please stop allowing changes to existing records without documentation

LegacyUser

Suzanne M Ballard said: I know I'm beating my head against a wall, again, but could you please consider somehow requiring ALL changes to an existing record to be accompanied by proper documentation or sources?? Today I got notification of one guy making FORTY changes to my direct line. His only source on one change was something like "making this match my GEDCOM". That's not a source and I have no idea what sources he may have for his original GEDCOM. But, he made all kinds of mistakes including adding a wife I've already proven is incorrect (it was right in the life styles section so people would quit doing this!) and adding an entirely new wife and family to an ancestor that would have meant that the guy was either a polygamist or a magician (living on 2 different continents at the same time!) It took me 2 hours to erase what he did and leaving a note to him asking him to provide sources so we could discuss his changes. A week ago I discovered a change from a more distant ancestor that I don't have a "watch" on - changed her name from Annie to Napoleon! Huh? I'm nearly 69 years old. Who is going to make these corrections when I die? It is entirely unfair for FamilySearch to allow willy-nilly changes to existing lines WITHOUT proper documentation or sourcing. It's unfair to those of us who take so much time to properly document our work. My line is a virgin line - I'm the ONLY member in my family - 15,000+ well documented names. It doesn't matter if these are people who are beginners, novices, etc - as I've so often been told by FamilySearch. NOBODY should be able to change ANY existing line WITHOUT documentation. PERIOD. If they want to put in a completely different line, then so be it. Just don't mess with the lines of people who love family history and do correct research. Please consider my PLEA. Thank you. Suzanne Ballard

LegacyUser

Juli said: Philosophical questions or approaches aside, there's a logistical, chicken-and-egg problem: if there's no conclusion, there's nothing to attach a source citation *to*, so you have to allow entering the conclusion first. Also, how would the computer determine whether a conclusion was documented or not? If someone attached a "source" that essentially said "GEDCOM", would that count? What about "Nagyanyámtól hallottam" and a (broken) URL?

LegacyUser

Don M Thomas said: Just another patron like yourself.

Reason for the FamilySearch “Family Tree” is to obtain names for Temple work. In order for us all to work in the FamilySearch “Family Tree” in obtaining and preparing those names, it must be an open edit database. However this open edit database, or tool, called the FamilySearch “Family Tree” is not a perfect tool and solves all our problems. The saving of our historical accuracy is one of the problems that the open edit tool called the FamilySearch “Family Tree” does not do, and this has yet to be addressed by FamilySearch and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Example, this, (your) Feedback. Hopefully in the future some smart person or group will come up with a way of having an open edit database, or tool, that will also allow us to totally save our historical accuracy. For now, it is obtaining and preparing names for Temple work, and trying to keep our ancestors showing their correct historical accuracy in an open edit database. (My Opinion).

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: One of the ways to help prevent changes is to communicate with those who are making the changes. I find it helps to send them a kindly-written message that includes at least some of the following. The most important parts are the first and last element:

-- Thanks for their interest in making the person's record as accurate as possible.
-- The person or family involved and my relationship.
-- My thoughts and sources with respect to the changes they made.
-- The corrections I made to their incorrect changes and why I did it.
-- Request that before they make changes that they study the record, including the sources that are attached, any notes and stories that may be included in memories.
-- Remind them (if they have not provided a source or a reason) that sources are crucial to establishing conclusions and facts, and that a person's reasoning is needed to let others know what research and thinking was done to reach those conclusions.
-- What I did to correct what I perceived to be incorrect material.
-- Thank them in closing for their interest in making the record as complete as possible.

Not every person will respond favorably because many (who believe they are related to the person) believe that their records are correct.

LegacyUser

Paul said: Tom

That might work, but only with regard to the individual concerned. There are thousands of them out there making reckless changes, such as Suzanne describes. I only pick up on many of them by "luck", as I can't have all the individuals on my watch list.

In the case where a user continues to make damaging changes, even after being advised of their errors, there just has to be some system of sanctions. And take Suzanne's example of the "Napoleon" change. Just like the Mickey Mouse / Donald Duck contributors and those who have Richard Nixon married to Shirley Temple, these users need to be sanctioned / kicked-off Family Tree, otherwise others will think, "Oh, what fun - look what I can do to mess up this program!"

Like it or not, there are some malicious and/or mentally unstable users taking part in the Family Tree project and no kindly advice is going to solve that issue.

LegacyUser

Paul said: Suzanne

As you can see from my comments to Tom, I am very much with you on the need to have some sort of means of dealing with a problem so many of us experience.

However, I'm afraid your argument over documentation / sources is a little too simplistic. I have been dealing with two cases of very close identity over the last few days where I could have easily added perfectly reasonable looking "matching" sources to the wrong individual. One involved two persons of the same first / last name, born in the same town within a few years of each other, both marrying widows called MARY, in the same town - and same year. (Oh, and both their fathers had the same name, too!)

Another again involved two individuals of the same (reasonably unusual) name who were christened on the same day in parishes just a few miles apart. So while attaching sources is the proper thing to do, this does not necessarily mean they apply to the correct person, of course.

It is possible in many cases that a user has intimate knowledge of a person, but just cannot find the sources to back-up their inputs, whereas another has added totally "convincing" sources and reason statements, yet they still do not relate to that ID. I would never underestimate the danger in believing a well-sourced individual necessarily makes their record any more reliable.

However, these comments are not meant to in any way detract from the troublesome issue raised - both by you and many other users, in a number of posts to this forum.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: That is all true, Paul. We can only do that which is within our scope and power to do.

LegacyUser

Suzanne M Ballard said: That's why we keep bringing it up. Please go to someone who can give you power and scope to fix this! I will die in the not so distant future and suggestions like asking them kindly are completely useless. There are malicious people making changes & if they aren't kicked off, then FamilySearch becomes a mess and of no help to anyone. Once I am gone, my 20+ years of work to make my virgin line accurate will be for naught.

LegacyUser

Don M Thomas said: Just another patron like yourself.

Reason for the FamilySearch “Family Tree” is to obtain names for Temple work. In order for us all to work in the FamilySearch “Family Tree” in obtaining and preparing those names, it must be an open edit database. However this open edit database, or tool, called the FamilySearch “Family Tree” is not a perfect tool and solves all our problems. The saving of our historical accuracy is one of the problems that the open edit tool called the FamilySearch “Family Tree” does not do, and this has yet to be addressed by FamilySearch and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Example, this, (your) Feedback. Hopefully in the future some smart person or group will come up with a way of having an open edit database, or tool, that will also allow us to totally save our historical accuracy. For now it is obtaining and preparing names for Temple work, and trying to keep our ancestors historical accuracy correct in an open edit database.

Please some smart person or group, step forward in saving our historical accuracy in an open edit database, because our historical accuracy is being changed or lost daily.

LegacyUser

Suzanne M Ballard said: Let me give another example of malicious mischief, which i previously reported. My great great grandfather was married 3 times. His last wife was a widow with children. They had no children between them. She stepped in to help raise his kids from the prior 2 marriages. She is buried in Drayton Ontario with him and the first wife. It is all clearly on the headstone, including her maiden name and both married names. I've visited the area, taken photos, and gotten local documentation. I posted a photo of the headstone as her photo. Then a malicious attack happened on that line. Suddenly without documentation her name was changed from Susan James to something like Matilda George. Now she was born in Louisiana, first hubby's name was changed, children's birthdates were changed from mid 1800s to 1600s & 1700s. Her marriage to grandpa was changed to before both of them were born, and she even died in CA before she was born or CA existed! I dont believe that person was sanctioned or kicked off! My message to the perp amounted to nothing. My complaint to FS amounted to nothing. It took me forever to fix the errors made. So WHY can't FS, which can put up error messages (ie: this child was born before the mom was born!), not immediately give those same error messages at the time of change and prevent the change happening by simply NOT ALLOWING obvious errors from being added without documentation? That would stop the majority of the malicious people! You don't allow obscene photos from being posted, why do you allow insane changes to be posted?

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Regardless of what we think is malicious activity, it may not be. What may have happened is that someone saw a "possible duplicate" and failed to properly consider what the change would do to the original record.

It has been only recently that FS has instituted some safeguards against accidental actions, but in fact, people still ignore what is plainly a difference between the two people. Merging today is now a three-step process, and it has slowed some actions.

But when a record is entirely replaced by another, as appeared to happen in Suzanne's case, then something is amiss.

I, for one, would like to examine the change log to see what exactly did happen. For that, I only need the ID of the person.

By the way, documentation will not resolve the issue that Suzanne experienced.. Not in the case of merges, where there are two records. That's why I need to see the change log to discover what, exactly, happened. Bad hints do involve sources, so that is something else that sources will not help.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: By the way, I have seen nothing from any Family Search person, that indicates in any way that they will consider abandoning the open-edit tree. In the case of malicious changes, a one-time change isn't enough to convince anyone that the change was malicious, not without multiple attempts to rectify the problem with communication.

Today's FamilySearch provides us with the means to retain the messages we have with another user, and as such, there is ample evidence when a person acts in a malicious manner.

Yes, there are users out there who operate in nefarious ways and yes, they need to be controlled. I do not expose my email address for that reason, but conduct all of my user-to-user communication through the FamilySearch message system.

LegacyUser

Suzanne M Ballard said: Tom--Would you like me to give you the info including the offending patron's name - or JUST the ID # of the ancestors affected? Now I see that the same offending patron did both Napoleon as well as "Malinda Brumfield" of Louisiana as the change of name from the correct name of Susan Jacob James Johnston. I see another offending patron added children to Susan who were born 2 years after Susan was born herself with a last name of Penny--um, not James or Johnston? There are no merges involved. One "reason" given was (" "). That's not a reason or source.

ID # for one person LZ83-7HL. ID# for another person L2RW-D93.

As for the change to various dates before the parents were even born - or dying in CA before CA was around - I thought it was the same line but I'm not seeing it right now. I'm going to go back through my report log and see if I can find it.

Thanks. Suzanne

LegacyUser

Suzanne M Ballard said: BTW, I don't think any of these were "merges" - they are just editing within the record.

LegacyUser

Suzanne M Ballard said: A note I turned into FS about the 2nd ID # above:
I guess because I’ve had to deal with SO many people doing this, I tend to assume that this is malicious. How else can you look at someone changing the name from Susan Jacob of Ontario to a completely different name in Louisiana and born 50+ years before the husband? I personally believe FamilySearch could easily resolve this issue by REFUSING to allow changes WITHOUT a proper source or documentation. How hard could that be? I mean, I can’t put ANY obscene photo on FS without someone looking at it before it is rejected or approved. Why can’t the same thing happen for major changes?? (like name/ birthdate/ marriage, etc.) If you look over my help cases for the past dozen years or so, you can see that I’ve addressed this over and over. It happens all the time. I’m 68 years old (nearly) and when I’m gone I want to assume that my work will be error free. I’ve added photos and documents to prove nearly everything I’ve entered. For someone to completely NOT look at the photo (which clearly shows Susan Jacob’s gravestone), to NOT look at any source I attached (census records, etc), and STILL change her name to a completely different name in a different country (!) is just astonishing. That to me is not “beginners” (especially when it was 5 separate people!) but that looks to me like “I’m anti-Mormon and I want to cause havoc on FS because I can!”

Thanks for hearing another rant. I see that there really is no way to convince anyone there that it is foolishness to keep allowing changes without proper sources/proofs.

Suzanne Ballard

LegacyUser

Suzanne M Ballard said: A different one: ID#2C1S-RVD
WHY did you add Jane Hutchinson to my John Martin (1719-1804)??? No sources, no documents. Did you even read all my documentation that shows that he only married Mary Boyd and NEVER came to the USA??? Please don't mess up other people's work!!!! Thank you.

LegacyUser

A van Helsdingen said: I have always thought it odd that FS is more concerned about stopping uploads of images that include kissing or have people wearing religious clothing (even Latter Day Saint attire) or swimsuits, rather than stopping vandalism and destructive edits to the Family Tree.

LegacyUser

Suzanne M Ballard said: a different one - marriage added that was 100 years off! ID#LL7D-RKD.
That ought to get you started, Tom. Thanks. Suzanne

LegacyUser

Suzanne M Ballard said: agreed.

LegacyUser

Suzanne M Ballard said: This one is an incorrect merge: Someone removed John Boyd, #99QR-WQD, from his parents, Samuel Boyd & Jane Murdoch, of IRELAND and placed him instead with William Boyd and Grizel Campbell of SCOTLAND and married him to Mary Urie of PENNSYLVANIA. Ugh.

LegacyUser

A van Helsdingen said: I know that FamilySearch's competitor WikiTree have volunteers on a roster continually monitoring the system for possible signs of vandalism (e.g. very large number of edits by a new user).

Of course, FSFT is much bigger than WikiTree (something like 1.3 billion to 24 million), but some automation could be used to make the job easier. If for example a new user makes 100+ edits on the first day of having a FS account, a brief glance at their edits to see if there are any obvious mistakes could stop a lot of damage. Or if a place is changed to something several hundred kilometers away (which can be automatically measured if the locations are standardized), this should be looked at by someone.

LegacyUser

Robert Wren said: I do find it quite amazing that the formative White Paper introducing this current form of the FamilySearch Tree had discussed most of these topics (and was then, regrettably filed somewhere and effectively ignored.

I often refer to it in this forum; here from a post a few YEARS ago:

https://getsatisfaction.com/familysea...

"PART II: SOURCES
IMO, FamilySearch may need a bit of a paradigm shift in its 'promotions.'
Rather than focusing on how EASY family research has become, (and, yes, it has) an increase in accentuation of another GOAL of FamilySearch should be undertaken, emphasizing SOURCES

SEE the 2011 White Paper (It's well worth reading!) : http://broadcast.lds.org/eLearning/fh...

"LACK OF MEANINGFUL SOURCES
Meaningful sources and citations provide many benefits. They can:
• Prove or disprove the accuracy of the information in a family tree.
• Reduce or eliminate duplicate research required to validate others’ work.
• Reduce conflict in collaborative research efforts.
Data in new.familysearch.org lacks meaningful sources and citations for many reasons:
• Legacy systems such as Ancestral File and the International Genealogical Index did not preserve a contributor’s sources.
• Some contributors did not track sources or contribute them with their data.
• Although you can add sources into new.familysearch.org, the feature, as it currently exists, is deficient and gets little use."

Perhaps a 'return and report,' or lookback analysis, of that White Paper's goals might be helpful to see how FSTree is doing in comparison with the goals set.

"Other collaborative websites find this same behavior pattern. Most people change something only when they really do have better information. Experts monitor their subject area and quickly correct errors, unintentional and otherwise."

What percentage of the PID's have no sources or simply "GED," Legacy NFS, my aunt, etc.? Is there more collaboration? How can that be determined? Numbers of internal Emails among users?

Are there ways FS can encourage SOURCING and Worthy Records, rather than making quick actions?

Recommended TASKS sounds a little like a directive, perhaps "Suggestions" might be better. Research HINTS help, but the same might be said for "Review and ATTACH," the "directive" has gotten better I think.

It's all semantics, but terminology that encourages more thoughtful consideration and further research is always better than "Do This."

The latest Email I received about 'my ANCESTOR's occupation, led to a page showing "What Else Can You Learn from a Census Record? Census records are rich collections of information that shed light on the lives of your ancestors. These records can include the following:"

GREAT promotion for encouraging folks to actually READ the SOURCE (not just the excerpt, transcript or index). However, it would be far better to place it in more prominent place to emphasize its importance. (Far more important than detailing that most of those listed were farmers and laborers.)

(THE MORE IT CHANGES, THE MORE IT STAYS THE SAME) why!!!

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: I am just another user. We do what we can to help each other.

With LZ83-7HL, Annie James, a merge took place last year (May 2019) in which Annie's parents were adversely impacted.

That is close enough to message the person and let them know that you have restored the original parents by restoring the original record.

In that case, I believe the changes were innocent.

But...

With respect to L2RW-D93, Susan Jacob, who married William James, and then remarried after Williams' death, the change log has a problem. There is no person listed for changes that were made from February 22, 2019 through May 11, 2019.

That's a problem with the change log. Either someone created an account to make those changes and then deleted it (or had it deleted), or something else is going on.

FamilySearch definitely needs to look at what happened and yeah, on the surface, this looks like someone maliciously made a mess of the record.

FamilySearch should have the information on the person and block the person from creating an account in the person.

I'm going to suggest that you put in an "before" marriage date for Susan and William, based upon the birth of their first child. That will order Susan's marriages in the correct order.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: I have opened a separate discussion thread to bring this to the attention of FamilySearch.

Even though every discussion thread is read by one or more FamilySearch representatives, things of this nature can slip through the cracks, which is why I opened a new thread for this specific issue.

If you have any more instances with other persons doting the same thing, please post them in this thread.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: In the case of LZ83-7HL, Annie James, a merge was the source of the problem. In the case of the other person, it is something that Family Search needs to investigate.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: I am of the same opinion in the case of L2RW-D93, Susan Jacob. On the surface, it definitely appears to be malicious activity of a create account, make a mess, and then delete the account (if that is what happened).

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Just to let everyone know, I am looking at each of Suzanne's profiles to see what I can determine. In one case, I have opened another discussion thread because it appears that the profile was affected by what I call "hit and run" activity.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: By the way, I start my investigation with when the record was created, or if it was imported from the previous system's (newFamilySearch) tree.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: I have found that many users are not taking the time to look at everything that is in the existing record. They make a change and because they spend so little time, they don't pay attention to what they are doing.

That's where communicating with the users are very important.

I have a record of one of my "end of line" ancestors in which changes are often taking place. The person is 9312-XFX. Pieter Claesen. You may want to look through the record (and change log) to see what has gone with that profile, just to know that a lot of changes are often innocent.

In regards to 2C1S-RVD, John Martin, This looks like another innocent change (again, not enough time was spent looking at the existing record).

This kind of activity will continue to plague the tree. The user never looked at birth dates -- Jane Hutchinson was born ten years after John Martin. That should have given the user a clue that maybe he had to wrong person? The other clue is that John was born and died in Ireland (You are lucky to have some original papers about his life).

The problem is that Martin is a common surname and as such, it is possible to find many John Martin's. Lacking records in Ireland is always going to be a problem, especially in Northern Ireland. If you can tap into Catholic records in the country of Ireland, then that helps.

I have a similar problem here in the United States. In three areas (Coshocton and Adams counties in Ohio, and Lancaster County in Pennsylvania) my ancestral lines lived for over 200 years (300 in the case of Pennsylvania), and their descendants still live in the area. In each case, the surname was common for the location and the families often married other families with the same given names. So something like this happens more often than I like to think about.

This is one place where sending a message to the user (via the FamilySearch internal system) can pay off. I have often received some very positive responses with the other users' apologies. For the other user, it is a learning experience.

Because I use a kindly written letter (not a why did you?), explaining what they did, why it was incorrect, and what supports the original conclusions (that they changed), they respond positively, if they respond. Regardless, they have not redone their changes.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: This one is interesting. I decided to dig in the sources, and to say the least the source you cited -- https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/619... -- was somewhat frustrating, there is an index entry, but I could not locate the actual image. This was done back in the days of the extraction programs and as such, the images and indexes are not connected (a problem that FamilySearch is working to resolve).

Regardless, that isn't the problem. We have an extract of the original created by R.E.F. Garrett. While it is all you have (that I know about), there is not much there. But, at least it has a date and place for the marriage. It is too bad that the original is not filmed (or included on that film), because in many instance, the name of the father is also listed, which helps identify the family involved.

Even though the name recorded by Garrett is Kingsworth, it is likely that he miswrote the name. An "n" can have the appearance of a "w", which is why it is so important to have images of the original handwritten records. Not much was can do, unless one of our English researchers on this forum helps out with other sources...

Anyway, regarding LL7D-RKD, Thomas Kingsnorth, I think this is another innocent change. A kindly written letter would go a long way to helping the user who made the change recognize that he needs to do a better job of looking at the existing record before he makes changes.

Even though he made the changes a little over a year ago, you may still want to communicate what you found and what you did to restore the change that he made.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: This one is going to be a problem because so many people had their fingers in the pie, going back to the earlier tree on nFS. The changes made in 2015 occurred while FamilySearch and nFS were still "attached at the hip" as I like to call it. Changes in one were reflect in changes in the other and since nFS had no change log, we don't know what happened when and in the earlier system, profiles were combined, not "merged" like they are today. That is likely where the problems occurred.

My initial thought was to create a new John Boyd, but that presents its own set of worms. Without any sources connected to the 99QR-WQD, John Boyd profile (that are recorded in the change log), I'm not sure what to suggest. You worked with your PAF program (Ancestral Quest is its successor and fully integrates with the massive tree on FamilySearch), and had some sources in it. Back then, sourcing was a pain, but you may want to create some memories of your source notes and then go to the sources page and create a source referencing the memory. That way, you will have protected your notes from changes (which can be made by anyone). The memories you create cannot be changed (though at one time, FamilySearch gave some thought about make those open edit -- a mistake, in my opinion if they ever implement it).

Beyond that, I'm not sure what to suggest you do at this point. I think I need to sleep on this one, mostly because of the connection to the previous system.