Making changes to custom events or written memories by others.

LegacyUser

Lisa Ann Stassforth said: Custom events and written stories in memories should only be changed by the author. Other users should not be able to delete any custom event or written story in memories since the content is usually personal knowledge sometimes based from diaries and journals. . The original author should be contacted first by the other user with questions about said items. Then if the author determines there needs to be a change then they can decide to make the change.

LegacyUser

Adrian Bruce said: I thought Memories could only be altered by the original author? Indeed, that's why many of us (mis-)use them instead of Notes because they can't be altered by others. Unfortunately, without two logons I can't double-check that.

As for Custom Events being only changed by the author - sorry, but absolutely not. FamilySearch has reduced reduced the number of Custom Events and Custom Facts compared to GEDCOM so that if you want to record, say "Baptism" as a baptism (rather than Christening), you need to use a Custom Event. Adoption, Confirmation, Emigration (but not Immigration), Probate, Will, etc, are just some of the Events that were in GEDCOM as standard events but now can only be entered as Custom Events in FamilyTree. All of those are perfectly visible in normal sources available to everyone, so there is no reason not to have them as open edit just the same as the ordinary standard events.

I entirely sympathise if someone has deleted your carefully input events because they've never heard of them - but this is the same risk that we run with any event or fact and the solution is the same - a local copy that we can use to repopulate the data if someone stupidly tramples over it.

There are also practical problems with the suggestion - on numerous occasions I've had to disentangle profiles that have been merged because someone else has apparently thought that there's only one person of that name in England in the 1700s. If the merged mess contains a custom event, I'm not waiting until I get permission from the original inputter before I do the disentangling. And if they're no longer using FamilyTree, it's even worse, of course.

As I said, it can be hugely, hugely annoying if someone tramples your carefully constructed input - but restricting update access to some of it, isn't a useful way forward.

LegacyUser

Amy Archibald said: You cannot change another person's submitted Story in Memories. You can detach it from someone, but you cannot edit it.

LegacyUser

Adrian Bruce said: Thanks Amy. I guess detaching it would be pretty annoying if you'd written it especially for that one profile.... But in practical terms I'd still need to be able to detach it from a profile for all sorts of reasons, especially when disentangling an over-write or incorrect merge - so a ban isn't feasible in an open edit system.