Wrong records & duplicate records being added to profile - How to fix this?
Hi everyone,
I appreciate the help people offer, and contributions made. However, I have had to clean out a lot of incorrect attachments (records); duplicate records attached; incorrect people added as parents and or children etc.
Profile: G2RB-W9M
I have spent so much time today double checking all of the information people have added - it has taken ages & I'm still going!
How can we make sure that people do not attach duplicate records; do not connect incorrect family members etc? In some cases there are obvious spelling issues that indicate the parents cannot be related to the person!
I'd very much appreciate if anyone can tell me how to avoid these issues so that I can keep my family records accurate & up to date.
Thank you,
Gail
Answers
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In short, there is nothing you can really do to stop careless Family Tree users adding totally incorrect relationships to the relatives you find in the tree. You have done the right thing (against the profile you reference above) to add an "Alert" note, designed to draw attention to the fact others have confused your relatives with unconnected individuals and that careful examination of the evidence is required in order that added relationships are correct. However, (in spite of doing this myself) I still experience these problems on numerous occasions throughout the year, whereby it can take me two or three days to make the necessary revisions that reflect the accurate information against just one individual.
On the points you raise, I would add some advice, however:
Firstly, because a surname spelling does not match it does not necessarily mean it does not relate to a person in your family. For example, I know of at least two examples where relatives spelled their names differently: a father and son who spelled their surname as BEASLEY and BEAZLEY, respectively, and two brothers, one of whom spelled their name as FINLAY and the other as FINDLAY. Never rule out a relationship / connection due to a different spelling, especially in records of, say, a couple of hundred of years ago, when names were recorded by an official as they heard them from someone who might well have been illiterate.
Secondly, there are lots of FamilySearch records ("sources") that one might consider to be "duplicates", but which on close examination have a different URL and have possibly been extracted from a totally different source (for example, in England, from the parish register, or from the Bishop's Transcript copy). In spite of the resulting "duplication", these all should be added to the individuals to whom they relate, otherwise another user could add any unattached sources to the wrong individual (of similar identity).
If you are not already doing so, make sure you "Follow" all those individuals (profiles) that are of interest to you: to ensure any changes made by other users are easily picked up. Certainly, carry on adding notes (particularly in the Collaboration section), reason statements and sources, to the profiles in which you have an interest, which should help reduce the number of errors make by others.
But you will never be able to eliminate the regular, unwanted use of your valuable time in correcting the mistakes made by other users - particularly in respect of incorrect merges. Unmerging / restoring these "deleted" profiles - when found to relate to completely different individuals - can be very time-consuming (as you may have found), because you have to ensure all sources are removed from the individual to whom they do not apply and remove any items under the "Other Information" section that do not relate to them.
Working in Family Tree can be quite testing at times, so be sure to have your records backed up in your personal software package, in order to restore your relatives' profiles to their accurate state after another user might have caused (sometimes quite considerable) damage to your carefully researched inputs.
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@GailHickey you may like to contact the relevant user by clicking on their name in the Change Log and using the Chat button. They are not obliged to respond, but this is a key mechanism for Family Tree collaboration efforts.
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@GailHickey You have been given some great answers above!
I’d also add that along with collaborating, taking a moment to fill in all the reason statements with clear explanations about the changes you’re making can really help others understand your thought process. When people can see why you made certain updates, they’re much less likely to unintentionally undo all the great research you’ve put in.
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Yes, thank you for the responses - I'm quite experienced with information research & also aware of changes in spelling due to immigration which causes changes to pronunciation.
As mentioned - I have added notes, alerts; recorded changes made & reasons why etc etc…however not many read this information.
I am now collating all info to my offline records, & will occasionally check in to check accuracy.
Thanks all, Gail
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