Please Quit Allowing Others to Make Changes to Family Trees that Don't Belong to Them.

LegacyUser

LyndaKelly said: Please stop others from adding to my family tree. I have worked VERY hard to make sure my ancestors are actually mine and have gone to great lengths to verify this information. When I come back to FamilySearch, there are different people added that have no connection to my family, the dates and relationships are incorrect, and it takes so much time to try to fix it multiple times. I actually had to defend that my own Aunt was still alive once to FamilySearch because someone marked her as deceased. FamilySearch wanted her address!
It just isn't as reliable as it once was. I can only use FamilySearch as a search tool now and copy information into Ancestry.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Welcome to the community support forum for FamilySearch. FamilySearch personnel read every discussion thread and may or may not respond as their time permits. We all share an active interest in using the resources of this site and as users, we have various levels of knowledge and experience and do our best to help each other with concerns, issues, and/or questions.

Unfortunately, you are working under the mistaken notion that your information in FamilySearch FamilyTree is on a unique and individual tree. It isn't. The following may help.

FamilySearch FamilyTree is a single tree that is a collaborative effort, built around an open-edit model, allowing any person, including yourself to add to and make changes on any person who lived throughout history, including all of our deceased relatives.

There is no "my tree" in FamilySearch FamilyTree — it is a tree for all mankind. If you have found errors, you need to know why those errors are there. It could be that someone incorrectly combined another person's record with your relative. It could be that someone found a source that they thought applied to your relative, but it did not. It could be that someone just knew that their information was correct and entered that.

There are sites that support independent trees and building them. FamilySearch is not one of those sites.

If you are unfamiliar with how to work with the massive tree (now containing over 1.2 Billion persons), The Family History Guide (http://thefhguide.com/) is an approved training resource. It not only contains procedures for working with the site and the massive tree, but also exercises for you to use.

As to the incorrect information -- Those who make changes usually believe they are related to the person for which they are making changes. Their changes may be valid, invalid, or contain errors and may lack support from primary and secondary source material. Or the changes may be based on misinformation, or information that was copied from an unreliable source.

The desire to belong to an elite group of people, such as Mayflower Descendants, the Daughters of the American Revolution, or the Sons of the American Revolution has likewise produced some inventive genealogies.

Not all participants who add to and make changes to existing material have the same level of knowledge and experience. Novices or Newbies often try their best to be useful, but they can and will make mistakes (even us old-timers can make mistakes), some of which are going to cause concern. Others are convinced that their information is factual, despite not having primary or secondary sources that validate their information.

While this can be frustrating, remember that everyone has been at one time or another in their lives, or is now, a novice or newbie. I remember what it was like for me, now over fifty years ago.

To minimize the changes others make to the tree, there are several things that I have found to be largely effective, given the nature that many inappropriate changes are being made by people who are new to FamilySearch FamilyTree, or do not work with the tree on any kind of regular basis.

1. I make sure every deceased person I work with in the tree is fully sourced with citations that can be used to locate original records, not only with sources from FamilySearch Historical Records, but also from other sites as well as material that may not be available online. I also add whatever stories exist about that person and provide sources for those stories. The more information I can include, the less likely someone will come along and make changes.

I make sure that every conclusion (fact) that is in a person's record actually applies to that person and I … [truncated]

LegacyUser

Jordi Kloosterboer said: Your title is against the purpose of this site. There is no "my" family tree and we are here to collaborate. You can send messages to those other people and explain to them your reasoning. They could have another reasoning that you haven't thought about or they could just be noobs.

LegacyUser

Paul said: LyndaKelly

Yes, it is an awful problem, but one we just have to accept if we want to take part in this communal project. I have just spent most of a day and a half putting right some ridiculous merges involving an individual on my watch list.

Sadly, a large part of my problems involve some crazy suggestions "FamilySearch" puts into Record Hints / Possible duplicates. Many users continue to accept these at face value and add sources / make merges in a sincere belief these DO, rather than just MIGHT, relate to the person on whose page they appear.

One user merged James Young individuals from all over England (together with wives and children) purely on the basis they had been suggested as possible duplicates. That resulting mess took me over 3 days to clear up!

It seems the algorithm that produces these suggestions is very difficult for the engineers to get right. Make it "too tight" and some genuine offerings would be lost but, on balance (and purely from personal experience), I feel the algorithm should be tightened considerably to stop the efforts of users, like me and you, being so badly damaged.

LegacyUser

Adrian Bruce said: The one important thing that everyone needs to take away is "Do not use FS FamilyTree as the only copy of your research". The risk is simply too great - you must have an independent copy of your data to act as a master to fall back on when someone "improves" (or not) the data that you entered.

Blocking people from editting certain areas will just cause more problems than it solves - when I started in FS FamilyTree it was to fix a problem with one of my relatives who was his own grandfather. I had no connection at that time in FS FamilyTree to him.

Recently, I unmerged my ancestors in Cheshire who been merged with two couples in Devon of the same names, a couple in Kent with the same names and a 4th couple in Lincolnshire whose son was born several years after his supposed parents (in Cheshire) had died. At that point, again, there wasn't a connection - I was just researching what had so far been entered for that branch. When I found that lot, I decided to correct it first before linking them to me.

Having spent ages on fixing those and other problems, I really, really, do feel for anyone who gets similarly messed up. We have to accept the risk - or steer clear. If we accept the risk, we must have our own safe copies in place.