Findagrave is a website that catalogs obituaries and burial places for genealogists. One can create "memorials" for their loved ones and others and list their burial locations for future generations. Many people also use it as a hobby and put in endless hours of cataloging obituaries and burial locations of strangers so that other people might be able to find their loved ones. In the last few months I have logged a hundred or more hours creating memorials and had over 300. I cataloged my family, people I've worked with in show business and alumni from my high school. I also linked my high school alumni memorials to a website I run for my school. Yesterday an issue arose from a memorial I created for a famous actor that passed away. Their rules state that you are always to do a search before creating a memorial. If one already exists, you're to work with the creator of that memorial on any changes or additions. Another person came along and knowingly created a NEW memorial for the actor. I made it known to her and she defiantly would not take it down. So I contacted the administrators for help. They actually sided with her, even though she admitted to breaking the rules, and gave her credit for the memorial. After a couple of heated emails with administrator Robert Edwards (who goes by the screen name "bobnoxious") He sent me an email stating that he was banning me from the site. So I went in to my account and sure enough had no access. I looked up my mother's memorial and it was gone! Further research showed that ALL of my memorials were gone...they had all been deleted! All that work I spent entering these memorials was for nothing. And they weren't just punishing me, they were punishing all the people that would have used those memorials in the future. It also rendered all the links on my alumni website useless. I have since written to the owner of the website Jim Tipton a few times, with no response. Since then I've been doing online research and have found that I am not the only one that they have done this too. Wikipedia lists conflicts with this company stating: "allegedly arbitrary actions by administrators particularly with regard to "memorials" and "privacy" concerns of families and relations regarding recent deaths." The website pissedcustomer.com has quite a few detailed descriptions of problems not dissimilar to mine at: http://find-a-grave.pissedconsumer.com/. Another detailed description here: http://deathreferencedesk.org/2010/03/15/crowd-sourcing-genealogy-at-find-a-grave/. Look, if I broke rules, fine. But let me know and allow me to correct my ways; but don't just ban me and delete all my work! But I DID NOT break the rules. In fact it was because I showed them that I hadn't broken them and that they rewarded another member FOR breaking the rules, that they arbitrarily banned me and deleted all my work. They should not be allowed to do this to people. We are talking about special, precious and often emotional memories of our loved ones. This should NOT be taken lightly. You don't delete people's work that helps anyone who visits the site, simply because you have a beef with that person. You don't offer a service to catalog information, get bent out of shape and then resend the offer. If they can arbitrarily delete anyone's work at their whim, what's the point of anyone working on making their site better and more complete? Sure, it is a free site, but they take in money from website advertising that bombards you while you work, and charge $5 if you want special privileges on a memorial. Even if you pay the $5, the possibility of that memorial disappearing forever is very, very possible.

Here's the thing: There is a ranking for how many memorials one member posts. This is good in that many people transcribe whole cemeteries, which helps us all. Most are very nice, want to preserve information for others, and are willing to transfer management to relatives with no strings attached. There are a few, who are apparently interested only in numbers, and refuse to transfer, unless they retain credit for creating the memorial, and can be extremely rude. I am always happy to find my relatives already listed, and do not really care who first listed them. When I was new to the site, I listed my husband, only to find someone else had done so. When I wrote to that person, she was extremely rude! She actually said other people had said terrible things about her. I could understand, because she was so hateful to me, a newcomer. She changes her name a lot, so I suppose she gets a lot of complaints.