How Do You React to Changes Made to the FamilySearch Family Tree?

I frequently hear about and from time-to-time personally witness the FamilySearch.org Family Tree equivalent of "road rage." The Family Tree is an open, collaborative, website. Just like cars on a highway where each of us is entitled to drive wherever we choose, each of us has an equal right to view, edit, correct, or modify the information on the Family Tree and just as with driving, if we violate the rules we can be subject to sanctions. Why do some people think they own the road, just as why do some people think they own the Family Tree?

We spent the last year living in Annapolis, Maryland. While driving on the freeways, we witnessed interesting and very scary phenomena; road racing. While traveling along the freeway with the traffic flow, we would suddenly see multiple cars go by traveling at least twice as fast as the rest of the traffic. Since the traffic was often moving at 75 mph, this means the road racers were traveling at more than 150 mph on a busy freeway, swerving in and out of the lanes of traffic and often driving on the shoulder of the road. We could imagine what would happen to us if one of these crazy people ran into us.

What is almost as insane, but not quite as physically dangerous is that we have the functional equivalent of these road racers on the Family Tree. People who make wholesale changes adding duplicates children to families, changing birth and death dates, destroying whole family lines apparently at one sitting. All of this destruction is accomplished without providing any sort of source citation or justification for the changes.

Thankfully, most changes to the Family Tree do not escalate to this level. But the real question is how do we react to these changes. Do we respond by racing with our own car to try to "show" those people? Unfortunately, I find the equivalent of road rage when people overreact to changes by literally cursing the Family Tree and refusing to use it at all. However, as registered users of the Family Tree, we can quickly reverse any damage done to the entries. In addition, we can give feedback to the person who makes the unwarranted alterations.

Every time I mention this type of situation, I get responses about a commentator's particular relative who just keeps making the same changes over an over again and never responds to emails or messages sent through the Family Tree system. I keep thinking about how the complaints I am listening to are road rage genealogy. There is no doubt that the person who is making the changes is "violating" the "rules of the road" on the Family Tree but how we react to the changes is more important than the fact that the changes were made.

Maintenance on the Family Tree is similar to weeding a garden. No matter how many times we pull up the weeds, they always seem to grow back. So why do I see gardens without any weeds and others that are choked with weeds? The principle is simple and can be directly applied to the Family Tree. Pulling weeds (maintaining the Family Tree) is a constant task. If you neglect to look at your portion of the Family Tree or watch the entries, you will soon have a weedy garden. If you do like we do, parcel out the tasks of watching to family members and correct the changes made as quickly as possible, then you will see marked improvement. But be mindful of your reactions to changes. Don't get discouraged. Don't get frustrated and especially, don't get mad.

One last comment, by the way, it is not FamilySearch's fault that people make changes.