Disagreeing with another user

Hi Mike, welcome to FamilySearch!

I totally understand the frustration of your situation, it is exasperating and time consuming, and perhaps the only downside to an otherwise generally excellent model of a universal genealogical tree (ie ‘your tree’ isn’t actually your tree but actually a shared branch of single public tree linking everyone together... in theory anyway).

Unfortunately there’s no outright way to stop it, but there are steps you can take to mitigate it.

The first and best thing to do is add as many sources as possible to each individual’s profile to show your research is verifiable. People tend to be less inclined towards multiple major adjustments when a profile is well filled out and corroborated with sources.

You can also add pertinent information as to why the details you are adding are correct and substantiated in the “Reason This Information Is Correct” box under each vital entry. It sounds like you’ve done the research already via Ancestry, so it’s just a matter of finding those records/sources here and adding them (or adding external sources where they don’t exist on FS). If you’ve filled out the details of a profile record hints can be very useful in doing a lot of the heavy lifting of record finding/matching for you.

If you’ve already done all that and this other patron is still making erroneous changes, I suggest reaching out to them directly via message to explain the situation. Sometimes the issue can be as simple as ignorant enthusiasm. I find something along the lines of the following can have good results:

“thank you for the work you are contributing towards making this profile/family as complete as possible. Collaboration is a welcome and valuable aspect of FS. However, I noticed you are basing your information on Wikipedia which, unfortunately, is not always historically or genealogically accurate. I’ve been researching this family for some years and am currently in the process of attaching primary sources which corroborate my research. In light of this I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t make changes based on unsubstantiated secondary sources like Wikipedia. Of course if you have some compelling primary sources to add, they would be a welcome addition and I’d be interested to see your research.”

Of course, not everyone is open to collaborative communication and sometimes it comes down to a battle of wills, sadly. This can be particularly true of historically ‘known’ personalities where the power of myth and legend can overshadow actual facts. Some very “interesting” parental claims crop up in this regard, particularly wishful thinking in connecting to nobility/royalty.

@mikehalligan1 I was wondering if you were ever able to resolve anything with the user as I am having the same issue with this same person on multiple families I have spent hours working on. Thanks!