I just found out the hard way that anyone can change, delete, merge and add people to the free version of Family Tree from familysearch.
Someone merged my tree with theirs and It erased about 900 ancestors and 3 to 5 generations. I am so glad I keep another tree on ancestry.com and a Gedcom File in three different laptops for backup updating weekly.
Although I love familysearch for research, I was not aware that others can change your tree and erase years of research.
Lesson learned
Ruben
Family Tree
There is a users guide/manual for Family Tree at http://broadcast.lds.org/elearning/fhd/community/en/familysearch/family… (October 2013).
Starting at page 72 there are details on how to restore a deleted individual, and from page 73 information on seeing what changes have been made and how to undo them.
If someone sees something questionable in a record, rather than just changing the data, they could start a "discussion" in the system, and if that person is being watched, an e-mail notification will be sent.
If a change is just made, the submitter of the information can also be contacted if they have a valid e-mail address in the system.
George Fulton
Pleasanton, CA
Family Tree
i didn't know you could delete. merge people on trees on that website. i tried merging two duplicate entries i made by accident, and failed
Unfortunate fact
I started using it since their beta launch about two years ago I think, I also decide to stop and now I am painfully copying most of the information on my own database, is not just that tree merges can heavily damage the relationships but the fact they decide not to implement a "export" feature after all is quite disappointing. The "one tree" is a nice Idea but also a really complicated one and I think the stuff they have available to program their site are not sufficient, (in numbers), they are actually trying to "bite more than they can actually chew" For the last 10 months I've seen that most of the complains are based on this very same issues and they make very clear that their goal is different from fixing it which is what most users are expecting, sad to say, but I don't think the FamilyTree idea is going far.
Who knows may be in the future with new or better management they can actually bring a good database site, right now the integration with the digital records is practically their main asset.
RJ Quiralta