Researchers, Beware of the Assertion That Barbara Bowman Was a Wife of Benjamin Stout

Question

Researchers, beware of this entry.  

I've been studying the descendants of Benjamin Stout Sr (this Benjamin) and have never seen a Barbara Bowman mentioned.  I assume it is she who has brought in the "Six" and "Funkhouser" siblings mentioned in the entries for her children.  In most genealogies, the children assigned to Barbara Bowman are shown as being children of Benjamin Jr and Martha Schenk.

Answer 1

Hi Anonymous,

This was a case where a vandal deliberately merged the profile of Benjamin Stout's first wife Rebecca Doolhagen with an entirely unrelated profile for Barbara Bowman. (In the 4 hours before they were banned from the site they also vandalized 334 other profiles).

Sadly, these vandals are often former users who have been asked (or forced) to leave because their actions or behaviour, particularly their treatment of others, is toxic to the Wikitree community. Because they are former members they sometimes understand what acts of vandalism are the most damaging and hardest to fix.

I can't even begin to imagine what sort of miserable existence a person has that they are not only incapable of treating others with the fundamental level of dignity and respect expected of Wikitree members but also feel compelled to make multiple trips to internet cafes and other public computers to create fake accounts and deliberately destroy the hard work of others - but the sad fact is some people are that petty, selfish, and small-minded.

Unfortunately it can take quite awhile for the community to clean up after acts of vandalism, particularly as many hours are also expended by numerous volunteers (who could otherwise be repairing profiles) in trying to catch and ban vandals in order to limit the damage they cause. Like other open Wiki's (Wikipedia, etc.) keeping the Wikitree community free and open means we have to acccept that vandalism will happen sometimes and someone will have to fix it.