Genealogy “Wars”

In my “spare” time, I dabble in researching genealogy with a particular interest in Mennonites from Prussia. I use various online platforms for this; FamilySearch, FindaGrave, Wikitree. All of these platforms have a different goal.

FamilySearch is run by the LDS (Mormon) Church and has a lot of records. I prefer this free service as they have a lot and I don’t have to pay for it like I would to use Ancestry.

Find a Grave was started “in 1995 when founder Jim Tipton built a website to share his hobby of visiting the graves of famous people. He found that many people shared his interest and quickly opened the site for all individuals (famous and non-famous) with a mission for finding, recording and presenting burial and final disposition information worldwide.” This site is now owned by Ancestry. Users create memorials from local cemeteries and you can contribute photos of tombstones, personal photos etc.

WikiTree was started with the idea that we create a universal tree, and it is free. “As the creators and hosts of the WikiTree website, we pledge that our mission is the same as that of the community: to create an accurate, single family tree that will make genealogy free and accessible for everyone.” Wikitree requires/prefers that profiles are sourced with records (other than because they are my family member).

I started on Findagrave as I discovered in my family research that a lot of the relatives were buried in nearby cemeteries. From there, my “hobby” morphed into me taking thousands of photos to post on FG and helping others to find the resting place and history of their loved ones. I have been on FG for 6 years, but recently do more on Wikitree. FG has the ability to link family members but not all are listed on FG, due to cremation or lack of records, whereas you can list whole families on Wikitree.

There are policies for usage of all of these sites and users are required to adhere to these rules of conduct, as they are all meant to be collaborative. There are problems with some of these rules as they are interpreted differently by various users and some users are not exactly helpful or friendly. I have had issues with some fellow Findagravers for this reason. For some, the purpose of memorials is to “collect” them. For others, it is to honor and remember their family members. There have been complaints about the “obituary” hunter — people who post memorials based on obituaries, thus robbing family members the privilege of creating a memorial for the deceased.

Other users have issue about style or format, or pickiness about genealogical information. While I have now been “doing genealogy” for that past decade, I will admit that there are still things to learn. There are also ways to communicate with others when correcting them, helping them, etc. A few years ago, I met a fellow graver that I will call Mary, in person and we went to a Mennonite cemetery where she grew up and photographed it all. She helped me navigate the site and learn about how to use it, create memorials, where to research information, etc.

Last week, I waded into a war with a fellow user, that I had never heard of before. This person, J, had sent a few edits to me and M, which we both declined and A disagreed with our rationale, stating that we were wrong to list a Mennonite with a certain birth location because the country in question hadn’t been founded until long after that person was born.

So to explain, on Findagrave, there is only the option to list a location by what it is called now, whereas FamilySearch and Wikitree will give you the options for what that place was called in the years that you are listing…. ie. if a person was born in 1841 in Ontario, the options are… Canada West, British Colonial America from 1841-1867, or Upper Canada, British Colonial America from 1791-1841, but Ontario, Canada from 1867 -onwards. If I wanted to put this location on Findagrave, it would be listed as Ontario, Canada but I could either a) leave it blank and write in the biography section about location, or b) list as Ontario wit the explanation in the bio.

So… this is sort of what happened with J and M. Mary responded to the repeated edit request and the interchange was heated and J’s responses were rude. Mary informed me of this exchange and asked if I had any edits from J yet. I did but had not done anything with them. So when I did find one, I consulted a college friend who is now an archivist at a Mennonite Heritage Centre to determine what I should do. Was I right in my assumption to use what it “is currently understood to be” or was the birth location actually somewhere else (Russia vs. Ukraine). I declined and politely explained similar to what I wrote above and noted that I had consulted an archivist about this.

Inside of communicating through the site, J sent me email to my personal email (that I use for genealogy) a long, rude letter correcting my understanding of birth locations, filled with FULL CAPS and even insulted the archivist, saying that I should tell them who it was so that they could “straighten [the archivist] was”.

I was shocked, upset and offended. Mostly upset. I got 2 of these type of emails and so I refused to touch any more of the edits. They then sent me another edit for the 2 that I had declined, as well as 8 more. I told Mary. She told me that she had reported J and that I should do the same. After sitting on it for a week, I finally reported this “harassment” to the site.

This is one the reasons that I prefer Wikitree. People can PM you or post on the wall of the profile but I have never gotten this type of message from Wikitreers so far. I also like Wikitree because you can join projects that range in theme. I am currently a member of the “Global Cemetery project”, “Notables”, and regional team. I have taken part in a few of their weekend challenges. They have a “clean up” challenge where you fix profiles that are linked to wrong people, have the wrong dates, parent is too old/young, etc. There are “source a thons” where you clean up unsourced profiles, that were likely added by someone importing a GEDCOM or tree, or just someone writing “personal knowledge of….” but not adding any records.

Living people are blocked. This can be problematic when a notable person dies as only the creator or moderators have access and then have to make it public, otherwise duplicates are created.

So this is what I do for “fun” when I have a minute (or hour) to myself. My extended family (mine and his) all think it is an odd hobby. “Why are you doing research on people that you don’t know? or aren’t related to?”

As I have researched a lot of my family and hit a brick wall (paternal), I have turned my attention to helping others. In the course of doing this, I have learned a lot about people that I would otherwise not know or read about, and it helps me to understand history about places where I live or the tradition behind somethings.