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Genealogically speaking, Abigail Warren Snow (b. 1619 - d. 1693) ID# 9WP3-6QP had the misfortune of being born to Richard Warren and Elizabeth Walker. Presently, in the FamilySearch.org Family Tree Change Log between June 4, 2022 (the same day this post was written) and January 29, 2012, when it appears that the original entry was made, there have been literally thousands of changes. I counted over 500 and then quit and spent a considerable time scrolling down to find the first entry. I probably scrolled for over ten minutes. Here is a screenshot of the first entries.
The amount of time and effort wasted on this one person is massive. The first thing I noticed was the tremendous number of duplicate entries merged but the duplicates are not even beginning to be addressed.
In my previous blog post, "Why are there so many changes to Elizabeth Walker?" I showed her husband, the Mayflower passenger Richard Warren with the Family Tree ID number of KXML-7XC. This Abigail Warren ID #9WP3-6QP already has a duplicate and her father is Richard Warren with the ID number of GXZG-WFS identified as "Master Richard Warren" ID number GXZG-WFS. Interestingly, while I was writing this post, someone deleted her from that entry. The Master Richard Warren entry married to Elizabeth Walker has zero sources attached but lists 17 children only two of which have any sources attached.
At one point, I decided to try and get involved in this huge mess, but I gave up because I had too much valuable and historically accurate work to do. At the rate the changes are being made to this one family, I suspect it would be a full-time job keeping out the unsupported changes. Now that I found this entry for "Master Richard Warren" ID number GXZG-WFS the website suddenly shows duplicate entries for both Elizabeth Walker Warren and Abigail Warren Snow. By the way, every Vital Record entry for "Master Richard Warren" ID number GXZG-WFS shows the reason that the information is correct to be GEDCOM Data.
Here is all the Mayflower Society has to say about Abigail Warren Snow:
Abigail Warren, born in England, circa 1618; died at Marshfield, after 3 January 1692/93; married at Plymouth, 8 November 1639, Anthony Snow; they had six children: Lydia, Josiah, Abigail, Sarah, son, and Alice Snow.
This and the brief entry in the following book are about all we know about this person.
Wakefield, Robert S., and Judith H. Swan. 2004. Mayflower families through five generations. descendants of the Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth, Mass., December 1620 Volume 18, Part one, Plymouth, MA: General Society of Mayflower Descendants, Volume 18, Part 1, pages 7-8.
Once again, this is a massive duplication of effort and an almost total waste of time. It might be productive if the huge amount of time adding unsupported information and by volunteers correcting the misinformation had resulted in some additional valuable information but there are only a scarce seven sources for Abigail in the Family Tree. Apparently, there are some good reasons for allowing this massive amount of waste to continue but it seems link allowing the changes to settled, specifically supported, accurate information to go on for over ten years cannot be excused because of any overriding reason.
A number of suggestions have been made to FamilySearch that would help to improve the situation without any constructive response. I have been and will continue to be a staunch supporter of FamilySearch and of the Family Tree, but I cannot see any reason for not directly addressing these obvious problems.
It’s so sad that in a nation said to be educated, that family historian think GEDCOM DATA and Ancestry Family Trees are sources.
ReplyDeleteGEDCOM Data are trees uploaded to the genealogies section. That text is generated by FamilySearch software, whenever you copy a person from an uploaded tree to the Family Tree. And when you do that as a user, you're not informed that this happens. I was told about this in a FamilySearch group on Facebook, and verified it with a personal GEDCOM, from which I copied a known person.
DeleteI see 2 potential contributory causes.
ReplyDelete(1) I'm reluctant to say it but some part of FS Management values participation over accuracy.
(2) Some FS contributors are doing this because they are not interested in genealogy but they regard the basic entries as the end product. To illustrate that, I spent some time in FS recently, fixing a William Purcell of Montana, born in Cheshire, England, who'd become confused with a William Purcell of Nantwich, Cheshire (a cousin of my GF). Fortunately I had access to stuff like the UK's 1939 Register and Ancestry's Montana BMDs, which hadn't been available when the original data had been entered. Fortunately also, several people had entered bits in their own Ancestry trees that hinted where I should look. Turns out William Purcell of Montana had indeed come from Cheshire but he'd been born as William Matthews and had taken the surname of his mother's 2nd husband. I was able to correct William Matthews / Purcell, and add him to his correct parents and siblings (one of whom also changed his surname but differently!).
I then messaged the two major contributors to William of Montana explaining what I'd done. No response.
I would also add that William of Montana could have been updated at any point in the recent past by using the record images on Ancestry but no-one had taken the trouble to enter any more information once that basic outline was in the tree.
I really don't like what I'm saying about people's commitments but I find it difficult to read it any other way.
I'm afraid both are correct, and find that often people don't even have the courtesy to realize that this is an international tree, based in the US, and and enter data in other languages than English. But OTOH, it's also true that many may not have access to Ancestry, for whatever reason.
DeleteYou know the meaning of GEDCOM Data in this context, right?
ReplyDeleteI have the same issues with several 1500-1700's ancestors. Not Mayflower, but shortly afterward. Gedcom input to family search is truly helpful to genealogists that get started on Ancestry or elsewhere, but there should be limits on FamilySearch, such as nothing prior to 1800 accepted. At that point, force new players to connect their trees back to already existing profiles. At that point they are back to 4th and 5th ggp, much of which is usually already there. Maybe even offer some partial automation after gedcom loading, Provide a list of endpoint ancestors at the cutoff point and offer hints of possible ties to existing profiles.
ReplyDeleteI did like the policy during the Mayflower anniversary which only allowed merges to be done with old profiles being the surviving person.
I don't think it's too much to ask for new folks to make those connections manually when comparing to the massive efforts that continually go on to fix GEDCOM driven changes to very old profiles and long ago profiles.
Thank you for bringing this to light and advocating for reduced energy on long settled profiles where little new knowledge is entering the system, just throwaway effort to fix continuing insults.
Bill Greggs
"I have been and will continue to be a staunch supporter of FamilySearch and of the Family Tree, but I cannot see any reason for not directly addressing these obvious problems."
ReplyDeleteI can: religion.
Simply put there is a strong faction within the Mormon hierarchy that simply want more ordinances performed and don't care about the quality of them. The side effect of this faction's slapdashness is appalling wastes of time such as you have documented and horrific genealogical quality problems in significant parts of FSFT.
I am lucky in that my direct line ancestors and indeed the vast majority of my collateral lines don't appear to have anyone LDS in them. That means there's generally no massive amount of junk in there already and also no hoards of incompetent novices futzing around and reducing the quality of the entries.
Since I'm not of that religious persuasion I also personally don't care about the religious aspects of FSFT. However it's a very powerful and compelling explanation for the refusal to take pretty much any concrete steps to actually restrict editing by those who put nonsense into it until they actually know what they're doing.
As for GEDCOM Data? Careless, pointless, very often wrong information imported by a route that should have been stopped long ago.
... and which wasn't stopped for the reason you mentioned.
Delete