Please let us LOCK OUR LINES! :)
We have done much/ most of the temple work for my wife's line, but someone is redoing it all and submitting the names to the temple for temple work--now we don't know what ordinances have already been done. So now what? People are going to waste time and resources redoing all these ordinances, and we are a little lost? Is there a way for us to go back to what WE put in and have done?
Please, let us be able to:
--LOCK OUR LINES (it's not that hard!),
--see others' lines but not be able to change them,
--be able to request lines from others, and receive only through their permission (with choices of what to do with differences, like when you paste photos in a folder that already has some of the same photos).
--be able to write messages to people who are changing/ working on our lines for information sharing and deciding search assignments.
None of these need to be done in ways that affect laws about living relatives.
PLEASE make these changes! I have so little desire to do any genealogy with FamilySearch, knowing that in a flash my entire genealogy can be redone by a stranger and my work lost forever!!!
Comments
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The Family Search Family Tree is designed to be an open-edit, "one world tree". The advantages of that are collaboration and reduction in duplication of research. The disadvantage is obviously the possibility of bad edits being made.
"Locking" a line and making it editable only by one person would go against the principles on which the FSFT is based. Additionally, there is usually multiple people who are related or descended from a profile, how do you decide who has the right to control their profile?
If someone makes edits to a profile you have worked on that you disagree with, you should use the built-in messaging features to contact them. If it becomes apparent that they are a vandal or highly incompetent, then you should report them to Support. If you have a genuine genealogical disagreement or misunderstanding, you should discuss this with them and present evidence to support your theory. Support cannot help resolve genealogical disputes.
And finally, remember that the majority of FS users (myself included) are not Latter Day Saints. They can't see information on the FSFT about ordinances, and may therefore make edits, without realizing it, that can mess up ordinances.
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I'm not sure what you mean by "someone is redoing it all and submitting the names to the temple"
Also note that even if folks HAVE "submitted the names to the temple", that does NOT eliminate your ability to reserve that name (for 90 days) and take to the temple yourself. When someone shares a name that they've reserved with the temple, it basically "un-reserves" it for them. Anyone can then get that name if they want.
In general the system is set up to mitigate people "redoing" temple work. The work that has been completed is linked from the temple data base to the original PID in the FSFT that it was done for, and any PID that the original one has been merged into. Completed work will persist in the database.
I have seen hacks that some folks have used because THEY want to be the one to "do the work". For example, someone detached the original record of my deceased Father-in-law from the family, and then created a brand new PID, filled out all of the vitals, and then reserved all the ordinances for themselves. Pretty bizarre since he had already had all of his ordinance work completed while he was still alive!
Another trick is where they will upload a copy of their tree into the FSFT (frequently using a GEDCOM file) but will not bother to merge all of the duplicates (which will usually identify that the work was already completed). They don't want to bother with dealing with merging duplicates or having anything to do with maintaining the FSFT, they just want their records in the FSFT where they can express-reserve them for themselves (even if the work is already completed). Then they leave their whole wad of duplicates all over the place leaving the mess for someone else to clean up. I've seen this happen MANY times.
The last thing is where someone reserves an ordinance and then sits forever on the temple card. Eventually the card expires and someone else picks up the reservation and takes it to the temple. Later the person who printed the original card out finally decides to take it to the temple, and they don't bother checking to see if it is still valid. Since the work has already been done, the work in their visit was a waste of time that could have been used on records that actually needed the work.
The system is SUPPOSED to maintain the earliest temple work dates in the records so that duplicate work doesn't show up as new dates. But I've seen where this is not happening correctly due to bugs in the software.
Finally, you can get situations where duplicate records with different work completed at different times can be merged together and the result is confusing to the observer. Again, someone holding an ordinance card for someone will all of a sudden might see that person's record show up with that work completed.
So you see, other than bugs in the system that links the temple database to the FSFT database, the only normal way that the appearance of ordinance work being redone can occur is if there are duplicates of a given person when work is being reserve and completed (this is why people should not print cards and then sit on them forever or trying to hoard reservations).
So you basically have to go into the change history for those records that you suspect have been messed with and see what results may have occurred from past merges.
P.S., "Locking Our Line" is a capability that will probably never show up in the FSFT as it is in opposition to the WikiTree model it is based on. "My Line" just so happens to contain ancestors and kin that are also related to hundreds and thousands of other people working in the FSFT. If I "locked up my line" then many many people would not be able to do anything in the tree.
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I really, really feel for people who've had work trampled over. But let me put an alternative view of a non-LDS member (me).
I started working in FamilySearch FamilyTree because I discovered that my 5G GF's grandson was - himself.... I'd got a looping tree, in other words. I'm pedantic and / or dedicated and / or daft enough to decide that I couldn't possibly leave it like that and so I started to disentangle them. (Exact descriptions not guaranteed by the way). I've never found another loop since then - identically named cousins being incorrectly merged, yes, but not a loop confusing someone with their own grandson.
The point of this is that this family, the Bate family of South Cheshire, are the only known relatives of mine where a family converted to the LDS Church and went out to Utah. Suppose their modern day descendants had decided to lock "their" Bate line? Their Bate line is just as much my line. But I wouldn't be able to just go in and sort it out. I could message them - with a distinct chance, based on my bitter experience, that they'd ignore my message for all sorts of reasons. If they didn't immediately unlock - well, thank you and goodbye, why exactly should I wait?
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I have now got to the point of no longer using Family Search, it feels as though it has just got far too 'messy' with the various contributors and inconsistencies. For example, a contributor has added a relative to 'my tree' as a new record to a family but is now showing as an extra spouse with a child/new family, all because their given and surnames were spelt differently. I click on the new record and it opens up as a separate tree view without any other family. If I click on the original record the new one comes up as a second husband with child but no mother attached! I tried to merge them but I think I may have deleted them instead! So now I've most probably added a mess to the other contributors mess! Many apologies if I have but I can assure you it won't happen again because I won't be using the site again.
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Sue,
I'm sorry for the confusion that you've had. I have a relative that was active in family history for many years, but because of people making unsubstantiated changes in the system, she finally gave up a couple of years ago and has refused to look at the FSFT since then.
In the record for your relatives, this may have been a careless change. However, there actually might be information there that you didn't know about. This has happened to me on occassion.
The important thing to do when you find this type of situation is to always first examine the notes and reasons for change that accompanied the addition of these extra persons. If reasons and sources have been provided (as they always SHOULD be), then you can examine them to see if they are appropriate.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of "drive by genealogists" who just make changes in the tree with no justification at all. In those cases when the change seems incorrect I might send a message to the person who made the change asking about it. But I have no problem with undoing the changes using reason statements such as "no sources or evidence provided to justify the last change".
If you can provide the PIDs for the persons in question, somebody here could have a look at it with you to see what might need to be cleaned up.
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