Not perfect, but it’s a start
Find A Grave yesterday announced a new system for the posting of memorials for the “recently deceased” (defined as anyone who has died within the past year) in an effort to give the families some greater opportunity than they have had to control the death reports and memorials for their own loved ones.
The announcement came in the support section for the Ancestry-owned-and-crowdsourced website under the title “Memorials for those who are recently deceased,” and the “changes apply to memorials added after January 11, 2022” — today.1
Under the new system, anyone — including the total strangers who haunt the funeral home and newspaper websites at midnight each night waiting for new death notices to be posted — will still be able to create a memorial for a person recently deceased. However, the contributor will be asked whether he or she is closely related to the deceased.
A “yes” answer requires the poster to designate the relationship: spouse/partner; child; parent; grandchild; sibling; aunt/uncle; niece/nephew; or cousin. While the question doesn’t specify, other support pages indicate a cousin must be a first cousin.2 The exact relationship can be made public, and will display with the memorial, or private, and the memorial will simply display as “Relationship is private.”
According to the announcement, under the new system, “If the member adding this memorial is not related within our updated transfer guidelines, to be sensitive to family members, the memorial displays with limited information to others on the site for the first three months after the death date. After three months from the death date, the view of the memorial is no longer limited. The memorial will show as others do except that for up to a year from the death date, the option for a close relative to ‘Manage’ the memorial will show on the memorial.”3
And, the statement says, “During those first three months after the death date (when the memorial displays with a limited view), we have added a simple way for close relatives to request to manage the memorial. A close relative can click the ‘Manage’ button, add their relationship, and become the manager for a new memorial for that person.”4
Now… there’s a lot about how this new system will work that isn’t clear. Many of the scoop-up-all-the-new-deaths folks use spreadsheets to upload information in bulk. It isn’t at all clear whether they’ll be able to circumvent some of the new controls with spreadsheet entries.
The new system is supposed to “limit the number of memorials (a contributor) can manage with certain relationship types to help prevent abuse.”5 What that means, exactly, hasn’t been stated, and letting anyone claim to be a “cousin” leaves a lot of wiggle room.
What data added by the first person to create a memorial will remain if a family member does choose to take over management also isn’t clear. Currently, new managers can add additional photos but can’t delete ones posted by the memorial creator. It’s not clear how the new system may impact that, so the family can control which photos — if any — are associated with a memorial they choose to manage.
Clearly, this new system — effective today — isn’t perfect. It’s not the waiting period that The Legal Genealogist and so many others had urged.6 It will not completely stop the anguish of a family member going online to create a memorial for a loved one, only to find that some unrelated stranger has already done it.
But it may stop some of those cases, and it should slow down others, and it will make it easier for the families to secure control of the memorial if someone else has already beaten them to creating one.
So… it’s a start…
Not perfect, but a start.
Cite/link to this post: Judy G. Russell, “Change at Find A Grave,” The Legal Genealogist (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : posted 11 Jan 2022).
SOURCES
- See “Memorials for those who are recently deceased,” Contribute > Add Memorials, Support, FindAGrave.com (https://support.findagrave.com/ : accessed 11 Jan 2022). ↩
- See ibid., “Request to Manage,” Memorial Management. ↩
- “Memorials for those who are recently deceased,” FindAGrave.com. ↩
- Ibid. ↩
- Ibid. ↩
- See e.g. Amy Johnson Crow, “How FindAGrave Could – and Should – Be Made Better,” Amyjohnsoncrow.com, posted 21 Oct 2016 (https://www.amyjohnsoncrow.com/ : accessed 11 Jan 2022). And see Judy G. Russell, “A modest proposal,” The Legal Genealogist, posted 5 Aug 2019 (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : accessed 11 Jan 2022). Also, ibid., “Hey, Find a Grave…,” posted 7 Oct 2019, and “Now more than ever…,” posted 15 Dec 2020. ↩
Definitely an improvement, although still room to make it better. And, it will be interesting to see it play out. But bottom line – nice to see some caring displayed by the site during such a sensitive time.
There’s so much more to be improved – like dealing with copyright issues for photos and obituaries – but this is a good start.
I wish I were more confident that it’s a GOOD start. It’s a start. We won’t know how good it is until we see it play out.
Thank you for taking the time to alert us to this change. I too wish it were more, but it looks like it should be an improvement from the current situation. I posted the most basic of memorials for my sister last year, within hours of her death, knowing that if I didn’t post it, a stranger would create a memorial the next day from her obituary.
When my loved ones pass away I would like for friends & family to see them on Findagrave.com so they can write something about them. After a year many people have gone on about their business & never go back. So those memories are gone.
If your loved ones pass away you or anyone else can enter their information. That’s not the issue. The issue is what happens with RECENT deaths and the reactions of their families — and what you or I or anyone else might think isn’t relevant: it should be the family’s decision only.
I did’t realize that people did such things. I would never even dream of adding a memorial to the page of someone I didn’t know. What satisfaction can someone possibly get from doing such a thing?
There is a history of contributors on Find a Grave literally collecting the dead the way people on Facebook collect the living. Those who collect the dead often refuse to transfer the memorials and their goal is how many memorials they can manage. It’s all about the numbers. It’s crazy. I got into a fuss with one of them and reported it to Find a Grave and she messaged me that she was a disabled vet who did not have a life and that managing Find a Grave memorials was all she had in her life and I was trying to ruin what little enjoyment she had in life. I then realized the type of people who do this. It is sad. By the way, I descend from Andersons in NC.
Your site has been a godsend to me as a genealogist. I find it upsetting when someone dumps a whole database on here without knowing the people involved. Thanks for all the work.
Thank you for posting this information. As you said, it’s a start. I had the unpleasant experience of having a total stranger make a Find-a-Grave memorial for my mother, after she died last spring. Fortunately, they did relinquish control to me, but the entire episode was very upsetting.
Whats to stop anyone from saying they are related to these new memorials
According to the announcement, the number of relatives you can claim will be limited. Presumably one only has two parents, four grandparents, etc. How this will work in reality isn’t yet known.
Judy, don’t forget that it now includes both step and in-laws. Two biological parents and how many step-parents and in-laws?
Yep, which is why it’s a “wait and see how this works IRL (in real life)” situation.
Today I received memorial transfers of 7 of my relatives from a FG member who appears to use a spreadsheet. I’d asked 15 weeks ago for one particular family member and it looks like she gave me everyone with the surname!
Wow…Thank you for posting this! I have no idea why it never occurred to me that I could be the one to add my own family’s memorials on Find A Grave. I have been grateful that someone had access to the gravesites I cannot travel to, but I never considered how I would feel if someone else made (and controlled!) a memorial for someone I was very close to…such as my own father. Now, thanks to this post, I am the owner of my dad’s memorial, as well as several other close relatives for whom memorials had not yet been added on Find A Grave.
As one who had this happen 3 times in the last 6 months, I think this is a start but as people say, “it’s not soup yet.”
One of the local Find A Grave serial inputters read my cousin’s obit that listed a spouse. They not only added the cousin but made up a memorial for the spouse listed in the obituary. Unfortunately, the
estranged spouse passed 2 years earlier and is in a different cemetery.
I feel this is overstepping ones bounds when creating a memorial based on only a name & relationship from another’s obituary with nothing more than the name and a lot of unknowns in the memorial.
There’s so much that could be done to improve this… but I’m grateful for the fact that Find A Grave has at least done SOMETHING.
I am grateful that there IS a Find a Grave. I have made several memorials for my family members and received ownership of several others. Some of the latter were military and I just assumed a volunteer group did these to honor the veterans. I had no idea about the “grave collectors.” I guess it is good in some ways to discover an ancestor on the site because a stranger “uploaded” them, although it is disappointing to learn that the manager has no relationship and therefore no further info. Thank you Judy G. Russell for your article.
Thank you for keeping us updated – it is a start. I have noticed recently a lot of people are posting death certificates to Find A Grave – mostly not related to the person that died. Why does Find A Grave allow death certificates to be posted at all – another thing that needs to be addressed.
I personally find posting death certificates to be very distasteful – and disrespectful. I wish findagrave would not allow it.
I understand the change and commend giving families a chance to contribute and control the memorial.
I am saddened a bit by the few negative comments toward many volunteers who spend hours inputting and take pictures after walking for hours, clear moss off of stones before taking pictures, and document stones of lost Vets and family members in unknown parts of the world for Millions of Family Members. Some volunteers are handicapped or housebound and find voluntering to fulfill them.
When a stone is unreadible, we even do extensive research on the person, to ensure we have the correct info. There is no financial reward for all this work… no trophy… we do it to help families like yours, who are trying to put the last connection to their family tree, those who can’t travel to visit the cemetery any longer and yearn to see the memorial, where they may lay someday. I want to thank all the Volunteers, including myself for a good job done.
A family member does not have to manage a memorial to participate, add photo’s or suggest a bio.
Simple communication works.
And may I suggest, don’t put information in an obit you don’t want the public to see…. obits are viewable for decades, even off Find A Grave. Some are nicely done like a bio, but I agree some info should be left out,like cause of death, names of all relatives, addresses, Church services, request for donations, etc. do not include the entire obit.
(a) Nobody, but NOBODY, has said one word in criticism of those who actually have gone to cemeteries, read the stones and taken pictures. The value of that historical data to researchers and genealogists ius incalculable and everyone commends those who do it. The SOLE criticism is of those who sit online at midnight and scarf up BRAND NEW death info, generally of folks who haven’t even been buried yet. There is absolutely nothing about that information that will not be just as valuable to genealogists and researchers in 30 days or 60 days or 90 days — after the families have time to do what they believe should be done. (b) Too many family members HAVE suggested edits — and been turned down, or ignored, by those who have so many memorials that they no longer even respond to requests. (c) Telling a family what it should or shouldn’t put in an obit is the height of hubris.
The minute my father died in Jan. 2021, I added him to Find-A-Grave. Wasn’t going to be beat out of managing my own father’s memorial by some unknown Find-A-Grave creator (learned that the hard way from past experience). On the other hand, in 2019 I found two rural township cemeteries (Locke and Wixson) in my county, that were not in Find-A-Grave. With books from the local library and township hall, was able to discern who was buried in these cemeteries and created 145 memorials. Felt I’d done my civic duty! Had I not entered these two cemeteries, they would have never gotten added. Needless to say, would transfer any of these memorials if requested by relatives. Definitely commend Find-A-Grave volunteers for all their ‘hard’ work. The problems arise when a creator refuses to transfer a relative or make changes to a relative’s memorial. It sounds like that’s about to change!
I really wish more folks would get out of their houses and into the cemeteries to photograph the stones.