June 12, 2023 Find a Grave Team
Thanks for your comments and feedback on the edit updates. We love hearing from you and appreciate all your time and efforts on the site. We made these updates based on your feedback:
- Added a date filter to Suggest Edits
- Increased room for adding notes
- Removed the notification about Notes when suggesting edits
- Allowed for searching partial names
- Simplified and universalized the veteran icon
- Added more options for ‘Suggestion Type’ filter
We’ve been reading through your comments on Edit Updates. As a follow up, we thought providing more clarity on these topics would be helpful.
Questions about Suggested Edits
Why are the edits displayed individually under Suggestions for Me?
Before this update, other fields in the same edit section for a memorial were locked when there was a pending edit. For instance, if a middle name field had a pending edit then all the other name fields were locked. Now, those fields are open and can be edited when there is a pending edit. As a result, edits are now displayed individually for processing.
What will happen when a manager doesn’t process edits within 21 days?
A little background, Find a Grave has an edit queue where we review suggested edits for Find a Grave managed memorials. As we roll out the edit changes and allow suggesting new fields, we’d like to learn more about how the new edit options are being used, so, at least for a time, edits that are not processed within 21 days will go into the Find a Grave edit queue where we can review them. What we learn will help us make informed decisions about processing edits in the future. It may take us a little extra time (generally within a few days) to process the suggested edits that come in, given weekends and the new fields available for Suggest Edits. We appreciate your patience.
The manager declined the suggested edit I sent, how can we better collaborate?
We hope that with these changes you’ll be able to work together more effectively and collaborate. Now the suggester has a notes field where more information can be added about the suggested edit. The manager also has a notes field when they decline an edit where they can add their reasoning to help the suggester understand the decision. If there is differing information in the historical record, the manager may choose to add both sets of information and sources to the biography. We encourage you to work together. If you send an edit and it is declined, you might try sending it again with a note that adds more information about the edit. Please see our support site to read more about suggesting edits and sending notes.
Questions about processing edits and new edit fields
The community asked if there could be an easy way to filter by type for some of the new fields. We updated the filter by type to include more options. Go to Suggest Edits/Suggestions for Me or Suggestions I’ve Sent. When reviewing and processing suggested edits you can filter by type. For example, this way you can review all edits for veteran or all edits for biographies.
Some edit types you previously received by email through ‘suggest other corrections’ (e.g. bio and burial location) can now be processed on the Suggested Edits page. Suggested edits for memorials you manage are under ‘Suggestions for Me.’ You can process them there or from the specific memorial’s edit page. If you need to contact a memorial manager, you can use the ‘Contact Manager’ button on the Suggest an Edit page.
We’ve also seen questions about the two new fields we added, veteran and gender.
A veteran designation has been one of the most requested features for the site and we’re excited to see it being added to memorials. As we explored the word veteran in different languages, we found that many of the words started with a ‘v.’ You can see the veteran icon on memorial lists and on the memorial.
A veteran is a person who served in the armed forces. If the person was a veteran, then the veteran designation is appropriate and should be added. We added this designation to recognize and honor their service and for veterans to be easily found on the site. From Memorial Search, you can check the box for veteran to include in your search. By adding the veteran designation (instead of relying on the military prefix, images, or the biography) it allows the memorial to be included in any search for veteran. If you manage many memorials you may receive more suggested edits than usual due to this new designation. We ask that members be considerate of others when sending updates. In the Suggest Edits queues, you can easily filter the type of edit to ‘veteran’ and process or view the edits.
We added an option for gender to the site in 2018 to support some of the partners we share our index with. While we don’t use gender directly on Find a Grave, that field is helpful to some of the other sites that use our index. Initially only managers had the option to add gender. With this update, the gender field can be sent as a suggested edit. We are reviewing this field and its use for Find a Grave.
One of the things that makes Find a Grave so wonderful is the way members work together to add and improve information on the site. We know that these updates will affect the way that collaboration happens and it will take some time to get used to. We hope you will continue to work together with patience and kindness as we adapt. With the addition of the notes fields and the Contact Manager button, you have more methods of communication and ways to share information. We’ve provided these tools for members to collaborate and help one another. Again, thanks for your feedback as we made these changes. We hope you enjoy working together in the new edit system.
Thank you so much for the updates to editing you have provided. It provides the manger an easier way to accept and deny certain items. I had one that I denied a certain part and could explain why and I could advise how I did change after their suggestion. For the most part the editing I have suggested has been approved. You still have those that won’t change anything.
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Veterans: You write ‘A veteran is a person who served in the armed forces.’ So, does that mean, all Swiss men are meant to have this designation? Because we all did military service
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Hi Paul, thanks for your question. Please use the veteran designation as appropriate according to the customs and culture of the individual being memorialized. If the person served in the armed forces, then the designation is appropriate and should be added.
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Are you having computer problems today? I was entering a memorial and it now shows up. Originally I had a message (Internal server error). That is gone but this memorial is not showing up in the index at all at the moment. See Memorial 255395784. The spouse link is showing up but not working.
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I realize that dynamic checking for recursive parent links is probably not a good idea when adding a parent. However, it would be nice to have a background process to check new suggested parent links for recursiveness. I just spent a couple of hours unwinding an error where the parent’s names were similar. The wife of one brother was set to be the mother of the brother.
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The new Edit Suggestions have proven to be of a great help to me. I like all of the “ability” being in one place. Thanks and keep up the good work.
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You guys wrote “ A veteran is a person who served in the armed forces. If the person was a veteran, then the veteran designation is appropriate and should be added”
I have a comment about this and I don’t know if anything can be done but it could be your guidelines could be updated. In the US a veteran is not only someone who served in the armed forces, but in the uniformed forces, such as the USPHS, United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and NOAA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Also, people who were dishonorably, discharged or discharge less than favorably or a general discharge are they entitled?Loading...
Make provision for the person who is buried to include in the comments the persons Mother’s Maiden Surname: this will help in identifing who they are linked to.
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Hi Stephen, from a memorial you can add a family link for the mother. The mother’s name will display and be linked under Family Members. One could also mention the mother’s maiden name in the biography.
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Could we add a place for unmarked graves
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You can put this information in the Bio or Gravesite Details.
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Not one ever pays an attention to the words of Unmarked Grave. We need an icon or symbol to put in place of a tombstone photo. I had one and it was disallowed and it has been removed. I have had trouble with photo requests ever since.
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Thank you very much.
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I love the fact that you’ve added the Veteran edit but I wish there were Veteran status by the time they served (like Revolutionary, Civil War, Spanish American War, etc etc). I know, a lot to ask!
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Thank you very much!
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Thank you for most of the updates. 😉 Try to make everything as simple and easy as possible, please.
PHOTOGRAPHS: Please, don’t forget about the photographs of all kinds, an option is needed to contact someone about duplicates, by the same member. Photos other than persons marked as such to get a better position than the other options, and more problems. There are many memorials photos closed that could be open for more.
FLOWERS: These are important to many people. Please try to make it easier to add photos and get the best results. I have almost given up and I love clipart. I really appreciate the many really nice ones I find, and also the so simple yet attractive ones. The ones who post flowers may also be tombstone photo takers. They may not have many memorials, but posted many flowers.
Would it be possible to set up a Help place to get memorials or examples for the many basically flower posters who aren’t remembered by sending their name and information.
For example:
Find a Grave Memorial ID: 196445317
June transferred her memorials to her daughter, Laura has been remembered. They also took tombstone photos.
MEMORIAL ID 210692108Barb J didn’t but I’d sure like to have her many slightly different tiny floral ones.
MEMORIAL ID 207041241MESSAGES: More space is needed to answer messages and when the message is not, shall we say suitable to the site now, and possibly not while under other ownerships, report it to present management. Unfortunately, not all members are on Find a Grave to be helpful to anyone.
Thanks to everyone involved with Find a Grave, including members and visitors. May it continue to improve.
Orlena
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Someone has posted an obit on my memorial where only a picture should go. How do I get rid of the obit if the person that placed it there refuses to remove it and place it where it belongs?
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I get irked by this as well. The person that added the picture is the one to change the subject of the picture (grave, person, family, other). We all need to be more careful when choosing the category for any pictures we share.
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https://support.findagrave.com/s/article/Sort-Photos
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Changes sound great. Anxious to try them out.
Does the Contact Manager allow you to contact those that do not accept messages as their default?Loading...
Yes, you can reach a manager through Contact Manager even if they don’t have a contact method on their Profile.
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What happens when the manager of a memorial has passed away?
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If you know of a manager who has passed away, please let the support team know. You can reach them through the “Contact” page, https://www.findagrave.com/contact
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Subject of the picture (grave, person, family, other) Obituaries and other articles, not person, family or grave photos, should be if not are, added in the OTHER category. If there isn’t anything in these other options, the correctly and even not correctly placed obit images will show in the Person and or Grave position. As in many things, it depends on what is considered correct, obituaries allowed or obituaries not allowed..
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I have valued and used Findagrave for several years, and was happy to add information, or pictures. And Findagrave staff and yunger members can cmprehend all these instructions, but at the age 83 my attention and computer skills are dwindling. But where I can I will follow.
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I have 2 questions which may be a little off topic. First, how about adding a “like” option for forum comments to emphasize topics which are important to more people. Second, are there plans to enhance the index feed to other services like Ancestry to include new fields like Veteran or Gender?
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Thanks for your suggestion, Rick. We have a like option here and have vote up and like options on the Find a Grave forums. To your question about the index, we will look into this further and see what we can do.
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With all the improvements being made, I wish one of them was to be make it easier to post a cemetery location than it is now. This is something that has been promised for a while.
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There are many excellent enhancements here. A request – can you do something to bring edit notes to the attention of memorial managers, particularly when they go to decline an edit. Already I’ve had numerous experiences where the manager just has not seen the edit note. It’s an embarassment if you resend a declined edit request with a note but they don’t realize the note is there.
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Hi Catherine, thanks for this feedback. We’ll see what we can do to improve this.
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How about: If a manager declines and edit that has a note, have a pop-up asking “have your read the note. It might explain the edit better”.
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The one thing I have NOT seen addressed is what to do after the 2nd edit (with more info) is declined? Previously, we could send it to Find A Grave’s “edit” address for resolution. Is this still the case?
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The manager may have differing information from what the suggester provided and would add their reasoning to help the suggester understand the decision. If a manager is consistently not managing memorials in an effective manner, then those examples can be sent to support@findagrave.com for review. Learn more here.
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It’s not a matter of differing info. It’s about inappropriate field entries, such as having an entry such as “Buried next to his mother” or “Came west in 1860” in the PLOT field.
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The one item lacking is a generic photo that FG provides to designate unmarked graves. Possibly one that can be clicked on when creating or updating a memorial. Anyone looking at the memorial would immediately know that a headstone does not exist. If there is a plot location, one could still request a photo of just the plot. Quite a few photo contributors lay a flower or bouquet of flowers where a headstone would be for easier location.
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Put it in the bio or Gravesite Details.
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I’m 100% for a Generic Photo for Unmarked Graves. Sure would help us.
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Have you changed the number of days for autoaccepting changes? I thought it was 21 days, but I am now at 25 days waiting for several changes to a memorial to be accepted and yesterday one was finally approved after 24. I am not sure if someone accepted that because it did not say autoaccepted.
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If you read the blog post it explains the delay sonI am not sure why you are asking this question. See repost below:-
What will happen when a manager doesn’t process edits within 21 days?
A little background, Find a Grave has an edit queue where we review suggested edits for Find a Grave managed memorials. As we roll out the edit changes and allow suggesting new fields, we’d like to learn more about how the new edit options are being used, so, at least for a time, edits that are not processed within 21 days will go into the Find a Grave edit queue where we can review them. What we learn will help us make informed decisions about processing edits in the future. It may take us a little extra time (generally within a few days) to process the suggested edits that come in, given weekends and the new fields available for Suggest Edits. We appreciate your patience.
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This update explained why they were being held past 21 days
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I wish there was an option to put the divorce date of a spouse. I think that’d be help to visually see a time line of marriages.
Also there are a lot of people that were born in what was once Germany or Russia but now those areas are completely different countries. I wish there was a way to choose the previous name of the city or country. On ancestry or any other genealogical website it lets you add the historical place of birth or death. I know I have several ancestors that were born in cities that no longer exist and I’m sure many other people are in the same boat. I think it would help make the website more accurate.
Example: My great grandmother was born in a tiny village in the germanic empire in 1913. That village no longer exists and was absorbed by a larger city in Lithuania. It would be nice to have the current city listed and the historical city name in maybe parentheses next to it.
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Just put it in the Bio!
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People do not pay any attention to a comment. (speaking from experience)
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This is a website that deals with where a person is put to rest, not so much how they lived there life. Those details are more appropriate in ancestry sites that detail a person’s life and lifetime events.
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This is one example in my area in just one cemetery. Notes are included on all of these as being unmarked graves.
William Pickens ·
1855–1909 – Requested By: Christopher Martin on 23 Aug 2022
Mount Gilead Cemetery
Mound City, Union County, Mississippi, USA
Plot: Unmarked Grave
Open
Joseph Warren ·
1904–1982 – Requested By: Hunts Forebears on 23 Mar 2022
Mount Gilead Cemetery
Mound City, Union County, Mississippi, USA
Plot: Unmarked Grave
Open
Sarah Warren ·
1908–2001 – Requested By: Teresa Shelley on 13 Apr 2019
Mount Gilead Cemetery
Mound City, Union County, Mississippi, USA
Plot: Unmarked Grave
Open
Elizabeth C Rakestraw ·
1832–1912 – Requested By: Sheila Richey Smith on 13 Apr 2016
Mount Gilead Cemetery
Mound City, Union County, Mississippi, USA
Plot: Unmarked GraveLoading...
It sounds like they are using the bio to keep track of the work that they did. I don’t think FindAGrave allows posting other members names and member numbers on any site other than the one where FindAGrave puts it at the bottom.
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Gail Schinner Jorgensen, If this comment that I made concerning the unmarked graves is unacceptable, then I give Find A Grave authority to delete the comment. I truly thought this was Find A Grave’s site with questions and answers. Sorry if this doesn’t belong.
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By no means was I negating what you said. I was just explaining probably what happened and why they do it even though they shouldn’t and FindAGrave should allow it to be deleted. Have you reported it to FindAGrave admins?
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Gail, I have communicated with them before on other situations just like this in other area cemeteries. I ignore requests like this now. That’s why I am so much in favor of some type across the board solution on unmarked graves.
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When I add a birth or death location, and try to enter Saint Louis, the ONLY option I am given is “Saint Louis, Saint Louis city, Missouri”. (Which technically is redundant.) You need to add an option of simply Saint Louis, Missouri, which leaves it open to city or county, which is better than nothing. As often as not we don’t know whether a birth or death was in the city OR the county (can’t be both because St. Louis city is a “city not within a county”). Thank you for all you do.
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St Louis is a tricky case. We are working on some updates to locations that we hope will help.
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Find A Grave, does “not managing memorials in an effective manner” include denying edits to remove inappropriate entries. Things like non-plot info in the Plot field, information OTHER than an inscription in the Inscription field, use of descriptors in the name fields (NOT for those with unknown names – entering the first name as Baby and the middle name as Clarence instead of Clarence as the first name), etc.?
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Sadly memorial management can be quite subjective. I think editors of memorials will have to move away from trying to micro manage what others consider to be “their” memorials. What you consider to be incorrect information in certain fields, they are probably happy with and don’t see why they should change it just because you say so. Unfortunately, there is an element of Managers that are quite belligerent when it comes to memorial Management but the same can be said for those suggesting the edits, who tend to get their knickers in a twist every time an edit is declined. Perhaps the best way forward is to build relationships with other members so that you can work collaboratively rather than getting into a ding-dong every time someone doesn’t agree with edits you have suggested. And accept that no means no since the Manager has the final say.
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SteveN, I am talking about what FIND A GRAVE says is appropriate for a field. On the Add Memorial screen, Find A Grave has a prompt for what goes in each box. For example, the Inscription field prompt is “Enter the inscription here. Only include what is on a grave marker.”
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Hi Find a Grave,
I have tried adding a Cenotaph link to a memorial that I don’t own, but when I do it adds the text into the hyper link. Please see the compare button on the memorial below. Is this a bug or am I doing something wrong?
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/15370210/aage-rasmussen
I am using an iPad and Safari browser.
Thanks
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It looks like you may be missing the after “Cenotaph here”. In the knowledge article about it, the example is missing the end bracket >. We’ll fix that, but if you copied that, you may just need to add the > after the “support@findagrave.com and paste in the code you are using and we’ll see what we can figure out.
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Is there a way to be notified when you’ve got edits pending? I rarely use the website, I just happened to be there reading a message, and noticed an edits field that I’d never seen before. Turns out I had edits in there waiting to be approved from two weeks ago.
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Thanks for the question. We don’t currently have email notifications of pending edit suggestions, but that’s something we’d like to add.
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You say you are manually approving suggestions that reach the 21-day age. Can you tell us what percentage of the total number of suggestions reach this mark? What percentage of memorial managers have let suggestions age out?
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It appears that some Veterans Cemeteries have marked everyone buried in them as “Veterans” including spouses. I had an edit declined where I asked to remove the Veteran Designation for a wife, she was not a military member. Should spouses be marked as Veterans?
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If a spouse has been marked as veteran and they did not serve in the armed forces, the designation should be removed. You may want to try and send the edit again with a note following up.
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On April 5, 2023 I sent the edit request shown below to the memorial owner. On the memorial I posted a picture of the tombstone that I took at the cemetery which shows James M. Cooper’s name. The tombstone is in Cooper Cemetery # 2775277 which is totally different from the cemetery in which the memorial has been placed. This edit request still has not been acknowledged. I understand where the memorial owner got the listing that put James in the wrong cemetery, but there are several names which were entered incorrectly into that cemetery. The death certificate for James’ wife puts her in the correct cemetery and, since their names are on the stone together and there are two burials at that place, there should be no question that James is buried in Cooper Cemetery #2775277.
James Cooper (124447935)
Suggested edit: Could you please move James’ memorial to Cooper Cemetery in Buchanan, TN? Cemetery fa*g# is 2775277?
Thank you
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With the new edit system, burial locations can now be sent through Suggest Edits. You can send the edit once more using the new edit system. More information on this process can be found here.
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The “edit icon” next to your name no longer gives you a count of edits sent to you until you click on it, then the count shows up. Someone on FG that usually approves hers within 2-7 days is actively adding pages and not noticing there are edits waiting approval. How many others are missing this? and putting more burden on the auto approve system which now takes longer than 21 days. The other edit improvements are great! Thank you FG team.
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Thank you for writing in about this. We’ll do some testing and see if we can replicate it. We appreciate your time!
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The icon hasn’t shown up for me for a long time. Once I click on it it shows that there are pending edits.
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I see that the latest guidance for designating a person as a veteran is “A person who has served in the armed forces. ….Use the veteran designation as appropriate according to the customs and culture of the individual being memorialized.”
It’s this last bit about customs and culture causing problems – eg in the UK The Ministry of Defence defines a veteran as: “anyone who has served for at least one day in Her Majesty’s Armed Forces (Regular or Reserve), or Merchant Mariners who have seen duty on legally defined military operations.” Under the definition, veterans have already left the Armed Forces, so someone KIA wouldn’t be a veteran.
There are memorial managers already turning down requests to designate war graves as “veterans” while at the same time Find a Grave has designated British & Commonwealth memorials originally created by War Graves as “veterans”. You also have many memorials managed by people of a different nationality from the individual being memorialized, so all in all there is no consistancy and much confusion. Find A Grave needs to be much clearer on which memorials should have the veteran mark – maybe don’t call it a veteran designation but instead a marker for someone who saw military service? Or maybe another icon is needed for those who died whilst serving?Loading...
