused and turn your Mary into their Mary.
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@Gordon Collett stated: "Living people's privacy is protected so you will never see any profiles for living people in Family Tree. That is why you can't see a profile for that other user."
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To be more specific, you will never see profiles marked as "living" except for the ones that you create. However, unfortunately, all too often, I do see "deceased" profiles for people who are very much alive.
Some were from obituaries or other sources. But, the vast majority were created from the 1950 U.S. census and usually done by those with "builder", "project", or "helper" in their user names.
In the latter case, those new profiles were children in 1950 and are now age 75+. I've seen some users cite "would be over 90" or "over 100". All of them oblivious of the logical FS guideline that if there is not proof of a person's death, then profiles should not be added until 110 years after their birth.
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As I said, one of the advantage of the open edit structure of Family Tree is that any user can correct errors. Someone being marked as deceased when they are actually alive is clearly an error that should be immediately corrected. Any user can click edit next to the death information, change the person to living, and add the documentation as to why this is known to be the case so that an administrator can review that and get the profile changed to living.
This is the only type of change, by the way, that needs administrative review. All other corrections take immediate effect and and not reviewed by anyone.
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