When I began using Find-a-Grave, as a source to support my early genealogy research, it was a site dedicated to document the passing of a family relative lost to time. 'Unknown' burials were not an option.
Images and even just confirmation by cemetery records where no grave marker existed, were verified by sympathetic volunteers who spent their free time wandering cemeteries collecting photos and creating memorials on the site, that could be trusted as accurate. and backed up by the photo or confirmation information of the burial information from the cemetery records. A '1st Rate' source, for the family, and for genealogists seeking their ancestral links.

When the website sold, and the genealogist took over a lot of the reliability that made the site so valuable ended.

Genealogists have expanded their thirst to display their ancestry in public, (amateurs mostly, but I suspect professionals alike) by creating a plethora of memorials for their folk with no idea where or when they passed (The only information that was ever truly reliable on this site).

There are multiple dedicated genealogy services / sites online where these people can play with their ancestors quietly, until they are correct, but they choose to create memorials on this site that assume dates times places and people who are insufficiently documented by sources and not necessarily even buried in the places where the memorials are created. This often bad or even falsified information is the spread into the genealogy community who pass it on, as viable information, when there are no record sources involved in its support.

This is just wrong; a violation of trust to the individual seeker and the genealogy community as a whole, and a mistreatment of the valiant volunteers who now spend their time hunting burials and cemetery records that don't exist, and quite possibly never did. The result of genealogists who would rather fill in the blanks of "where and when", with their own suppositions (or some other author's guesswork), instead of documented / documentable facts supported by sound records, available for verification.

I have recently become active in taking positions of challenging these memorials that have become the single available source, especially for basic 'birth and death dates and places' without confirmation from other independent sources/records. At least for the people associated with my heritage.
Fraudulent genealogy has been a salable commodity to individuals in the past; to enhance their prestige, and promote their advancement in society, when necessary, or just to stroke their egos when money was available for such frivolities. How many people do you think are REALLY descendants of Charlemagne or Christ.

I invite your all to join me in eliminating the rampant 'fraud' being passively perpetrated on trustworthy researchers and just people with an interest in their family history.

When I began using Find-a-Grave, as a source to support my early genealogy research, it was a site dedicated to document the passing of a family relative lost to time. 'Unknown' burials were not an option.
Images and even just confirmation by cemetery records where no grave marker existed, were verified by sympathetic volunteers who spent their free time wandering cemeteries collecting photos and creating memorials on the site, that could be trusted as accurate. and backed up by the photo or confirmation information of the burial information from the cemetery records. A '1st Rate' source, for the family, and for genealogists seeking their ancestral links.

When the website sold, and the genealogist took over a lot of the reliability that made the site so valuable ended.

Genealogists have expanded their thirst to display their ancestry in public, (amateurs mostly, but I suspect professionals alike) by creating a plethora of memorials for their folk with no idea where or when they passed (The only information that was ever truly reliable on this site).

There are multiple dedicated genealogy services / sites online where these people can play with their ancestors quietly, until they are correct, but they choose to create memorials on this site that assume dates times places and people who are insufficiently documented by sources and not necessarily even buried in the places where the memorials are created. This often bad or even falsified information is the spread into the genealogy community who pass it on, as viable information, when there are no record sources involved in its support.

This is just wrong; a violation of trust to the individual seeker and the genealogy community as a whole, and a mistreatment of the valiant volunteers who now spend their time hunting burials and cemetery records that don't exist, and quite possibly never did. The result of genealogists who would rather fill in the blanks of "where and when", with their own suppositions (or some other author's guesswork), instead of documented / documentable facts supported by sound records, available for verification.

I have recently become active in taking positions of challenging these memorials that have become the single available source, especially for basic 'birth and death dates and places' without confirmation from other independent sources/records. At least for the people associated with my heritage.
Fraudulent genealogy has been a salable commodity to individuals in the past; to enhance their prestige, and promote their advancement in society, when necessary, or just to stroke their egos when money was available for such frivolities. How many people do you think are REALLY descendants of Charlemagne or Christ.

I invite your all to join me in eliminating the rampant 'fraud' being passively perpetrated on trustworthy researchers and just people with an interest in their family history.