Sunday, February 26, 2012

Separating the Wrong Records, New FamilySearch Tree

Here are some of my thoughts after 4 days working with the New Familysearch Tree. The tree I found for my family contained several wrong ancestors. My immediate reaction was to try to remove these people. I should have looked at the how-to videos located in the Help Center section. Instead I began changing names, which is the wrong way to fix the problem. You must unlink the person from the tree because this is a shared tree, and each person has a fixed person ID and is linked to other trees. So you will anger a lot of people if you change a name. Luckily I discovered my error quickly and was easily able to change everything back and delete my changes. Since all changes remain linked to the individual you are able to easily change back to the previous info if you make the wrong change. If you submitted wrong info you can delete it all together.
Screen for Separating Records
The correct way to remove wrongly attached individuals from your tree is to go to the detail screen for the son of daughter of the wrong person. Then click on combined records link under the person's info. At the combined records screen check mark each record with the wrong parents for separation. This is more advice from Familysearch; "If the combined record contains 3 or more individuals, separate all of the records for one individual. Then repeat the process for the next individual." There can be many wrong records so it's best to check mark view 100 records at a time. Once you selected the records to remove then click separate then click confirm, which should remove the person.
This James Forgey and Margaret  mistaken match is found
everywhere in my tree cannot fix this
I am finding sometimes you cannot fix records which might contain a wrong spouse, children etc.. It's likely because the originally submission made years ago was wrong. Only the person who made the submission can change it. I was under the impression that anyone could make changes? So at this time you can unlink records,  but cannot change all relationships. This means that earlier wrong family connections can be uncombined and then may be recombined by someone thinking they are being helpful. If you click on the watch link you will be notified when any change is made to an individual record. I've put in a many hours separating records and will keep checking for changes.
I like the idea of working with others and discussing conclusions on a shared tree. We can make more progress this way as opposed to working alone. Eventually we will be able to add document images which will make this and even more powerful resource.

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