HONOR AND RESPECT OUR DEPARTED RELATIVES AND FRIENDS AND THEIR FINAL RESTING PLACES. Cemeteries are sacred places, not garbage dumps. It's disgusting seeing empty beer cans, liquor bottles, cigarette butts and other trash thrown out in local cemeteries. I don't like people "parking" in cars in secluded areas of cemeteries for liaisons or drug use. I've also witnessed people driving by who come in to use the cemetery as a restroom on their way out of town (both men and women!). And I've seen young people racing four-wheelers and cars through the grounds, and snowmobile tracks across graves in the wintertime. Our family members, relatives, and friends lay at rest in a cemetery. Visiting there should be in memory of and to honor their lives, and for spiritual peace and reflection, not a place to litter or abuse its purpose. I wish more cemeteries were fenced with a gate or chain that needs to be opened before entering to prevent some of this from happening.

Usually there is some sort of connection between my family or myself and the persons whose memorials I manage or have added pictures or information to, but not always. Occasionally I come across a photo or some interesting information about someone and check to see if there is a memorial for that person. If so and there is not a picture, I try to add one so there is something there. I like enough information on the memorial pages to properly identify the person. And I keep a close watch to add information about AMERICAN FARMERS, ranchers and farm family members.

Working on Find A Grave is a part-time project for me. I don't have the time or desire to do more than what I can, and do not want to "manage" an an unwieldy number of memorials. But I try to be very careful that information on the memorials I manage is accurate, and there are sometimes multiple edits after more information is learned.

One of my big frustrations as a findagrave contributor/manager:

I don't want to amass a large collection of memorials that I cannot reasonably monitor and manage, but I notice some members with many thousands of memorials, and that often a memorial is created immediately for someone they don't know after a death is publicized. I have had close friends who passed away whose memorials I would have liked to have created and managed, only to find someone who never knew them (and often doesn't even live in the local area) immediately added them, often on the same day of the death notice. Find a Grave has a "close relative" transfer policy, so this often frustrates me.

Mistakes are sometimes made when trying to connect up family members or determine other facts, and that's certainly understandable - and that can be changed if it's wrong. But if you submit an edit request, please be as sure as you can be that the information is correct. I ASK THAT YOU DON'T SEND EDIT REQUESTS IF THEY ARE GUESSES OR ASSUMPTIONS, PARTICULARLY IF THE INFORMATION CONFLICTS WITH SOMETHING ALREADY ON A MEMORIAL. It can take time to try to figure things out and be extremely frustrating, and I've had a few edit requests I approved that were questionable and later had to change things back. Also, I have found errors in dates and relationships that were sourced from ancestry.com and other websites, so online information is not always correct. I may ask you to provide further information or a link to your source information before I make a change.

MIDDLE NAME EDIT REQUESTS:

Every person has a right to be known by the name they prefer. If a full middle name or middle initial is NOT on the headstone or marker, the individual or their immediate family obviously chose not to include it, so I do not want to go against their decision about how they wished to be identified. I know people who didn't like their middle names, never used them unless they had to for legal purposes, or preferred to just use an initial (or none at all), and I don't think they would want their middle name displayed on their memorial here either.So unless a middle name is actually on the gravestone or marker, or is needed to distinguish between persons with the same first and last names buried in the same cemetery, region or era, I normally do not add one.

"INSCRIPTIONS" ON GRAVE MARKERS:

To me, it's not that important to add "inscription" information to the memorial pages I manage if it is something general like "In Loving Memory", "Gone But Not Forgotten", a branch of the military service, "Gone Fishing", "Mother", "Father", etc. It takes time to review all edit requests, and honestly, these are mostly trivial issues that take up time reviewing these edit requests that really add little or nothing to what's needed to know, and I may decline them. However, if the inscription actually provides UNIQUE or clarifying information that is useful for identifying the grave and is NOT already available in the Bio/obituary or shown in photos that have been posted on the memorial page, that is another matter.

PICTURES:

Having a picture on a memorial helps us remember this was a real person, rather than just a headstone or cemetery plot. I My hope is that everyone who takes photographs of headstones or graves for findagrave will spend some time to do it right. I've seen some horrible photos posted here, taken haphazardly at odd angles, and blurry and distorted pictures. I try to take a few moments to get a decent picture, or find the best available pictures that I have access to for posting on the memorial pages. If I have added a photo to a relative's memorial that you do not feel is flattering, contact me with information on your relationship to the deceased. I am certainly willing to remove it so long as you are a close relative, but I hope you can provide another picture of better quality as a replacement. Likewise if I find someone has posted a poor picture onto one of the memorials I manage, I may contact the contributor and ask them to remove it.

Also instead of just snapping a photo of a grave or headstone and moving on to the next one, why not stand there for a few moments out of respect for that person's life?

LAST, PLEASE DO NOT COPY ANY OF MY PHOTOS OR OTHER INFORMATION ON MY MEMORIALS TO ANCESTRY OR OTHER BUSINESSES OR ORGANIZATIONS THAT CHARGE FEES TO USE THEIR SERVICES. My feeling is that if an organization or business is charging a fee for membership or to access the information they provide, they should likewise be paying the contributors who actually provided the photos or information they are using. Everything I have added here is as a non-paid contributor for historical use by families, friends and genealogists, and NOT for the monetary profit of any business or organization. There should be no fees or charges to research history.