I work almost daily on genealogy tasks. I (as I may have said) research both my family and my husband's. My primary platform is Ancestry, but I try to transfer all the information to FamilySearch, which is the collaborative family tree/genealogy website, run by the Church of the Latter Day Saints.
I'm so passionate about genealogy that I put some pretty coin into using services like Ancestry, Findmypast, Newspapers.com, and Wiewaswie. I have the resources to do that and I like to share by putting useful information up on FamilySearch, where anyone can have an account for FREE.
But because FamilySearch is a collaborative website, anyone can change the things that are put up there. I try to write a Life Sketch for each person I research, using historical documents as the basis. I transcribe carefully, all the information out of those records, onto the Life Sketch. I assume, wrongly apparently, that with that Life Sketch front and center, anyone who wants to change something vital, will read that first and see that the facts there are documented. Maybe they have the wrong person...an ancestor with the same name and similar dates, but not the right person they are searching for. No.
Lucky for me, FamilySearch lets you opt to 'watch' any person listed and see what changes are made to anyone you are watching. They send a weekly email listing changes to everyone on your watch list.
Recently, I had an ancestor of my husband's that I had researched very thoroughly and I had documented my research there. Last week, someone changed his parents, gave him a child, born in a different country and ten years before he and his wife married, and merged him with another person...all without thinking how this could possibly be right and wiping out all my data, including the Life Sketch. I try to write very kind notes to folks like this but this one made me very angry. I have to admit that I wrote a note saying he had wiped out many hours of work, not only by me but by others who had contributed to this person and all of his descendants. Then I changed everything back. Thank goodness, there is a restore function.
I have not heard back.
FamilySearch can be a fun and interesting place to do genealogy. It can also be infuriating. How many times have I slapped my forehead in disbelief when someone assigns parents to someone when their marriage (or birth or death) record is attached, which clearly states the parents' names...and they are not the ones you think they are, dude!
I do transfer the Life Sketch information for anyone I have in my tree to my Ancestry page, so I will have it for the long run. But for others that share these genealogies, I want to make their life easier and not make us all hunt for the information we need. If it is out there and I have found it, I want to share it. I hope others feel the same and want to share information, too.
Just please, think twice before you change the work of hardworking home genealogists like me. I always double check that I have facts or documents before changing someone's work, and I hope you do, too.
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