FamilySearch website and over-zealous wanabee researchers

[Creighton]

Hi everyone.
I felt I ought to write a missive on my experience of this 'important' website and problems I have often encountered with whom I can only describe as over-zealous researchers.

I have, over time, been working my way back into my expanding antecedents branches, putting verified dates and references to many of my 'family'. I also sign up for 'watched' names that I may be alerted to anyone else with similar family interests and connections. It is here I hope to find data that I do not have and possibly connect with distant cousins or like minded people who have an interest in the name or branch of the family.

Sadly, on numerous occasions I find that 'others' have bolted-on other families and people, that have no bearing on the branch of the tree. I have spent an entire afternoon removing these false interlopers and communicated with some contributors to tell them that they have the wrong families mis-matched. Two different people were verbally quite hostile to me stating they believe they are correct and have had the ordinances sealed (LDS jargon).

Now, I am not going to say that my research is without errors but I have learned over the past twenty five years that if you publish facts, then one has to verify them and quote sources.

It becomes more apparent that, and I say this without spite, some of our friends seem to assume that if names and dates sort of fit, it must be the right family. A lot of people seem to take pleasure in collecting swathes of trees and appending them to their own without any substantive proof and/or data to back them up.

I still use FamilySearch, but sadly I do not trust it as much as I used to do. It is just an aid for me now, and if I am lucky enough to find any added value in the interim, then I research the names, dates and places for myself before confirming them to be correct.

Genealogy is never a foolproof hobby and I wondered if anyone else has had similar problems with this particular site or any similar issues of non-related interlopers appearing within your branches.

 

[At home in NZ]

Sadly, on numerous occasions I find that 'others' have bolted-on other families and people, that have no bearing on the branch of the tree. I have spent an entire afternoon removing these false interlopers and communicated with some contributors to tell them that they have the wrong families mis-matched. Two different people were verbally quite hostile to me stating they believe they are correct and have had the ordinances sealed (LDS jargon).

I have only ever used FamilySearch for research, I ignored the invitation to start a family tree because I do not wish to be baptised into or sealed to the LDS.
Most of what you have said sounds like you could be talking about Ancestry or any other website where you can add things from other researcher's trees.

 

[Creighton]

No, it is definitely FamilySearch as I have been registered with them for a number of years and one does not have to be baptised into the Mormon church to use the website or add to the respective tree.

 

[At home in NZ]

No, it is definitely FamilySearch as I have been registered with them for a number of years and one does not have to be baptised into the Mormon church to use the website or add to the respective tree.

I was making a comparison and not suggesting you were actually talking about another site.
I have also been registered with them for a number of years.

 

[Pauline]

Having a tree at FamilySearch is somewhat different from having one on other sites such as Ancestry, largely because you do not 'own' your tree in the same way and cannot exclude others from contributing to it. On the contrary, the aim seems to be to merge trees so as to have just one tree for any particular family and, I guess, aim towards having just one massive tree to cover everyone in the world.

This seems to me to have more cons than pros, and it's probably not the best place to plant your tree. The main positive that I could find was that it gives you an opportunity (which is not available on other sites) to correct those trees which are clearly wrong, and where documentary evidence has been blatantly disregarded without any explanation or justification.

But the big downside is that people can also do what they like to 'your' tree and override years of careful research.

 

[Creighton]

I agree entirely, and I do not use this site as a de facto place for my tree for those reasons. The purpose of my post here was to gauge opinions and to see if anyone else had similar problems to those I had described. My own tree is built using TribalPages website where I can give access to whomever I chose, be they family or people who stumble across it and are interested in potential family connections. It also has the advantage of being in the cloud as against on a local machine which could be compromised at any point. I must say, I am not promoting this as the best way forward but just speaking as to what I find most suitable. My point was about FamilySearch being a free-for-all (which is understandable) but with concerns over those who do not have the wherewithal to be accurate with their research.

 

[Mitch_in_Notts]

I found years ago that a lot of research had been done using solely familysearch records and no other sources. If a name fitted it would be added as a parent and hence the info was wrong. I remember pointing a couple of glaringerrors out to distant cousins and never hearing from them again.....

 

[Britjan]

I find Family Search most useful for the global reach of their records and my interests in non-family research. When I was looking for soldiers with British roots who had served with South African forces in WWI for example I found their scanned probate records informative and fascinating. On a personal level Family Search will also sometimes have a clearer scan of a census or other record than I've found elsewhere.

 

[illyjay]

I logged on to FamilySearch.org the other day and found to my surprise (and disappointment) that some eager, well meaning, but ultimately misguided “volunteers” had attached incorrect records, added about 20 unrelated children to one of my Great Grandmothers, changed names, dates and relationships of family members. I am very careful with my research, and do not attach records unless I can verify the information so was quite upset when I saw the damage done—I spent a good hour rectifying a lot of it. Has anyone else experienced this on their Family Search tree?

 

[Creighton]

Hi there, welcome, I see you are a new member.
Well, you have really hit a nerve with that revelation regarding FamilySearch!! I have been battling with many 'well meaning volunteers' over the past 25 years, who have disrupted a lot of my own work on this site. Some of them got quite irate that I suggested they were wrong in their assumptions and incorrect (lack of proper research) mismatches. As an example, whole families in Norfolk, England have been 'blended' together just because the names and dates are congruous. They even berated me because they said the records are now 'sealed' with the LDS archives and that I was wrong in my data. Unfortunately, there are quite a few overzealous people dabbling in this hobby that have no skill in research or checking their sources. Some folk, I think just want to rush this hobby and collect names and dates just to impress their friends and family with the fact that they have an amazing ancestry. It has got to the point that I only now use this site as a source of records, and sometimes a useful link is provided which I then research more fully for myself.
If I do see that someone has put a wrecking ball through my referenced work, then I just delete all the spurious incorrect data and I do not even bother to contact the person concerned. The site does have its uses but I would not use it as my de facto tree, just a source of records (of which there are many - for free) and as a pointer for earlier generational names to consider and research and check.
I wish you luck with your research and do not get too disheartened with FamilySearch. After all, it seems to be a feee-for-all but there are many good people there who do things properly.

 

[Pauline]

The thing about having a tree at FamilySearch is that you don't own it, and anyone can make changes to it. There are benefits of having your tree there, but you do need to accept that there are down sides too, this being one of them. You can restore your original work, and remove things that have been added incorrectly, as Creighton says, but I agree it can be annoying to find that someone has damaged your careful work.

I would guess almost everyone who uses FamilySearch trees has experienced this kind of thing to some degree, and it's not their "volunteers" so much as just other ordinary (and perhaps less experienced or less competent) researchers.

 

[Creighton]

P.S. See earlier forum thread on this subject. https://forums.lc/genealogy/index.p...te-and-over-zealous-wanabee-researchers.3161/

 

[Pauline]

Thanks - I thought I remembered an earlier thread on this subject.

 

[At home in NZ]

Thanks - I thought I remembered an earlier thread on this subject.

Looks like another job for an administrator, to merge this discussion with the previous one. Bryman are you up for it?

 

[Bryman]

Looks like another job for an administrator, to merge this discussion with the previous one. Bryman are you up for it?

It is very kind (??) of you to think of me but I am not an administrator for this forum. If Peter has any good sense (of course he has!), he would not even suggest that!

I only dabbled at trying to do something similar a week or two ago in order to see if I could avoid an administrator from having to get involved. It is not a simple activity to attempt manually and it can be easy to make a mistake or do things in the wrong order so probably better to leave it to the designated helpers to do a proper job as appropriate.

 

[Tim]

Looks like another job for an administrator, to merge this discussion with the previous one. Bryman are you up for it?

All done.

 

[peter]

I would guess almost everyone who uses FamilySearch trees has experienced this kind of thing to some degree, and it's not their "volunteers" so much as just other ordinary (and perhaps less experienced or less competent) researchers.

Now you know why I don't have a tree at FamilySearch! I do look at other peoples' FamilySearch trees occasionally, but treat them as hints.

But (apart from the trees) FamilySearch is a wonderful site that nobody can afford to ignore.

 

[Susan48]

I've just been looking at a tree on FamilySearch which includes some of my distant ancestors. One of them has been given a precise date of birth in 1782, with no source given for this information apart from the 1841 census, which of course only gives an approximate year of birth. This precise date of birth now appears on numerous Ancestry trees. Where on earth did the date of birth come from? There's not even a baptism for her.

 

[peter]

I've just been looking at a tree on FamilySearch which includes some of my distant ancestors. One of them has been given a precise date of birth in 1782, with no source given for this information apart from the 1841 census, which of course only gives an approximate year of birth. This precise date of birth now appears on numerous Ancestry trees. Where on earth did the date of birth come from? There's not even a baptism for her.

It might have come from a family Bible or similar document. But also remember that baptisms were taxed from 1783-94 so if she wasn't baptised in 1782 she might well have been baptised any time from 1795 to her marriage (or even the baptism of her first child). Going through a register recently I found several couples whose children were baptised around 1800 with birthdates going back as far the early 1780s.

 

[Susan48]

It might have come from a family Bible or similar document.

I hadn't thought of that. The family were in Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire, where there were a lot of non-conformists and their baptism records often included the date of birth as well so worth looking into.