Extensive changes from non-relatives
Comments
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I know it is your policy to let other non-related individuals change my family trees and your view point is that it can be changed back BUT something should be done so extensive damage by non-relatives to my trees should be eliminated. I have been helped by SUGGESTIONS from time to time but when a person who is not related to me completely changes a great deal of my entries and I have to take hrs. and hrs to repair this this is not right. I have been a member for quite some time without incident. Some control should be implemented so extensive changes from non-relatives or people who think they know what they are doing but don't should be made to your site. PLEASE PLEASE CHANGE THIS
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It is frustrating when people make changes that they think are correct, but turn out not to be. Mistakes can be made by both family members and non-family members. I've seen lots of work done by family members that…well, let's just say it takes hours and hours to fix. Being related doesn't make someone a better researcher.
Some people are accurate and diligent researchers, some are not. But virtually all of them have the best intentions.
I don't think there's any particular reason to limit work on our shared tree to people that can prove they're related to the person in a profile. I sometimes help out other people with their research challenges and the easiest place for me to do that (and for them to see what I discover) is on FS. Or maybe I'm doing research to try to figure out if I am related and to try to find the next link.
I keep "my tree" on my computer in my local software program. I control what's there and no one else can come along and mess it up. A shared tree like FS really has a different purpose in my research process than my main tree that's just mine.
I do agree with you that I wish there were better ways to prevent or correct extensive damage done by researchers who may be less skilled and unintentionally make a big mess. I especially wish it were possible to unmerge people or completely revert profiles and relationships to an earlier stage.
In the meantime, I try to make a pass through my "Following" list pretty often to catch things before they get really bad.
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@Regan8 said "… I don't think there's any particular reason to limit work on our shared tree to people that can prove they're related to the person in a profile. …"
Totally agree. In fact, when I'm "unmerging" my relative from someone else with the same name, it's a valuable strategy, I believe, for me to not only update my own relative but also update the non-relative with enough data to make it clear that, really, truly, honestly, my John Doe isn't the same person as this other John Doe.
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