The FamilySearch.org Family Tree is a marvelous resource. It has the potential to become a standard universal wiki-based family tree. However, there are serious issues with any large wiki-based project that must be addressed to maintain informational integrity. There is a precarious balance between open participation and accuracy. Most large, online cooperative websites, such as Wikipedia, are source centric. In addition, However, Wikipedia actively notifies users when information is unsupported by sources or is incomplete. Here is a quote from the article, Wikipedia: Quality Control.
Quality control is essential to Wikipedia. To maintain articles of acceptable quality, it is necessary to improve the quality of existing material, and remove material of irreparably poor quality.
The article further points out the following:
But mistakes sometimes occur. These, and the damage done by the bad apples mentioned above, need continuous attention. The three ways that Wikipedia maintains its quality control is as follows: (a) A great deal of Wikipedia's volunteers' effort is applied to quality control. Wikipedia has an elaborate disciplinary system for handling vandals and other troublemakers, and a dedicated force of system administrators to enforce the Wikipedia community's decisions and policies – admins even have the power to block a bad apple permanently. (b) Once material is added to Wikipedia, an army of volunteers organized under various departments check and recheck it to make sure it conforms to the high standards set forth in Wikipedia's policies and guidelines (which were established specifically with the creation of quality articles in mind). There are departments for everything from typos to factual errors. For a list, see Wikipedia:Maintenance. (c) And Wikipedia even has robots, automated users that monitor for errors and correct them automatically. For example, these days most vandalism is fixed by Wikipedia's robots, or our content editors, who are watching your every move. Be careful.
Now let's think about the FamilySearch Family Tree. Which of the integrity preserving activities outlined by Wikipedia have been implemented for the Family Tree?
Basically, the Family Tree is an unsupervised, open field for any type of change and any level of accuracy imaginable. The only moderating factor is that some users can "follow" entries in the Family Tree and make corrections. No one and no organization monitors the followers. Good, substantiated information providing birth, marriage, and death events are frequently changed by unsupported and speculative information. For an example see "My Revolving Door Ancestor: Francis Cooke."
There seems to be a dichotomy in the Family Tree between those who recognize the need to maintain the integrity of the Family Tree and those who are afraid the "average user" will be excluded by any such efforts. For example, it has been proposed many times that some restrictions be imposed on entering unsourced information. This suggestion always incurs the response that any restriction on entering any data in Family Tree would discourage people from entering information that they know about their immediate family members. For example, the question arises about entering information derived from oral histories. Some efforts in standardizing information have already been implemented, such as standardizing dates and places, but let me give give some hypothetical examples of how a system might work that would differentiate between initial entries and changes.
Let's suppose I was a completely new and unknowledgeable person who wished to begin entering information about my deceased parents and siblings. Let's further suppose that I only have a limited amount of information about my family. The Family Tree should, of course, allow me to enter what I know about my own family. However, why not put that information into a specialized category. These initial entries, where there are no sources, could be shown to be lacking in sources, the same way date and place entries are shown to be non-standard. This would encourage the entry of sources without discouraging entries altogether. Additionally, personal knowledge should be considered to be a source.
Now let's suppose another situation. Let's suppose I have been doing genealogical research for years and have contributed thousands of source supported entries. The existing system in the Family Tree will list all the pertinent sources supporting a Vitals section entry if someone tries to change any of the entries. An attempt to change existing sourced information indicates how many people are following the changed individual and how many have contributed information to the individual. Why are these entries not treated differently that those made by novice users? Why can anyone, without supplying a source or a reason make changes to existing entries when sources are listed? For example, if you refer to the entries for Francis Cooke LZ2F-MM7, referenced above, and view the change log, you will see that the change log contains hundreds, if not thousands of changes including adding parents without citing a source to support a child/parent relationship with the person added. Recently, for another example, someone added Richard Cooke (b. before 1530 - d. 3 October 1579) the son of Anthony Cooke (b. 1504 - d. 1576) as the father of Francis Cooke LZ2F-MM7. There was no source cited showing a connection between Richard and Francis. It was also apparent from the entries already in the Family Tree that Francis was born about 1583, after both Richard Cooke and his father are listed as dying. Why does the Family Tree allows such a change to be made and thereby force someone following Francis Cooke to correct the mistake?
From my experience with the Family Tree, I see thousands of changes being made to people without a modicum of an attempt to provide a source for a parent/child relationship or for any other changes made. This includes changes such as the one for Francis Cooke where simply looking at the dates would obviate the need for a change. Adding and accurately correcting information should not be considered a change but in the case of people such as Francis Cooke LZ2F-MM7, no changes should be allowed at all. Now, FamilySearch can and does make some entries Read Only. However, other than protecting a narrow arbitrary class of people from changes, read only entries are parsimoniously distributed. Why not monitor the number of changes made to one individual, such as Francis Cooke, and make him or her read only if a certain number of changes were made per week or month? In the last week there have been 24 changes, including corrections, made to Francis Cooke LZ2F-MM7. Why is this acceptable?
The main effect of allowing wholesale changes to the Family Tree without discriminating about whether or not they are warranted is to discourage a significant number of people from using or being involved in the Family Tree at all and also forcing people who could be productively working on adding substantiated information to spend an inordinate amount of time correcting unnecessary changes. How about having a possible "Verified" status that would prevent unsourced information from being added to those individuals.
I need to mention that adding a source is not a change. Correcting entries that need correcting is also not change. How do we know the difference between a change and a contribution? Presently, there are almost no internal systems for the Family Tree that prevent or even slow down constant and monumental numbers of unsupported changes. If nothing is done to prevent the escalation of these changes the Family Tree will become almost completely unreliable and far less useful than it could become.
This is only the beginning of my discussion about this subject. Here is a list of some of the previous blog posts about this same subject.
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