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General => The Common Room => The Lighter Side => Topic started by: bullet on Tuesday 14 March 17 22:42 GMT (UK)
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I recently very politely contacted a person who (through Ancestry) had 'taken' my grandmother to America, and married her to one of her relatives. I explained that I had her birth, marriage and death certificates, ( she was my mother's mother) and that maybe she had the wrong person. She emailed me back to say when she put her ancestor's name in the search box, my grand-mother's name kept coming up so she put it in her tree, even though the spelling was incorrect. I explained that in the 1881 census the name was misstranscribed but by looking at the rest of the family listed, she was in fact not hers. I also said that the reason being was that in many cases, people who were not familiar with the English language were used to transcribe documents. I suggested that by buying certificates that the correct information could be found and could offer more leads to other family members by witnesses, informants, etc.
This morning I received another email saying she had no idea that people other than Americans transcribed the documents, and in no way was she ever going to buy a certificate to authenticate her findings and that it was now time to 'pack it in'! I had a look at her tree to try and help her in some way, (you never know, we could of been related somehow,) and it was quiet long going back a long way. - I wonder now how much was in fact true....
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It doesn't surprise me, many people now copy and paste anything they find online and think they are researching and yet don't have any real documents to back up any of the 'tree' they merrily continue to build....and 100% defend 'their tree' as real and they don't want to hear they have unrelated people in their tree.
Thankfully I started researching way before the internet, way before online trees so learned how to research correctly and prove each person, however now we are all guilty of wanting everything yesterday so with the internet it makes it easy and quick.
When the internet arrived and the LDS site which had some trees on it, there was a lady who lived about 2 miles from me an LDS member who had used the IGI to build a tree which was part of my family line and I got in touch with her several times before she answered me, her tree was wrong, I had all the copies of real records and wanted to ask her about her tree and share what I had researched, she wanted everything I had and we met, but that is all she wanted she was not prepared to tell me anything and so I left as she was a FH hoarder and really didn't care about real or not. Today I see that tree of hers copied and pasted on every website as that is how people "research" they copy someones elses tree, so not one of them are correct....and I can't remember how many times I have sat in records offices and from the beginning researched that line to make sure I have researched correctly ( I have but it must be FH OCD).
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She emailed me back to say when she put her ancestor's name in the search box, my grand-mother's name kept coming up so she put it in her tree, even though the spelling was incorrect.
I think that the television advert we get here, and presumably they get in America, is to blame for that, as it says that all you have to do is type a name in and your whole tree is revealed (or similar). It makes it sound so easy and doesn't warn that you have to check and double check that you have the right person.
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Iluleah, Your LDS member neighbour is supposed to "hoarde" names:
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/mormon-church-baptising-thousands-of-dead-victorians--atheist-or-not-20170306-gus640.html
There is a huge amount about this on the internet but the above was the first article I grabbed. :)
There have been various (sometimes heated) discussions about this on rootschat too. I vaguely remember reading that church members are assigned quotas and encouraged to collect as many names as they can (I don't know if this is true or not). That is one of the reasons we are told not to take too mich notice of the member submitted records on FamilySearch, as many are guesses and "best fits" - and you sometimes see entries such as John Smith's wife is entered as "Mrs John Smith" for example.
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Bullet,
I couldn't resist but your reply back was a bit of a 'ricochet' ;D
Annie
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I have serious reason to believe that my grandfather would complain severely if he was "baptised" into the Mormon faith, as he was a Methodist minister until his death aged 97, in 1974.
Going several generation back, the family was a faithful Methodist family, with both sides seriously engaged.
AC
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Iluleah, Your LDS member neighbour is supposed to "hoarde" names:
I didn't really mean it in that way, although I do see how it reads.
I understand how the LDS work. FH is big business for their church raking in billions worldwide and many moons ago the person who started me researching or rather taught me how to was ( and still is) a LDS member and spent the first 30 yrs trying to convert me ( I love her to bits but she is wasting her time with me on that one) and yes they collect and send in at that time 200 names at a time, in fact ( not sure about now) but anyone could send them data, as they believe everyone is related and it is all about proving that but that goes along with no checking of facts or where data is from as well as continuing "the LDS is largest growing church" of course everyone who is dead is 're baptised' into the LDS regardless of their religion in their lifetime. There was a huge media stink some years ago when they re baptised the Jewish victims from the holocaust.
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Iluleah, Your LDS member neighbour is supposed to "hoarde" names:
I didn't really mean it in that way, although I do see how it reads.
I understand how the LDS work. FH is big business for their church raking in billions worldwide and many moons ago the person who started me researching or rather taught me how to was ( and still is) a LDS member and spent the first 30 yrs trying to convert me ( I love her to bits but she is wasting her time with me on that one) and yes they collect and send in at that time 200 names at a time, in fact ( not sure about now) but anyone could send them data, as they believe everyone is related and it is all about proving that but that goes along with no checking of facts or where data is from as well as continuing "the LDS is largest growing church" of course everyone who is dead is 're baptised' into the LDS regardless of their religion in their lifetime. There was a huge media stink some years ago when they re baptised the Jewish victims from the holocaust.
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I understand how the LDS work. .....
[off topic] Iluleah, I think you just followed this with some sort of record - a sentence of 144 words with just two commas. Well done :D :D
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A long story, shortened.
An ex-colleague of mine (who I knew had been adopted) lived in my village. He mentioned to me that I should come and see 'his tree'. He lives in an early Victorian town house. His adoptive parents are dead.
I turn up and expect something on paper or on computer. But no. One whole wall of the study is a beautifully painted fresco. There is a miniature painting of every member of his family going back generations. He started to tell me the story of his family - practically every one of them was a 'somebody', or was responsible for doing 'something of note'. I was impressed.
I asked some questions and it transpired that he had found interesting people and included them. From what I could ascertain, hardly anybody (if any at all) on that beautifully painted wall was related to him.
He knew that his birth parents had to have been white Europeans but other than that, he had no idea. So he invented a family to be proud of and had the wall painted.
He had only included his adoptive parents, because there were living people in the village who had known them.
Any time I feel tempted to cut corners, I think of him.
Regards
Chas
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many people now copy and paste anything they find online and think they are researching
They may not actually be doing this.
As I have related before, I once tried to build an online tree; but quickly found that the way the software expected me to work was very different from the way in which I wanted to work. I couldn't make the software conform to my ideas, and as I don't believe in allowing tails to wag dogs, I therefore abandoned the project.
HOWEVER, when I was still trying to record my tree online, the computer would periodically show me a part of somebody else's tree and ask "is this a match?" or some such. If I looked and thought that that person had identified the same ancestor as me and appeared to have the same family surrounding them, I would say "yes".
I had and have no idea what the software actually did when I confirmed the match; but from time to time even now, many years later, I get automated e-mails telling me that new material has been added to my tree. Well, I'm not adding anything! So I can only assume that when somebody whose tree I confirmed as a "match" adds something, the software automatically assumes that I want it added to my tree and does so.
Are all of these people good researchers? I doubt it.
Will it look to anyone chancing upon it as though the compiler of "my tree" is just "copying and pasting anything they find online and thinking they are researching"? Probably.
Is that which is ACTUALLY happening? Certainly not!
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A long story, shortened.
And a very good one. Thanks for sharing.
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I had and have no idea what the software actually did when I confirmed the match; but from time to time even now, many years later, I get automated e-mails telling me that new material has been added to my tree. Well, I'm not adding anything! So I can only assume that when somebody whose tree I confirmed as a "match" adds something, the software automatically assumes that I want it added to my tree and does so.
Are all of these people good researchers? I doubt it.
Will it look to anyone chancing upon it as though the compiler of "my tree" is just "copying and pasting anything they find online and thinking they are researching"? Probably.
Is that which is ACTUALLY happening? Certainly not!
An interesting question. I am currently trying to redo my tree on a well known site. It makes suggestions of matches and if I check them out and agree then I confirm them as correct. However, I had never thought that in the background they might in future surreptitiously add further matches because I had previously agreed to one of their matches. I would be totally against this and it would make all online trees an equivalent of the familysearch one world tree where I believe anyone can add or amend entries made by anyone else with predictable results
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On Ancestry you can set your tree to 'private' and you can exclude other people's trees from your search results. This at least stops you adding other people's errors by accident. I've never had the experience of them adding anything without me knowing about it.
It still gives me some really terrible hints and it's easy to make a mistake if you are not super careful, I've been taken in by them in the past.
Sometimes it's very persistent in insisting that a person is a different person altogether, with the same name just in a different location. Even if you've confirmed all the major details, birth baptism etc, it will still show you hints for others with the same or similar name.
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I think my point was in writing 'copying and pasting', regardless of if a person is doing it or computer software is doing it for them, really is irrelevant. It is not researching and proving.
Copying, collecting information or clicking a key is adding it blindly to a tree and regardless of how many times you see the same information doesn't mean it is real and only researching records to prove any information yourself so you prove and cite each person.
The internet is a wonderful 'tool' but no computer 'researches' the software just matches a criteria put into it so only the individual can research, prove and cite. As a tool only, no one would use one tool to eg build a house, you wouldn't get very far only using a screw driver.
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For those of us who are non-English speaking Gobsmacked is ................
so surprised that you cannot speak
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How refreshing Iluleah, to read that last paragraph and find someone saying the same as I am always saying, but I usually feel like a lone voice!
i.e - the internet is a "tool", yes a very useful one. It is to be used alongside other tools.
Unfortunately the world sees it more and more as it Master, not as a tool.
"The internet says ....., so it must be right" , or "I cant do xx because the computer wont let me", sort of things. Rather than I will research xxx and will use the internet as one of many tools to do so, or I can do xxxx and I will use the computer where appropriate to help.
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The internet is a wonderful 'tool' but no computer 'researches' the software just matches a criteria put into it so only the individual can research, prove and cite. As a tool only, no one would use one tool to eg build a house, you wouldn't get very far only using a screw driver.
Iluleah,
That's a great way of explaining & very true ;D
Annie
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How refreshing Iluleah, to read that last paragraph and find someone saying the same as I am always saying, but I usually feel like a lone voice!
i.e - the internet is a "tool", yes a very useful one. It is to be used alongside other tools.
Unfortunately the world sees it more and more as it Master, not as a tool.
"The internet says ....., so it must be right" , or "I cant do xx because the computer wont let me", sort of things. Rather than I will research xxx and will use the internet as one of many tools to do so, or I can do xxxx and I will use the computer where appropriate to help.
No you are not alone ;D
I listen to students who seem to think exactly what you have said, they think they have 'friends' and freak out when someone doesn't 'poke' them or they find someone has 'de-friended ' them...... I end up counselling students who claim social anxiety, depression and loss of 'friends' when in reality they just need to switch of their gadgets, mix with real people, use all their senses and live their life.
These 'kids' have no clue about researching as unless it comes up on wikipedia it doesn't exist in their world....and unfortunately many people who have long left school, college or University are falling into the same trap
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I think my point was in writing 'copying and pasting', regardless of if a person is doing it or computer software is doing it for them, really is irrelevant. It is not researching and proving.
Copying, collecting information or clicking a key is adding it blindly to a tree and regardless of how many times you see the same information doesn't mean it is real and only researching records to prove any information yourself so you prove and cite each person.
Yes ... I get that.
And my point was that it appears that the software may be copying and pasting things into trees without any active intervention by the person who is responsible fo rthe tree.
I agree that this is not research.
My point is simply that we ought not to be to quick to condemn the person who is responsible for the tree for "blindly copying and pasting" when they may not even be aware that it has been done ...
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For those of us who are non-English speaking Gobsmacked is ................
so surprised that you cannot speak
Or, more literally, in the same state or condition that you would be if you have been "smacked" (i.e. punched) in the "gob" (i.e. mouth)
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When my tree on Ancestry was public, I was getting hints which originally came from my own tree!! Some of these were also my own family photos, some house photos, comments and stories that I had personally written, also BMD's that I had purchased myself! Before I scan anything to put into my tree, I always add something personal on the original photo or document, I use my photo editing programme to add names, dates etc.
I might add that most of these trees where my relatives info had been acquired from, had several thousand people - really big trees - I certainly hope I and mine are not going to end up in the Granite Mountain Vaults! Or re-baptised!
I don't mind sharing these things at all, but at least a member connect message explaining their relationship would be good! Those I have had that have identified their connection properly, get a certainly, they're welcome - )after I've looked at their tree) That's why I made my tree private!
If I get a hint, I always check out the tree, if I looks dodgy, I just ignore it! If it looks like a genuine connection for me, I will message the tree owner, explaining my connection, and ASK if they would mind if I took a copy of something, especially in the case of photo's and notes, stories and other comments!
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There's a horrible person who puts other people's information on Find a Grave without permission. They copied information from one of my websites and created bios for each person not just the basic grave details. They made a lot of copying mistakes in the process. I tried to get the mistakes corrected but she ignored my e-mails. This experience led me to take my websites and trees offline as although there are a lot of nice people out there in the genealogy world but there are also some horrible people out there who spoilt things for others.
Blue
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Find a Grave is a very strange operation. Some participants do seem to care about preserving memorials to aid family researchers, while others seem ghoulishly interested in collecting as many souls as they can. Why someone would want to retain ownership of a memorial when they have no familial connection to the memorial is beyond my understanding. My mother hadn't been buried a week before someone created a memorial with a exceptionally long bio, giving information on living members. To her credit though, she did transfer the memorial on my request and I was able to edit the information.
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Find a Grave is a very strange operation. Some participants do seem to care about preserving memorials to aid family researchers, while others seem ghoulishly interested in collecting as many souls as they can. Why someone would want to retain ownership of a memorial when they have no familial connection to the memorial is beyond my understanding. My mother hadn't been buried a week before someone created a memorial with a exceptionally long bio, giving information on living members. To her credit though, she did transfer the memorial on my request and I was able to edit the information.
This could be the future of genealogy unfortunately. A moderated network of trees where we have to put a case forward to gain some control of the publication of information about our relatives out there on central record systems.
Blue
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This could be the future of genealogy unfortunately. A moderated network of trees where we have to put a case forward to gain some control of the publication of information about our relatives out there on central record systems.
I wouldn't call that Genealogy.
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This could be the future of genealogy unfortunately. A moderated network of trees where we have to put a case forward to gain some control of the publication of information about our relatives out there on central record systems.
I wouldn't call that Genealogy.
Neither would I but I've read that this networking approach to research is predicted to be the future of genealogy. Centralisation of trees and records. Big Brother's got his eye on your ancestors' narrative!
Blue
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The Find a Grave website has my ancestor George Stanley as being buried inside Lichfield Cathedral in 1509. This I could not believe so wanting more evidence than the original submission in the first place I contacted the Cathedral archivist as well as journeying to Lichfield myself. It turns out that the Stanley buried there is in actual fact Sir John Stanley and the Cathedral archive have no record of a George Stanley although George was related to the above John. I have found this error repeated elsewhere.
I can't understand how someone could make such a mistake especially when the Stanley monument clearly indicates which Stanley is buried there.
I thought about contacting the above site to get the submission corrected but then decided it would be a complete waste of time.
Jay
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From my experience if there's a family connection to a burial place then Find a Grave submitters will assume a person is buried there. My lot are all supposed to be in one cemetery even the people who emigrated to Australia!
Blue
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Interesting reading about Findagrave and others experiences.
I saw an entry and the person who submitted it had also linked it to another as their spouse which I knew was wrong ( it was their child) so sent in a request to correct it, the person who had submitted it didn't change it.
Sometime later I received an email message from a very old post on one of the original forums and as they are so big it can take years for anyone to answer, they came across as they were looking for their own family and wanted me to send my tree ( not happening) Something clicked in my head as I knew the name from somewhere and eventually I traced it back to findagrave, this person had input hundreds on there from all over the world and had added "personal leave flowers and notes" to many.
So I responded with the findagrave message of 'not spouse but child' which needed changing as it gave spurious information to others which could be changed easily to stop that.
So "reets3" I agree, some strange people out there
while others seem ghoulishly interested in collecting as many souls as they can. Why someone would want to retain ownership of a memorial when they have no familial connection to the memorial is beyond my understanding.