RootsChat.Com
General => The Common Room => Topic started by: Ssxy on Friday 01 July 22 19:43 BST (UK)
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Is it just me - but I am finding that Ancestry links through to FindaGrave are oftentimes coming up with entries that do not relate to photographed headstones?
Seems to me some folk are at best harvesting Family History Society transcripts or at worst projecting their own, possibly flawed research.
In the spirit of the apparent wishes of the FAG website I have over the years contributed photos and data, but on several occasions when I have contacted authors for clarification or challenge an entry I have often been convinced they don't actually know anything about the entry I am talking about. Some have refused to change their entry when I have produced documentary evidence challenging what they have put.
Such a pity that such a useful website appears now to have lowered the bar in regard to the source of submissions.
Rant over.
Ssxy.
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Is this the group that plan to have mapped all England's graveyards and put the details online?
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I challenged an entry on FAG just a few days ago and the entry was removed just 2 days later. It should have been obvious to whomever put it on because the age on the headstone was over 20 years out from the age of the person it was supposed to be.
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I sent information to correct an entry on F-a-G and got a very quick and friendly response. The information was almost immediately updated on the F-a-G site.
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I have also had cause to correct a few entries on FindaGrave.
They have always been prompt and courteous in my experience.
Bev
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This is a really dodgy site I had a bad experience with them a few years ago. One of their contributors took a lot of content from one of my websites without permission and when challenged denied they'd done it so not only were they a thief but they were a liar too! The problem with this was it wasn't just burial details it was bio information for people which is subject to change and may not be suitable for a general family history site. So if you've written about reports of domestic violence you don't want that coming up on a general site.
Blue
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To some people it seems that Find A Grave is just another online competition. This can have devastating consequences, as Judy Russell mentions with reference to the Uvalde school shootings in her Legal Genealogist blog:
https://www.legalgenealogist.com/2022/05/31/ancestry-this-ones-on-you/
(Find A Grave is owned by Ancestry, hence the title of the article.)
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I stopped using FAG a long time ago because there didn't seem to be any citations to support the entries. Sounds as if its got worse.
Martin
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I've noticed that the entries I'd looked at recently as "hints" for a tree were cribbed from other sources, such as Lan-OPC, but with the detail removed. There are no photos (because there are no headstones), but not as much detail as in the burial registers.
What annoys me more about FaG is their insistence on using place names which didn't exist when events occurred. With many local government reorganisations, some of them no longer exist, except on FaG.
This is of course not confined to one website. Wikipedia, for example, insist that George Washington was born in the United States of America.
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I've had a mixed experience with Find A Grave in recent years. In several instances I submitted corrections to a few people, was thanked and details were almost immediately corrected on the site.
However, I've two especially annoying problems. First concerns a relative whose entry show an incorrect middle name. My correction with a explanation was sent but no response. I know who the person is (a relative) and other people have continued the error in their trees. One of them recently corrected me when I gave the real middle name saying records give the other one. When I asked which records do so (I have 3 census records, numerous obituaries, burial details from cemetery, newspaper articles, deeds, etc.) they finally admitted 'maybe' I was right now that they can see the references.
Second case is a bit more annoying since it concerns a large number of people who are apparently buried at our church about 200 years before the 1st actual burial (before the church was on it's present site- no burying ground at site of old church which we used to own). Some of them do have a headstone at a neighbouring church in the same parish. When contacted one of the submitters (a husband & wife team) asked for proof and then said they weren't going to change anything as 'it would be too complicated to correct so many errors' or words to than effect.
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Ancestry is full of inaccuracy and sometimes to a ridiculous level. As a total novice I trusted Ancestry's "suggested parent" feature and ended up related to Mary Tudor ! I had to delete hundreds of records from my tree.
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This topic is about Findagrave - AngelJunction has now opened her own topic re Ancestry "suggested parent" here
https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=863658.new;topicseen#new
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There are some managers who bulk upload transcriptions of registers. If a cemetery had very few entries and suddenly appears to have thousands that's usually the reason, clicking on a few of the memorials will reveal who the manager is and their profile will show how many memorials they have created and how many they manage. Corrections offered can be accepted or rejected by a manager, if ignored they are auto accepted after a period of about 28 days (I can't recall the exact timeframe). Some managers are really good and deal with corrections promptly, some are a little slower to respond, some ask for documents/supporting evidence before accepting them.
The bulk uploads may be light on detail as the registers themselves rarely have maiden names for example and even if burials of the same surname appear in the same plot the multi million manager types rarely research the names to link them together as family groups.
I've had good and bad experiences, it's not the site as such, more the attitude of those using it and the way they sometimes use it, that goes not only for managers but also for those submitting corrections. I've had numerous corrections offering maiden names to memorials I've added but sent as private messages, where a name applies to duplicate memorials it's often difficult to tell which memorial is being referred to. If the 'suggest edits' was used then it's much easier as a manager to go through them.
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"First concerns a relative whose entry show an incorrect middle name. My correction with a explanation was sent but no response."
The memorial manager may no longer be active on findagrave or perhaps they have changed their email address. If you had used the edit system there would have been a response - the manager would have to accept or decline the edit. If they did nothing, the edit would have been automatically accepted after 21 days.
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I did try that, Enumerated, and my correction was also rejected without explanation. I know that the person is active and has the same email address. They also don't responded to queries about DNA matches (from more than one relative).
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I did try that, Enumerated, and my correction was also rejected without explanation. I know that the person is active and has the same email address. They also don't responded to queries about DNA matches (from more than one relative).
Suggested edits on Findagrave can be declined without a reason having to be given, there is no way to know if a memorial manager is active on the site or not as there is no indication of their login or activity history. Findagrave does not support DNA links/matches.
There's nothing fundamentally wrong with the site but the way some users go about things can leave a lot to be desired. The same can be said of trees on any of the tree hosting platforms, I've seen some really mangled efforts for my direct ancestors on wikitree and tribal pages, had no response to messages on Ancestry and rolled back edits on familysearch and merged duplicates several times.
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Suggested edits on Findagrave can be declined without a reason having to be given, there is no way to know if a memorial manager is active on the site or not as there is no indication of their login or activity history. Findagrave does not support DNA links/matches.
The person who has the incorrect information is a relative, I know they are still active on the site. I know that Find A Grave has no DNA connection but was merely commenting that this same person does not respond to DNA messages or queries from known relatives.
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I do wonder why people upload photos if there are already good photos of the grave.
Recently photos have been uploaded of the graves of relatives that are not an improvement on the photos that are already there. Some photos are too pixelated (probably taken on a phone), or the photographer hasn't crouched to get a good angle, or they don't check what is in the background and the photo includes a rubbish bin!
In early 2020 I flew to another city for a funeral and decided to search for some graves while I was there. It was very successful mission and I took a hearthbrush and shovel with me to tidy up the graves before I photographed them. They needed a little bit of weeding. I visited the cemetery early in the morning before the funeral, tidied the graves and photographed them, but I decided the sun would be at a better angle later in the day so I returned in the afternoon and took more photographs. The afternoon photos were much better and I created entries for these relatives and uploaded the afternoon photos.
I really do try if possible to make the photo as attractive as possible. One of my favourite photos that I took is of a grave that isn't associated with my family. It was a clear autumn day with good light and the ground was covered with bright red and orange leaves.
I was back there at Christmas 2020 and the graves were looking very tidy. Since then one grave has been overgrown by vines. A volunteer has taken a low quality pixelated photo of the grave in this state and uploaded the photo. I just can't see the point, and now this grotty image is the main image on the entry.
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The standards seem to vary from one extreme to the other don't they. The way some people make photo requests is another thing to ponder. I've seen examples of multiple requests for a plot because it has Tom, Dick and Harry in it. In that scenario I make one request and add a message with all the names rather than 3 requests and no message at all.
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The standards seem to vary from one extreme to the other don't they. The way some people make photo requests is another thing to ponder. I've seen examples of multiple requests for a plot because it has Tom, Dick and Harry in it. In that scenario I make one request and add a message with all the names rather than 3 requests and no message at all.
I'm about to fulfil a request like that. Perhaps the requester doesn't know that all three people are in the same grave. I don't mind because I will get three Volunteer Photo credits when I fulfil the request. I found the grave the other day but the sun was shining through foliage onto the grave and the photos looked awful so I'm going back to get better ones.
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I find it easier as a photo volunteer to have separate requests for Tom, Dick, Harry. Saves a lot of faffing around when uploading.
Pauline
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"they don't check what is in the background and the photo includes a rubbish bin! "
If there's a rubbish bin in shot there's not much you can do about it. Sometimes the bin is right beside the grave and I will take photos from different angles so at least some of them won't have the bin in them.
The other day I photographed a gravestone that had a big black rubbish bag beside it which was too heavy for me to move. Maybe I'll remember to take another photo when the bag is removed. When I was using a computer I was able to 'clone' an area of grass over any unsightly objects in the photo, but I don't think I can do that on a mobile phone.
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I found the grave the other day but the sun was shining through foliage onto the grave and the photos looked awful so I'm going back to get better ones.
Use flash ? :D