What are the benefits of Global Cemeteries over Find-a-Grave?

Question

I have have a cousin who really likes using Find-a-Grave.  I want to explain to her some of the advantages of WikiTree's Global Cemeteries project http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Project:Global_Cemeteries

Please let me know.  Thanks and sincerely,

Comments

Peter is correct.  Anything you compose, documents or photos or the likes has an automatic copyright of, I believe 25 years, without requiring any application or paperwork.  You can file a lawsuit for copyright infringement based on this law regardless of filing status.

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I’ll put in my two cents on findagrave, which I currently use. I have a hard time finding the deceased on findagrave, & always get a message to check Ancestry.com, which won’t help me because I don’t have an account with them. So I generally google or try other ways to find the obituary, & after I find it, there is a link to findagrave, & there it is. It’s almost as if Ancestry is forcing folks to find graves on their site first...Of course we would have to be paying members to obtain info on Ancestry.

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https://familysearch.org/search/

Family Search has Find A Grave memorials indexed, one peculiarity however is that you need to search by where they died and not where they were born for the Find A Grave results to work.

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Actually, Vince, you need to search FAG by where they are buried which is not necessarily the same place they died.

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The copyright / disclaimer portion of Find-A-Grave is found in the Terms of Use.

http://www.findagrave.com/disclaimer.html

The pertinent text is something like this, "By submitting material to the Websites, you represent that you have the right to do so, and that you have obtained any third party consents where required (e.g., under data protection or intellectual property laws), and, subject to these Terms and restrictions on data processing in our Privacy Statement, as amended from time to time, you grant Find A Grave and its Group Companies a non-exclusive, transferable, sublicensable, royalty-free, world-wide license for the maximum amount of time permitted by applicable law to host, store, copy, publish, distribute, provide access to and otherwise use such material, including, hosting and access on co-branded services of that material, and to use the data contained in that material as search results and to integrate that data into the Service or other services as Find A Grave or the Group Companies deem appropriate."

As well as on their Help Page:

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=listFaqs#196

"What is your copyright policy?
Content, other than items of fact, which has been contributed to Find A Grave by members remain the property of the submitter and Find A Grave is the licensed distributor of such content. Occasionally, a person may feel that content submitted by a member is their property or is covered by the copyright of someone other than the submitter."

And finally, here too:

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=listFaqs#143

"I found a photo of a relative on Find A Grave, can I use it?
Photos posted to memorials on Find A Grave are copyrighted by the member who submitted the photos. Lifting the photo to use elsewhere would be a violation of copyright. You must obtain written permission from the member to use any photo for your own use. In general if you did not take the photo yourself, you do not hold the copyright to the photo."

All their words, not mine, but feel free to debate their legality. I choose to take it at face value that someone put their effort out into getting those photos, and it would be rude to use them without asking permission.

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I ran into an interesting problem. I had someone tell me I couldn't use the photo on a Find a Grave memorial on my Ancestry Tree. I told them I had that photo in my possession. They didn't believe me. So I took a photo of the photo against a newspaper to prove it. I have multiple copies of many photos professionally done a century ago. My grandma had 5 siblings, three of them had no kids, and I got passed down all their photos, certificates and what-nots.

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It is hard to keep track of who originally posted photos on Ancestry. Everyone, of course, saves them to their own tree.  The original attribution is supposed to remain with the photo but it doesn't.  Several times I have posted photos, but when my FTM froze up and I had to reconnect to Ancestry, those attributions were lost.  They are now attributed to people who copied them from me.

I can also see your position too. Families shared photos with other family members. Photos got passed down through the ages.  No one can be sure who was the original photographer in most cases.

Despite copyright laws, I just assume if I post a photo online, someone else is going to use it and/or claim it at some point.  I think it is ridiculous to get upset over it.(Not referring to you, Susan, but rather the person who questioned you)  I do, however, ask permission when I know it wasn't a photo I took, and give attribution to that person.

Just as a note, Find A Grave doesn't want anyone posting a photo unless they were the actual photographer.

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Copyright laws should apply to photos that have been copyrighted, I am assuming. Perhaps findagrave is referring to photos that have been taken professionally and/or a photo of someone that would generate money, versus a snapshot taken by say a niece of her uncle, etc.... In addition, I too have family photos that were taken professionally but at the turn of the Century. The photographer is no longer in business.

Thank you for the information.

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Photographs don't have to be formally copyrighted to have copyright protection. If you take the photo, you have the copyright. That's the law. The problem is trying to prove it if not formally copyrighted and someone challenges you or "steals" from you.  See Scott's reply about Find A Grave rules he posted above on Jan 7th.

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I have posted quite a few photos of family members from long ago onto Ancestry that I have and also copies of letters from the early 1900's late 1800's and I find these same letters and photos on other peoples trees and in these trees are huge mistakes telling me they are not my family. I have just given up on the idea of pointing out the mistakes of others but it still grieves me to see it happen. (Mistakes I too made in the beginning)

Answer 1

I agree with Dennis.  I use FindAGrave and I post links to the memorials in each profile.  I use the following format for my links:

[http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=123456 Find-A-Grave Virtual Cemetery memorial #123456] in Name and location of the cemetery.

The blue letters are individual information from each memorial.

FindAGrave is committed to remaining free, and I for one will hold them to that commitment.  http://www.findagrave.com/ancestryFAQs.html  

Comments

Kitty, just curious, do you ever post the WikiTree link to the FindAGrave memorial?

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I have put a link to Wikitree on at least one Find a grave memorial, but then happened to be reading the FAQ's and found this "Links to other websites or email addresses are not allowed within any memorial." But that doesn't say I can't cite a wikitree profile. I think I said something like "See Wikitree profile xxx-ID for biography and sources."

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Good workaround!

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I haven't contributed to Find-a-Grave, but I do get a lot of hints from there and often send corrections and links to information I've put on Wikitree. Some of the contributors I've corresponded with post references to the information I've given them. They don't post links, but they do post that it's available on Wikitree.

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I do something very similar, but put the person info first, then the link...

<ref name='grave'> first maiden (if applicable) last name grave; U.S state name (all counties); Online: FindAGrave.com; [http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=ID # Memorial# ID #] </ref>

This is the format for the source reference; the actual bio contains:

=== Cemetery ===
: Place: cemetery name, county, state <ref name='grave' />

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@Kitty

nice citations maybe also add GPS location, Plot name and if a photo has been requested over at Find A Grave

See G2G discussion that we need a FindAGrave template... that I think should generate the format you have above.....

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I never have GPS or plot info... But I agree that it would be nice to include them.

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@Kitty

Plotinfo: I think we should have a standard section on all cemetery categories how to get the plot info etc....

GPS If you have a smartphone you have a GPS and if you dont have you can request other people to help you on Find A Grave

see video me using the mobile phone app from Find A Grave

Answer 2

I agree with Dennis and Kitty. I am a contributor to both sites. I always add the Find A Grave to the profiles I set up on Wikitree.  I add the photos I take of graves to both sites and update information on both when I have new information to add.  Wikitree, however, often has more information on the person than one can find on Find A Grave.  When I set up profiles for the people I document in cemeteries, I always do as much research as I can (in a reasonable amount of time) to add other sources and documentation to the profiles.

 

One more thing, on the cemetery free space pages, one can get an idea of who is related by the order of the graves, and can see who else is buried there on the category pages.

Comments

I would think the benefits of Global Cemeteries is that one can post sources and have discussions as there are many early Find - A - Grave memorials (without a stone which is a type of record) that are questionable because one can not post sources.

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So true!  And you can't change or easily edit or correct erroneous findagrave pages and when I was a contributor working with the findagrave admins (I quit the day ancestry took over, as did many other high level volunteers) there were a number of instances of malicious adds on findagrave, so in reality you have no way of knowing if what is posted is even accurate unless you've been to a cemetery yourself.

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Lisa, it really isn't difficult to correct errors found on Find A Grave. I do it whenever I come upon something wrong. It is easy to add information to an established entry also. I have never had a problem with it.

Answer 3

At this time I think it is easier to use Find-A-Grave and I still use that mostly, but as others are saying why not use both to give a greater weight to sources from either, you don't have to choose to use either Find-A-Grave or http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Project:Global_Cemeteries 
 

 

Comments

Agree 100% 

see Video me running the Find A Grave on a Iphone 

We don't have this functionality in WikiTree and we need it....

1. Support for coordinates ==> you find a grave among 30 000 others
2. Sorting profiles and search per cemetery/location
3. Finding what people have graves on the cemetery you are visiting right now
4. Request photos of a churchyard....
5. Finding nearest graveyard with a photo request  

Also see G2G discussion that we need a FindAGrave template tracking easy that we have photo requests on a Find A Grave profile etc.

Answer 4

I am a contributor to Find-A-Grave, trying to make it more accurate with the results of my research. I also use it as a secondary (tertiary?) source for profile info. The advantage is that it has a much wider audience than WikiTree in the U.S. (at least for now); the disadvantage is the sometimes inaccurate info. I use it as a starting point to find more accurate (hopefully) primary & secondary sources, then use that info to source related profiles here as well as update Find-A-Grave.

Answer 5

I think best practise is to update all places WikiTree, WikiData and FindAGrave

Yesterday I documented in the following way a grave Space:Prince_Oscar_Bernadottes_Familjegrav then I did the following ( have not done the Global Cemeteries part yet)
 

1. Created a Free Space page
   Space:Prince_Oscar_Bernadottes_Familjegrav
    
   1. Added all people in the grave on the Free space page with links to WikiTree profiles
       
   2. Uploaded photos to the Free space page and also linked to the persons mentioned
       
   3. Added Grave reference number 22 2 21F 38
       
   4. Added GPS coordinates  59,3559° 18,0196° and a link to Google map
2. On all WikiTree profiles in the grave the Free Space page was added
   
   {{Space:Prince_Oscar_Bernadottes_Familjegrav}}
   
   What links here
   1. Munck af Fulkila-84 (inclusion) (← links)
   2. Bernadotte-21 (inclusion) (← links)
   3. Bernadotte af Wisborg-1 (inclusion) (← links)
   4. Bernadotte af Wisborg-2 (inclusion) (← links)
   5. Bernadotte af Wisborg-3 (inclusion) (← links)
   6. Manville-64 (inclusion) (← links)
   7. Bernadotte af Wisborg-4 (inclusion) (← links)
   8. Bernadotte af Wisborg-5 (inclusion) (← links)
   9. Cedergren-23 (inclusion) (← links)
   10. Bernadotte-53 (inclusion) (← links)
   11. Bernadotte af Wisborg-6 (inclusion) (← links)
   12. Bernadotte af Wisborg-7 (inclusion) (← links)
        
3. In FindAGrave the pictures was uploaded eg. GRid=83190997 
    
4. In FindAGrave GPS Coordinates was added  eg. GRid=83190997 
    GPS (lat/lon): 59.3559, 18.0196
    
5. In WikiData for the person Q4346031 the burial plot reference and GPS Coordinates was added
   
   
   Bic Pic
    
6. WikiData Q4346031 a link to WikiTree and FindAGrave was added
   
   
   Bic pic 
    
7. Created a Category for the Cemetery in WikiTree [[Category:Norra_Begravningsplatsen_(AB)]]

Comments

Looked at various pages to posted. Beautiful job. Your dedication is very noteworthy. The more valid documented links truly helps WikiTree profiles stand out.

Answer 6

Hi Peter,

I'm not really seeing anyone answer your question. And I'm going to take a somewhat contrarian view to some others who have responded here.

I think that WikiTree attracts a certain kind of person. I have seen more people on here who, let's say, lean towards a ideal of perfection, than the average person. Many here have a very strong urge to "get things right".

The good side of this character trait is in making sure that the information on WikiTree is well sourced. I think this is a very laudable goal. WikiTree benefits from it, and those who contribute to it, or use it benefits from this.

However, this urge to get things right, spills over. I see many people who say they use both Find A Grave and WikiTree, and that they are working to keep Find A Grave up to date too. And people work on other sites too, keeping them up to date.

Personally, I think that this can go too far. It could be considered a waste of energy. But who am I to tell someone what to do with their time and energy?

I prefer to add some discernment into what I do, and to target my efforts.

The way I look at it, is this:

- WikiTree is committed to being free.

- WikiTree, and its contributors, are committed to having good sources.

- WikiTree's design is about one profile per person, and having no duplication.

In contrast:

- Find A Grave says they are committed to being free. However, they got bought by ancestry.com. Ancestry is a commercial entity that turns former free sites into paid ones. Don't think that they spend money in buying a website for charity purposes. This situation can change in the future.

- Find A Grave doesn't know what it wants to be. It seems to have started off as "memorials" to the deceased. But as you can tell, there is genealogical information on these memorials too. Parents, siblings, children. Free text area for all sorts of things. In a way, this is actually similar to WikiTree. The difference is that there is no emphasis on genealogy or good sourcing on Find A Grave. It's website is designed for uploading pictures, some identifying information, and these "memorials". Kitschy digital flowers and flags and messages from family and friends.

- There is duplication on Find A Grave too. And I've seen memorial pages somewhat merged. Sometimes just a link to another page. WikiTree has a very good system for merging profiles.

Now, with anything, there are always tradeoffs:

- I, too, have used Find A Grave extensively as a source for WikiTree. I'm always cognizant of Caveat Emptor. The information there is only as good as the person who added it to the memorial. There is no emphasis on showing your sources. But it can be useful as a starting place, to then go find those sources to either back up the information, or to replace it.

- Find A Grave has been around a lot longer, and has a head start on WikiTree. It has more memorial pages than WikiTree has profiles. But that could change over time.

I wonder..... Why bother with keeping Find A Grave up to date, when I do not like the practices of either the company that owns the website, or the lack of mission of the website and it's contributors? What are they really there to do? Kitschy memorials to the dead? Or are they there to do real genealogy? Both? Neither?

I know what I'm interested in doing, and that is creating an accurate family tree as I can. It takes time to do this.

I strongly believe in the mission of WikiTree. I would rather see WikiTree be the "go to place" for genealogy. Part of genealogy is knowing the location of death and / or burial. Photos of gravestones and markers are a part of this. I would like to see WikiTree become the "go to place" for gravestones and markers and surpass Find A Grave.

Because I would rather see WikiTree be the premier web site for good genealogical information, I have no urge to ensure that "accuracy is everywhere". While I may use Find A Grave, I don't believe in it's mission (if it has one), or its owner. Therefore I'm not going to spend my energy in keeping its data accurate or up to date. I'm going to ensure that WikiTree has the best data, because I can show my sources.

I think that there many people here, who have that perfectionist urge, end up following that urge over considering the mission and ownership of these two different websites. They see an inaccuracy on Find A Grave and it bothers them so much, that they have to see it corrected there, even if the correct data is already on Find A Grave. Like it somehow bothers them that the two sites may be inconsistent. 

Now, this is perhaps too broad a paintbrush. My intent is not to malign anyone. And there are always exceptions to any rule. I'm not out to change what anyone does, this is just my observation and current opinion.

But I would rather focus my time and energy on WikiTree for the aforementioned reasons. I would hope that others do this too. WikiTree has all the tools needed to recreate what Find A Grave does, but even better. The only difference is the amount of data. There is currently more on Find A Grave, then there is on WikiTree. It requires more contributors to come here to make that situation change. WikiTree requires more of a time investment from contributors. It's system is more complex. But WikiTree's system is also more rich, and I believe, more rewarding.

Everyone has to decide for themselves.