Taking Advantage of Your Weekly Updates from FamilySearch Family Tree

If you are using the FamilySearch.org Family Tree program, you are probably aware of the background issue with changes to the individual profiles. Individuals' reactions to the "changes" cover the whole spectrum from anticipation to hysteria. I regularly get comments from people who say they will never use the Family Tree because of the changes. Hmm. This topic is something I regularly write about, but this time I am going to focus on one of the most important "solutions" to the problem with people changing entries on the Family Tree: the weekly update of "Changes to People You Are Watching." See above. This notice comes in the form of an email sent to the email account you use when registering for the program.

Where do the notices come from? When you are working on the Family Tree, you can "watch" anyone you are working on or interested in. If anyone makes changes to your watched individuals, all of their changes will show up on your weekly FamilySearch email. This process assumes that you are working on the Family Tree and also clicking on the Watch link on the individuals you are working on. Here is a screenshot of an individual showing the Watch link or star.

In this example, I have already clicked on the Watch link and now it will let me "Unwatch" this individual should I wish to do so.

How do I know how many people I am watching? Here is a screenshot showing the dropdown list under the Search tab.

The Lists link will take you to a list of all the people you have clicked and entered into your watch list. Here is an example. You can see that I am watching 300 people.

Now, as I wrote above, once a week, FamilySearch sends me an email telling me all the people for which there have been changes and giving me a link to all the changes. Part of this weekly list is shown at the beginning of this article.

Now, what do I do when I get the list? I review all of the reported changes. As I do so, I see that the changes generally fall into a number of categories including adding sources or other information, changing existing information, or adding or deleting individuals. Here are examples of some types of changes:

Some people seem to automatically assume that all changes are bad. This is an example of a good or at worst neutral change. This is on a list of 26 people with 109 changes (a slow week, by the way). Unless I am interested, I don't take the time to check on changes such as this one. If the story turns out to be inappropriate, then remember that there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of other people who are related to this person. Ultimately, someone will make a comment or change the story.

But what about some ancestor that gets inaccurate information? Here is an example.

I have removed the names of those who made the changes for these examples. Again, we have beneficial changes. If you don't recognize the person or what has been changed, you can click on the name of the person and then look at all the changes made to that person. Here is another example.



This particular entry in the Change Report has about 17 changes. Fortunately, in this case, all the changes were minor and took only a few minutes to correct. The main issue was that the entries needed to be standardized.

What about the changes made to people such as Francis Cooke?

I have a few suggestions for this type of situation. First, don't jump into the battle unless you have satisfactorily verified every person in your family line back to the target person. Also, don't bother to get involved unless you have new sources to add that will clarify any disagreements among the contributors. Last, don't think you have to participate unless you really want to do all the work to become a "Mayflower" expert or whatever type of expert required by the entries. Always work systematically from very well substantiated entries.

Think of the Weekly Update Report from FamilySearch as an important adjunct to your research that gives you an insight into the problems that need to be addressed in the Family Tree. As you become involved, be sure to communicate with the other people who are working on your lines.