Errors in Family Tree
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Celia Summers said: I find numerous errors in Family Tree. Here are some restrictions and some warnings that might help:
1. Before someone adds to, changes, or merges an existing line in Family Tree they should first agree to have their email address included (or have a mail system like Ancestry.com where you can send a message without it showing their email address) and agree to let people contact them and agree they will respond and try to work it out.
I have found that the people that leave an email address and respond are good researchers and it is a beneficial thing for both parties. The ones who make current changes and don't leave an email address or aren't willing to write back appear to be the ones that make the mistakes (and sometimes put the mistakes back in once they are corrected).
2. There should be some kind of warning screen that pops up and asks if they are sure the information is correct.
a. Explain that online trees (in pay sites or free sites) are highly inaccurate and should not be trusted or used as a source unless double checked with primary sources, etc. [It seems once it is put in an online tree it automatically becomes fact and trying to convince people otherwise is very hard. Hence the internet which has done wonders for genealogy is also a plague to genealogy.]
b. Family stories, traditions, and histories can also be inaccurate and misleading until proven correct. The stories people have heard since childhood they believe and even primary sources don't always convince them (they seem to become a part of you). Genealogies in books can also have mistakes.
c. There should be a separate place for those researching a line to include their email so people will contact them first before changing something. That way they could discuss it. Likewise there should be a place for those new to a line to put their email, so those more familiar with the line can contact them.
3. New genealogist that don't have any genealogy already in Family Tree should be encouraged to add new lines. New lines would be helpful.
The problem is with the lines that are already in the tree. People see what looks like the same families (especially with Scandinavian names) and connect them even though one might be in Norway and one in Denmark. A warning should pop up not to merge them unless you know they are the same. Not just because they have the same name or names, ages, and even birthday. Further research is needed first.
4. Syncing programs can cause problems to existing trees.
1. Before someone adds to, changes, or merges an existing line in Family Tree they should first agree to have their email address included (or have a mail system like Ancestry.com where you can send a message without it showing their email address) and agree to let people contact them and agree they will respond and try to work it out.
I have found that the people that leave an email address and respond are good researchers and it is a beneficial thing for both parties. The ones who make current changes and don't leave an email address or aren't willing to write back appear to be the ones that make the mistakes (and sometimes put the mistakes back in once they are corrected).
2. There should be some kind of warning screen that pops up and asks if they are sure the information is correct.
a. Explain that online trees (in pay sites or free sites) are highly inaccurate and should not be trusted or used as a source unless double checked with primary sources, etc. [It seems once it is put in an online tree it automatically becomes fact and trying to convince people otherwise is very hard. Hence the internet which has done wonders for genealogy is also a plague to genealogy.]
b. Family stories, traditions, and histories can also be inaccurate and misleading until proven correct. The stories people have heard since childhood they believe and even primary sources don't always convince them (they seem to become a part of you). Genealogies in books can also have mistakes.
c. There should be a separate place for those researching a line to include their email so people will contact them first before changing something. That way they could discuss it. Likewise there should be a place for those new to a line to put their email, so those more familiar with the line can contact them.
3. New genealogist that don't have any genealogy already in Family Tree should be encouraged to add new lines. New lines would be helpful.
The problem is with the lines that are already in the tree. People see what looks like the same families (especially with Scandinavian names) and connect them even though one might be in Norway and one in Denmark. A warning should pop up not to merge them unless you know they are the same. Not just because they have the same name or names, ages, and even birthday. Further research is needed first.
4. Syncing programs can cause problems to existing trees.
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Comments
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Thomas Robinson said: I totally agree. I have seen the same glaring errors in my tree go unchanged for many years. The person who submitted the sometimes even ridiculous info is deceased.
Also, I tried to delete a person from my tree......and wow, error message.
It's unfortunate that scores of budding researchers are being led down rabbit holes.1 -
gasmodels said: do not make corrections by deleting records. If they do no belong unlink the relationship. It is easiest to do this in the family member section of the person page by click on the appropriate pencil either on a spousal relationship or after a childs name.
Remember these are not personal trees. There should only be one record for each person. Just because you believe it does not belong in your tree does not mean the record does not belong somewhere. So if you unlink you do not destroy the record.0 -
Gordon Collett said:
I have seen the same glaring errors in my tree go unchanged for many years. The person who submitted the sometimes even ridiculous info is deceased.
Don't forget that Family Tree combines in one big file every bit of genealogical information, LDS membership record information, and temple ordinance information compiled by the LDS Church since 1830. Of course there are going to be errors in that 186 years of information. And as you mention, a lot of the original contributors are deceased.
My great-great-grandmother did genealogy by writing to her relatives in Sweden. She did the best she could with the resources she had. All the information she compiled and submitted is in Family Tree. If there are errors in it, she will not be correcting them since she died in 1928. It has indeed been many years since she corrected anything.
In fact we did not even gain the ability to correct those old errors until Family Tree opened in 2012. But that is the responsibility we have now since we have the resources and tools to correct all this 186 years worth of data.0 -
Thomas Robinson said: Perhaps I am not yet familiar with the process. I merely want to disassociate a person from my tree, not delete records.0
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Thomas Robinson said: Perhaps I have not searched enough, but I have not yet found a way to correct ANY error that I have found. I would certainly appreciate guidance on how to correct an association that is absolutely wrong.
For example, the alleged father of my earliest proven paternal ancestor Jacob Robinson, is stated to be Col. Charles Robertson in the LDS tree. After my over forty years of research on Jacob, the only tangible "evidence" of this connection is the statement in an article in Virginia Magazine, "........is probably the son of ....." The author of the article makes a giant leap, apparently to tie up a loose end. Every succeeding "researcher" has taken the connection as fact, even though there exists a very substantial body of data which refutes the allegation.
In my mind the preservation of demonstrably incorrect information just does not make sense.1 -
Thomas Robinson said: Much ado about nothing on my part. I am no longer getting the error messages.0
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Gordon Collett said: I can't find that combination of names in Family Tree. What is Jacob's ID number?0
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Gordon Collett said: Good! A lot of people have been reporting error messages with merging and adding sources and for a while everything seemed to be down. That usually means server problems. Guess everything is fixed. It is a pretty good idea, when something does't that that seems like it should or one is getting unexpected error messages, to just try again tomorrow.0
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Tom Huber said: Trying to stop people from making changes is difficult, if not impossible. Not everyone uses FamilySearch Family Tree "live" -- that is, on the site itself. Many people do use a partner program for their research and use that partner program's synchronization capabilities to add people, information, or make changes to peoples' records.
Any messages are not passed back to those programs unless it becomes a policy point, such as the permission from close relatives if a person was born in the past 110 years.
Yes, one has the option to enter a reason why they are changing the record, but in many cases, it is something that is simply blown off.
As to what to do with these problem people in Family Tree -- Jim Greene told us that the idea of an open-edit tree was developed from the Wikipedia model where the information needed to be sourced. He said that the conclusions that was most heavily sourced would be those which were eventually accepted.
I have found that to be generally true. with at least one end-of-line ancestor. It helped, of course, that I put the reasons why the end-of-line ancestor was not a New England ancestor and that he did not fight in the American Revolution. It helped that the D.A.R. and S.A.R. cleaned up their records and removed him from their indexes.
Most recently I have started to work on cleaning up a mess of another end-of-line dutch ancestor. Fortunately, there is a very dedicated family organization as well as a well-documented article about this ancestor in Wikipedia. Both of them strongly state that there is no documentation to provide us with this immigrant ancestor's parentage or birth place. The Wikipedia article goes so far as to state that a genealogist produced a fraudulent pedigree that claimed this ancestor was related to Scandinavian royalty. Many people took the falsified pedigree as factual and because virtually everyone now living in North America produced many many LDS genealogy records incorrectly linked the end-of-line ancestor to the falsified pedigree.
I placed two manually-produced sources, one pointing the the family organization site, and the other pointing to the Wikipedia site. I then removed the end-of-line ancestor from the parents that were part of this falsified pedigree and used to two sources to provide evidence that my conclusions were valid. I also opened up correspondence with others active in cleaning up the record and thanked them for their efforts and also pointed them to the two sources. They responded, agreeing with my conclusions.
There is still a lot of work to be done to clean up the record, but by putting two major sources into the record and referencing those, I have not seen any attempts to add the falsified information back into the record.
Another case exists, wherein a widely circulated family history of Mennonites who went from Lancaster Pennsylvania to Ontario is known to contain numerous errors. I haven't even started looking at how I'm going to clean up that mess, mostly because I am unsure of any reliable records from the Canadian Province. Eventually, I, or someone else, will start working with those families and be able to source an article about the erroneous family history and that should go a long way in helping clean up those records.
Regardless, keep up the work, but make sure that you have solid verifiable documentation to back your conclusions. The better the documentation, the more likely the conclusions will "stick."
I use the watch feature only on those families where keeping track of any changes is crucial and involves end-of-line families or persons with known issues within the LDS records.0 -
Celia Summers said: After getting over the frustrated part. I finally resolved on a solution for me. I keep a Ancestry.com tree on my father's side and work on my cousins's Ancestry.com tree on my mother's side. I use them for research, and for adding documentation, and links too. Then I just add the tree links to FamilySearch.
I also use the FamilySearch search suggestions or links, add outside links, and cut and paste my typed notes/sources for documentation. I need to work more on adding copies of documents.0 -
Tom Huber said: Years ago, I started with an ancestry tree and did all my basic research in that tree. I also use ancestry to develop a tree if I am helping someone else, simply because I can work from no records and do not have to worry about some pre-existing "condition" (family tree) that may contain many errors and bad information.
This allows me to construct a pedigree and details from actual records, which I attach to the tree. From there, I work with a personal genealogy program that can synchronize with FamilySearch FamilyTree, and capture images of all documents and photographs and put captions with each one.
By using a genealogy program, I am able to:
1) do extensive and complex sorting
2) do extensive and complex searching
3) produce reports of temple activity (updates)
4) maintain dated backups, which provide me with earlier dates for temple ordinances (there is no ordinance change log in FamilySearch FamilyTree
5) produce and review the genealogical record without ordinance data
6) produce a indexed "book" with all the details, including images of all the descendants of any given ancestor. It contains fully cited sources, as well as original images contained in or attached to those sources. It does not contain any LDS-related information, other than those sources that I have drawn from FamilySearch and using it to search records and capture images that are not available elsewhere. In addition, I can include images of actual newspaper announcement, obituaries, etc., as well as vital record certificates that are not otherwise available.
7) Search for and eliminate (either through merging or deletion) duplicates and delete all but ancestor-related persons in the tree. In other words, I can clean up the local database, so that I have a maintained and backed up database.
Finally, after everything has been "proven", complete with source citations, I can attack the FamlySearch FamilyTree record, adding to, correcting problems, and providing sources. I can use Memories to attach photos that I have in my local records.
But basically, it is the same process as Celia Summers uses and it works for me. I have two backed up online copies (one in ancestry and one in FamilySearch, and a local backed up tree offline. Backups are made on a regular basis to two external hard drives, as well as my laptop.0 -
S. said: good luck at fixing them, I had some of errors too, and I hate them.0
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Thomas Robinson said: Thanks for the advice. I do research in cycles to prevent brain fog and wait for new data to appear. I am extremely happy to discover that I can now correct bad data. As soon as I have explored all the new features I will gradually work on my tree. I will NOT speculate on connections.0
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Thomas Robinson said: It is refreshing to receive polite direction!0
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Thomas Robinson said: I spent many years utilizing RCA (root cause analysis) techniques to study accidents in the nuclear industry. My experience there gave me much insight into how people process data. So, I guess I have some idea on how people "jump to conclusions". There are striking parallels to the Three Mile Island nuclear accident to be found in how people blindly accept data as factual. Usually, the same people either resent correction, or will hope the person offering correction just goes away.
At least now there is a way to offer backup evidence to prove your point.0 -
Thomas Robinson said: I use my ancestry tree for research. I have a disclaimer stating it to be a work in progress.
I finally gave up on offering corrections to people who share parts of my tree. If one points out a glaring error, such as....hey, your child was born 20 years before the mother......and your message is ignored.
Once a woman told me that I was mistaken about my great grandmother's name.....even after I told her that I lived in the same house with her.0 -
I keep getting 'new information' added to my Family tree that is INCORRECT. Someone is associating/incorporating their family into mine. It is not accurate! I did much of my research many years ago, by actually going through old Catholic Church records in Quebec and Northern NYS and VT. Trying to contact and correct these errors is just far too time-consuming for an elderly person like me. I think it is a travesty that people are allowed to add incorrect information to a family without documentation. That is why I do not trust/use Family Search!
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The FSFT operates on an open-edit basis. There are advantages and disadvantages to this way of working, and it's not for everyone. However it's here to stay. There are plenty of websites and software packages that allow you to build a private family tree that no-one else can edit.
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I to have MANY MANY MANY errors in my partial tree that I submitted to Family Search. It makes me just want to puke every time I look at it with the HUGE amount of errors with no proof that people take NO TIME to really Research and just add what they feel like and the many people added to the tree that I have no relation to whatsoever. I submitted a partial tree with me, my parents, their parents and my Grandparents to facilitate my search and that was a HUGE mistake. A woman affiliated with Latter Day Saints Church removed my GGrandmother and added my GGrandfathers DAUGHTER as the wife. I changed it and sent her a message and she changed it back. GRRR She also had one of my Ancestors dating back to the 1800 married to someone and numerous kids t born all the way 1840 and he died at the age of 16 in 1820. The worst part is MANY have copied from that and it is now on Ancestry.com as well. Family Search needs to do better in making it that people HAVE to post a record of proof and their email address and full name not a user name and when a change is made an email is sent out. If I could delete the tree from FS I would do it in a second of a heart beat.
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Unfortunately, a full name and email and phone number and mailing address does not guarantee the person (a) won't be rude or (b) is who they say they are. Facebook is proof of that.
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The worst part is MANY have copied from that and it is now on Ancestry.com as well.
That is a downside and an upside. Good trees I have made here are on Ancestry now, and people keep loading them from there onto FS in the Genealogies section, all broken into little pieces. I am so grateful for Family Tree!
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I agree with 2c!😊😊😊😊
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I totally agree!😊😊😊😊
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I think a very good solution is to create a point system where users of the site that have been correctly and accurately indexing, sourcing, researching, and contributing to the site for years, get a type of priority over new and incoming first-time users who are the ones that often create all the errors. An over excited first-time user can cause a lot of chaos in the site and I myself almost did so myself when I first started. Thankfully I had the maturity to say to myself maybe I need to research a little more before assuming someone is correct or incorrect.
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