Errors in Family Search Trees getting as bad as Ancestry

Question

I had started a tree on Family Search and just sort of left it at a couple generations when all the privacy issues came up.   I just went back to it, looking for some sources on my 2nd Great grandmother.   OH MY....  First of all, someone had added a totally incorrect husband for my mother, and they had also had two wives for my 2nd great grandfather, both profiles represent the same woman, but someone had decided they were two different women because they had added some obviously incorrect sources to the profiles.   I fear that Family Search is headed in the same direction as Ancestry....any "hint" becomes reality, even if it makes no sense at all.   Such as Find a Grave with a death in 1864, then census records for the person in 1870, 1880, 1900 etc.

Sometimes I am frustrated with the WikiTree  focus on sources, but, I see things like this, and I appreciate the focus on validity of data on WikiTree.

Comments

Family Search is the 'wild west'. of genealogy inhabited by name collectors and people with little sense of geography and also at times without logic.That said it also now has a remarkable search mechanism, especially if you standardise your dates location and add alternative spellings, and for that reason alone it is a place worth inhabiting despite the frustrations. I must go through and put my main family on the Watch lists. Thanks for the tip. The art of the game seems to be to add what you find as quickly as possible to your Wikitree profiles. I have a lot of catching up to do.  Wikitree X is going to go into overtime.

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After a few years of trying to keep Family Search current and correct on some family profiles, and with no help from the company, I had started using the little stars watchlist.  I have not currently been able to keep up, getting five plus emails a day on people changing the profiles.  I have given up on trying to keep up, have given up on the family profiles there .... even though I get so upset sometimes on how stupid and crazy some people do thing on it, and I go in and correct.  But their system is poor, no real control.  I use the Family Search for the great sources to attach to my own home program and on WikiTree.  But the days of just trying to keep up with the daily, weekly, monthly, etc changes people make on Family Search Tress/Profiles has made me give up on it.  I really feel for you about the problems, my fingers are crossed for you.

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Hi Robin

I have a tree on Geni which I no longer use, I discovered that someone had got into the tree and added a child to my 3 x  great grandparents, the problem is that the person added was born 6 years after those grandparents died, the site now has a New Zealand ancestory which is totally wrong.

I was researching one of my wife's ancestors on the My Heritage website, I found that the relation was reported as having a second husband that lived in America, I managed to find the original American family in the 1910 American census, in following this through I discovered that the person attached to this tree had never left America and was married to a totally different person.

Sourcing information is a time consuming process but if we do it there is a good chance we will ask the right question and find the right answers, no-one is perfect at this and mistakes will happen, but it could avoid obviously wrong entries into WikiTree.

Happy Wikitreeing

Mike

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@Mike,   This is the whole reason I have enjoyed WikiTree.   With all the sources, my family has stayed "intact" for over 6 years now.

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Huh Interesting. Not long ago several people (not on G2G) jumped down my throat for saying whats already been said here.

 I have a handful of Family Search profiles on watch just for amusement. It ebbs and flows. For example. A new over anxious genealogist will come along and make a mess of things or re edit back to its family group sheet glory. Then the pitbull ad guardian swoops in slaps hands and restores things back to  "we are related to Revolutionary War Generals and Aristocrats", wishful thinking state. If the pitbull hasn't all ready managed to get the profile locked down, lol.

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I started on the Family Search tree a number of years ago.  I really disliked so many things.  When I found WikiTree, I was hooked.  I still maintain a number of starred profiles at Family Search to watch because people do all kinds of terrible (and entertaining) things to my family.  My parents, a number of my husband's aunts and uncles have all been marked deceased without any verification.  Someone presumed they were dead because they were old.  Also, a number of children have been attached, extra spouses, etc., because names were similar.  I can't stress enough how important it is to watch your immediate family members.

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Hi Kathy

Thanks for the comments, it sounds like more people than I thought have noticed this, I will be even more vigil in the future than I am now. Good Wikitreeing, Mike

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same happening on a number of Nisbet/Nesbtt profiles even when corrected someone changes them back.

Also too many adding links to these trees on Wikitree even when there is a reliable source from before and all the link adds to the profile is errors/ or possible errors in the future

Answer 1

Unfortunately this sort of issue will continually rear it's head in any sort of one-tree environment simply because there are a whole range of skill and commitment levels of those who are contributing to the tree. The issue is present here in WikiTree, but it is compounded in FamilySearch Tree by the fact that FS Tree was not designed to be a public tree, rather the original concept was a private tree for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to use for their genealogical research with regard to the Church's direction to “seek out our kindred dead and perform temple ordinances for them.” It has since morphed into a free public tree which has been enthusiastically adopted by those who cannot afford the costs of joining paywall hidden trees like Ancestry, FindmyPast, etc.

While I personally applaud this change, one needs to recognize a few facts when playing on FS:

1. There are very few controls over what is submitted to FS Tree. Basically anyone who signs up can put whatever they want into the tree. There is policing done on things like images and memories to ensure than inappropriate items are not posted but overall, it is open season.

2. The general level of genealogical skill and knowledge on FS Tree is probably much lower than here on WT. Many members of the LDS Church make use of FS Tree through a sense of duty rather than a genuine interest. Some have little or no knowledge of properly sourced genealogical research. Here in WT it seems most members have at least a rudimentary knowledge of genealogical research and everyone has a interest in this work as at least a hobby if not an obsession. The same is not necessarily true in FS Tree given that church members are encouraged to do family history work, whether they are truly interested in it or not.

3. There is no honour code that must be signed and there are no data doctors, rangers and mentors and so on working to assist contributors and policing the tree. There is no real g2g equivalent in FS Tree. WikiTree has all of these which results in a good (not perfect) system of policing the tree and contributing to increased accuracy of the data herein.

4. There is no real way of resolving disputes about incorrect data. You can change data to correct errors, but there is nothing stopping the other party from changing it back. The mediation process is essentially non-existent. Note also that there is no way to correct transcription errors on sources. I have been questioning this since before the tree was made public and have been told “we're working on it.”

5. There are no projects and thus no project protected profiles. Some might think that this is a good thing, but the lack of them means that there is no way to effectively use the skill sets of people who may have a greater than normal knowledge level in a given area.

6. There are literally hundreds of thousands of unsourced profiles. Only recently has FS been providing any emphasis on providing sources. Unfortunately, like Ancestry, many less skilled members are taking the “hints” as gospel and adding to the garbage in the tree. Also any profiles created by the FS extraction process (see below) will be unsourced.

7. There are also multiple duplicate profiles, most of which are created by FS itself. When the system was first developed, it was initially populated with a data dump from the IGI, and other LDS data sets. The IGI was notorious for duplicate and nonsense records. Now duplicates are created whenever FS extracts a record. The extracted record creates one or more profiles that are dumped into the database with no check on possible duplication. So if FS extracts a birth record, a marriage record and a death record for an individual, those three extractions will generate a minimum of three duplicate profiles in the database in addition to any possible records that might already exist for that individual. I have found individuals with up to ten duplicate profiles. Not a pleasant prospect when you consider that those extractions probably included family members as well. The extraction program was started as an aid to LDS members, now it is nothing but a pain in the neck.

8. There is a heck of a lot of mythical data in the FS Tree. One of my wife's line on FS traces back to about 600BC using the usual unsourced European royalty myths. Apparently she is also a Mohawk princess, although there are absolutely no sources to confirm that particular fable.

9. On a related note the record search function used by FS is almost worse than useless. I do not know what algorithm they use to index and search. I would estimate, based on personal experience, the FS search function will miss anywhere from 25 to 50 percent of the indexed records that meet the search criteria.

Personally I use FS Tree since I am a member of the LDS church, however it is not my primary research area, nether is it my primary tree. When I do log into the system, it seems like I am spending 80% of my time correcting errors and merging duplicate records. Currently I think that FS management is more interested in adding bells and whistles apps to the system than in fixing fundamental problems with the underlying software and database.

Comments

John you've made a fair critique of FS, but those auto-generated profiles came in handy when I came a across a 'notable' on FS with a locked profile. I'm not sure how to stand up a profile from a blank page over on FS, so one of those scrappy little auto-generated profiles describing the same notable was put to use and a multi-generational family tree sprouted up out of that auto-generated profile. One person's detritus is another person's building material.

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A comment on part of your point #4, "there is no way to correct transcription errors on sources" - they have now added a rudimentary edit capability for *some* names on sources.  It's not an easy problem, and I'm not surprised it took them awhile, and they have a long way to go to catch up with Ancestry.com.  But it's there now, a somewhat novel method, but does work.

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Hi Rob

I see this change as two sided

1 some folks will change to suit their point of view

2 others will cross reference before editing

As a transcriber for FS I have attempted to discuss a disputed name or location spelling without any luck previously. Old documents are difficult to read so errors occur but I like many are concerned if this opens to side it will just enable folk to rewrite history to suit them.

The system like so many is based on America dictionary so the language shifts can complicate things, also time it self changes the way names are spelt, so what is in the record is as it was at that time

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Rob, they do now, but that is only after years of people like me hounding them constantly about it. 

Personally, I feel that editing privileges should only be given to people who can do one or more of a) prove they know what they are doing by demonstrating familiarity with the local, record type, era or whatever is relevant or b) have an alternate verifiable source that demonstrates the error.

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I have issues with the transcribers on FS as well Janet. Although they are all well meaning, there are so many skill levels that too many errors get through.

I too used to regularly index for FS. My wife was an extraction supervisor and both of us were regular contributors. I still index occasionally, but let me give you just one example of why I do not do so much any more:

A few years back FS was extracting and indexing Dorset parish records. My ancestors come from the Dorset/Somerset/Wiltshire area, so naturally I jumped right in. One of the batches I received was for one of the parishes my ancestors were from and that I had been working on for years. I knew those people and so I happily transcribed the batch running across multiple names I knew, including some of the oddballs such as Thirza, Mesech, a number of last name variants and a few others I can't remember now. Imagine my frustration when I was informed that over half my transcriptions were wrong and had been changed by the reviewer. (as I recall, Thirza became Thelma and Mesech became Michael) I appealed and mentioned that I was familiar with this parish and the odd names as some of the people indexed were my relatives. I was still overruled. I made quite an issue out of this, but was eventually told that I had not indexed enough records to "know what I was doing" and the reviewers were far more experienced than I was with indexing (not Dorset, indexing). 20 years of previous genealogical research experience in the west country records counted for zip. As far as I know, the indexes are still wrong. .

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Warren, I really have no problem with the auto-generated profiles. My issue is that they show up with no sources attached. If FS is generating a profile, they got it from a source somewhere. There is absolutely no reason on earth, other than incompetent programmers, why said source is not included in the auto-generated profile. a profile generated for John Smith born 1775 with no source or any other information at all is thoroughly useless and a waste of bytes.

Answer 2

Robin, I feel your pain on Family Search. I have found a partial solution for the profiles I have added to help keep them from being too badly damaged by false information and wrong sources.

On each profile there is a little Star near the top of the profile page. If you click on that it turns black and that puts a "watch" on that person. Then, when there are any changes to that person's information, you will receive an email about once a week for all the changes on your watched profiles. It has cut down dramatically on changes. When there are changes, I can quickly look to see if the sources added are correct or see if wrong family members have been added or changed.This feature keeps it manageable.

At this time I am focusing on WikiTree because of the controls and cooperation and collaboration here. I am just maintaining on Family Search.

Comments

Thanks for the info Virginia, I hadn't thought to use the little Star/"Watch" function, great idea!

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Virginia, maybe I've not had enough coffee yet, but where is this star you are talking about. Maybe a screen cap would help. I've looked everywhere and it's probably staring me right in the face but I can't find it.

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If it was a snake, it would have bitten you!   

It's right there high on the right side, just above the horizontal red line.  It's associated with the word Watch, with the star to its left.  click it and the star fills in, and Watch turns to Unwatch.

I agree with Virginia, it's a great tool, and I use this a lot to monitor ones I've worked on.

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From the tree, go to a person and click so that the person's page is up. At the top is the person's name and ID, etc. Just below and over to the right there are three choices: Tree with tree icon, Watch with star and View my relationship. The star will be blank (white inside). When you click on it, it will become black and the name will change to Unwatch.

If you still have issues, I will send a photo of it later - am tied up at moment. Hope this description helps!!

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Thank you R. Whitehurst for the star. So glad I could help!!

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hi Folks  - - here is my latest 'star report' = for my wikitree -

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Cock-734 - -

Changes to People You Are Watching

Week Ending: 1 June 2019

2 People   3 Changes

Agnes Cook 1563-1617 • LH6T-2LR   ★ Unwatch Parent Relationship Added 27 May 2019 by NitaShannon Agnes Cook ★ 1563-1617 • LH6T-2LR ✔ Henry Harry Cook 1537-1616 • GSS9-D73   Parent Relationship Added 27 May 2019 by NitaShannon Agnes Cook ★ 1563-1617 • LH6T-2LR ✔ Henry Harry Cook 1537-1616 • GSS9-D73

Changes 3   View all recent activity

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Hmmmm....Going from the descriptions, I should be able to see it. Maybe it's a browser thing. Or addon. I looked using both Firefox and Chrome. No star. Is it near the top right where it has: My Wikitree - myname and number - Add - Find - Help? Or is it near the Privacy medallion? Or where the tabs are for Profile (public view) - Edit - Images - Family Tree & Tools etc.?

The only "star" I see is in the browser search field but that is for Bookmarks/Favorites.

Thanks for your help everyone :-)

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The star we are discussing is on FamilySearch not WikiTree!! If you have a tree on FamilySearch, go to a profile there and your will see the star.

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R .. they're talking about the familysearch watch star:

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Well then there ya go! That got by me. It would nice to have some indication here for changes through email too. I do have a profile there. I'll have to go check it. Thanks and sorry for the mix up!

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This is great, thanks for sharing!

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R. Whitehurst, There IS an indication for changes through email at Wikitree. In the weekly email (the one that comes on Wednesdays), there are the news, the featured profiles etc. and then (under the xx degrees from featured profiles) there is: "Activity on your watchlist". There you go. From there you can control what happens on the profiles of your watchlist.

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By far the fasted method to tick the Watch Star  is to use the tree view don't open each profile just click the profile name this opens a pop up the Watch Star is there.. It is very quick to go down the family line this way. Well it is is you don't get distracted and head off down the children as well ;-)

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Really, it's not that easy to find ! I have to look hard everytime to find it myself.

Answer 3

Funny, I have found that I am spending a good deal of time correcting the FamilySearch records, but I find it to be really worthwhile.  Thanks for the tip Ginny about the little star to watch the records!!

Comments

 - yes - I too  use the 'star' for pre 1600 profiles of my name and Trewartha's - - some are trying to 'grow' back to the 1500's in Cornwall with Mr and Mrs unknowns, with NO sources (there are none of course, as the records were 'destroyed' )

I then leave a note/comment the profiles are Fake without a source - - - cheers . j

Answer 4

Myself and my parents, and further back, are on Family search tree.

I noticed that my mother was marked as deceased, so I corrected it, and I was asked for a reason to make the change. My answer of -- Well I was only talking to her 20 minutes ago, and she answered me... seems to have been a reputable source.

Comments

Now, that is funny, Dave!!! I hope you got no argument.

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Made my day

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Unless you're a Ghost Whisperer.

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I guess that someone was telling fibs trying to keep the profile visible. The moment you tick the box as living the profile is only visible to the person who made the profile. I don't think FS has a trusted list like Wikitree or does it ?

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LOL! That's great!

Answer 5

I agree, and pretty much gave up on FamilySearch as there were so many problems. Occasionally I will source or fix some  

Using the star to watch people is a great idea. Just yesterday I saw that someone added the church record for my gggg grandfather then added FindAGrave for his son-in-law. Might have found a cousin, need to send an email.

Answer 6

I've had some distressing experiences at Family Search, like having my Great Aunt Frankie merged into the wrong person, then having to reconstruct my aunt's record with a notation at every possible step with "DO NOT MERGE" with the other person who was born the same year in the same county and had the same first name.  I am frequently afraid to look at the people on my watchlist there, and yet, I find Family Search trees an invaluable partner to the work I do here.  It would be great if every source was attached to the correct person.  I figure that it's my job to help that happen.  If I happen to come across an unsourced orphan in our tree, and I find sources in Family Search which are attached to someone, then I work on both profiles to make them as accurate as possible before I move on to the next profile. Family Search will only be as accurate as you help make it.  But if you're not in the mood to do that, that's fine too.

Comments

I agree with you - my first experience was when I discovered one of my cousins on my dad's side had scanned all the research my dad did in the 1980's and added it to Family Search. He also had my mom as deceased (my dad died in 1989 so obviously he figured my mom was deceased also). It took me over a week to get her listed as living.

Now, I frequently use it as a place for sources and do my best to get things correct on both Family Search and WikiTree. I also utilize the watch capability to see if things get changed. I've only had to change things back once and it was for a biological mother of my grandfather's older half sister.

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I have a couple of people that change my changes back. I have emailed, ask they contact me, but the circle goes on.  I finally gave up and don't even check the site anymore. I do like how the site works but can't depend on the information.

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If those changes are still there and are not correct, you can ask for arbitration. I would first  correct the profiles, add the correct sources and see what happens. If they are changed again, then ask for the arbitration.

Answer 7

Another way to solve this problem, but in the much longer term, is if WikiTree provided access to primary records (such as Census records, etc.) here on WikiTree.

The only reason for anyone to go to FamilySearch is because of their free access to a large number of primary records. If WikiTree had the same feature, then that would be a killer combination.

In an ideal world, I would love to be able to just go to WikiTree to do my research (e.g. FamilySearch), store my family tree (like what we can do now), and create a nice looking memorial for each family member (e.g. Find A Grave).

I want WikiTree to be better than FamilySearch and Find A Grave combined. I don't want to have to go to multiple sites to gather the data, and to correct their data. I want to have one-stop shopping right here.

Comments

I think that Wikitree's Research button provides this ability-- and more. It enables me to research across a number of different sites, including FamilySearch.

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Hi Jillaine,

I was trying to make a different point. I would also like to see some primary sources available here on WikiTree and not to have to go to different sites.

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But Eric, how much would you be willing to pay in subscription costs to gain all of that?  NOTHING is free!  I find it incredibly misleading, the 'free' sites, because someone is paying for everything, directly or indirectly.  Putting data online is expensive - equipment costs, maintenance costs, building costs, IT costs, cyber security costs, bandwidth costs, development costs, etc.  Some data can be acquired freely, but much other data has acquisition costs.  But even if there's no acquisition cost, there are still all the other costs in making and keeping it accessible.

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Hi Rob,

I think that is putting the cart before the horse. First off, I would be interested in what is the long term vision for WikiTree. Does it include something like that? What does WikiTree want to be? Does it only want to stay in its particular niche? Does it want to be something more? And what would that look like.

You've already jumped into how to solve that problem, and are making some assumptions about one individual (me).

I've got a technical background, so I'm familiar with the overall costs.

I'm really talking about the overall Mission and Vision (I think that they have great Values already). We're not at the point of breaking that down into Goals and How to Achieve them.

And honestly, only Chris Whitten and maybe those on the WikiTree Team can answer this.

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Here is our mission and vision: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:About_WikiTree

"We have made a pledge to keep WikiTree free. This is possible because we are an ultra low-cost operation. Almost everything is done by volunteers. By keeping costs low we are able to cover expenses through modest ads on public pages."

I believe that it's important that we stay focused on our core mission: growing the free, collaborative, single family tree. A broader mission would require a larger organization.

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Rob you have hit the nail on the head with your comment. The LDS church has spent millions of dollars to acquire the collection of microfilmed records it now possesses. My understanding is that they have been working at building that collection since the 1930s. In addition, they spent millions building the granite mountain vault to house the collection and protect it from just about every conceivable disaster. Now, they are now spending a considerable sum of money to digitize the entire collection and make it publicly available.

They do this because to their belief of the importance of these records to the joining of "eternal families." We all, members of the church or not, benefit from the generosity. There is no requirement to make any of this stuff free to the public. Rather the church has made a conscious decision to do so.  For those records not available publicly or only available at church run family history centres, it is because of restrictions placed upon the copies by the original holders of the records, not by the church.

As Chris points out, WT is a volunteer site. There are neither the people nor the resources to acquire, catalog and put on-line source records and in reality, why reinvent the wheel? There are plenty of site with free resources including FS, achive.org, Canadiana and so on. In addition, many government archives and libraries are digitizing their collections and putting them online - the images of the Canadian censuses at the Archives and Library of Canada are an example of those efforts.

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@ Jillian Smith I Absolutely agree ! Wikitree X is pretty cool too.

Answer 8

Family trees are only  as good as the sources that support. Not all family trees on ancestry or familysearch or any other online database has sufficient sources.

I've found partial solutions on FamilySearch, but the parents or the grandparents didn't fit.  The main profiles were sourced, but not those of the parents or the grandparents.  Oh,what to do?

Answer 9

I have to laugh. One of the people I've been researching lately is Sarah Clawson Rothwell. I found a tree in Ancestry.com where she first married Enoch Furr, had several children, then married Thomas Rothwell and kept having Enoch Fire's babies.

Another I found was a certAin Thomas Clawson was a veteran of the war of 1812 but he was born in 1711.

Terri

Comments

>she first married Enoch Furr, had several children, then married Thomas Rothwell and kept having Enoch Fire's babies.

Incredible. Well, don't let me judge you, Sarah. You do you, girl.

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Lol! She was definitely her own woman!

Answer 10

The trees at FamilySearch can be aggravating, but the sources are fantastic.  Another feature I really like is My Source Box.  When you're logged into your account (no fee), you have the ability (via the dropdown under your login) to quickly save records and compile them in folders you choose and label. I haven't found anything like it anywhere else.  It's especially useful when I'm adding sources to family profiles here at WikiTree--It gives me a place to keep the Census record and quickly return to it for other people in the family. It's a great help when working with their tremendous record compilations.

Comments

Are you referencing the Source Box function, Jo?

I generally use it to add offline sources related to my FamilySearch tree; it is quite handy!

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Yes, offline sources would be helpful too.  Its a very useful.  Much can be done with it.  And I haven't run into a total sources limit yet.

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I like to use the FamilySearch tree to find sources rather than trying to find them.  Seems to me in some cases family search in requiring the middle name to find a record for some people when looking for a specific event like marriage.  In the tree there is the source for the marriage which I can find and cite.  I am finding duplicates and now sources in some of my latest searches are obviously not a person that is not a source that should be added for the profile.  Was very frustrating because trying to fix them takes time away from WikiTree.

Answer 11

Yeah, I find it works to use them as a pointer to send me in the right direction to find a valid source. For example, when I see someone with no parents, but maybe some other identifier like date of birth, I can often find a rough match on MyHeritage or Ancestry, then use the relatives to confirm via a primary source.

At the moment it's true, I don't think there is a lot of value in those family trees because it's so easy to add information without attribution. However it definitely bleeds into WikiTree when someone uses an Ancestry tree as a primary source without checking for confirmation. Then I feel like there's a whole diversion where the wrong two people are married and have generations of descendants to fix!

Answer 12

Has been same problem with some from my one name study. People keep repeatedly changing back to known errors that are found in publications. every time it gets corrected.

Answer 13

I consider Family Search, Find a Grave and My Heritage all as a secondary source and only use them if the data is verified by one of my primary sources. I try to have at least 3 to 4 sources in my profiles, when possible, with at least 2 being primary sources.

Answer 14

My "favorite" duhhhhhhh moment on FS: apparently it makes perfect sense that Alexander McFatter could be the son of Archibald and his wife Lucy... even though Alexander was born about 1770 and Archibald and Lucy married in 1841. Yes, that's it! They had a son in 1770 and seventy-one years later got married! I've heard of men leaving a girl hanging on, but this long??

Answer 15

Hi Robin,

I onely use the official sources as much as possible, I search with Familysearch, and go to wiewaswie( whowhaswho), or  openarchives.

I onely use the info from Familysearch as a lead, same for ancestry, when there is no community info, I Adress it as a lead, or research note.

Answer 16

From what I have read above, this makes me appreciate Wiitree all the more.