Why are my profiles suddenly flooded with information from people I have no connection with?

Question

I am fully appreciative of all the volunteers who make up the WikiTree Community. Once I get a farly good grip on my line, I would like to possibly join their number.

My question is this, I have been finding many of my profiles being 'edited' by people I have no connection to. In some cases, some vital information, which I documented, have been changed, even eliminated. Also, biographies have been inserted, but are totally unreadable; there are abbreviations, incomplete sentences, and meaningless (to me) numbers.

I am not as experienced as many, here, but I want to learn. Is it possible to explain what's happening?

Thank you.

Jerry Fuller

Comments

It sounds like someone uploaded a Gedcom that included some of your ancestors.  Check the “Changes” tab and you can see what was changed and when.

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Without specific examples, its difficult to give a generic answer.

Answer 1

Could you link to one of these profiles which has been changed so much?

Answer 2

Many times, Jerry, these are a result of of new Wiki members uploading their gedcom files (their Trees) to WikiTree. What to them are incidental or interesting distant relatives/connections, may be your close people. Edit, and edit some more!   Ann

Answer 3

As Ros asked, a sample profile where this happened would explain a lot. Looking at some of your contributions, I do see that there are some GEDCOM merges occurring from another member.

Do keep in mind that this is a collaborative site and while you may have created the profiles, they belong to all and there are other people who will have them in their data. For example, I am pretty much documenting the entire community where my father was born since I'm likely related to them in some distant manner. On all the rest I document at least to the grandchildren of each ancestor. This becomes a potentially large tree that intersects the WT tree in lots of places.

Answer 4

For myself, if I am researching someone, and |I find some good information, I will check to see if a profile exists on WT. If it does, I will edit that profile and add the information/Sources.

Its called collaboration.

Answer 5

I think that the original poster was more concerned that other members were not improving profiles he created, but changing sourced dates, and providing biographies that were likely plagiarized cut/paste jobs and not readable.  There needs to be more guidance provided to members who wish to perform merges and/or upload their information.

Answer 6

Aw Kathryn Parks has indicated in her comments to your question, when you check the Changes tab, you can figure it who did what and when they did it.  Aw the profile manager, you can change or eliminate the unreadable messages, the abbreviations, the in complete sentences,and the meaningless numbers

The other answers below are concentrating on why someone else whom you do not know might be related to the same person you know.  We  all have distant relatives, whether they be ancestors or cousins,who might be interested in the same people we are.

Answer 7

I am sorry. I responded to some of you individually. I am not experienced enough to know this option is available.

Please allow me to explain a bit better. I sometimes will revisit a profile to edit new documentation, or clear up a biography. I then find a GedCom, or other 'editing'- even the elimination of information, eg: dates that I sourced.

A recent example, if anyone has time to look, is (Thurber-93). Major editing was done. Some of it reads like this:

: FAM
		+	: @P959@
		+	: @P960@
		+	: @P931@
		+	:: to Father: Natural
		+	:: to Mother: Natural

Is this accepted as 'clear and intelligible' information that the average reader can understand? Am I wrong? Or just inexperienced? I honestly want to know.

On the rare instance that I go into a profile that I am not a manager of, I try to leave an explanation of what I did, with source information that anyone can track to see it for themselves.

Thank you to each of you for taking the time to respond. A special note of thanks to Lucy Selvaggio-Diaz and Steve Schmidt for being able to read 'between the lines' to understand my real issue.

Jerry Fuller (Fuller-1512)

Comments

In my opinion this is GEDcom mess that can and SHOULD be deleted. Bios should look as nice as possible.

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I have added an answer based on the profile you mentioned.

Answer 8

Jerry - in the example you provided (Thurber-93), what happened is that a duplicate profile was merged into the original. The duplicate profile had many gedcom artifacts like the ones you mentioned - these are basically junk and can be removed. The person doing the merge is *supposed* to clean out the bio, but that doesn't always happen - certainly I've been guilty of that myself.

As annoying as it is to see this useless information appear on a profile you manage, it's caused by a good thing - eliminating duplicates (and in so doing connecting additional profiles to the tree). It's just a question of doing the clean up afterwards.

Comments

Thank you, John. O appreciate your answer

Jerry .Fuller