Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.


Messages - Sandrafamilytree

Pages: 1 2 3 [4] 5 6 7 ... 18
28
The Common Room / Re: Find A Grave biographies
« on: Thursday 12 October 23 10:52 BST (UK)  »
I'm sure there's a lot of good contributors to Find A Grave but I had a bad experience with them when Ancestry hints alerted me to information that had been taken from one of my websites and used to not only say where and when they were buried but to build biographies. Some information is family folklore and can be quite sensitive and is not what you want to see on a grave site. Some information evolves over time and the grave site remains stuck in time while original research has moved on. Some contributors just want to hoover up other people's information and are careless when it comes to accuracy and etiquette.


C

Just wondering - after your bad experience - did you contact the Find a Grave contributor and ask them to remove the sensitive information? Hopefully they did?

They denied copying it. It was a very frustrating experience. I remember telling them all the mistakes they made copying the information I was trying to get them to correct them. I washed my hands of it all in the end and put it down to experience. I'm more careful now about posting burial details. It also put me off research in general to an extent because there are horrible people out there that can steal your stuff and do things with it and it's too much bother.


C

That's a shame to hear.

I wouldn't have copied information in that way in the first place, but if someone contacted me and pointed out potential errors in my research, I'd like to think I would have the common sense and good grace to listen and make appropriate corrections.

I suppose it's possible that the Find a Grave support team would have been willing to help, especially if any sensitive information needed to be removed.

I've just had a look and it looks like some things have been changed since I last looked but there's a very obvious mistake of a relative who emigrated to Australia being on Find A Grave as buried in England. I'm not going to look further it's not worth the work now. I see that the contributor has now died perhaps their lack of manners was down to their age or health issues or maybe they just got too big for their boots with their access to information.


C

I know you have decided not to pursue it, but if the contributor has died, it might be fairly straightforward to contact Find a Grave support and ask to take over that memorial, and then you could correct it properly.

29
The Common Room / Re: Find A Grave biographies
« on: Thursday 12 October 23 10:41 BST (UK)  »
I'm sure there's a lot of good contributors to Find A Grave but I had a bad experience with them when Ancestry hints alerted me to information that had been taken from one of my websites and used to not only say where and when they were buried but to build biographies. Some information is family folklore and can be quite sensitive and is not what you want to see on a grave site. Some information evolves over time and the grave site remains stuck in time while original research has moved on. Some contributors just want to hoover up other people's information and are careless when it comes to accuracy and etiquette.


C

Just wondering - after your bad experience - did you contact the Find a Grave contributor and ask them to remove the sensitive information? Hopefully they did?

They denied copying it. It was a very frustrating experience. I remember telling them all the mistakes they made copying the information I was trying to get them to correct them. I washed my hands of it all in the end and put it down to experience. I'm more careful now about posting burial details. It also put me off research in general to an extent because there are horrible people out there that can steal your stuff and do things with it and it's too much bother.


C

That's a shame to hear.

I wouldn't have copied information in that way in the first place, but if someone contacted me and pointed out potential errors in my research, I'd like to think I would have the common sense and good grace to listen and make appropriate corrections.

I suppose it's possible that the Find a Grave support team would have been willing to help, especially if any sensitive information needed to be removed.

30
The Common Room / Re: Find A Grave biographies
« on: Thursday 12 October 23 09:56 BST (UK)  »
I'm sure there's a lot of good contributors to Find A Grave but I had a bad experience with them when Ancestry hints alerted me to information that had been taken from one of my websites and used to not only say where and when they were buried but to build biographies. Some information is family folklore and can be quite sensitive and is not what you want to see on a grave site. Some information evolves over time and the grave site remains stuck in time while original research has moved on. Some contributors just want to hoover up other people's information and are careless when it comes to accuracy and etiquette.


C

Just wondering - after your bad experience - did you contact the Find a Grave contributor and ask them to remove the sensitive information? Hopefully they did?

31
The Common Room / Re: Find A Grave biographies
« on: Wednesday 11 October 23 09:14 BST (UK)  »
A lady in my family's tree has a Find a Grave entry showing a photo of a grave vase. The dates on the vase state simply '1884-1974.'

The death registration gives a birth date of 24 June 1884; however, the birth was registered in 1883 and the 1939 Register includes a birth date of 24 June 1883.

Looks like the vase is wrong. I plan to create a Find a Grave note to alert people looking into this family, but of course I would expect anyone reading it to want to check this out for themselves.

Find a Grave biographies can provide clues, and hopefully the creators of them take as much care as they possibly can.

For instance, I steer very well clear of mentioning children, as I have learned from experience that there are so often more children to be found!

32
Thanks for the update! I'm certainly curious to know who has been chosen.

33
The Common Room / Re: Find A Grave biographies
« on: Thursday 21 September 23 17:04 BST (UK)  »
I wasn't aware of Find a Grave's stated goal/mission statement, but this thread got me interested, so I had a look.

Its stated aim is 'to help people from all over the world work together to find, record and present final disposition information.'

Perhaps the key words there are 'work together.' If anyone felt I had made a mistake - whether on Find a Grave, or in my Ancestry tree or elsewhere - I would really welcome them with open arms! I certainly wouldn't be offended and I would want to hear what they had to say, and exchange opinions and information.

The way in which Rootschat members work together so willingly with advice, suggestions etc demonstrates the value of collaboration. The same spirit of collaboration could work on other sites, too.

34
The Common Room / Re: Find A Grave biographies
« on: Thursday 21 September 23 07:53 BST (UK)  »
One of my research interests is the surname SMITH in the North East. (Yes, I know... ;D)

I have a SMITH ancestor who died as a young child. She was born and died between censuses. Her birth and death were both registered in a particular name. She was baptised with a completely different name.

I ‘inherited’ very, very few family documents but I recently found – in an old tin – an invoice from the funeral director for ‘grave dressing’ so I know where she was buried and I have a plot number.

As far as I am aware, all the other trees on Ancestry have identified only her three siblings.

There was no FindaGrave entry for her, so I have created one.

I thought it would be helpful for anyone researching that family to know about the fourth child and to know about the difference between her registered name and her name at baptism, so I added a biographical note to that effect.

Because her parents and siblings already had FindaGrave entries I added the reference numbers for those memorials, so they are now all linked.

I have also added a postem on FreeBMD, so anyone who finds her birth registration will know she was baptised with a totally different name, which they may find helpful if they then want to look at Parish records.

I’m certainly not claiming any great ‘find’ that could not have been worked out by other researchers but the existence of the biographical details function on FindaGrave at least gives the opportunity to record potentially helpful pointers.



35
The Common Room / Re: Find A Grave biographies
« on: Thursday 21 September 23 00:19 BST (UK)  »
I have recently started to submit brief biographical details to FindaGrave entries for people with connections to my family.

Since starting my research I have accumulated a lot of potentially useful information from BMD registrations, parish registers, newspaper articles, census returns and such like. (All of which could contain their own errors, of course. Nothing is perfect.)

It seems a shame not to share.

As with everything else, I would not expect anyone simply to add that information to their family tree without due consideration. But if it gives someone a lead, a clue… I think that’s a good thing.

If I record where a particular person was baptised, for instance, then the reader can go on line or to a local studies centre and perhaps inspect the full Parish record for themselves.

Having now purchased a number of £2.50 birth and death records from GRO, I can sometimes add more specifically where a person was born or died.

It can also be useful to ‘link up’ FindaGrave entries, so families are brought together.
I’ve been doing some research recently and I have a couple of families that have several separate ‘FindaGrave’ entries that I realise I can connect, perhaps helping someone find more of their family members.

I take care with my suggested edits, and I'd hope anyone reading them would take care with them, too.

Pages: 1 2 3 [4] 5 6 7 ... 18