Deliberate misrepresentation of photo and information sources

Question

I'm getting more than a little annoyed with a PM who has copied information verbatim and entered it on WikiTree.

In one case copied from notes I made on an Ancestry tree, these notes were labeled speculation and are about possible parents and a possible brother for an ancestor. On the WT profile other parents are listed and then my speculation is copied into the biography.

In another case it is photos uploaded to WikiTree that I know were copied from another source as I asked permission from the original source to copy and use them.

The photo was published on a non profit local history site and provided by a third cousin. The source could easily have been given as the non profit local history site, even though no permission was sought from the original source, I got so annoyed I asked the third cousin.

Comments

If you know the PM and if you decide to , you can start the process for problems with Help:Problems with Members

You can perhaps otherwise enter changes and restore the affected profiles ?

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Can I edit the source for the photos?

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Well, you can add a profile comment to the image page saying where a photo really came from, but that will not resolve the underlying issue. Cousins who do genealogy on WikiTree need to be able to cooperate better than this. Susan gave you good advice regarding Help:Problems with Members

I hope you can get this worked out! It sounds very upsetting.

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Ellen, I agree with your comment, unfortunately this would be the third time I have found it necessary to ask for help by filing a non-responsive manager report. The prior two have been approved.

I have known the third cousin who originally provided the photos for several years, we did not know this person the PM existed until 3 years ago when apparently there was a major family problem.

I was inundated with messages through Ancestry and eventually had to block messages from this person, who is as far as I can figure it out is a 4th cousin perhaps 2 x removed.

It appears that there have been about 5000 perhaps more profiles created; none of which have been edited since their creation. I looked at the suggestion list for this PM and there are hundreds of profiles with children born before their parents, children born after their parents died etc, etc.

I have edited some profiles for shared 3 or more X grt grandparents; correcting/deleting comments that suggest there was wholesale incest and infidelity amongst early settlers based on people remarrying shortly after a spouse died.  

I don't want to adopt all the related people; perhaps more immediate family, however there are so many errors and quite inappropriate statements in biographies that I feel the PM needs a reminder that accuracy rather than inference is important.

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Unreponsive Manager is when the PM of profiles is no longer active on wikitree OR they do not respond to comment and messages left for them.  You can have their profiles orphaned and then claim them, if desired.   

 Problem with Members process is used when a PM is not collaborating about changes, creating profiles with no sources, adding photos that they should not be doing, etc.  Those are just some of the reasons that you would go through the steps in that process.  You can get to a point in that process where you would file a Mentor Intervention Request Form, which would have a Mentor get involved in the problem.

Answer 1

Copying without attribution seems to be the norm on every genealogy site except Wikitree.  Unfortunately, many Wikitree members never read G2G or help pages so they don't incorporate Wikitree standards.  Think of all the members who never graduate beyond "Personal family tree" as their only source for everything.  Remember that the honor code says "We assume that mistakes are unintentional when others make them"; often easier said than done.  If you think this other person might just be ignorant of Wikitree standards, you could try educating him/her.  Otherwise, you're left with Problem with Members noted by Susan and Ellen.

Comments

Yes, I agree we assume that mistakes are unintentional however in this case it seems to me that most of the problems with the profiles that involve shared family members that I have looked at by this PM are created with a complete lack of attention to detail.