Into Utter Madness - The Grave Police

As anyone who actually reads my blog knows, I am a genealogy/cemetery addict. I love doing genealogy and I love going to cemeteries. That's why I'm a member of Find A Grave. I love the fact that I can find almost anyone on that site, and if I can't find them there, then I can indulge my genealogy addiction and find them through their cemetery and put them in Find A Grace so that others can find them, too. I volunteer to take photos for other people who may not be able to travel up here to find their people. I love to do that, too, because I am helping someone else who may also enjoy the same addictions.

We get credited for all the work we do; adding/managing memorials, and posting volunteer/non-volunteer photos. We even get credited when we add famous people or leave flowers. It's great that we get credited, but that is not, nor should be, the sole reason for doing this work. Unless you are a few select individuals.

There are certain members of Find A Grave who seem to think this is some sort of competition...the goal? To get on one of the Find A Grave "Top Contributor" lists. Now, I'm not saying that everyone who winds up on those lists is a glory hound, but I happen to be very aware of at least one who is.

Really, if you're going to perpetrate a fraud then you should have a better plan than simply creating dummy accounts that you use for nothing but requesting photos which your main account then immediately posts. And if you are going to do it this way then you should seriously consider coming up with email addresses that aren't virtually identical. Your desire to artificially inflate your volunteer photo numbers is touching...in a heartburn sort of way...but it gets incredibly irritating when my inbox gets stuffed with bogus photo requests.

But these aren't the only problem people on the site. There are definitely others who, while not necessarily doing it to get on the list, are hording memorials that they have either no time or no inclination to maintain (or they are compeltely inactive).

This presents certain problems for those of us who are trying to get information corrected or added. Memorial managers who don't respond to correction requests force active members to involve the site management who may or may not respond either! This means that information is not being updated and memorials are being unnecessarily neglected. There needs to be some sort of recourse for this situation. Maybe Find A Grave needs to hire a few more people?

Don't get me wrong, I love the site, I appreciate what it does and what it represents, and I've had a blast adding and updating memorials. I just wish that other people felt the same way about it that I do...