I had a few bad experiences early on with Find-a-Grave but for the most part I think it's been good overall. I feel I've helped people, and some have also helped me. I am both a family researcher genealogist historian, and local historian of the region where I reside, as well as a study of history of my State, Country and world history.

Because of my early problems on Find-a-Grave I'm not deleting my personal editorial below from some years ago. The reason is, I think it had enough of an impact to some members and some of those in charge, that a few changes were made. Yet I think it is time to update and let folks know I'm not just a Find-a-Grave unhappy camper.

It's a great website and free at least to this point. I truly believe most of are here or should be here to freely share genealogy, history and information and not just control the memorials. I think most feel the same way, but I've come across a few, well you know, who use the rules to do just that, to control memorials.

I'm still here but getting older and have found I put way too many pans on the fire over the years so at this point I can't devote all my time to multiple areas of research and contributions to various real groups or websites. At the same time, I've enjoyed the ride and am not sorry for the fun I've had. The bottom line is I will try to help when called but I think I've finally arrived at a point where I just can't keep up with real life and multiple websites.

My old post below. I was kind of an unhappy camper back then, but I believe it has improved greatly since then.

"It is sad and unfortunate that the find a grave site now has police that go around searching for minor rule offenses and harass its members with deletion demands.

These find a grave police send only their requests through the edit tab and have disabled and removed there contact information so as not to be bothered by the person they are harassing. I imagine hundreds of other members are also being harassed.

Some of these people have taken it upon themselves to hoard up unclaimed memorials or even post a new one for recently departed of those very same people they are harassing, effectively stealing control of these memorials before the true family member can get around to it. This type of behavior has turned this site into a real-life game of 'Who Controls the Memorial's?' I didn't join this site to play games.

I thought the site was created for family's and family genealogists but apparently not. It seems it was created by busy bodies with nothing to do but go around and pick apart every little possible rule transgression on a given memorial.

Yes, we must have rules but many of the find a grave rules were ill-conceived from the beginning and outdated now. I could write a book on the subject, but I don't have time for that.

When I joined this site, my initial thoughts were there may be too many cooks in the kitchen here and as time has progressed, my original hunch turned out to be correct.

In the past I promoted this site to others as a great researching tool but if some family members are memorial are deleted, what's the point?

I no longer will promote this site, but I will remain active with my direct relatives and will still honor legitimate corrections & transfer requests.

I'm currently working on a personal website, untouchable by find a grave police, in order to share the family genealogy with family members.

As I recently mentioned to a friend, there are many great people involved on the find-a-grave site, but a few bad apples are ruining it for the rest of us. Life is just too short!

Wayne DeMunn"