I’ve recently been corresponding with a person in Canada who had come across their deceased father in the Cromar-Robb Hypothesis tree I authored using the Ancestry platform. They wanted to know how their father came to be listed in my tree, and what our connections might be. Using my tree, I traced our most recent common ancestor to Robert Cromar 1717, son of Peter Cromar 1690, making us 6th cousins 3 times removed if I read the cousin chart correctly (a skill which I must admit remains a challenge).

Checking in

I then went back to cross-check the lineage in FamilySearch, the “one big tree” shared by all of us. The last time I had spent any significant time at FamilySearch was June 2022, when I wrapped up revision work to Ron Cromar’s genealogy hypothesis, an effort which synthesized strong research by others including Paul Smillie and Kevin Cromar. To my consternation, I discovered that another FS contributor had summarily deleted a parent-child connection I had established as part of that effort, a link along the line between Robert 1717 and my Canadian cousin’s father. This unanticipated change to my work had occurred a couple months after I was actively working.

I also noticed that several of my other entries had been modified as I moved up and down this particular line. Most of these changes were minor, representing various contributors’ preferences for dates, places, or precisely where notes should be. An instance of this kind of thing occurs in conflicts between standardized versus historically accurate place naming. FS, for example, does not recognize the term Great Britain as the standardized name of a country from 1707 to 1800, though that is historically precise. It only allows the United Kingdom as a standardized name, even though the UK does not exist until 1801.

So my preference is to always keep the FS-recognized “Standardized Place” designation in the database, of course, but to format the public-facing “Place of Residence” name to reflect history. Some users evidently object to my doing this, as I noticed several instances of my “Great Britain” designations have evaporated. De gustibus non disputandum est. I can’t really be bothered to get into such contests.

Disruption

But some of the changes, like the parent-child relationship deleted along my Canadian cousin’s line, were quite disruptive, eliciting in me a reaction of strong and often conflicting emotions and thoughts that I found surprising.

This surprise should of course have come as no surprise at all, since I rationally understand the consequences of working with such a resource. The FamilySearch tree is “one big tree” after all. No one “owns” it, and no one can claim “ownership” over even a close family entry. It is a cloud-based and crowd-sourced compilation, one of the most prominent examples of such on the web. Users are free to make any kind of change at any time — whether those changes are carefully researched or recklessly assumed.

Reason v emotion

Yet, here I was, distressed at the thought of someone undoing “my” work! I had spent months aligning the data in three resources — FamilySearch, updates to Ron’s research, and my Ancestry tree used to generate a GEDCOM. With nearly 5000 persons entered in Peter Cromar’s descendancy, assuming just 15 minutes per person spent on research (a very conservative estimate), I had spent over 1,200 hours on this project spread over 9 months — that’s an average of over 30 hours per week! I had to consciously chide myself and rationally choke down that emotion. I reminded myself that 1) I own the “work” but not the database in FamilySearch, 2) that work is preserved in the change documentation at FS, and 3) the work is still present in the two expressions of this database that I DO own, the revision to Ron’s notes and my GEDCOM.

This led me to reflect further: how had my work affected others who saw their work change during my flurry of activity? Had I ruined a pet hypothesis that someone had spent years developing? Were they grateful for the new information, or annoyed that I had intruded on their family? This is very personal stuff, and therefore one’s reactions to it are not necessarily guided by reason.

This also led me to consider critically my own objectivity and propensity toward confirmation bias, a trait even the most seasoned scientific researcher is not immune from. Was I falling prey to the same bias I had so often seen and cast aspersions on?

Collaboration v competition

Regaining some composure and a measure of objectivity, I looked at the record of change in the parent-child deletion that had unchained the link between me and my distant Canadian cousin. On what basis had this user objected to my inclusion of this connection? The change record in FS allows a contributor to justify their reason for the change. In this instance, the changes were twofold, because I also discovered, in addition to the parent-child relationship being severed, the death date I had entered had also been scrubbed.

According to the contributor, in the instance of the parent-child change, they had deleted it because “(n)o evidence has been presented to show the relationship linkage.” In the instance of the death record, no justification was offered by the contributor. However, I did note in my record of change that a “(h)ypothesis” had been created “by Ron Cromar,” which “must be confirmed by source.”

So this began to feel a little bit like a competition more than a collaboration to me. Technically, the deleting contributor had me dead to rights: I indeed had offered no evidence for the parent-child hypothesis. But in the vitals, it was crystal clear that I had based my entry on some evidence. The deleting contributor did not connect the dots — and it may be asking a lot to expect them to.

Primary sources?

Now, the evidence I offered was decidedly not a primary source. It was a hypothetical based on Ron Cromar’s reliable (but fallible and refutable) genealogy notes. So again, technically, I’m dead to rights. The deleting contributor is not entirely out of bounds in deleting Ron’s data as not derived from primary source documentation.

Still, I remain a bit baffled by the spirit of this exchange. The contributor in question is an active FS user whose username I recognize (and whose work I admire) all along the various Cromar lines. No doubt they have seen my work as well, and their opinion of the soundness of my efforts remains to be understood. Clearly in this instance, they held it in pretty low esteem.

Good intentions gone awry

Part of me says I can’t say as I blame them. I have seen a lot of sloppy work in genealogy sites in general, and FamilySearch in particular, which I’ve heaped my share of scorn upon in this journal more than once. I have done my best to adopt better practices, but I can see that in this entry I did a very poor job of communicating my intentions, specifically in how (or how I did not) effectively communicate 1) the justification and source, 2) the hypothetical “to be proven” nature of the entry, and 3) an offer to others to assist in collaboration notes.

But another part of me wants to ask why, if it’s clear there are some serious people trying to do serious work here, there is not any attempt at reaching out? After all, we are 1) probably family, and 2) ALL invested in creating the best hypothesis we can in this big database — and we ALL need to recognize that even the best sourced entry is hypothetical in nature. I’ve seen primary sources that are themselves riddled with error, so how can we assume to know the real truth of relationships lost to living memory?

Etiquette and empathy

So I’ve learned a great deal in this episode. I’m creating a personal code of etiquette and empathy for working through a database like FamilySearch, and hoping that others come to similar conclusions:

• When making entries of any kind, always be generous with reasoned justification. Never be lazy with letting people know your intentions.
• Always cite a source, even if (especially if) you are taking a hypothesis risk on a non-primary source.
• Always indicate when something is a hypothesis and encourage help with finding primary sources through notes.
• Always remember every entry, no matter how well-sourced, is a hypothesis.
• Never be snarky with newbies or look down upon someone else’s honest-if-naive effort. Instead, always guide them with courtesy toward better practice in your notes.
• Always attempt to contact a contributor if it is evident they are invested in a particular person entry. Let them know how you are trying to help.
• Never shoot down a clearly labeled and sourced hypothesis unless you can prove it is incorrect with better data.
• Don’t confuse FamilySource with a professional-only forum. All kinds of researchers, from rank amateurs to seasoned pros, are creating contributions, and they all mean to do so for the better, not for the worse (at least, I’ve never seen an instance of a maliciously and willfully incorrect entry).

Conclusion

I’m sure as I return back to any of the 5,000 or so entries along Peter Cromar’s descendancy, I will find plenty of instances to employ this code, because I’m sure I made the same mistake in many places that I did with this entry. So I’ll start with this entry, making updates in the spirit of this code:

• I will contact any contributor who has at least two record changes listed, including the individual who deleted my work. I will engage them to collaborate, not to compete. If they don’t respond, that’s the way things go. If they do, I will have gained a collaborator!
• I’ll restore my earlier entries, but this time with ample reason notation and links to my resources where possible. I will stress 1) the hypothetical nature of the entry and 2) invite others to prove or debunk — and if debunked, to go ahead and delete. But I will implore users not to cast away a clearly labeled hypothesis without doing that work.
• I’ll follow through on my due diligence and attempt to back up or debunk my own hypothetical work with primary source “proof” — although to be fair that will take far longer than I would wish!