FAG Hazards at WT

Question

 I am beginning to think, believe even, that there should be a special page constructed (and kept updated) to deal with "Issues" related to Ancestry and FAG. 

I note a post which mentions "ad-blockers" and Ancestry in conjunction with FAG, for instance.  I found it utterly confounding

I have noted that any Source from Ancestry tends to drop the unwary into a promotional site for a subscription or perhaps that's membership, RATHER THAN containing the information that the link was meant to direct us to. That doesn't happen with www.familysearch.org

I note that there are those who insist on linking a profile to a FAG memorial which is a gamble since one can end up in a dispute with FAG over the date of birth or death that the certificate from the duly authorized authority shows

As yet I'm not informed of the other pitfalls and hazards but no doubt will discover them.

So, how about a special page over there in Help: ??

Comments

 I don't look to support data reported by FAG. Instead, I look to support the assertions made in the creation of the profile.  FAG has to shift for itself. 

And I'm not going to argue with a photo of a tombstone that clearly shows the dates. Any discrepancy between the tombstone and duly authorized records isn't the fault of any FAG volunteer. 

I'm interested in where someone is buried since I see it as part and parcel of their life story. 

And in my experience, there is sometimes info found on the FAG that provides me with directions to explore. 

BUT there should still be a page devoted to "Deal with FAG &  Dealing Ancestry Sources" 

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Hi Susan,  The use of any source on WikiTree is to show where the contributor obtained some information.  We all know that some sources are more accurate than others, but we still need to identify where the information for our contributions came from, even if it is from Aunt Nelly's needlepoint sampler.

I don't follow what you are asking for here.  Can you write a 1st draft of what you are suggesting?

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I've been thinking a little about this.  There is some content in help that addresses these issues, but agree that it could be a little more in depth.  I do find that the help section is a little overwhelming.  Adding additional helpful content isn't bad, but will people find it or go to it? I wonder if maybe adding more certifications could be helpful?  These don't necessarily have to be required, but more like continuing skill development.  Maybe a WikiTree for Ancestry users certification. Or using FindAGrave for WikiTreers.

Answer 1

I personally like Find A Grave and like to link profiles there. Yes there are issues so I like to add more info to support the info the FAG reports. A couple months ago, I started a cemetery study on a local cemetery and I found a lot of discrepancies in the published data. I’m now 450 profiles into this 1500 person cemetery and I can report the following.

* At least 10% if not more had some sort of issue with the data.  The most common was a headstone transcription error either with dates or the spelling of the name. I turned all of these errors in and they have been corrected.

* Most of the memorials were created by the local historical society. They noticed my corrections and took the time to thank me and encourage me to continue helping them.

* we have had several discussions about what data I can share to WikiTree and I am getting more excited about what I am doing.  I even joined the historical society. I am hopeful to get permission to publish their archive of historical photos.

* A couple family members have reached out to ask what I am doing and overall been very positive.

* I only had one case of leave my data alone and that was easy to respect.

So my takeaway is to recognize that this source has many of the same flaws as WikiTree. They also have the same good intentions. We both win when we help each other. So communicate issues you see and the whole system improves.

Comments

Gurney, I to have had great experience with Find A Grave making corrections when I submit them. And I agree that they are like WikiTree and the volunteers from both sites for the most part are trying their best to be accurate. I have seen here on WikiTree entire families created from Find A Grave. I think WikiTree and Find A Grave should work in cooperation together it's a win win for both. If I have a problem with someone not making corrections I report them and/or post a birth certificate or death certificate or marriage certificate, etc. That always does the trick.

As for Ancestry, I'm an Ancestry person, and when I post a link I have also entered all the information that was on the link into the WikiTree person I am working on.

I wish that a lot of WikiTree people would stop harping on Find A Grave and Ancestry and realize that the problem is more with the people who are entering the information to give as much detail as possible. I think WikiTree loses a lot of potential new people to WikiTree because it is complicated to the "average" person, including me. I still learn something new virtually every day. I know when I first started I just put "Ancestry" as the source. I see others have done the same thing.

Any profile that just has an Ancestry link or Find A Grave link I feel has at least started to add another person to our WikiTree and glad that they at least tried. For some that is all they know and the rest is to difficult for them to continue or not the time to learn everything there is here on WikiTree.

Also lest we forget the nightmare that downloading family trees to WikiTree created. I believe that is/was the biggest problem with most profiles and probably a majority of those were from Ancestry.

My 2 cents worth...

Answer 2

I really like Gurney's post above. As we all find errors on WT, we all find errors on Find A Grave as well. We know that people volunteer to gather this data for all of us to enjoy. I live here in the Central Pennsylvania area, and I must say when I find an error on Find A Grave, and supported it with facts, it has been corrected on the Find A Grave site. I really appreciate all the Find A Grave folks working the fields for us.

Answer 3

FaG shouldn't be your only source of information, but it can certainly be a part of it, particularly if it has a picture of a gravestone that confirms date of birth, death, or other facts.

Sometimes they'll quote an obituary, which I consider to be fairly reliable information as well. The links to other family members is almost always incomplete. Everything should be double-checked if you can, but remember that any source can make mistakes.

Comments

"Fairly reliable"? I guess that's a good way to put it. Just as a FindAGrave memorial usually at least shows that a person was buried there, an obituary at least tells you that a person died in a certain time frame.

I came up with a kind of tongue-in-cheek "rule": "All obituaries contain at least one error." Realistically, they can contain a fair amount of information, and the author often doesn't even know the parties involved - is just passing along what was reported to them, by people who might be in a bit of a state, or who don't really know what they think they know.

But even with that observation, to say obits are "inaccurate" would be to call a 90% full glass "not full", and throw them proverbial baby out with the bath water.

I've seen F-A-G memorials with transcribed death certificate information, too, or even (and this was very illuminating for me) burial permit info (which can be kind of like a death certificate).

There's fewer bells and whistles, but at its core a F-A-G memorial isn't so different from a WikiTree profile.

Answer 4

When Find-a-grave has a picture of an actual grave it’s a great resource.  It’s all the “memorials” that are not connected to a burial and the supposed family trees where I find the problems.  Most of those are no better than the unsupported trees you find on Ancestry, Familysearch, or random websites and on the occasions that I’ve contacted the creator I’ve had no luck getting a retraction or correction.

Comments

^ This! I use FAG as a cited source for things that I see on the gravestone. For everything else ("Son Bob, buried elsewhere, 18xx-19yy), I consider it unsourced (well, no sources cited). The FAG profile editor may be a thorough researcher or it may be that's what Aunt So-and-so always said--and there's no way to tell the two apart.

Answer 5

Re Find-A-Grave.  I think Find-A-Grave should be treated like any other online secondary source of questionable reliability. I generally won't link to it unless (1) it contains a reliable copy of an original source -- in the case of Find-A-Grave, that would generally be a photo of a grave -- and I want to provide a link to the copy or (2) the link is used on the WT profile as part of a discussion of common claims regarding the person and is used to give an example (eg, "[https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/157609818 the Find-A-Grave profile for John Smith] says that he died in 1675. However, based on the fact that he signed a deed in 1677,<ref>[cite to deed]</ref> that is certainly incorrect.")

Re Ancestry links - Links to free websites like familysearch.org are always better than links to pay websites like ancestry.com, if the same info is available on the free site. In either case, the cite should always provide a description of the information linked to, so that the info can be tracked down in other places. One problem with most or all online services is that their source citations often describe their database, not the source for the applicable info in the database. A cite that describes a proprietary database is not very useful. The best source citations describe the original source, not the database that information from that source got incorporated into, and provide a link to a copy of the original source (not just the indexed entry in the database).

Comments

Re Find-A-Grave. See my response here. FAG is fine as a resource and is fine to link to, but it should not be confused as a source. I think this is what a lot of people struggle with.

Re Ancestry links. I am not sure I understand the point here. sites like Ancestry and FamilySearch do provide the original information of where the source was obtained, it is just surrounded by their database information.

As an example, see the highlighted information below. I can easily determine what the original source is, and where to find it, even though it is wrapped in the Ancestry database collection details:

“Idaho Marriages, 1842-1996,” Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 18 July 2010), search for Alonzo Raymond, married 1922; from “Upper Snake River Family History Center and Ricks College (Rexburg, Idaho),” citing “marriage book at the County Courthouse located in Bannock Co., ID in Volume 11 on Page 55.”

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I guess the usefulness of Ancestry source citations may vary. A lot are not very helpful at taking you to the original source. Here's the Source Information that Ancestry gives for the birth record of Robert Burnam in Boston in 1647:

Ancestry.com. Massachusetts, Town and Vital Records, 1620-1988 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011.

The Ancestry page says that the original data comes from:

Town and City Clerks of Massachusetts. Massachusetts Vital and Town Records. Provo, UT: Holbrook Research Institute (Jay and Delene Holbrook).

As far as I can tell, this "original data" is not actually very original but another database, which does not seem to be available online. Not very helpful.

If no image of the actual source was available on Ancestry, I would have reached a dead end with no easy way to find the source of the real original data (ie that used by the Holbrooks). Fortunately, Ancestry does give the image of the source of the real original data, which by going to the first image turns out to be:

A Report of the Record Commissioner Containing Boston Births, Baptisms, Marriages, and Deaths, 1630-1699. Boston: Municipal Printing Office, 1908. p. 25.

Which is freely available on archive.org. The best citation for the original data shown in the information found on Ancestry.com is therefore actually something like:

A Report of the Record Commissioner Containing Boston Births, Baptisms, Marriages, and Deaths, 1630-1699. Boston: Municipal Printing Office, 1908. p. 25. Link to page at archive.org.

Ancestry.com and familysearch.org databases are a nice easy way to initially find the information you are looking for, but the best source for the information is almost always several levels below that and requires digging.

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In the case of Robert Burnam's birth in Boston in 1647, familysearch.org is just as bad or perhaps even worse than ancestry.com. Here's the citation info they give:

"Massachusetts Births and Christenings, 1639-1915," database, FamilySearch(https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FCWG-YY4 : 10 February 2018), Robert Burnam in entry for Robert Burnam, 25 Sep 1647; citing BOSTON,SUFFOLK,MASSACHUSETTS, ; FHL microfilm 397,042.

Their explanation for the source of the data is:

This record came from this set of images. You will need to look through several images to find this record. Browse the film

If you then go to the effort of browsing the film, it turns out that the film is a scan of the 1883 edition of the same "Report of the Record Commissions of Boston," which is identical in relevant part to the 1908 edition, but is also available on archive.org.

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Those are some great examples Chase. In this case, as you mentioned, it will take a bit of research to get to the original sources.

However, please consider that if you take the information from Ancestry, you should be using the Ancestry source citation so it is clear where the information came from top avoid any issues or misrepresentations in the sources.

As we all know, many records are transcribed by volunteers, and can contain many errors. By taking information from Ancestry, then providing a source of the original, it would mistaken that you personally have seen or have in your possession the original and can verify it's contents.

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The value and accuracy of FAG is often very much dependent on the time period.

FAG pages for burials in the last 100 years are tremendously useful, and generally as accurate as any other primary source (I might even say I find more errors on death certificates than on FAG for this time period).

Chase works primarily in the 17th century where FAG profiles should always be questioned, and are generally not much better than any other personal web page found on the internet.

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Chase, your comment to your own question-- walking us through how to find the original source from an obscure Ancestry.com "citation" -- is worthy of its own G2G thread and I encourage you to create a separate thread for that purpose. It's amazingly helpful.

Answer 6

I am not sure what type of Help page you envision, but I think we have a lot of this information covered already.

We cover using Commercial Websites as Sources, the different types of sources and how to cite them, as well as the difference in original and derivative sources.

Can you please provide some examples, or a draft page of what you would envision this new Help page to provide to users?

Comments

Here's another page I came across, which could use some updating:

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:WikiTree_Genealogy_Guide_Find_a_Grave

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As noted in a comment on the page, the information is old (and not approved) and should actually link to the FindAGrave Help pages.

Answer 7

FAG can serve as a secondary source as others have pointed out. Even with photos of headstones having information, however, can be problematical. For example, the surname could be very common (Adams, Howe, Clarke) and the first name could be very common (Mary, John, James). Even the birth or death date could be very close to another James Howe, or John Clark or Mary Adams. Without other evidence taking this FAG information for fact can perpetuate errors. This is especially true for 17th and 18th century searches. I think it is salient to remember that there can exist a 'grain of fact' in every secondary source. Information can be built upon; however, it is important to back up the FAG information with other more compelling sourcing. There are way too many messes in Biographies on WT (and elsewhere) because of inadequate sourcing. Happy hunting! Carol (Baldwin-3428)

Answer 8

The I always cite the FAG as a “see also”  along with other sources. But no you can’t always trust a stone. I have a whole cemetery page where the stones were replaced and there are transcription errors. When the stone says she was two years old but there is an obituary about her being a beloved teacher who died ten years later that’s a case where the obituary is more reliable.

And a lot of my Scottish relatives birth years don’t match their baptism records.  Even the 76 years 4 months and two days aren’t always right.

But we do the best we can with what we have.