Can I stop people from making changes
Comments
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Along these same lines: Is there any way to stop people from making changes that can't possibly be accurate? Case in point: My 7th great grandmother, born in Norway in the 1500s: someone connected her to a couple in Bavaria... but there is no way (and no records) that this is accurate. They would have gotten married in Bavaria, traveled to north of the Arctic Circle (a 20 hour trip by train in 1980 -- I took it!), had a daughter there the next year, left the daughter there, come back to Bavaria the next year and had several more children during the following decade.
I mean, it's silly what's being allowed, but it's really messing up my records AND the Temple work that has to be done. I literally take 40% of my time CORRECTING garbage information.
FamilySearch: Has there been any thought of taking editing rights away from people who continually abuse this? I've reached out to these people nicely, and either get no response, or an "I don't care" attitude.
Thanks.
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The problem with trying "to stop people from making changes that can't possibly be accurate" is that just about any detail is possible. It's the combination of details that can't be accurate. For example, if the Tree shows that someone had a child 5 years after they died, then what is wrong? Was the birth year of the child later than it should be? Was the death date earlier than it should be? Does the child belong to a different parent? Although all 3 details can't be true, the number of true details could be 0, 1, or 2. Which one(s) should the system disallow?
In a collaborative tree, it's easy to believe that your perspective is correct, and anyone else making changes to your ancestors is mistaken. But they might believe that they have the correct data and they are frustrated that you have the wrong data. Now I'm certainly not saying that you are wrong about the particular ancestor, but just suggesting that you try to understand the perspective that others might have.
As for the topic of removing editing rights from those who abuse the system: there certainly is a mechanism for this. It's the Report Abuse option, present on each Person page as well as for each Memory (and a few other places on FamilySearch as well). In clear cases of abuse, FamilySearch will take action, which can include various remedies, even banning from further use of FamilySearch. However, having a difference of opinion on which genealogical facts are accurate is generally not considered to be abuse. That's true even if an opinion is misguided or seems to be provably false. I believe that ignorance, incompetence, or laziness is a far more common cause of such problems than actual malice.
So in conclusion, I thank you and thousands more like you who make efforts to improve the accuracy of Family Tree, providing sources and explanations for the changes you make. I know it can be tiring at times, frequently testing your patience. And it's good to have discussions about how we might improve the collaborative model. There will almost always be tradeoffs in any changes in collaboration, but it's still good to explore ways to make it better.
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The best way to stop others from making changes - or at least slow them down - is by adding as many sources and as much supporting evidence as you possibly can.
I recently was able to convince someone - who was CERTAIN my ancestor was the father of hers, by an out-of-wedlock liaison - by showing her conclusive evidence that my ancestor had died 10 years before hers was conceived. It was a time and place when vital records were not kept. I had found a census of children who were half-orphans just after the American Civil War.
It's not always easy, but it almost always works.
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Maybe a solution is to create a separate entry for the indivdual in question. Ok that creates duplication but allows either party to incorporate their view into their part of the tree. Over time additional sources might become available or are found and the duplication can be removed.
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That feels like it would make things even more confusing in the long run. The two could diverge wildly over time, especially if the two profiles end up representing two different but equally real people. I think that that would be even harder to verify. Even if they don't represent two different people, how do you know which is correct, or, if one has sources and the other doesn't, how do you know for certain that they are the same person if the information is all different? You can tell sometimes, but other times the falsehoods can pile up until you can't be certain.
Case in point, there are three Samuel Graves's who all married Sarah's and lived in the same general area. (Two of the Samuels were even cousins!) They have been combined by well-meaning FamilySearch users several times because they seen so similar at first glance. (Why do common names have to be so... common?) If three different people can look so similar in an overview, how do you know if the two similar looking people with differing information are actually duplicates or different people entirely? Obviously, the answer is research, but that just brings us back to the beginning all over again.
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And it's counter to the concept. The FSFT is meant to have one and only one profile for each person who has ever lived on Earth.
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I find the weird changes usually fall into the following six categories:
- Real source, wrong person. I've been helping two people separate their family lines because someone new to FamilySearch was adding to their tree, and ended up adding the wrong person with the correct name. She had a source that seems to have come from a researcher she or someone she knows hired, but, because she was on the wrong person, the information didn't match. Assuming that the information in FamilySearch was wrong, she started changing the tree from that point forward, replacing names, dates, and places to fit her sources. Her assumption that finding the right name meant she was on the right line caused all three of us working on the line a bit of trouble. The solution proved to be simple: Find the person that they were supposed to have attached, and guide her in that direction. Sure, there is still a lot of leftover damage, but it was an honest mistake.
- Overvaluing other family trees. I've found a lot of people who add information from trees on sites such as Ancestry and MyHeritage without thinking to verify the information. It may take new hobbyists time to come to grips with the fact that not everyone has actually done their research and that they need to check the tree for sources. As these people are usually new to genealogy or don't do it often, you can generally just change it back and they won't notice. If they do, explaining the situation may help as well. I wouldn't know, they've never responded or made the change again in my experience.
- Unsourced changes They could be right, they could be wrong. I think a response to this would vary based on the situation, but my response to this usually includes (kindly) asking them how to find their source. I don't think I've ever got an answer back in these circumstances, but like the previous situation, I don't think they would notice if you changed it back.
- No cross-referencing This could be considered a variation of the first one I mentioned, but it's so extreme that I felt it warranted it's own entry. I once encountered a person with so many contradictory sources that I don't think any two of them belonged to the same person. To be honest, my response was to leave an alert note explaining that multiple people were combined and listed all the contradictions. The weirdest part was that every single record there was added by the same person--they were contradicting their own sources! At that point, it may be best to split the person into multiple.
- The only sources are unreliable If you've ever tried to do research earlier than the 1500s, this should be self explanatory. This is where you start to get impossible dates (such as a child being born too early or late) and there is nothing you can do about it except accept that it's going to stay wrong, because people, for the most part, just didn't care about the accuracy of the dates back then. Refer to @Alan E. Brown's comment for why FamilySearch can't disallow that.
- A professional messed up Even professional genealogists mess up sometimes, and those goofs can result in errors when used as sources. I find you can usually solve the issue by explaining the situation.
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The advice that we as FS Missionaries give people is," Do Not rely purely on FS as the only source of your tree". Always place it on another system where you have total control over what goes on it. There are several free sites such as Ancestry and FindMyPast.
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