George - Could you add a page to your website that includes tips you are learning about editing the tree? Offering some guidelines would be a very helpful resource. Marc On Sep 4, 2011, at 8:47 PM, "George W. Durman" <GermannaResearch@comcast.net> wrote: Someone warned me when I announced the Tree at Ancestry that I was opening up a can of worms. I disagreed, saying that Germanna descendants could not possibly make mistakes. (GRIN) Well, I have been proven wrong. I've discovered mistakes where people just clicked the wrong place. In all those cases I know of, the "Editor" emailed me, or left a comment for the person involved, and I corrected those errors. Now, what really ticks me off is when "Editors" go in and haphazardly change data I had entered in the original database. I AM NOT so proud of ownership that nothing can be changed, or so sure of myself to think there are no mistakes in the database. But, when I have included source documentation for events, such as marriages, and someone ignores the sources and inputs his/her data, changes spouses' names, dates, etc., I'm upset. Most of the problems have occurred when someone was working on a person where there were multiple people with the exact name. Folks, MAKE SURE YOU ARE EDITING THE CORRECT PERSON!!!!! MAKE SURE WHEN YOU ADD A SPOUSE, CHILD, ETC., THAT THE PERSON IS NOT ALREADY IN THE DATABASE. If you want to add a spouse or child, you are given the choice to add a new person, or one already existing in the Tree. Look before you leap! At least one of you combined two men with the same name, gave the wives of both husbands to the newly created combined person. LOOK AT DATES, LOOK AT PLACES, LOOK AT SOURCE DOCUMENTS IF THEY ARE GIVEN, LOOK AT PARENTS, LOOK AT THE BIRTH DATES OF PARENTS TO SEE IF IT IS POSSIBLE TO GIVE THEM THE CHILDREN YOU WANT TO GIVE THEM. If you have a wife born 1769, don't give her children born 8-12 years after she was born. Just not possible. WARNING: If I see repeated bad editing from someone, I WILL take that person of "Edit" status, but he/she will still be able to "Contribute", just not change anything already in the Tree. If that person continues to add bad data, I will place that person on "View" status only. No adding, no editing. If you are as confused as I was when I started the Tree, you WILL have problems adding, deleting, changing data. There is a steep learning curve and you MUST figure out how to do things BEFORE "Contributing" or "Editing". Sorry to come across so harshly, but we can't have people changing data in a willy-nilly fashion. Sarge My Germanna Database at Rootsweb: http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?db=germanna My Germanna Website at Rootsweb: http://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~george/index.html TN Germanna Reunion - Sept. 9-11 http://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~george/easttennesseereunion2011.html ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to GERMANNA_COLONIES-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message