Ettiquette issues involving Find a Grave links

Question

Another Wikitree member has been going through the profiles I've started for descendants of my 2nd great grandparents, adding Find a Grave links without taking the time to consider the primary sources I have linked. I contacted him after he had edited my data erroneously, I let him know that I prefer to add Find a Grave myself, after I run through the primary documents, that I am working in stages while I learn Wikitree skills, and plan to revisit these profiles several times as I develop the batch of them.

This man has a six year head start on me and I am just learning how to add my research to this website. It is very uncomfortable for me to confront someone with so much experience, but I suspect he's claiming low hanging fruit in a rush to reach 1000 contributions per month and being careless in the process. He knows how to correct Find a Grave memorials but hasn't been taking the time to check and correct them. He could do so much better if he would stretch his skills. I've considered reaching out to some project managers to plead with them to recruit him for a challenging project that suits his interests.

When he added the Find a Grave link to my grandparents' profiles and added the category, I felt violated as well as mad because someone swiped my dessert while I was finishing my veggies. What aspects of policy are relevant to this situation? Should I lower my standards and add Find a Grave links before someone else can, push to raise his standards, or some combination of both?

Comments

hello Anonymous,

You say you contacted him about some of his entries.  Did he respond?  

Since the profiles you mention this happening on are relatively recent in time, FaG might be useful, or it might not be, it all depends on the degree of research done by the FaG contributor.  FaG has become simply another tree site in recent years.

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Findagrave now uses the Acronym FG.

Answer 1

Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to give feedback. I asked because I've been sick for 3 weeks, isolated alone in my apartment lest I contribute to more of my elderly neighbors getting sick too (senior housing). I didn't realize how irritable I'd become.

I've green locked a few more profiles to protect the privacy of my closest cousins and allow them to make their own decisions about posting obituaries or cemetery information. I became less enthusiastic about posting burial information online after the cemetery director shared that there's been a spike in rage incidents of cemetery vandalism in which particular graves are targeted because of some argument or other.

I've noticed that this post landed just above several FindaGrave challenges. This person was probably participating in a challenge and doing what he was encouraged to do. My concern is whether gamification unintentionally prioritizes speed at the expense of accuracy. Why specifically direct volunteer hours towards FindaGrave that is owned by a profit driven company?

Comments

Adding Findagrave memorial links as sources to WikiTree profiles is especially useful when there is a gravestone photograph that supplies us with a death date, and possibly relationships to other family members. There will always be a question about the value of any other data on these memorials, but it does usually tell us where they were buried and their likely date of death.

As far a 'prioritizing,' I don't think that's the intention. More likely these challenges help draw attention to easily corrected low hanging fruit. If you go through your own suggestions list and make the changes yourself, that will keep others from making those changes. A good defense is a great offense.

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Hi Bobbie,

I have looked at suggestions and have not had much luck resolving those cases where my data is supported. There was a Find a Grave profile that had my grand uncle buried in the wrong cemetery. I took photos of his grave in the correct cemetery, posted those, and categorized him as in that cemetery (with his birth family). Sure enough, someone came through and changed everything according to the erroneous Find a Grave memorial.

I have a number of suggestions that I've checked repeatedly and explained why the data is supported but the suggestions keep coming back.

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Hi Anonymous. If you mark the suggestions as False (giving a reason), then they should not come back. If you did mark them that way and they returned, something is wrong: let us know more detail and maybe we can work it out.

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Thanks Jim, I will take you up on that offer! I don't have all that many suggestions for the number of profiles, but there are a number of persistent hiccups that require factoring in subtleties such as this person was born before this date (of her baptism, her mother died between the birth and baptism).

Answer 2

I think both of you could improve the cooperation skills to be honest. The member you are talking about should probably first post comments to the profiles you manage, especially when you have let him/her know that  you prefer to check the profiles first.

But possibly you also need to remind yourself that there is no such thing as 'your' profiles and links to additional sources, even the dodgy ones, should be encouraged.

If the profiles are recent enough you could consider adding the green privacy level. That will force people to post comments and engage in discussion.

If this all does not help, then consider the problems with members option.

Comments

Michel,

I do not claim to own the profiles I start, the question is one of policy and etiquette- whether he should add a link to a Find a Grave Memorial without checking for accuracy, rather then whether he can. As a new member I asked him for the courtesy of time and space to develop these profiles of near kin stage by stage rather than having to practice new Wikitree specific skills on profiles of people further out that would be harder for me to keep track of. Second great grandparents may seem a stretch to some, but I was raised to pay my respects at their graves and have 5th great grandparents in that cemetery. When there are so many generations of a family piled up in one town, care must be taken to sort out the records of all the fathers, sons, uncles, nephews and cousins of the same name by sorting all the records of their siblings, wives, and children.

Being 12th generation Massachusetts born and bred, I am well aware that I do not "own" my ancestors, but my patience with people who ignore provable facts in favor of legends and rumors grows thin from time to time. I have immeasurable gratitude for the managers of the Mayflower and Puritan Great Migration Projects in particular, who are dedicated both to patient and meticulous research and defending the integrity of those profiles. I have great respect for Ellen Smith and Carol Baldwin as well, for their wide ranging efforts on Massachusetts more generally. I have collaborated with several other people, it is just this one specific behavior that I find annoying because it runs counter to what I've understood to be widely accepted practice and proof standards of genealogical and historical research.

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Thank you, Anonymous, for mentioning the great work my cousins Ellen and Carol have done.  I have collaborated with them both on occasion.  As it happens, Carol edited a number of my ancestors, creating biographies for them from the bare bones lists of sources I had left on their profiles.  She didn't contact me first, she just went ahead and did it.  They are her relatives as well as mine.  I was thrilled to find a relative who took an interest and nominated her a wonderful wikitreer.  I am equally thrilled when anybody else adds information to a family profile, with or without contacting me.  That's why I'm here, where the work I do can be enlarged and expanded by others.  I am not offended by their contributions, even when they are made in error.  Errors can be readily rectified, here, and research notes added to profiles when sources like Find a Grave contain inaccuracies, or when errors are inadvertently made by other researchers.  I have been the beneficiary of Ellen's indulgence, when blithely bludgeoning my way through our extended family.  Wikitree profiles are resilient.  They aren't static personal compositions.  They are shared works in ongoing process.

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I think it is important to actually check the information is accurate before making edits, than for someone else to need to correct introduced errors afterwards.

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Just to be clear: I totally understand the feeling. We have all been there. It is good to know that the frustration is part of the process here, as well as the discussion what is good sourcing and what not. Thank you for sharing your experience Anonymous.

Answer 3

I think you'll find that a good way to handle it is to evaluate the added source, then either incorporate it into the profile in the manner you prefer, or restore the profile and perhaps add a research note explaining why the source is incorrect, if indeed it is. 

Findagrave won't be the only 'dodgy' source added to "your" profiles as you go further back, so probably best to accept that others will add sources and how to work with others additions and corrections on profiles that you manage. After a while you'll appreciate the additions I think, and work to add the sources in a way you like on the profiles.