Who edits what
Could there be more rules about who can edit family tree information? I have someone removing people who belong in my family tree repeatedly since 2019 and most recently he removed someone who's a fairly recent ancestor and I'm absolutely sure she is her daughter's mother. I even have a book that mentions multiple ancestors including that family. Since people can't have private family trees on here and anyone can edit the person pages, there needs to be some sort of code of credit or honor where people can't just randomly mess with other people's family trees and repeatedly remove information. At this point I wonder if this person is just being a troll especially since I don't think they're a relative. Just a random person who keeps removing information. I decided to have an account where I don't even start a family tree and just use it to look up records because shared family trees any random person can edit are too frustrating.
Comments
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Melissa
This issue is raised here quite frequently. Throughout the course of a year, I lose several days in correcting careless errors (merges, changes of data, even complete name changes) relating to the relatives I (and others) have added to Family Tree.
Sadly, there appears to be no resolution to the problem. Well, some well-meaning fellow users will suggest adding sources and notes to give solid backing to the identity of and facts concerning your relatives. But, as you have probably found, nothing will deter the careless users who decide to merge, say, a John Smith who lived all his life in one part of the country with a John Smith who spent his entire life hundreds of miles away - occasionally, even in a different time period!
FamilySearch will neither change the open-edit format of Family Tree, nor provide resources to monitor changes or mediate in disputes. This means we either have to give-up on the program altogether or continue to do our best in retaining the accuracy of records we know to be trustworthy. Obviously, keeping a back-up of the records relating to our family tree branches in our own, personal records (software) is important. However, the change log section usually contains enough detail to reverse the details to how they were, even though having to do this repeatedly (often due to damaging work by the same user) is such a pain and a totally unwanted use of our precious time.
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It helps to share one of the PIDs involved so others can see what's going on. Often the situation is easily resolved to everyone's satisfaction.
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There is a way to at least tag images so that no one can un-tag them. BUT you'd better be careful not to make a mistake. An ancestor of mine was recently tagged by accident. I have no idea how it happened, unless someone was typing an ID in and made a typo, but there was around 200 years between my ancestor (born 1680) and the photo (taken 1904). It actually got very ugly when someone thought I had tagged my ancestor on that photo because no one could untag it. Ultimately my ancestor was untagged by the person who made the mistake.
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I have read everyone's comments with great interest on this subject. While the concept of one shared family tree for everyone sounds like a good idea, the consequences of someone editing or deleting one of your relatives is unavoidable.
While FamilySearch.Org is free, I have another ancestry service website that I pay for. The advantage is that no one can delete or change anything without my permission.
This way, I can somewhat easily repair any damage someone has done to my tree on FamilySearch.Org,, just by copying and pasting from one tree to the other. This is the solution that currently works, for me.
One FamilySearch.Org member dontiknowyou came up with a suggestion: A pending file, or digest for changes made to your tree. This is also probably a good idea to restrict changes people make to your tree that don't have the same last name. I think it's a good suggestion. Hopefully it will be implemented.
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Right now you can see a complete list of changes made to individuals, and I love that, and usually I am studying that NOT upset over a change, but to study the changes. Some of my ancestors just led murky lives. I also have several ancestors on my "watch list" so I receive notifications when they are updated. Those are both very good features. If I were FamilySearch I would not want to be an arbitrator of all changes because the research time required with that would suck the church dry of resources. Also, there are historic people in the tree and their changes can be a due to academic controversies or even political points of view. Has anyone been watching the changes to William the Conqueror's record(s).? Good heavens! It verges on the hysterical, to be honest. If there is an established need for controlling edits, it should be because somebody is repeatedly destroying someone else's work, there should be a way to report it. Allow for a decision by church resources to be made on 1 individual record at a time, not the whole tree. And the solution should be not what is right or wrong, but whether someone's work is being maligned. I would say people who are victim of their work repeatedly being destroyed should have a means to present a case to request a record being locked down. I know duplicates are not really endorsed, but if the person doing the destroying really believes their changes are correct, let them create a duplicate. And one of the basic rules for this kind of system (I recommend) would be to NOT accept disputes on historic individuals.
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The majority of changes on "my" trees by other contributors are improvements. When they are not improvements, I look to see what happened.
Lately one tree head, an early colonial American, is getting a fresh rash of links to couples in England. Why? Because fresh historical records from England have arrived and are being worked by contributors who are not standardizing anything, as a result FT is suggesting bad hints, and naturally contributors are working the hints. I don't see any reason for personal attacks on any contributors; they're all doing the best they know how, and learning as they go. Aren't we all?
So, I'm spending a little time now standardizing dates and place names of English couples in the 17th century with the same surname as my American. It is tedious but the benefits are huge:
- I am preventing who knows how many future bad edits. Fix it now, and be done with it.
- One of those couples are the long-lost parents of the early colonial American and I would very much like to find them myself.
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Allowing anyone to edit someone else's work is a BAD IDEA. While I understand the principles of Wiki material, it is not working well on FS person pages or trees. Its actually getting worse and more frustrating, to the point of my considering giving up on FS. The best suggestions I can make are 1) REQUIRE any edit to be accompanied by a source or document; unsourced entries should not be allowed. 2) Politely contact the person that made the "incorrect" edit, and ask why? Sometimes that can provide useful information. Family Search must stop turning a blind eye to this growing problem and institute some reasonable measures, or risk losing valuable members.
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