What is wrong with all these pictures?

Oh boy, He is at it again. Picking on those poor people at Ancestry and FamilySearch. Ah heck, why not. Need to do a good rant every now and then. Besides I start my Fall genealogy classes tomorrow night and I want my students to have something to talk about before I arrive in class.

First, let me say I have over the years discovered trees at Ancestry.com that have some darn good stuff -- well put together and well sourced. Then there are . . . well let me illustrate.

This is a test. What is wrong with the screen capture below? Unfortunately over half of the trees at Ancestry for the family below had this configuration.

Unfortunately, IMHO opinion, FamilySearch.org trees are even worse. In the case of FamilySearch not only are the participants doing this type of stuff, but the computers at FamilySearch make these types of changes all on their own, no prompting, they just do it.

At least at Ancestry, I have the option to ignore this insanity and I control my own tree. At FamilySearch, not only do some of the "genealogists" think they are smarter than me and my research, the computer thinks it is smarter than all of us and just makes changes even after I put correct sourced information into "MY TREE."

For the folks at FamilySearch, that is why I refuse to spend even one more millisecond messing around within your trees, and I refuse to teach my genealogy students your tree system.

And when you approach these people in Salt Lake about these issues, they say they do not have a problem or when confronted with evidence they ignore you and will not answer queries. I get an airdale salute (you Navy guys know what that is)!

This new trees system is every bit the mess you had with the Ancestral File and other tree ventures you have tried in the past. When is someone at FS going to figure out that the computer can't be trusted to take control and link up people in these online trees.

But enough of my ramblings I just pulled just three examples from my "tree" at FamilySearch. There are many, many more I assure you.

In each of these examples these are entries to "MY TREE" I did not even make. I do not have the time to sit here and go through their convoluted menu system to get this stuff out. Even if I did have then, it still continues to come back unannounced anyway.

In this first case, when the computer inserted Mary Mason I took her out of my tree as it has been positive proven she was not Elizabeth Dancy's mother (child birth at age 9) and the computer came back and inserted her back in again this time without a date of her birth. (click on image to enlarge).

 

In the screen shot below, I put none of these people in my tree. Didn't ask for them to be put in there. In fact, I have not even gotten that far out in the tree. Again the computer decided what was best for my tree, not me. (click on image to enlarge)

In another random act of genealogy this third example shows why this system is no better than the trees at Ancestry (at least I have control over that one).

Please notice the families on the far left and compare then closely with the rest of the chart. Again I wasn't this far out in building the tree, didn't enter these people and the computer system at FS has messed this tree up entirely.

I could keep this up for the rest of the day but to what point? They won't listen to legitimate concerns out at Salt Lake and I don't have time to keep correcting the record only to have some computer system come back and make more changes I did not ask for or want.

Genealogy trees you either love'em or hate them. But I would suggest a third alternative and you can do what I do. Nothing goes to my online tree unless the preponderance of the evidence says I am right. You can use trees but verify the information.

Bottom line, once that genie is out of the bottle, if it isn't right, good luck getting it back in the bottle.

To bad I can't get some of these Ancestry tree people, including the FamilySearch tree people in Salt Lake in some of my classes. We would have to spend some time realigning their thinking. ;-)

I'm posting this piece to my main genealogy blog as well, maybe this will get some attention, especially out at FamilySearch. Are you folks listening or will this fall on deaf ears like everything relating to this computerized tree system. Only time will tell.

FamilySearch Trees - Don't waste your time

While I give the nice folks at FamilySearch an A for effort in attempting to put together a one world family tree, their latest attempt at trees gets an F for failure to execute a viable system.

In my humble opinion this latest nuance (previous attempts by the LDS church were known as ancestral file, pedigree resource, etc) is probably the worse yet, this time not only is the computer system at Familysearch making changes to your trees that are flat wrong, much like the insanity of the old Ancestral File, but now you have even in some cases unknown individuals inserting wrong information , names, places and dates into your tree, after you have inputted your correct, source data. Then you are suppose to have discussions with these folks about who is wrong or right.

The flag I just threw and whistle I just blew means time out and a penalty. Hey FamilySearch I do not have the time, energy, or inclination to keep changing my stuff back to right, have a discussion with people who pull stuff they call genealogy from God knows where, and spending an enormous amount of time constantly correcting my files only to have your computer or someone think they are smarter and changing it to something else again. Then the cycle repeats itself in an endless loop.

This is suppose to aid in my research, not hinder it. I haven't spent one single minute of my time at FamilySearch and their new trees learning anything new about my family. Instead I have spent my time correcting bad info from everyone except me. But hey don't take my word for this. Let's take a look at only a tip of the iceberg illustrated in the screen capture I made this morning from my, uh their, uh the FS community tree. Let's just see how many of you catch the problems I captured in one instance in the image below from "my" FS tree (click on image to enlarge).

 



 

The second image below really show you dramatically what I'm talking about. I put the info in about John H. Mallory and his two parents. The rest came from so called cousins and the FS computer system who think they are smarter than me. I do not have the time to address the dozens of issues in this lineage and corrections needed to make it correct (and then have the whole things wiped out in a week or two) by their computer or others.

 

 

Wonder how many reader can spot all the problems in this chart and nothing past the second generation was created by me.  The "computer and other cousins" created it all and it is now attached to my tree!!!

 

The worse of the abuses above was Lucinda Paynes b. 1718 whose mother was identified as Lucinda Pynes, born in . . . 1718. Really??? As my son would say when he was a little guy, "Are you Kidding." Sad really, really sad.

 

The bottom line in all this as far as my personal research is concerned, I will no longer participate in this madness. If I could take my data out at this point, I would so I can wash my hands of the whole thing. I didn't get much of a response from FamilySearch when I attempted to address the issue. They wanted me to me to watch a brief video telling me how this is all done. I guess they figured I was uninformed how this was all suppose to work.

 

So if you take any of my classes are doing so in order for me to explain how to do FamilySearch trees, don't bother. I will not be covering anything in regards to FamilySearch's trees. I will also be sending a link of this in feedback to FamilySearch. You folks can reach me via email at familyhistorian  at  frontier  dot com. I will also be happy to discuss this on the phone with them, but please do not patronize me by telling me I need to watch a video so I can better understand how to do your trees.

 

Bottom line, this whole thing is extremely labor intensive to input, update and maintain; very frustrating to use; and definitely not an aid to genealogy research. Oh yea, you won't be seeing any of my pictures of other electronic research records either.

 

PS - (That means post script for all you common core students). I attempted to provide feedback with a link to this post to FamilySearch and guess what, it didn't work (the send button did not work). I got a message saying I need to update my Internet Explorer to then latest version (I'm using version IE 11) or switch to another browser such a Chrome. I did switch to Chrome and the send button and you guessed it the send button still didn't work. Does anything at FamilySearch work at all????