A 90-day moratorium at Find A Grave
It happens over and over and over.
A grieving family struggles to cope with a loved one’s death. There are so many arrangements to make, so many people to be notified, so many things that have to be handled.
At some point in that process, the family genealogist reluctantly heads over to Find A Grave to add a memorial to the loved one who’s been lost. Wanting deeply to perform this last act of family love for the lost one.
And finds it’s already there. Complete with photo and obituary.
Posted by someone who never even heard of the deceased before finding the information online or in the newspaper.
What that someone apparently doesn’t understand is how violated the family can feel at that point. Someone else — someone unrelated and unconcerned — has essentially crashed the funeral. Interjected himself or herself into the family’s private grief.
And because that someone else isn’t family and doesn’t know the deceased, all too often the information posted is wrong. Wrong in big ways. Or just wrong in small details.
And then — in way too many cases — the fight begins.
The family has to try to use an internal messaging system to contact the person who put up the memorial, and now controls it.
All too often that person doesn’t respond, despite multiple requests.
The family then has to persist to contact the site administrators.
Eventually, in most cases, control over the memorial will be transferred to the family — but it often takes months.
And every day the family gets angrier and angrier, and feels more and more hurt.
If you don’t think this is a problem, you haven’t been paying attention. Right now, on Facebook, in a genealogy group, genealogist after genealogist is telling the story of this happening in family after family:
“My father recently passed … To my surprise someone had added a memorial for him before he was buried. … I was really upset. This stranger did this without giving family time to grieve and handle things on their own.”
• “This happened to my uncle and I asked for transfer three times, nope nothing been almost a year.”
• “I went on Findagrave after my dad passed away in 2013 (but wasn’t yet buried) and found that someone had already created his memorial.”
Why in the world do we allow this?
Why isn’t there a rock-solid-no-exceptions rule that only the immediate family can post a memorial within a fixed time after a person’s death?
Why can’t we all wait 90 days to give the family a chance to post its own memorial to their own loved one?
How about it, Find A Grave? How about a rock-solid-no-exceptions rule that only the immediate family can post a memorial within 90 days?
Let’s give every grieving family a little bit of time to grieve in its own way.
Cite/link to this post: Judy G. Russell, “A modest proposal,” The Legal Genealogist (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : posted 5 Aug 2019).
I agree 100%. When my mother passed away at midnight in 2013, the first thing I did the next morning (after not sleeping much), was put up a memorial on Find A Grave. Sad that it was the first thing I thought about so that I wouldn’t have to go through what so many others have experienced.
I don’t know how they’d limit it to immediate family – what constitutes immediate, could immediate family request that someone do it for them, etc. I LOVE the idea but struggle with the details.
I’m sure a system could be constructed.
I disagree. Remember, Find A-Grave is about documenting the final disposition of the deceased. The site was developed to do just that, having little to no reference to anything genealogical or family related. It is not a family tree site, it is not a genealogy site. It is really not even a pure memorialization site. It can be a reference for your genealogy, but that’s all. The content was expanded to allow more information to be added regarding the deceased, but again, family relationships were not the reason this site was developed. Find A Grave has made the statement countless times they will take no action on the timing of entering memorials for the deceased. This is extremely difficult to monitor as some people will find ways to work around any rule input to delay a memorial being added. You work within the rules of Find A Grave or you don’t participate.
YES, the site has been owned by Ancestry since 2013 but it still operates as a separate entity and not behind the pay wall of the parent site.
This has been discussed and debated to the point it’s the same conversations beating a dead horse, over and over again. The basic truth of the matter is this: If you want to ensure management of a family member or dear friends entry on the site, you must enter it immediately, even a bare bones with names, dates, and burial location to which you can go back and edit later. The people who enter memorials from obituaries have NO way of knowing that the deceased is a family member of a contributor.
If the deceased is a required transfer, the contributor has no choice but to transfer it. Did you ask for management the right way by sending a SAC and copying yourself on the edit? If the person who created it doesn’t transfer within 30 days, you forward the SAC and submit the problem to Find A Grave. An admin will transfer eventually. If you have been asking for siblings, parents, or grandparents to be transferred to you for months or years, you aren’t following through the right way.
Terms like “holding my family hostage” “hoarders” and “in it for the numbers” don’t help at all. Have any of you submitted information, including bios, to other contributors without the expectation of getting a transfer? Have you refused to share information because someone won’t transfer? I’ve seen that happen. I know there are people out there who will not share a wealth of information unless they get the entry transferred to them. If this information doesn’t get added, have you forwarded the bio request SAC to Find A Grave after 30 days so the entry CAN be completed?
There’s also people out there who join, get excited and start asking for transfers, get a few dozen or hundred, and then disappear from the site, losing interest quickly and moving on. Then it’s a real pain to get anything beyond basic edits done to those, and they sit orphaned for years.
I will agree with two things…..it is wrong to make burial unknowns or assume cremation if the burial information is not in the obit, and it is wrong to steal photos from the funeral home site or Facebook to add to a memorial, regardless of who created it.
I am a contributor who occasionally enters from obits, but most of my recent work is for long time, completely forgotten deceased folks, some of whom likely have genealogy driven relatives out there that haven’t even thought of “Finding Their Grave” in spite of the amount of resources available at their fingertips. Maybe related to some of you on this thread, who knows. This is why I’ve been adding in Ohio lately, but live in SC…… another whole topic to address.
Karyn Garvin, bravo!!!
Karyn Garvin, I totally agree with you…
Karen, Thank you for the information about how to request a transfer. I appreciate your input. By the way, what is an SAC?
However, I still think waiting 90 days is not a lot to ask. My daughter was distressed to see her father’s memorial created by a stranger within the first three months of his passing. Fortunately, the owner kindly transferred it to her without incident. When I learned of the situation, I also felt a bit violated.
Sandra Layton, a SAC is Suggest A Correction. Go to the memorial and you will see a link for a Suggest Edits. Near the bottom of that page is Suggest Other Corrections. Click on that and make your request, and be sure to click the box to send a copy to yourself before sending the message.
Sandra Layton, you have to accept that the site isn’t first or foremost about family. Attaching feelings about being violated or experiencing distaste is pointless, when the site is about documenting graves. You have to detach.
If it is supposed to be about burials, then perhaps it would be appropriate to at least wait until there is an actual burial and not post information from obituaries before the body is even in the ground.
Personally being one of those persons who sat in my living room waiting for the funeral home to come for my newly deceased parent, writing a Find a Grave entry before a stranger did it, I am all for a non-family moratorium.
It would also be nice if a non-family entry could be deleted and replaced by a family one within the 90-day period. No family member is pleased with having the entry listed forever as created by a stranger when they have been beat to the computer by an obituary poster while the family grieves.
Kat, the site is for final dispositions instead of just burials. Once the disposition is made public, like a statement that burial will be in X cemetery,, a memorial can be entered.
Immediate family should be a spouse, children born to that person, that person’s parents, or that person’s sibling(s). The day my Dad died and we waited for the funeral home to come and transport him from the VA hospital to the funeral home, I went in and created a basic Find A Grave memorial before there was ANY chance that someone else could find out about it in a newspaper. I shouldn’t have had to do that. I should have had that opportunity to take time to do a better job of it when I wasn’t trying to do it through tears.
Katherine J Bopp, I created a basic memorial for my mom the day after she died, containing just her name, dates and locations. About a week later, I added a short bio. Whenever I thought of something I wanted to say about her, I’d add it. I probably changed it a dozen times over the first 3 months. If I thought of something new to add today, I could. The point is: F.A.G. memorials are easily editable. We don’t have to have them perfect from day one.
Judy,
I absolutely agree that this should be the rule. Perhaps even that no memorial should be posted at all until 30 days after the person’s death and then only family can post for the next sixty days or until ninety days after the person’s death.
Louise
I like that too.
I would think that a 90 day moratorium for ALL deaths would be much more simple and easier to administer without worrying about who constitutes “immediate” family.
Having posted many gravestone inscriptions where one person has passed but the spouse has not, in the past I have posted both, even though perhaps I should not have done so. But whenever I get a request to update a memorial with the obituary the day after the person died, and that obituary lists all living immediate relatives, I refuse to do so until at least a month has passed, and then I redact the names of all the living.
As insane as it sounds and a little morbid. I already saved mine and my wifes. I am fighting one lady on several family members memorials. She won’t update she won’t answer back, and i know she is not next of kin.
It’s not morbid; it’s sad that you should even have to think of that.
The issue you raise regarding Find A Grave memorials extends far beyond current burials. For example, the person (a non-family member) who posted information on my great great grandfather refuses to respond to my messages about erroneous information. That’s very frustrating, especially since I know that the person who posted the information is still alive. What do we do when the poster (again a non-family member) of a memorial has passed on? Find A Grave is a fantastic resource, but change is needed.
This was possibly pre-Ancestry management.
We had a cousin pass who had entered family in a number of cemeteries. I wrote the Admin or Customer Service and noted the numbers of “my” relatives in their home town cemetery. I also attached either his obit or his father’s (he pre-deceased his father). They were transferred to me in about a week.
Allen Gray, have you fully followed the process to get the corrections made?
Thank you for bringing this to public awareness. However, this in not the only problem at FindAGrave, though I certainly share your concern for still-grieving family members. Crowd-sourcing of information can be valuable, but it really depends on who’s in the crowd, doesn’t it? I’ve cooperated with a number of kind, helpful members at FaG to improve certain memorials, but the lack of any real way to request that the site intervene with “problem” posts and/or posters is quite distressing. I’m presently confronted with an intransigent poster who continues to systematically add erroneous and incomplete memorials (WITHOUT easily-discovered burial information, no less) about a number of my father’s close relations. When contacted regarding verifiable edits regarding my own meticulously-researched grandmother, to start, she brusquely insisted I “had the wrong gal.” She demanded documentation, then ignored my attempt to try to provide it. And for this, I must lay the blame squarely on FindAGrave itself, as there is no mechanism to actually attach documents within the body of messages to the memorialist–or to the site. In any case, it’s clear this uncooperative individual is not interested in the accuracy of her additions–or our likely “family” connection. That Ancestry will ultimately allow these misinformed memorials to be regarded as “sources” is even more exasperating. More than one change is needed at FindAGrave.
This happened to me, but the person who posted the memorial *immediately* gave me management and then added two candles to show good faith. Perhaps F-a-G needs a special button where relatives can elevate the request for transfer to an urgent level. We also need to remember that not every family knows about F-a-G, even though it’s well known in the genealogy community. So allowing a non-relative to post a memorial may be a kindness in some instances. IMHO, of course. However, no obit with names of living people should be allowed, for privacy reasons!
Can we also remember that Find A Grave’s purpose us *not* genealogy? It wasn’t started for that purpose. When Ancestry bought it 6 years ago, they didn’t change the mission statement. They did make a slight change when the site was updated but it was merely semantics. The gist was the same.
It’s an Ancestry property today. How it started has little to do with what it is now, and what rules it should adopt for the future.
Yes, it is called “Find A Grave”, yet these memorials are created before there is a grave. So these memorials are not following the purpose of the site either.
Judy, it is Ancestry’s property and has been for nearly six years. Did Ancestry change the purpose of Find A Grave when they bought it? No. Was the purpose changed when the site was updated? No. Doesn’t that tell you something? It should.
Back to a question you haven’t answered: How would changing that rule benefit Find A Grave.
A better question is, how would it HURT Find A Grave to ask non-family members to wait? What exactly is the gain to you or to other “gimme the numbers” folks from rushing to create a memorial before the family has a chance to?
Your answering a question with a “better question” is telling. You don’t have an answer to mine. You said you’d consider a change to your rules of the road if someone had a good reason. What is the good reason for Find A Grave to change a rule that is working for them and for which they HAVE addressed in their FAQ/Help?
Why don’t you ask the curators in their forums to change the rule?
Jennifer, in your “reasoning”, memorials would not be allowed for non-burial final dispositions such as cremation, burial at sea, donated to science, etc. And that’s simply not the case. The site allows memorial creation for known dispositions. When my uncle died, his memorial was created the same day. By a non-family member (without the drama Judy described) who knew he was going to be buried and where. That’s 100% allowed by Find A Grave.
Arguing that something is legal doesn’t necessarily make it right. Insisting that because your action doesn’t break the law (or in this case doesn’t violate the site’s TOS) you therefore have the right to trample all over the feelings of the deceased person’s close family members is selfish, and if insisted upon over the objections of the family, whether they have been expressed in the technically correct words and form or not, is the kind of conduct engaged in by bullies.
Fortunately, most of the gravers I have encountered on FaG adhere to much higher ethical standards of courtesy and kindness. Several who have transcribed entire cemeteries have even transferred memorials of distant cousins to me, unasked, as soon as I sent them suggested edits showing the relationship between several members of a family who are all buried in the same cemetery. According to the rules, they were entitled to keep control of these memorials, but they told me they got immense satisfaction whenever they were able to turn a memorial over to an actual family member, however distant that person’s relationship to the deceased might be. They weren’t interested in keeping score or competing for the title of top FaG contributor. Those are the people who deserve to win a title, as far as I am concerned.
The bullies are the vocal minority who demand a change for their own interests rather than the good of the community. Not once have you considered the feelings of anyone else – those who are unable to catalog cemeteries due to disabilities, the small-town cemetery office that uses Find A Grave as an on-line directory, or anyone else that doesn’t agree with you. Calling people names and being insulting is another tactic of a bully.
All right, Jane, you’ve been given total free rein to vent long enough. This is my turf and I’ve had enough. Take your “the sky is falling if people can’t invade the grief of the families” stuff to some turf of your own.
I agree, the loss of a loved one is usually sad and painful for the family and this pain is worsened by the posting of a memorial by a stranger, a person who probably did not even know the deceased but obtained the obituary from a newspaper. The are sometimes errors in the obituary which makes the pain of the loss greater and then some stranger adds the erroneous information to Find-A-Grave or another such site. I suggest that you wait at least a year. Give the family time to grieve. If the new grave is not that of your family member, please don’t add a memorial at all. Give the family time to do so if they wish. I have added only a few memorials and those were of my own family members who had died many, many years ago. The adding of memorials, although helpful to family researchers, can be very painful for the loved ones and especially if the information is incorrect.
My suggestion is to accept the site for what it is (a place to record final disposition info) instead of what you think it should be. And either add a memorial for your people as soon as you learn of the death or wait to search or one until you’re ready to see it.
Refusing to acknowledge the legitimate feelings of the families — for no good reason (what possible good is done by allowing this???) — is not helpful. Telling people not to look to see that their family’s privacy has been invaded is no solution to the problem of having the family’s privacy invaded.
A family’s privacy isn’t being invaded. And there is “no good reason” to say that it is. The right to privacy dies with the person.
In other words, your rights to a statistic take precedence over a family’s decision to honor its loved one its way. I know which side of this debate I’m staying on…
Your right to use the site is the same as mine: according to Find A Grave’s Terms of Use and their Community Rules. You just don’t want anyone to use it in a manner you disapprove.
Considering you’ve only created one memorial in the 8 years you’ve been a member (not the “more than a decade” you claimed), are you simply taking sides for a so-called moral or ethical standing or do you have an actual dog in the fight, such as a recent death for which you did not get to create the memorial and you’re miffed?
Arguing that something is legal doesn’t necessarily make it right. Insisting that because your action doesn’t break the law (or in this case doesn’t violate the site’s TOS) that gives you the right to trample all over the feelings of the deceased person’s close family members is selfish, and if insisted upon over the objections of the family, whether they have been expressed in the technically correct words and form, or not, is the kind of conduct engaged in by bullies. Fortunately, most of the gravers I have met on FaG adhere to a much higher standard of courtesy and kindness. Several who have transcribed entire cemeteries have even transferred memorials of distant cousins to me unasked as soon as I sent them suggested edits showing the relationship between several members of a family who are all buried
in the same cemetery. According to the rules they were entitled to keep control of these memorials, but they told me they got an immense feeling of satisfaction whenever they were able to turn a memorial over to a family member, however distant the relationship might be. They weren’t interested in keeping score or competing for the title of top contributor. Those are the people who deserve to win a title, as far as I am concerned.
G, “right” is subjective. One party believes A is right. Another believes B is right. Neither is wrong but one may be legal and the other not. Like the conflict over re-using photos without the photographer’s permission. Many genealogists think it’s okay, even that they have an “emotional right” to the photo if the subject is their relative. The law says differently.
While you’re accusing me of trampling all over the family’s feelings, did you ever consider the feelings of the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Find A Grave contributors who will be impacted by this? The disabled folks who add from obits because they can’t go out and walk cemeteries. The cemetery offices that are using Find A Grave as an “online directory”.
Have you ever realized that the vocal minority who push for this change are, in fact, the bullies as they are trying to push their agenda on the entire community? Like a person who has only added one memorial trying to get the entire site to change by calling fellow contributors insulting names. That’s pretty much the very definition of bullying.
I hold contributors in far higher regard: they are not going to abandon the site if asked to wait a brief time to give the family a chance to honor their dead their way. The singular horrible impact being wailed about is just that: a brief delay. Nothing horrific. Nothing earth-shattering. The sun will still rise, contributors will still contribute. And families will not be hurt.
Sorry, Jane, There are plenty of digitized collections of historic newspapers with obituary pages begging to be transcribed to FaG. There is no reason your hypothetical disabled person couldn’t work with those instead of racing to transcribe today’s haul of hot-off-the-presses information newly posted by the funeral homes before its had a chance to cool off and be fully proofread by the family for typos and other errors.
Judy, your insults and name calling certainly do not show a high regard for Find A Grave users. Those are not the way to win hearts and change minds. However, the only minds that matter are the ones who can change the rule – Find A Grave administration. Have you posted in their forums yet?
Why should family not have the first option to post an entry even if it is only a final disposition site?
Also why should obituary collectors feel it is appropriate to post a new entry when the body has not yet reached the final disposition site?
I think you might also be missing the point of why people feel it is painful. In most cases it is not the fact they are seeing it in writing and that is painful.
It is the fact that due to death a loved one has been taken from them. People are not yet ready to have that loved one further ripped from them by a stranger laying claim to them by creating a Find a Grave entry.
Judy, if the cemetery has a website, do you also feel your family’s privacy has been invaded when they post your relatives information?
There’s another choice too. When my emotions are running high, I “shelve” things that upset me until I can think about them more rationally. When the initial rawness of a loss has passed, perhaps try looking at the big picture, like how a delay would really impact the site (how many memorials would never get created).
Anybody who would refuse to do a memorial because they couldn’t wait 90 days to get their “stat” shouldn’t be doing this in the first place.
It isn’t that contributors refuse to make a memorial at a later date. The information to do so may not be available. Not all newspapers are online yet and those that are rarely have obituaries available for free for 90 days.
Maybe the people who shouldn’t be doing “this” are those who cannot accept the site for what it is. Yours isn’t the first call for a waiting period. Find A Grave has stated they take “no position” on the timing of memorial creation after death. That statement wasn’t an accident. They put it in their FAQ/Help several years ago, on purpose. The curators respond to these suggestions in their forums by pointing to that statement.
When my father passed away last year, the funeral home published only the information that we, our family, allowed them to published. The funeral home asked our permission on what the publish. The information was only then published to their website, generally, for the family and friends to be informed of the services, to leave flowers and condolences.
You are correct in saying that Find-A-Grave was not created for the purpose of genealogy, but that is it’s purpose now. I have been tempted to create a memorial for someone other that family, but chose to let the family have the opportunity. It is a part of the grieving process and if someone disagrees with me, they have never experienced loss. If an individual doesn’t know the family well enough to leave condolences, don’t use the information for Find-A-Grave. These a memorials, not numbers. If you don’t have a memory of the individual, don’t memorialize them.
If someone wants to increase their numbers, go to the cemeteries that have no index and walk the graves. There are many individuals that do not have memorials that do need to be remembered.
For the recently deceased, this is not a numbers game. It is not a game for anyone who has lost a loved one. Let the family grieve for more than 90 minutes, 90 hours or 90 days before posting.
Allen Herrod, if someone disagrees with you, they haven’t experienced a loss? Seriously? In other words, your opinion is the only one that matters.
We put a stone on our lot, a few years before my husband died. I have 5 generations on my mother’s side in that Cemetery. I understand if you don’t want to give me “custody” if my husband’s and parents graves, but get crap right or accept it. I was just up there, flowers I placed in May on husband’s, parents, grandparents and great grandparents were missing. Really!!?? You can’t afford the dollar store flowers?? Respect the living and the dead
I love this. And its also about time that they deal with the “collectors”. The people who control tens of thousands of listings and muck up the edit and transfer processes.
Can you explain this to me? What’s the driver behind being a “collector”? I’ve encountered this in a couple of cases for my family members. Once was someone who refused to transfer a memorial to me for a great aunt, even though there was no relationship. Once someone copied my grandfather’s photo from my Ancestry tree and posted it on F-a-G as their own. I could think of no other motivation in either case other than toting up numbers.
Some people I am sure genuinely want to help everyone find their family members and genuinely believe they are helping. Others are just in it as a way of keeping score. I cherish the former, I am directing this post to the latter.
It depends on your definition of “collector”. I happen to be one of those who see “collectors” as those who are only concerned with their own family, who collect memorials for every leaf in their tree and contribute nothing that isn’t connected to their family.
Debra Grimes, I see the word “collector” usually attached to those asking to have every family member, distant or otherwise, transferred to “their care” so they can “keep the family together” and “make edits”. When told no, many go so far as to create duplicate entries because “they are family” and “it’s my right” to do it. I found one making dupes of people who had been dead 100 years or more, and she responded to me in a very nasty note that “why should I let them have those just because they got to them first?”…the entries had been made 3 or 4 years earlier. Needless to say, those dupes are going now.
There’s a saying in customer service about a satisfied customer tells 1 person, an unhappy one tells 7. For every complaint about a relatives memorial being created “too soon”, how many memorials for recently deceased individuals are appreciated? Or receive no comments?
Many of us are deeply appreciative of the efforts of volunteers to go out and document our ancestors. But frankly I know of very very few who appreciate memorials for recently deceased people AT ALL. It’s the family’s right to do this, not some unknown person who sits online at midnight when the obits hit the funeral parlor’s online site.
Judy, “the family’s right” according to what law, rule or ethic? No such right exists and you of all people know it.
Their MORAL and ETHICAL right. Dear Lord, it isn’t all about the law, y’know. How about just plain the right to be treated as we would want to be treated? The first rule in genealogy, as in medicine, should be, “Above all else, DO NO HARM.” The name collectors can wait a few days before swooping in on a family’s grief.
Judy, what about the moral and ethical right to allow a company to make their own rulesFiWould you allies a reader of this blog to call for a change in your “rules of the road”? I bet not. If you don’t like Find A Grave’s policies, no one is forcing you to use the site.
I’m perfectly happy to have anyone suggest a change in my policies if they have good reason to do so. I may not accept it, but I will always listen. And a good company — like we all can hope Ancestry tries to be — will try to DO NO HARM as its first rule. That its “we don’t care about families, gimme the numbers” volunteers may not agree hopefully won’t stop them from considering the harm that is done by those “gimme the numbers” people, even if unintentionally.
How does your suggestion benefit Find A Grave fulfilling their mission? Back to my first comment, what percentage of memorials come under complaint? You have no clue, and without that type if info, your “good reason” seems rather self-serving.
Has it occurred to you yet that you are the only person in this entire set of messages defending the idea of a non-family member scarfing up a memorial? Everyone else here appears to be on the “good reason” side of this.
Jane Elroy, are you a regular user and contributor to findagrave? In my experience, there are many instances of good faith, but there are also many examples when mistakes need to be corrected – and there is no response from the memorial manager or findagrave. Many others have this same experience. If a company is profiting from memorials created from people’s personal lives, it needs to have better ways of handling these issues. This isn’t a simple equation about the right of corporations to do what they want, as long as its legal, and all else be damned.
Joan Stewart Smith, yes, I am a longtime contributor on Find A Grave. I understand, and accept, what it is. There is a process to get errors corrected. It may not be speedy but there hasn’t been a single error on a memorial that I haven’t been able to get fixed by following that process. If, by “issues”, you mean differences in opinions, like this one on policy, it HAS been addressed, multiple times. They added a statement to their FAQ/Help file that they take “no position” on the timing for creating memorials. That wasn’t an accident. Perhaps you and Judy should join Find A Grave’s forums and express your feelings directly to the administrators.
Judy, yes, I did notice I’m the only one advocating for accepting Find A Grave as it is. Quite honestly, your stance took me by surprise because you are normally a very rational person but this subject is obviously very emotional for you.
You said you hope Ancestry is a good company that would “first do no harm”. That sounds like you would expect Ancestry to remove things from trees that you object to. Suppose your deceased grandfather was a convicted rapist. I wrote a “story” about the court case and posted it in a public Ancestry tree. Said story completely complies with Ancestry’s Terms & Conditions as well as their Community Rules (original writing so not a copyright infringement, no mention of living people, etc.). Would you consider it an invasion of privacy and want it removed?
Not relevant. The issue here is non-relatives swooping in before the family has even buried someone and not leaving so much as a minute for the family to create its own memorial. Stay on topic, please.
It is the same thing so it is relevant. None of us get to control the information about our dead loved ones. That’s just a fact of life. We don’t get to tell people what to put on their family trees nor do we get to say who gets to add what to Find A Grave. But your response is telling…
As is your NON-response. Neither you nor anyone else can give me a single reason why anyone is in any way impacted negatively by being “forced” to wait 90 days to give a family a chance to post its own memorial to its own loved one. “Because we always have done it!” is not a reason. “Because we can!” is even worse. “Because we WANT to!” is worst of all. All of these utter rationalizations pale in the face of one simple fact: it hurts families when strangers rush in. Causing hurt without a compelling justification for doing so is selfish in the extreme.
And this goes back to my original post.
On average, how many memorials are created each day for those who just died?
Out of those, how many cause the harm you claim? Elsewhere I have posted about my own experience (in learning of a death in the family from the Find A Grave memorial) and that I was not upset, harmed or otherwise diminished by it so your “harm” is not universal.
But again, answer the question about the benefit TO Find A Grave…
You are a long-time Find A Grave volunteer and have a strong bias in favor of allowing these immediate memorials. You are hardly the typical user. I am seeing post after post after post by serious genealogists and amateurs alike all expressing the same pain and anger and dismay at seeing someone swoop in and create a memorial before they’ve even had time to process the death. Avoiding that bad feeling, that bad publicity, is enough of a benefit to Find A Grave and to the entire Ancestry family of companies. There are NO positives to allowing this. NOBODY is benefited. There are positives to NOT allowing it, including good will (except among the “gimme my numbers” people).
Perhaps I am selfish in the extreme.
But then again, your continued refusal to show even one benefit to Find A Grave is, in my opinion, no different than a petulant child stomping their feet saying “Because I want it!!!”
I have given you an overwhelming benefit: the avoidance of bad publicity, the avoidance of actual emotional harm to real living people. You simply refuse to lift your blinders and see the families’ pain.
You say I’m not the typical user. Neither, my dear, are you (1 memorial created in 8 years though you claimed more than a decade). The complaint posts are not new; they have been around for YEARS.
Both the serious genealogist and the amateur alike should understand and accept the site was NOT created for genealogy and, despite being owned by Ancestry, their mission is NOT solely genealogy. They welcome the myriad of interests that I highlighted elsewhere. It’s a site for MANY people and MANY interests. And some of us wear multiple hats – serious or amateur genealogist, local historian, taphophile, photographer, etc. But the genealogist doesn’t get preferential treatment.
You are always promoting read a site’s Terms of Use and other documentation. Users of Find A Grave should read all of the Help file, not just the pieces they like, and understand what the purpose of the site is.The purpose of the site is to “find, record and present final disposition information”.
There are a number of purely memorialization sites out there you could use or recommend. None of them have the rules Find A Grave does. Someone else mentioned the one Ancestry has provided, weremember.com. But you refuse to even consider those. The only thing that matters is getting what you deem to be the “correct” change. Again, the petulant child stomping her feet saying “But I want it this way!!!”
You just don’t / refuse to get it. Grave grabbing before the family has time to draw a breath HURTS people. Real live living people. It causes real emotional distress at a time when NOBODY needs more distress. It’s easy to fix. It hurts NO-ONE to fix it. There’s absolutely NO downside whatsoever and loads of upside. Yet it’s not even on your radar. Mind-boggling. Just mind-boggling.
Judy, you have blatantly ignored the downside I have pointed out (information no longer available). It is extremely doubtful that Find A Grave or Ancestry will do something that discourages new memorials being created.
I understand the raw emotion following a loss. I also understand how that state can lead one to irrational actions or reactions. Been there, done that. Remember my suggestion about shelving things that upset me? I learned that because I reacted badly to something that was said to me (and I took completely wrong) after the death of a family member. My reaction was horrible and it was entirely my fault; the person was only trying to help. A couple of other lessons I learned during that bereavement was to always give the benefit of the doubt unless the malicious intent is undeniable and to do the “What if” scenarios. It’s having a plan of what to do if x, y, or z happens. We cannot control what others do, but we can choose how we act and react, even when we are hurting.
Anyone involved in Find A Grave should realize someone in their life is going to die. And that someone else might make the memorial before we are ready. You can take the time to think about it ahead of time. You can add ‘create the memorial’ on your list of funeral arrangements (as a friend of mine did after her son committed suicide). Or you can choose not to. Like I said, we can’t control what other people do or even should do.
I’ve been on Find A Grave long enough that I won’t be holding my breath waiting for this change. If it comes, i’ll accept it and work within the rules like I always have. If the rule isn’t changed, will you accept it or continue to rant and call other contributors names?
And Judy, the fact that you cannot see a downside to Fin AGrave discouraging users from creating memorials is also mind boggling, especially a free content-driven website. Users = site traffic = ad revenue. Decrease use, decrease revenue. The ones you consider typical users aren’t doing much to build the database.
At the top of this FAQ page is contact information for addressing different issues and problems with FindaGrave. See https://www.findagrave.com/list-faqs
I agree – No memorials for 90 days to give people that actually remember the person to memorialize. Also, what is reported is rewarded: stop displaying the number of memorials managed. Start displaying the percentage of memorials that are complete (bio, gravestone picture, etc). Display the avg number of days that to respond to edit and transfer requests.
It really would help to reward those who do right instead of the numbers people, wouldn’t it?
That suggestionvwould give 100% credit to the memorial manager when multiple people may impact a memorial. Also, a memorial is complete, by Find A Grave’s standards if only the name and final disposition is recorded. Everything else is icon on the cake.
If the only reason to do this is to gain stats, somebody needs a new hobby.
Sigh. Judy, please read Karen’s suggestion again “Start displaying the percentage of memorials that are complete (bio, gravestone picture, etc).”
The memorial manager may not be the person who added the gravestone photo.
The memorial manager may not be the person who wrote the bio.
Karen proposed giving credit for “completeness” to the memorial manager. Find A Grave is a collaborative website and multiple people can have input on a memorial. It wouldn’t be moral or ethical to give the memorial manager credit things they didn’t create.
I would have thought you would understand that.
Judy Russell, you nailed it perfectly in respect to the vultures who do not give any consideration to a grieving family. I have additional issues with standards of practices on FAG, although this topic has been the most painful. I feel that there should not be a biography section right on the same page as the grave information. The ability to post links to the graves of other family members is helpful, especially if you want to visit the graves of everyone in a cemetery. But, why a biography? I find that to be tacky and inconsiderate of the deceased. When you visit a cemetery and look at a grave, you do not see their life story. Why does the site feel that it’s OK to publish more about a person than the cemetery knows? My mother would be mortified that her grave is being viewed by people who not only didn’t know her, but didn’t need to get off the couch to go see for themselves. But, to also automatically learn her lifestory, as short as it was, is rude.
Then there is the issue of the double markers. My FIL passed away in 1991. My MIL is still living. She’s 99 but still living. The guy who originally put the gravestone in FAG did promptly remove her name from the website, and substituted my photo which only shows my deceased FIL’s name and not my living MIL. But, since they allow others to add photos, now there are multiple photos showing my mother-in-law’s name. Additionally, from that strangers who are not even related have put her in FS and Ancestry as deceased. So, the FAG site is only the tip of the iceberg.
Then you have people who (generally new to genealogy) use FAG as a primary source. There once was a FB post requesting help to find information about this gal’s ancestor. She was trying to connect her Canadian ancestors with a grave in Illinois. Something along the line of the reason why the guy would have been there when he died. Her source was the bio written on FAG. A couple of us looked up her ancestor and found that the guy buried in Illinois was obviously not her relative, which explained the difference in the dates and spelling. The kicker is that when I clicked on the name of the FAG member who entered the biography, it was HER! She had written it about 5 years before and not only forgot that fact, but did not recognize her own FAG login name! I am not making this up. I can probably find it on FB. Now, how’s that for a primary source?
This is such a difficult issue because people grieve in different ways. I certainly agree that one should wait at least until the dearly departed has been buried. After that, if a close friend or relative wants to post a memorial, maybe a call to someone in the immediate family to get their feelings would be the courteous thing to do.
So far as the pros and cons of a bio, I, personally, love the idea of sharing facts, achievemenys, even happy or funny memories so that it really is a memorial. In some way, the person lives on and doesn’t just become a name with a set if dates. Obviously, nothing negative should be written about someone who can’t defend themselves but a kind and loving tribute would be meaningful to many — and a gift to future generations who so wish they had known that special ancestor.
Findagrave really needs to do a better job with these kind of issues. Someone posted a findagrave memorial for my mother BEFORE she passed away. She is still alive at age 92. For months, I repeatedly contacted the manager of the memorial. No response. I knew the manager was alive because I saw her posting other things. Then, I sent several messages to findagrave. No response. I finally gave up. After TWO YEARS, it finally came down, and no one ever got back to me to let me know or apologize.
Years ago, Find A GYearsencouraged creating memorials for all existing markers in a cemetery, even those for living people, as part of completely cataloging the cemetery. That policy only changed a few years ago. If your mother’s memorial was created before the change, there was nothing for which an apology was owed. To many people try to fit Find A Grave’s square peg into a round hole.
There are a lot of memorials on FindAGrave for people who are still alive. I’ve seen so many of them even for my own family tree. There are people out there who stroll cemeteries taking headstone photos and making memorial pages for them even though only their name and maybe a date of birth is on the headstone with no date of death. It’s wrong and I believe it’s just people who want huge contributor numbers next to their name.
Marge S, again, years ago, Find A Grave *encouraged* creating memorials for EVERY tombstone in a cemetery. That encouragement was in their FAQ!! Just like the encouragement to create memorials for pets.
I think it would be hard to regulate, but I think it’s a good idea. But why can’t every family genealogist go to their smart phone or laptop right after the person died and create a memorial? My great-aunt passed away a couple years ago, and my aunt and I are both Findagravers who are aware of this situation. So we knew to make the memorial right away. I know some are upset if it is a sudden death. For my cousin, I did wait several days, but luckily no one else posted one. Either that or if the family is SO concerned, then don’t put the burial info in the obituary. My 2 cents worth.
It’d be nice if every family had a family genealogist who wasn’t so emotionally distraught by a death that he or she could think to get onto the website first and make sure the family had control of the memorial. Since that’s not going to happen, we need plan B.
I learned of a family member’s death by finding the memorial the same day as the death. Mom just hadn’t had a chance to call me. I wasn’t angry that someone else created the memorial because I had already thought out the “What if” scenario and decided before it ever happened how I would act/react. Apparently, forward thinking is a novel concept.
I am one of three family members who have been researching our family. A nephew and I have contributed memorials of family members to Find-A-Grave. When my brother died three years ago, a fellow church member of his, was one of two church members to visit with him and our immediate family less than 24 hours before he died. When he died the next morning, the pastor who was on vacation was immediately contacted about funeral arrangements. Perhaps my brother’s death was announced in church the next morning because when I did attempt to create a memorial easily within 48 hours of my brother’s death, I discovered that it had already been created by this woman who was one of the last two, non-family members to visit him before his death. Neither she nor her husband who knew every immediate family very well contacted any of us for permission to create my brother’s memorial. I contacted Find-A-Grave and was rebuffed. Subsequently when the obituary was released by the funeral home handling the arrangements, this same couple copied and posted the obituary verbatim on his memorial. I, again, contacted Find-A-Grave and was, again rebuffed. Needless to say, my previously good opinion of both the couple who created my late brother’s memorial and Find-A-Grave has been forever altered. Jane Elroy, it’s not only ethical to observe a decent interval before racing to add to a list of managed Find-A-Grave memorials, it’s simply good taste -especially when you know the deceased and his family and have not requested their permission to do so.
Ann Kauffman, no one needed to get permission to create the memorial.
I agree, don’t publish an obituary with private info, if you do not want everyone to know your business. What difference does it make if the obit is on FAG? I can look up the obit on the funeral web page, newspapers.com, genealogybank.com etc. This all happens all the time. My granny was on FAG 10 years before she passed because grandpa died. But they never put any death dates on the actual stone, so how were people to know? The owner deleated it when I asked finally. And same thing, the day I found out granny passed, I made the memorial so I could put the correct obit on FAG because the person that did the obit in the newspaper had missing and incorrect info because they would not ask for help. Nothing is perfect. Volunteers dont get paid, family historians want the info, but everyone has an opinion.
Most of my family have not heard of Find-a-Grave, therefore they don’t look at it or know about it. They leave it up to me to keep family members informed as to when someone died or is buried. Most times the immediate family will not go to the website or want to, so there would not be a record of the death or burial site.
I don’t see anything wrong with someone recording what is on a headstone even if they aren’t related.
Nope, no problem with the headstone as long as it has a death date (no posting memorials for living people, folks!!). Once a headstone is up and engraved, you can be darned sure time has passed to give the family time to grieve.
I don’t a problem with not being a family member posting the information found in a cemetery. You don’t have to be related to post the name and dates as appears on the headstone.
NO problem AT ALL when there’s a tombstone with both birth and death dates. That means a decent time has passed since the death. I’d be all for that.
Judy, how long have you been a member of Find A Grave?
More than a decade, if it’s in any way relevant.
Relevant that with more than a decade under your belt, you should understand the site by now.
And, with more than a decade under your belt, you SHOULD know Find A Grave allowed “pre-need memorials” until a few years ago so all your protestations that memorials for living are “wrong” is, well, wrong.
The fact that Find-a-Grave apparently no longer allows “pre-need memorials” indicates the company came to the conclusion they were a bad idea, so the rules can be changed if there’s enough dissatisfaction among the sites users (including consumers as well as contributors of the content).
Although we’re not supposed to make pre-needs, when it comes to merging a pre-need and a memorial made after the death, the post-death is merged into the pre-need. Also, newly created pre-needs are not removed.
Have any of you considered using weremember.com, also by Ancestry? You wouldn’t have to worry about someone else creating the memorial because it doesn’t have the one-memorial-per-person rule.
The issue is less with creating a memorial than with preventing someone from posting one when the family isn’t ready.
I take headstone photos at cemeteries in my area for FindAGrave and there is already one person who I refuse to take photos for. She was even in our local newspaper with an article about her and how she follows obituaries and pulls up cemetery records wherever she can then creates memorials. She does dozens every day and she then expects area volunteers to run out and take hundreds of photos for her. She outright states on her FindAGrave page that she will not transfer any memorials – they are all hers no matter what. She will not correct errors. To her it’s all about ringing her contributor numbers as high as she can every day. She’s one of those people that makes the site a terrible experience for others. I wish FindAGrave would do something about people like her. Personally, I only add memorials for my own family members and I think that is the way it should be.
Sigh. Another one who doesn’t understand Find A Grave would not even exist under those conditions (only doing one’s own family). The person who started it wasn’t doing his own family. He was doing famous people. In a podcast interview, he said he didn’t consider it a “genealogy site”. It appeals to people with a myriad of interests from fans of the silver screen, Civil War buffs, local historians, royalty watchers, sports fans and, of course, taphophiles.
Jane Elroy, I agree with everything you have said here. Thank you so much.
So how many graves does someone find by sitting at home copying from obituaries? I would guess zero. Since the names of the site is not “Find an Obituary”, those using that method seem to have missed the purpose of the site which is to walk cemeteries, record burial sites, including photos of grave stones and the general location.
Kay, while the name of the site is “Find A Grave”, it isn’t limited to just “graves”. It allows memorials for cremations, burials at sea and donations to science to name a few. If the purpose of the site was JUST “to walk cemeteries, record burial sites, including photos of grave stones and the general location”, that would mean no unmarked grave could be recorded because no amount of walking will put a name on a sunken rectangle. Or the thousands of souls who lie in such places as New York’s Potters Field (aka Hart Island). Obituaries are one of the “third-party sources” Find A Grave mentions in their policy as are death certificates, burial logs and permits, previously published transcriptions and even letters from Aunt Mabel remembering Grandma Mary’s grave was under the tree at the end of the third row in XYZ Cemetery. Find A Grave wants ALL final dispositions recorded. I believe it is important to understand what the site IS (what they say) rather than what some merely “think” it is.
Now tell us how that purpose would be negatively impacted if people who are not family had to wait 30 days before posting death information.
This has happened to me in a very personal way and I ended up having to shame the person publically on a couple genealogy websites to get them to cease and desist. The information they posted on Find A Grave was incorrect. Plus, they were using pictures which I had posted on an Ancestry tree. That’s why I changed my tree to ‘private’. They refused to turn the management on Find A Grave over to me. They were the in-law of a very distant relative.
Teresa, were the pictures you posted on Ancestry “yours” to post, in accordance with Ancestry’s Terms & Conditions? A photo that you took yourself or that you had permission to post.
It’s sad how the website has become “Find an Obit” instead of “Find a Grave.” Pages are now created from obits, very often before the deceased is even in the ground. I went to create pages for each of my parents, only to find one had already been created, some 6 weeks prior to the ashes and markers being placed. I’m also the sexton of our local rural Cemetery, and dislike intensely finding a page created for someone who is NOT buried in our Cemetery, nor is there a marker. When I contacted one person who created the page (based on the obit), I was told “Show me where the person IS buried and I’ll take down my page.” REALLY? Let’s please go back to Find a GRAVE!
Dear Laurie, Your post explains perfectly why I no longer consider FaG a reliable source of burial information. I have found numerous memorials for 17th century burial grounds for individuals with “burial unknown”. In one case there was a very good reason why the burial information was “unknown” since the individual in question appars to have been a myth created to by the fertile imagination of a genealogist who may have wanted to give someone an interesting ancestor.
The problem is that people have begun copying erroneous information from unsourced public family trees found on sites like Ancestry on to FaG without verifying the people whose memorials they are creating were actually buried where they think they were.
Although I usually agree with you on things, this time I do not. 90 days is entirely too long. And it really isn’t invading anyone’s privacy, since the information is already public someplace, assuming the names of the living are deleted.
Though I’m not a ‘collector’ I do check Find A Grave as soon as I learn about a death of a family member, friend, or someone connected in some way. If there is already a memorial, though I may be taken aback temporarily, I add flowers. It is my way of mourning and paying respect, and it helps with my grieving process. If there is no memorial yet, I create one, even if I am not related. From past experience, I know if I don’t put it up, a total stranger will.
And though you’ve cited examples, they are all negative. You’ve cited none of the positive examples — family members who discover the memorial and are touched that someone took the time to remember their loved one. Those examples exist; I’ve can think of 3 times right now that I’ve been contacted and thanked for created a memorial, once by the mother of an 8 year old child.
My opinion is that if there is to be a time limit on posting, anything over 30 days is too long. I’d much prefer Find A Grave streamline the process for transfers, and extend it beyond the 4 generation of direct lines — there is no reason for me not be assume management of a cousin, uncle, or grandmother-in-law. That said, if I get a transfer of an uncle, and a more direct-line descendant, perhaps his grandchild, joins and wants management, there should be a way for them to get the transfer from me.
I also would like to see Find A Grave require sources be cited for edits, and even adding memorials.
To me, all of those things are more important than who adds a memorial and when they add it.
I would go for even a 30-day delay over no delay at all.
Kim, I agree with your points about Judy not pointing out any of the positives. However, I don’t agree with extending the required transfers. There’s enough “family collectors” on Find A Grave who are only concerned with their own family and not contributor for the good of the site. You probably don’t remember when the transfer capability was first added and it was a free-for-all. It wasn’t pretty and caused an enormous amount of conflict. Really good members who had gone above and beyond to find the backwoods cemeteries out in the hills and hollers of Virginia and West Virginia, recording every grave simply for the sake of doing it (you now, that part of Find A Grave Judy “approves” and “appreciates) quit over it. We don’t need another blow-up lie that
You are right—I don’t remember that. Probably before I was a member, though I’ve been a member for quite awhile. I was going to say over 10 years, but I just checked and it’s been over 15! Time flies!
I do think it’s a little different now that only management is transferred, so that the creator of the memorial still gets credit. I personally make transfer to anyone regardless of closeness of relationship, as I feel letting a close friend of family member manage the memorial will be more likely to lead to a well-maintained memorial. I’m one who thinks the site is for genealogy and honoring the deceased, and not just recording a gravesite though.
There are a lot of things I’d like to see changed about Find a Grave, but ultimately it is their site and they get to make the rules. If I don’t like them, I can start my own site.
What do mean “only management transferred”?
Jane,
I guess I used incorrect terminology. Instead of management, I should have said maintenance.
It used to be that when you transferred a memorial, your name was removed and the new person was listed under ‘maintained by’. Now when you transfer a memorial, there is still a line for ‘maintained by’ with the name of the person was transferred to, but beneath that is a line for ‘originally created by’ with the name of the original creator!
I don’t know how that affects stats since I seldom look at those. The only time I really look at stats is when I want to request an ‘out of guidelines’ transfer, and then only because I know the more memorials a poster has created the less likely that person is to make a transfer out of guidelines.
Kim, you’re mis-remembering. Transferred memorials always had the “Created by” and “Maintained by” lines, which led to people deleting transferred memorials and recreating them just to get the creator’s name off the memorial. That resulted in Find A Grave removing the delete function from transferred memorials.
So many memorials would never be posted if this were the policy. Everyone contributes to Find a Grave differently, and those that work with recent obituaries do a service when there is no family member that knows about the site , where the death notices disappear online quickly or are behind a pay wall. With the cost of printed death notices more and more are only online and will not be searchable in the future.
Also, how will “family” be determined? Even the four generation rule would be difficult to work through when you are grieving and making arrangements, etc.
I honk we should talk about the immediate transfer of memorials for recent deaths if you are more closely related than the original creator – wouldn’t that be enough if there were a way to go directly to admins to get a transfer quickly?
And yes I have had very close family members and friends memorials created before the burials occurred, I have suggested corrections to those memorials and was not the least bit upset at the managers as they followed the site rules, updated in a timely manner and offered to transfer if they knew my relationship.
I created a Change.org petition to ask FindAGrave to consider even a 30-day memorial a few weeks ago. Perhaps we can boost the number of signatures by sharing it here.
http://chng.it/k8dTnDWVdv
I’ve been a member of Find A Grave for over 10 years. I remember when one of their own admins lost her mom and it was a topic in their forums. Most of the regular members who commented were outraged. When the admin came back online after the funeral, she was not outraged. She said the system worked exactly the way it was supposed to: a person created the memorial, recording the final disposition. An immediate family member asked for a transfer and it was made.
It seems to me the only reason to be up in arms about the current rule is because someone else made a memorial that you wanted to and which isn’t a required transfer.
Here’s a twist on how to deal with those mongrels who beat the family to adding their loved-ones memorials on Find A Grave — put the memorial up on Find A Grave while your loved one is still alive! In fact, I did my own — it’s at memorial #187158794. The death date is “unknown” but I put in the description “This is Kathy’s cemetery marker — and she is still living a full life!” I already have a grave marker… I figured, why not have a F-a-G memorial too? What do you think?
I think it’s sad that anyone should have to do this.
You’re allowed to make a pre-need for yourself as long as there is already a marker in place. I don’t think you need to call people ‘mongrels’ since you asked.
Kathy Kult, are your really willing to break the rules to get what you want? Find A Grave’s rules now say that you are allowed to create your own pre-need memorial IF (and only if) you have a pre-need marker installed in a cemetery. Other than that, we’re not supposed to create pre-need memorials.
One of the things i would like to see is the capacity for contributors, at least, to create a ‘pre-need’ memorial. Who better to tell their story? However, my twist would be that it would not go live until the contributor is reported deceased.
Of course the problem with that is that someone else would surely create a ‘bare-bones’ memorial right away, and then there would be 2. I’m not sure how Find A Grave would handle that….maybe a merge?
There is a vulture at the little cemetery I photograph for FindAGrave. He routinely makes memorials by copying the full obit and photo as soon as the obituary is posted at a funeral home or newspaper. As I understand the rules the photos aren’t his to use but he does it anyway. He has also disabled all messaging apparently to avoid complaints. I have a hard time believing a general moratorium would bother such an aggressive vulture that much. He’d probably have memorials ready to go the second that time expired.
Anne, that really does disturb me—the fact that contributors turn messaging off to avoid having to field negative comments. I’d like to see their accounts disabled if there is not method of contact.
I’d also like to see Find a Grave crack down on the use of photos and obits ‘stolen’ from websites and newspapers. I don’t mind when family adds an obit they wrote or a photo from their collection, but when anyone comes along and takes info that is probably copyright protected, it bothers me. But then we are right back to ‘how do you determine who is family and their right to add info?’
Kim, I guess you think my account should be disabled because I stopped accepting messages and took my email address off my profile. One woman decided using a memorial’s Edit tab was too hard and left corrections in messages. I asked her not to do it that way but she wouldn’t stop. Shutting off the messages solved the problem – if you want to contact me, do it thru the memorial.
Sally,
I’m sorry you disabled messaging because of one bad apple.Since you are asking, yes, I do think you need a method of contact. However, we can agree to disagree on this one, particularly since neither of us have any say over what Find A Grave decides to do as policy.
Kim, I have a method of contact. Over 500. How many more do you think I should have?
Kim….every Find A Grave contributor DOES have a “method of contact”…every memorial has a built in message space within the edit function. You can contact ANY contributor you want through ANY of their memorials and leave any message you wish, and they will get it…….
I agree 100%
I agree. It’s sad, but for recent deaths in my own family, as soon as I learn what the burial arrangements are I have had to make sure to take the time to create a memorial ASAP.. I shouldn’t have to be worrying about that when grieving a loss. But the obit vultures really can be frustrating.
And yet those who defend this can’t even try to understand why the families regard them as “obit vultures”! It’s mind-boggling.
And name-calling is what if not childish?
Maybe the funeral homes will solve this problem for all of us by offering to create the Find-a-Grave Merorial at the same time they arrange for the newspaper obituary, as part of their package of services, and then transfer it to the person designated by the family member who makes the arrangements. Think I’ll suggest that to my local friends in the business.
Thank you, Judy. I am ashamed to admit that for a brief period–about two weeks–many years ago, I created memorial pages after reading my local newspaper’s obituaries. Fortunately, I ended up being too busy at the time to continue this, and now that I am older and (hopefully) wiser, I can see how hurtful this would be. As the family genealogist who has a close family member who is terminally ill, I will be absolutely distraught and heartbroken if someone zips in and creates a memorial page before I have a chance to process my grief and create one myself.
Someone on this thread mentioned the original purpose of Find A Grave. I had the privilege of being in contact with Jim Tipton, the founder, via email on and off for several years in its early days. At the time, I was teaching computer user groups for our local genealogical society, as well as online genealogy for senior citizens at my local community college. “Using Find A Grave” was one of my most popular courses, and Jim used to send me free pens and bumper stickers to hand out to my students. His passion for helping people find celebrities’ graves expanded to helping them find their ancestors’ graves.
Finally, we must remember that the name of the site is Find a Grave, not Find and Transcribe an Obituary!
Just 90 days and you guys that want a pat on the back are all butt hurt. I’m grateful to find info on relatives from ages ago-and that was the purpose of F A G but as things are added…this has happened to me. And because of it-now I don’t give a fig if anything is ever added to it. It pretty much was the final straw for me with F A G. I haven’t been to the site since this happened in 2016 with my father. You know I also think there needs to be a rule that if you are in charge of a grave then you’d better be answering back when someone finds a mistake. We all make mistakes. But to simply ignore and not take it seriously then this database means nothing. It’s flawed.
Lisa Hibbs, did you follow through and get your father’s memorial transferred to your account? And the edit process has been much improved in recent years for corrections to be made of missing information added. And what is this about a”pat on the back” ? I know many contributors and none are looking for glory. We do what we do out of a desire to help grow the site.
I told you I don’t give a flying fig about F A G. Anymore. I’m pissedat them and I’m pissed at ancestry. What’s next pictures of the living on the trees? Pat on the back is better than doing it for the, “I’ve done this many graves” y’all talk about family members abandoning well that’s better then someone who isn’t kin and won’t answer the family members back, and totally ignore what they are responsible for. Another thing about current graves, F A G forgets that people pay a pretty penny for that burial site along with a stone when they can do it. Like I said y’all are all butthurt over 90 days. Which makes me wonder why?
Lisa Hibbs, what does paying for the grave and marker have to do it? Google photographed my house without my permission and put it on their Google maps. I didn’t have any choice in it and I can’t get it removed. If a grave is in a cemetery that allows the public to visit, it can be recorded on Find A Grave, BillionGraves, GenWeb sites and any other website that wants to do it. If the cemetery doesn’t prohibit photography, the grave can be photographed and those photos published in as many places as the photographer chooses.
You’re projecting your own emotion onto others.
Lisa Hibbs sounds like you are the butthurt one, and didn’t follow through correctly to get the transfers, something so easy to accomplish. And geez, I have less than 10k entries in 9 years, I’m sure killing it and racking up numbers, lol. About 7400 people die in the USA every day, so I have about a day and a half’s worth done on my account. And this has NOTHING to do with someone paying for a burial site and headstone, like Jane Elroy said. I’m not butthurt by this, I know Find A Grave has already made its decision YEARs ago and this is also something that is unenforceable and would waste precious resources that could be used for continuing improvements.
If it is so important to you to be the creator of the memorial, and you are a member of Find A Grave, then you should know to treat the creation of a bare bones memorial as soon as possible. You can’t convince me that you don’t get online at some point before going to the funeral home to make arrangements… usually to let someone know of what has happened. You can take the 60 seconds maximum it may take to make a memorial with the final disposition and worry about adding more to it in 10 days, 30 days, 90 days, or whenever you want.
My brother in law died last month. No, between the time he died and the time we went to the funeral home neither his wife nor I went on-line (I know it’s hard to believe, but we were concentrating on other things than mindless self-enjoyment). Within an hour of the funeral home putting his obit on their web-site someone had put a memorial on FAG. It wasn’t his wife, myself, or his family. It was some stranger who swoops in for a numbers count. BTW, my BIL doesn’t have a grave, his ashes were scattered–so complete misuse of the site.
Cremation is a valid use of the site.
Yep, this happened with my sister’s memorial a few years ago. It was like a kick in the gut.
Find A Grave may have started just for grave registration but over the years it has evolved into a genealogy site whether or not it claims to be. Allowing biographies, obituaries, private photos, tributes, information edits and family links made it so, and as a consequence memorials can also be deeply personal. If it was originally designed to create a record with the basics of name, dates and a grave photo, then that is a fairly dispassionate exercise that can be accomplished by anyone who chooses to take the time to do it for whatever reason. After all, data is just data. On the other hand, the opportunity to create personalized memorials, particularly for the newly deceased, can be a passionate endeavor for family members. Can two such divergent approaches to Find A Grave be accommodated? I don’t know. Reconciling head and heart never seems to be an easy thing.
Annie, it wasn’t designed to be just a record with the basics of name, dates and grave photo. When it was just famous graves, it had biographies and photos of the people.
Hah! Another gripe I can add to my very long Find A Grave list!!
I’m sure cruising the death notices is a very clever way to rack up points for the ghoulish types with tens of thousands of memorials under lock and key.
But I’d rather they took up Minecraft or Fortnite, and left Find A Grave to family members who care about the deceased, or to serious genealogists who understand the value of high-quality data.
Using obituaries to “rack up numbers” is very inefficient.
How would you go about implementing or validating you immediate family? I believe that even in 90 days someone would complain they didnt have enough time. I might self just experienced this and went ahead and created a find a grave for my dad before it even had a chance for it to hit the obituary site. Fir me it was easier to do right away then wait. For me it help to do it so I could gather or get my thoughts in order for the info for a obits. In the process also created a reremember site.
Possession of a death certificate. When my grandmother died last year, someone used her cell phone to play on Facebook and posted stuff on her Facebook page after she was dead. In order to get my grandmother’s Facebook page shut down and “memorialized” to prevent anyone else from signing on to her account, I had to show them the death certificate.
That’s just appalling.
Judy – great suggestion, I LOVE IT! But would those that enter 1000’s of obits a year, be willing sit on an obit or other information source they use for 90 days risking losing out on getting credit for the number they enter? I doubt it. Maybe do away with those numbers all together might help. Just my thoughts
Maybe they need another way of being rewarded than just racking up stats. That would take the pressure off to scarf up these brand-new deceaseds’ records.
I think the comments on this blog by people such as “Jane Elroy” show exactly what is wrong with findagrave. Those only interested in numbers and stats (get a life people) who can’t understand the agony of families coming across findagrave shows some of the people who have turned what could be a helpful site into an agonizing one.
John R, I discovered Find A Grave by Googling my recently deceased father-in-law’s name. The memorial had been created the day before his funeral and my initial thought was “But there wasn’t a GRAVE yet!” Instead of flying off the handle, I looked around the site, read the FAQs and realized the site was a perfect place to contribute accurate information for the cemeteries in my area. What was online at that time was woefully inaccurate. I joined and have never looked back.
I serve on 2 cemetery boards and enter the new graves right away. The secretary of another local cemetery sends me the new grave info for that cemetery. For us, it’s not about “stats”. It’s about having accurate information available to those searching.
Judy G. Russell, are you really an attorney? I think I have seen you call people vultures, talk about ‘scarfing’ and other derogatory comments about contributors. Is it true that you are a member of FindAGrave but only have one memorial so you really don’t understand the site? ‘Racking up stats’ is not done by entering from obits… it’s done from submitting spreadsheets from databases. Did it ever occur to you that creating a memorial is a way of dealing with grief? Making a memorial upon hearing of the death is my way of coping and I don’t think I’m the only one. A 90-day waiting period is totally ridiculous. If someone is that ‘into’ FindAGrave, then they will take the time to make a quick memorial as part of the arrangements BEFORE they go to the funeral home where it will be public almost immediately.
I have made many memorials from funeral home sites and some recently go back as far as seven years and no memorial has been made… so how many others have fallen through the cracks? What about those who made them from obits 10 to 15 years ago? Do you think it’s easy to find an obit from that time today without having access to something like newspapers.com or some other site that costs money? I have had very few requests for transfers.
You also state that people make repeated requests for a transfer. Only one request should be made and if it is not done, then it goes to info@ for FindAGrave to handle. Suggesting that someone make repeated requests goes against site policy and, of course, makes it take longer than it should.
“Why in the world do we allow this?” This is the 21st century and not even a family member wants to wait 90 days to make a memorial.
I agree that making a memorial is a way of dealing with grief. That’s my whole point! There’s no reason to force the family into rushing to do this to try to beat a stranger. There’s more than enough out there to fill in the holes from the past. Leave today’s grief to today’s grieving families, and give them a brief window to deal with their grief their way.
No one is forcing anyone to do anything. People are just whining because they are not the creator of the memorial page. Like I said earlier, if it is THAT important to them to be the creator, then they should make a simple memorial BEFORE going to make the arrangements and/or before the death is made public. BTW, thanks for not addressing my entire post. I don’t usually like to deal with people who call others names when they have done nothing wrong. You may be an attorney but you’re one who gives them a bad name! I worked in law for over 30 years for respectable attorneys.
You started by saying you understood that creating a memorial was part of the grieving process. Now you’re backing off because people really DO want to create a memorial as part of their own grieving process for their own loved ones. You can’t have it both ways.
I am very grateful that a Find A Grave contributor posted a photo of my father’s niche cover on the columbarium wall in a National Cemetery. No memorial has been posted, but since I personally wrote the obituary that was published in the newspaper the day of his “burial”, why should I care if it was posted on Find A Grave the same day? After all the main point of an obituary is to provide a public tribute to the life and accomplishments of the deceased person. Most newspapers are online, so is the funeral home web page and the Find A Grave website. Why is publishing an obituary in an online newspaper or on a funeral home web page OK, but the exact same obituary re-published on Find A Grave considered bad? Why is listing the survivors of the deceased perfectly fine in a newspaper obituary but considered a heinous breach of privacy of the living if the exact same obituary is posted on Find A Grave?
Did you ever consider that if an obituary contains incorrect information you should be critical of the person who actually wrote the obituary, not the Find A Grave contributor who re-posted the obituary? By the way there are much better ways to create a memorial, virtual or otherwise, to honor a deceased loved one than Find A Grave!
You don’t have to share the pain of those who find this a violation. You just have to not contribute to causing that pain. A brief delay hurts NO ONE.
Danni, you hit the nail on the head about incorrect info in an obituary.
I’ve had this happen to me more than once. I’ve had it happen where they didn’t even wait until the body was in the ground before they made a FAG page. For my father, they put up a memorial a year after he died, even though I had already put a memorial up for him shortly after his death. Either way, it really irritated me that someone else had decided to put this information up without allowing family time to do it. Or in the case of my father’s memorial, without checking to see if something had already been put up.
When someone dies, things are crazy and with so much going on, it’s hard for family to take the time to get on FAG right away, if they know what FAG is. It’s tacky and inconsiderate for these obit hunters to just assume nobody will put up a memorial. It’s one thing to take a gravestone photo of someone long dead, go online, see if there is a page and if not, build a page for that photo. But it’s another story to make pages for people newly-deceased when their family is not only grieving, but likely overwhelmed with all the business things you have to do when somebody dies and may not have had time to put up a FAG memorial yet.
In my case, these pre-funeral pages that were placed didn’t even get assigned to cemeteries, because the obit did not list a cemetery. It was just a fluke that I discovered someone had put them up.
Another problem I have with these obit hunters is that they don’t know our families. I’ve found these people making relationship links on FAG based on what they read in an obit. I’ve even found them making tree entries on Family Search after they found my family’s obits. And they’re wrong! I come from a dysfunctional family where family feuds, multiple marriages, and family secrets have impacted the information in obits. If you don’t know my family and are relying on the obits for factual information of people who died in the last 30 or so years, you’re going to screw up any genealogy stuff you try to pin onto these FAG and online family trees. I purposely left obits off of some of my family members’ FAG memorial pages because of incorrect info in the obit. I didn’t want somebody doing genealogy to see those obits on their FAG memorials and think all the information was correct. But these obit hunters put the obits on the pages they made for my family and they used them as the basis for the family tree they tried unsuccessfully to build for my family.
When we’re talking about someone long dead and all we have to go in is the obit info, that’s one thing. It’s another thing to use obits of newly deceased people to build these pages and assume the info is correct. If these obit hunters would wait for the family of newly-deceased people to have a chance to put info up, accuracy of info could be improved. Sadly, too many don’t care about accuracy and only care about collecting people on trees and FAG memorials.
Too often when I come across this stuff, the people are unwilling to make corrections or turn over custody of memorials, so I’ve stopped trying. I could make a full time job out of trying to fix things I’ve found on these genealogy/grave websites. Here’s what I found on the profile page of someone that put up a memorial for my family: “In response to ALL of the people who accuse us of “It’s only about the numbers.” Yes it is only about the numbers. If I list only one person, I have only helped one family. If I list a thousand people, I have helped a lot of families. The more I list, the more I help and the more I give the respect they deserve. Make any sense to anyone?”
That’s a big red flag to me and told me right away that I’d be beating my head against a wall if I even bothered contacting them.
I’ve created about 1000 memorials based on recent obits during the past few years.
Complaints about them: ZERO
Thanks from a family member for creating the memorial: Six
It doesn’t appear to be the problem Judy claims.
There have been dozens of these “I was shocked to find” stories posted just in the comments to this blog. That you haven’t had a complaint is irrelevant to the fact that people are complaining. And you’d still get the thanks if you waited a short time.
For someone unrelated posting an memorial of someone prior to burial it is hurtful. Sometimes before the family can post the obituary online to let friends know someone already has it on Find A Grave. Posting older obituaries are fine, but not current (to 2000 or some define date). Why? Because sometimes families don’t realize despiser living in a internet and social world that there isn’t a online place for memorials. You might not mean to and I last year after I got control of a cousin’s memorial for his mother (his daughter was distraught at the time. He was about the same age his father was when he died and memorial was right before Christmas. I was thankful the memorial was transferred so easily, yet families need a chance to create a memorial without hassle.
I’m aware not everyone will. Is it possible that the members can also get obituaries from newspaper websites (free or paid) or other records? I didn’t know if any company policy. I know of several local indexes here in my area (I’m not sure has been maxed). Also sometimes there are cemeteries which for some reason isn’t listed.
When I read this post, I could have swore I read it before (like I was experiencing groundhog day). After a bit of searching, I found a similar post from three years ago by Amy Johnson Crow.
https://www.amyjohnsoncrow.com/findagrave-made-better/
Amy has spoken out on this issue more than once. See e.g. this recent article.
I agree with a moratorium of some reasonable period for non-family members. I know some non-family member posters are concerned that information would not be available later, but couldn’t that be saved off somewhere?
Personally, I’ve been fortunate to have memorials turned over to me with little quibble. But I am disturbed at the increasing amount of information being posted on other memorials I’ve seen – death certificates, for one, really bother me. I know we don’t have a right to privacy after death, but I think decency counts here. Family members do often have a need to obtain death certificates, and certainly family historians do. But while some of these may be easily obtained from Ancestry, for example, I don’t think they need to be displayed on a person’s memorial. That said, I’m open to hearing an opposiing opinion on why this isn’t distasteful.
Meanwhile, despite the guidance that no information about living persons be posted, I see countless obituaries with this information. And, nothing happens when findagrave is alerted.
For those reasons as well, I believe family members should have time to create a memorial. Like others, I’m very grateful to the many contributors who have enabled me to see graves of my distant relatives, through photos they have taken in distant cemeteries. Their time and devotion to recording them is much appreciated.
I created my mom’s FAG memorial the day she died, when I had more important things to do, because I didn’t want someone to swoop in to make it for me. I did the same for my father. I appreciate and value the work others go to in creating memorials and have certainly used many in my research. But if you’re going to do it, do it RIGHT. Far too many obituaries and bios are posted without any attribution or citation to the original source. Finding a family memorial with wrong information and no clue where they got it is more upsetting than finding one done with respect.
Personally, I think Ancestry needs to change the number counting system, eliminate it altogether, or at the most run it like LinkedIn, where only the highest number seen by everyone publicly is 500, and only that individual can see their number. Or as a repercussion of their selfishness, eliminate it altogether. I am livid still over the selfishness and how much work it takes to get your own family’s profiles