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Por RJQ |

Few days ago we were commenting on how in Family Search there is been a huge amount of records modified and wrongly merged (on purpose) by trolls, been the most notorious "Mbarrena" who also goes by other names.

One of the problems in Family Search is the "volunteering" that seems to give "points" to LDS Church members, who many been inexperienced end up confusing names and merging people generations apart. This is still understandable. I'm not referring those here in this topic. I'm exclusively talking about people who intentionally change data even when sources are given to prove it.

This are definitely trolls, they just do it for fun or out of jealousy, they have no intention on helping or collaborating, they just want to mess around with the information.

In that conversation we had in the other topic (which I didn't continue, as it was kind of hijacking the main topic) there was a suggestion to use WikiTree, I checked it out and give it a try, well, it only takes a few moves before you get bombarded by this trolls such as "Don Ximenes", you can tell they hide under silly nicknames, they every connect themselves to the tree, and they spend quite a bit of time changing information instead of researching, in fact they will not add real information, they just go after what has already been posted.

The consequential problem and one that is becoming more eminent is that new comers may think that the data that is been wrongly modified is correct and they en up perpetuating wrong information (without intention) due to the lack of experience.

This is why I think we need to point out this profiles so people are aware of this and hopefully prevent inexperienced researchers from taking data for granted.

Once again, there is nothing better than posting genealogy on personal website and for everyone to keep the records safe in your own files.

The Shame List (please add the ones you had found)
Mbarrena aka JGPS aka NataliaFranco6 (and more to discover)
Jovanni Ramos
Don Ximenes

I have had a couple of interactions with this user over the last two years, both around my 5th great-grandfather, Pedro de los Reyes and his son, Vicente Irineo Reyes, and grandson Jose Eustaquio Reyes. I'd spent a ton of time compiling records and putting this family together, tying in original sources (before they had them indexed, even), and making sure that everyone was documented. In the course of one day, this user destroyed all of that work and took everyone apart as family.

Then when confronted about it, and clearly showing that the changes were made by them, they denied it and claimed it was others ruining their work. Whoever the person has said to me on more than one occasion that they live in California. They have also asked, more than once, if I am a member of the LDS church, which makes me feel almost certain that they are a church member. In one of our exchanges, she referred to a user "Nuestro Ranchos" that was making changes and stated her opinion that this was a company based out of Anaheim. The biggest thing that I've noticed is that they are very protective of their "work" because they will place notes in the bios of people telling others not to touch and to "RESPECT" their ancestors. Meanwhile, I'm asking for her to provide proof of what she has, but to no avail.

Thank you for pointing this out. I have seen Mbarrena many times. She also wrote to me once, she said she was from California, I think and her name was Maria. That's all she would give me, when I asked her who her parents were etc, she just did not want to tell me. Thank you
Elma Ramos

Hi Elma,

I wouldn't believe anything this person says, today I restore the information of 23 people in the FamilyTree, all messed up by "mbarrena" and find out that "AlejandraRizo1" does exactly the same, thus likely another "mbarrena"'s persona.

Also is distasteful that this person only goes after people she/he think were spaniards leaving untouched those who were indigenous, black or any other caste, and try to create (fictitiously) links with "kings" and other nobility names. which only demonstrates her/his supremacist poor mind.

Family Search hasn't done any thing about it, plenty of reports haven't ever made a change, I still reporting this person and encourage anyone else to do so, maybe one day the administrators will understand how useless that page is turning due to people like this.

Thank you for the comment Elma, goes to show how many people's work this person has affected.

Hi there, FYI

I just found some other iD that this Mbarrena is using. I have been working onf the Ruiz de Esparza family and this is where I found some other ID. that belong to same person.
Neill Hernandez
J Mirano

He or she has attached herself to different families. Cause on one she is my 11 cousin and on another she is my 12 cousins, I look it up and they are different families.

Thanks for the alert about this. I find that I am relying on the FamilySearch trees less and less as I find more and more cases of inaccuracy.

FamilySearch allowed someone to change my step-father's record to show he had died when in fact he was still alive. While FamilySearch allowed that person to make this change without any oversight, they made me jump through hoops to verify that he was still alive so that I could change his record back to reality.

If I do look at FamilySearch, I accept nothing at all without verifying it on my own. And I see many cases of errors. I keep my master trees on Ancestry and allow no one else to modify it. I document all of the core persons' information, including writing research notes where the documents leave questions or are in conflict. The people at the periphery of my tree may be in various states of reliability, but people seeing my tree can count on solid ground for my core people. FamilySearch trees have no real way to prevent corruption, either intentional or not.

Sadly that's very true.

Reality is that we all do make errors at some point, but these people I've mention do not made those errors, they purposely and with malice had change the information, thus I feel it is important not to let this folks "bury" again the information that we have found with many years of research and collaboration.

I work a lot on family search and have noticed exactly that and it is a shame that people just mess around with records. Some are probably not made on purpose but out of different considerations, but some are clearly made on purpose. I think that is the price to pay in family search because it is an open, collaborative genealogical website and that is great to make conecctions with other results and trees. I try to watch my relevant trees and every once in a while I have to make corrections in both cases (trolls and innacurate modifications) Since I have no proof of trolls I haven't keep their names. What I do is to keep my tree in geneanet https://en.geneanet.org/ which in my opinion is a great site because there are some profesionals that keep their work open to consult but not to modify. Family tree is very important to consult their microfilms.

Totally agree, Family Search (their films) is definitely one of the best sources of information in the net, FamilyTree in the other hand had been lacking from the get go. I should check Geneanet.org, sounds like another option. Thanks for mentioning it.

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