Tell FamilySearch How Users are Messing up the Tree

LegacyUser

Ron Tanner said: One of our goals is to encourage good data and discourage bad data. We are looking for users to give us examples of how others "messed" up the data in the tree.

Was this from a hint or a possible duplicate? User edits or some other fashion.

We are trying to find some patterns that we can detect to help alert or warn users before they make these kind of changes.

If you provide some examples, we may want to contact you for more information.

Thanks,
Ron

LegacyUser

JT said: Hasn't happened to me.

LegacyUser

Jordi Kloosterboer said: I know of one person who keeps on reverting changes back to whatever he has on his own program or whatever. (He messes up the data by using an external program.) He does not pay attention to the reason why I changed it (I don't know if he sees it or just plain on ignores it). There is nothing that I can do to keep it correct (He did not respond to a message from me via the FamilySearch messaging tool).

With this specific case it is the case of the other user putting down the wrong municipality (I know because I looked at the original source image--the indexed data shows the same municipality as what the other user put down because that is what the current municipality is for the town since 1972) and changing the date from the nicely formatted '9 November 1901' to the ugly formatted '09 Nov 1901' (my opinion of it being nicely formatted or not--and also the default formatting of what the computer likes). A typical user may not care about that, but I do. Here is the change-log for the birth information that was changed multiple times by both of us: https://www.familysearch.org/tree/per...

I don't know how FamilySearch can help alert or warn users of this kind of data changes, though.

The other problem of data being "messed up" is from gedcom uploads but that already has warnings sent to the user I assume.

LegacyUser

Virginia Florence Horvath said: I've had issues with people merging others together who clearly are not the same person.

For example my great aunt -
Mary Allen born 1888 in Idaho was merged (several times over and over again) with a Mary Allen born in 1480. The only common information was their names and their father's name both James. I contacted the user several times but she kept remerging the records ignoring the fact that they women were born 400 years apart. I had to contact customer service and have the record locked.

There have been others who have merged people based only on name. A 2nd great grandmother keeps (still to this day) merged with another women with a similar name 1 of these women lived in Nova Scotia the other in North Carolina. However the user refuses to believe that they are separate women and continues to merge these records.

If a warning either based on dates or locations this would help prevent these types of mistakes.

LegacyUser

Cousin David said: 1. If there are more than (x) sources, set a warning if Vital Data is about to changed, such as: "This person has (x) documented sources. Are you certain that you want to (change) (modify) (delete) (merge) this individual".

2. Add a category "Warning" of some kind that appears EVERY time the person comes up. Just like Memories, review reason for WARNING with HQ and approve same before adding.

3. The option to lock, require contact or seek approval for changes on a few critical individuals is important. Example: My Family Organization; oldest immigrant is Robert Self M79V-4HF (correct person). Someone has created another person (G3GR-YPD) with similar but not the same data (you aren't likely to be born in Wiltshire and Christened in London). The documentation on this particular is large, clear and proven (I compiled it, sources after source, note after note, etc. - that was my family assignment). The wife Jane's surname is shown as MAKEING (fully explained in multiple notes and other information on her page), which is from a will and was a verb, not a surname (a "duh" moment here). These are critical errors. PS: In old new.familysearch.org, I merged duplicates over 600 times (not kidding).

4. A person, once deleted, cannot be re-added without bells and whistles going off. Example, Catherine Rising Fawn Moytoy (LBQV-L9D) added multiple times (seven of them out there now); data from a specious and unproven series of books (theoretically Shawnee/Cherokee) that are simply unintelligible and documented frauds. I have deleted dozens of times, explained why and been ignored.

5. If there is "No relationship", require Warning before changes are made.

6. If there are more than five contributors and/or one contributor of more than (x) records, add "WARNING" as above..

7. Require more ID than just a User Name in the data base. Almost all other programs do. If not, then track messages and require responses or an automatic reminder "You have a message from such-and-such a person to which you have not responded".

I'm sure there are more ideas. Back to correcting the most recently found errors.

Thank you for all your efforts (and putting up with some of the unfortunately strident comments on this blog).

Kindest Regards;

Cousin David in Holbrook

LegacyUser

Jordi Kloosterboer said: Here's another example of same user messing up tree. This time he changes the date to the registered version instead of the actual birth date. https://www.familysearch.org/tree/per...

LegacyUser

Philip A White Sr said: I was named after my great grandfather, Horace P Anderson. He was married to Emma Belle Kerby. They had two children, Willye Anderson, my grandmother, and Emma Anderson, my great aunt. I have lots of family pictures with just the two children. On January 29, 2020 Rebecca Jane Bettinger added the source, '1910, E Schrod in household of Horace P Anderson, "United States Census, 1910".' The source shows the person's name as E Schrod, although it is crossed out twice in the original. It is added to the family as "E Anderson." The source shows the gender as Male. It also lists this person as a daughter. The age is listed as 18 because of an estimated birthdate of 1892. This person is not listed in the 1900 or 1920 census. The relation was originally written as son, then crossed out. The index says daughter, however I do not believe that is not what is written there. Compared to the word "daughter" written above, the first two letters are "ch" and not "d." What is written looks like "chauffer" a misspelling of chauffeur.

I have sent two messages to Rebecca Jane Bettinger asking for a reliable source. No answer. I have checked other genealogical sources, including Ancestry and MyHeritage and they show no such person a E Anderson.

Philip A White