The website in the past had allowed an unlimited number of images to be loaded to each individual online grave, but this has been reduced to five. If you pay $5 per grave the limit is upped to 20, but the website still retains the right to purge images its editors find not to fit into the graver community.
The editorial policy, which was never clearly stated by the website has led to the wholesale purging of image documents from the site. I have had almost 500 images deleted from my account. This represents over 100 hours of scanning and transcribing letters and documents, many of which I no longer have access to the originals.
I was reminded in emails and in responces to postings I placed on their community bulletin board that this was a "graver" site and not a genealogical site.
Images removed have been:
- personal letters from the deceased that were scanned and transcribed
- marriage certificates
- birth certificates
- census entries
- ship passenger lists
- naturalization certificates
My postings begged for an explanation in the editorial policy as to whether this was because disk storage space was scarce, or if their was a major shift in editorial policy.
I also feel that complaining about the image purge put my records under further scrutiny, so that out of 7.7 million entries, my ~2,500 entries were combed through one-by-one to delete out every document image.
This purging of history is bad for all serious gravers and genealogists. Findagrave needs to clearly state its editorial policy on the website and create a list of what can be posted and what cannot be posted. Images deleted should be returned by email to the poster, or the poster should be warned and allowed time to find a new home for their documents.
