Ability to work with other living relatives and stopping people from making changes to my line.

LegacyUser

Mindee Taylor said: While I understand that for privacy reasons you can't show living people but this is a huge obstacle when it comes to working on family history. It would be so nice it if people could register as a verified living relative and allow that info to be shared with others trying to work down the same line. This would avoid toes being stepped on and lines being crossed. I also would like to see closest living relatives being able to lock vitals and details so that distantly related people would be unable to make nuisances of themselves. I spend a frustrating amount of time correcting changes made by people who have absolutely no idea what they are doing let alone have the actual documentation of this information. On this note it would also be helpful to be able to disable the family hint feature on my relatives. I have found that these hints 99% of the time are wrong and unknowing people make changes based on them.

LegacyUser

A van Helsdingen said: 1. Allowing living people to choose to make their details is something regularly asked for, but it is legally very difficult. FS has to obey the privacy laws of every country and multinational union (i.e/e.g. the European Union) it operates in. In practice therefore the strictest privacy laws have to apply for everyone, unless FS makes certain features accessible only in certain countries.

2. The FSFT operates on an open-edit model. However I personally believe there are profiles (e.g. Mayflower passengers) that should have edit restrictions on them. This is similiar to Wikipedia, where controversial or high-profile articles that have attracted vandalism or biased edits have restrictions placed on them.

The genealogist blogger James Tanner is currently writing a series of articles about the mess surrounding one of his Mayflower ancestors on the FSFT: https://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/

3. There are frequently complaints about hints on this forum. If you give details, then the engineers may be able to refine their algorithms to avoid the problem. In some situations, such as Scandinavian names, the hint feature is poor, but it's hard to solve this.

You can dismiss hints by clicking "Not a match" instead of "Review and attach". That should at least slow down other users who may seek to attach those hints.

You can contact any other user of the FSFT. Contacting those making wrong edits and politely pointing out their mistakes may be helpful, and you could get in contact with relatives.

You can report users to FS, but there's a very high bar before they take action. There's many stories in this forum about FS refusing to deal with vandals and highly incompetent users.

LegacyUser

Mindee Taylor said: I wonder if one can prove their lineage to someone within a time frame such as the last 100 years they can agree to have something pop up with contact info that states they are a verified closest living relative of the person and you need to contact that person before making changes. . And I realize the hints can be dismissed and I always dismiss them, but it's dingbat people who have them pop up in their feed that attach and make changes to vitals based on them. It's just a LOT of unnecessary work for me. Closest living relatives of recent dead people should be able to lock vitals and details. Privacy laws should go both ways as well. It's not right that if I died tomorrow that suddenly I am fair game to whomever decides my life story is theirs to mess with. I also think that their should be some sort of strike system for people reported to FS. The bar of misconduct is set way too high. These issues make it really hard to want to spend time doing family history work because how it works right now doesn't lean to protect those of us who have a genuine interest in our family history. It's just so disappointing and frustrating.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: I'm not quite sure what you mean by "prove their lineage", but yes, since I have my living brother in my private space, the relationship shows up when I view My Relationship on his record (names, etc., blanked out for privacy reasons).

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: As to the rest, privacy laws take effect. In my case, I have my brother in my private space but I will not see any living relative unless I entered the name in my private space.

I suspect the mechanics of being able to share a single profile of a living person is rather complex. At one time, a FamilySearch representative (it may have been Ron Tanner, but I don't remember) said the legal issues had been resolved, but there were issues that needed to be resolved to be able to share a single profile for a living person.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: The open-edit nature of the tree allows any deceased person, even if they died yesterday, to have the details in their profile "messed" with by others.

The likelihood of that happening is unlikely, unless there is someone that has nefarious plans for the profile.

The only way to prevent or reduce any bad changes is to make a deceased persons profile as complete as possible, and include memories (photos, stories, etc.) and extensive information about their life.

Those who make changes usually believe they are related to the person for whom 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.

By having as complete a record as you can make for any of your relatives, the likelihood they will be changed (in a bad way) is reduced.

Once you have identified a relative that you have completely sourced out and provided detailed information (from more sources than just FamilySearch), place that relative on your watch list. When a change is made, that change and the person who made the change will show up on your "Changes to People I'm Watching" list (soon to be a "following" list.

Recently, a will was added to an end-of-line relative. The comment in the reason that the will was added is that everything lined up with the existing profile in terms of children and dates. It was a wonderful addition and I sent the contributor a message thanking them for adding it.

Every time someone makes a change or merge that I feel is incorrect, I use the FamilySearch message system to leave them a kindly written message that contains many of the following elements:

-- 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.

I am prepared to not receive a response from the person. They have the choice to respond or not respond. Also, they may not work with FamilySearch on a regular basis, so it may be months before they see my message. Many times when they respond, they mention that they are beginners.

I am well aware that not everyone works with FSFT every day or extensively, so there are many different levels of knowledge and experience being applied. I try to help others understand things like the differences between primary and secondary sources and that published family and locality histories often contain errors and are not sourced. I let them know that unsourced material needs to be treated as hints, not as facts. If a faulty record may have been involved, I let them know about the problems.

By taking an active part in working with a few of my relatives, I have found that bad changes either stop, or slow considerably (no method is entirely effective). To track what changes do take place, especially with critical persons in the tree, I put them on my watch list.

LegacyUser

Mindee Taylor said: I mean like, I can prove I am my grandmother's granddaughter. I would like to see something that allows my info to be shown and given if someone were to try to make changes to vital info. So, say someone decided to change my grandpa's place of death (this actual happened), something could pop up and say something like "Mindee Taylor is a verified living closest relative for this person. Please contact her here to make sure the information you would like to add is correct". I think this would be a good feature when it comes to people who have died within the last 100 years. I have more problems with changes to the recently deceased. Actually had to argue with someone that they were indeed wrong about my Grandpa's place of death and I was there when my Grandpa died but they still argued with me! I would like to see the collaborate tab add a section that would give a list of closest living relatives that ok being listed so that it's easier to reach out to family members I don't know to ask questions and work with since rarely do people respond through the FS message system.

LegacyUser

Mindee Taylor said: Yes, I've done all those things you listed above. I have completely filled out all details and vital information including dates, places and extras as well as added photos, life sketches and obituaries. I still have people make changes to these on my aunt who died 6 years ago, my grandparents and their siblings who have recently died and my great grandparents as well. It's just unbelievably ridiculous. Haven't had much trouble with ancestors above my great grandparents just the more recent ones. Had a lady make 45 changes to my grandmothers profile. Took me hours to straighten that out.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Mindee, privacy laws prevail for all living people. It is simply against the law in many places (including the United States) to reveal information about living people that might be in their profile. This is especially true in Europe.

LegacyUser

Adrian Bruce said: FamilySearch is never going to back off from its open-edit principle - its wide-open edit principle. Nonetheless, I wonder if something might be made of the idea of automatically identifying a user's closest relatives out as far as grandparents and their siblings, parents and their siblings, and second and first cousins (say) - no further. These are the people that the user might reasonably be expected to have known.

Then we need some sort of impedance in the update process designed to nudge someone to collaborate. I suspect that it's not possible to put an amendment on hold - there's just way to much data dependent on other things to hold it back. But maybe some sort of message that comes up to say, "Close relative found in FamilyTree's users. Have you contacted them to agree changes?" This banner message should appear at the top of the profile before anyone makes changes.

However, I am really, really not sure what should happen next. Ideally contact takes place. Ideally the morons give up at this point. And ideally, if no activity from the close relative has been seen in FSFT in the last 12 months, then the banner message is removed because that close relative has died or given up.

I'm not sure quite what else can be done - but I do feel that we're not exploiting things like the Watch List and Collaboration tabs to any useful extent now. That's just plain, good old-fashioned messaging that we can't even start off....

LegacyUser

Mindee Taylor said: This is true unless you yourself make an agreement otherwise.

LegacyUser

Mindee Taylor said: Yes, this is exactly what I'm suggesting be done because people making changes to people who I knew is just infuriating. I've had child relationships deleted, marriages changed, spouses added to immediate aunts and grandparents. I had a guy try to tell me he could change my aunt's info because he was her grandchild even though he was 5 or 6 years older than my aunt and I even have pictures on hers. I had a lady delete my grandparents marriage because my grandma has been married previously. It's just a joke.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Even though you may reveal the details about you, it is still against the law to reveal many details. Laws regarding one's health is one area where you can get yourself into major problems, especially if you are attempting to obtain employment.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: I had something similar happen. I was recording information about one of my aunts and included the date of birth she provided. Her children grew very indignant because they claimed her birth date was one day different than hers (all are now deceased). The proof was her Social Security application and thus, I used the date she provided.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Yes, it is very frustrating when someone changes a record. This impacts those with long Church membership more than people like me who is a convert. But I still have certain records that I closely monitor, more because of a claims that have proven to not be true -- in one case, it was a D.A.R. application and in the other, it was a widely circulated genealogy by a self-proclaim genealogist who was fraudulently bilking families out of thousands of dollar during the early part of the twentieth century.

The changes to the end-of-line ancestor who was not involved in the Revolutionary War have essentially stopped. The changes for the end-of-line ancestor whose alleged genealogy was produced by a known fraud, not so much. But they have significantly slowed down and two of us are now watching for changes and almost immediately correct the incorrect information and contact the contributor, letting them know of the issues.

LegacyUser

Mindee Taylor said: It would be one thing if I was having issues with 1st or even 2nd cousins but the problem people are either not related or are so far distantly related that our family doesn't even know one another.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: As to a banner, I'm not sure that would work that well.

There are three widely-used and fully-certified family tree management programs. Any banners displayed on the site are not displayed by those programs, so bad changes can happen through them.

It has also been my experience that many users are in such a big hurry that they ignore any banners or other significant warning messages and simply move ahead with what they are doing. Now that is frustrating.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: By the way, I'm not saying that a banner should not be used, only that my experience suggests that it is often ignored. Short of slowing things down significantly by demanding a person acknowledge the banner, I don't know what else can be done.

LegacyUser

Mindee Taylor said: Yes, but I would think if is was just contact info like my name or email. Something like what was mentioned below. Just something to notify others that there are living relatives in existence and actively engaged in that particular line. This wouldn't just stop mischief but it would make it so much easier to find other relatives who may have pieces of info I don't.

LegacyUser

Mindee Taylor said: Good point.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Yes, just the fact that you have contributed to a person's record suggests that you are related. Most changes (bad or good) are made by people who believe they are related to the person for whom they are making changes.

Others (in other threads) have said that they have made contact and discovered new relatives as a result. That can lead to a wonderful new relationship.

LegacyUser

Mindee Taylor said: I've had a great experience like that with a couple people unfortunately the vast majority of people I've contacted or have contacted me because I undid their changes have been rude and belligerent. When I see there's a change made I usually message the people telling them how I'm related and ask where they are in the family line because maybe we can help each other out. I have honestly tried to be really nice up until a couple days ago when I let my frustration get the better of me but I apologized. Using family search has been an overall disappointing experience.

LegacyUser

Adrian Bruce said: Requiring someone acknowledge the banner as soon as someone presses an Edit link might be useful.... Not sure how the software accessing from a PC could handle that. Although, not to put too fine a point on it, I wonder how many of the idiots have their own PC program synching data with FSFT? Sounds a bit sophisticated, maybe? So a banner on the FSFT site might catch a lot of the idiots. Even if it only makes them read...

LegacyUser

joe martel said: Mindee, you are absolutely right in needing the ability to share and work on living with other family members. There are a couple options to achieve this and still adhere to privacy law. You can think of it like the Patient consent form that lets you share your medical info with others and still adhere to HiPAA privacy law. It's also similar to how you can invite other users to see your info like in Google photos or Facebook. 

The trick is deciding on a model that is simple for users and not a huge leap for engineering. There is design work on this but it has been challenging for this intent to gain much traction to implement. Maybe someday.  Thanks

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Not everyone uses a local tree program. For me, the purpose is to be able to print a book of an ancestor and all the descendants. It requires that I capture all of the images for sources (if they are available) and because I want only one image for each source, I use a source-centric method of attaching them to the people in that source.

The other advantage that I have is that I can continue to document and add information to living people without the system creating more profiles in my private space.

What I have noticed is that each transfer update or otherwise, pulls any existing reason statement and displays it, along with the option for me to add to or replace the existing reason statement.

But yes, there are (I'm not sure if idiot is an appropriate term) people out there who are not cautious in what they are doing. GEDCOM files are a poor choice because most of them do not carry sources attached to the persons, or at the most, a limited source reference, which I suspect is a little better than none at all.

But the way FamilySearch handles the ingest of all sources leaves a lot to be desired. The merge screen, on the other hand, keeps getting better and better, now including warnings when dates and places do not match.

I hope at some time in the future that the same kind of merge screen is used to merge source data with existing data, especially when dates and places do not match.

LegacyUser

Adrian Bruce said: Yes, the word "idiots" covers a multitude of things.

Another distinction is between fools and b*****y fools. Fools probably behave foolish because they've never worked out how to do better, for all sorts of reasons. Or they make honest mistakes. They need help - which might sound patronizing, but it is so.

Whereas b****y fools know very well that they are doing wrong but plunge on regardless because they think that they know better.

I would really like to help the first category, especially since I cringe when remembering some of the things that I have done. I'm not sure where we can go with the others.