Recently, after almost 18 years, I decided to leave Find-A-Grave due to a really miserable Karen who went under the name of "Graves R Us". During all of those years, I had never heard one single peep from Find-A-Grave (or later, Ancestry.com) about me having the website address for my website (4thmichigan.wordpress.com) in the bios of the hundreds of memorials that I had created, and / or managed. The reference was there as a courtesy for those family members and historical researchers (both amateur and professional) who were interested in learning more about the Fourth Michigan Infantry and the men that served under her banner during the Civil War. The site is, and always will be, a non-profit historical source of information. So, I felt that because of that, sharing it on Find-A-Grave would be simply taken at face value, as a non-profit source of additional information.
Well, about October of last year, Graves R Us decided that she really needed to serve as the policy police for Ancestry / Find-A-Grave and point out that there was in fact a policy that forbid the use of links or URLs of any outside websites, and that I needed to go through all of my 1700+ memorials and delete any reference to my site as well as sources used for any information on them. I then pointed out to "Karen" that:
a: That prior to her entering my peaceful life, that there had never had a problem with the staff regarding the issue.
b: For someone who had been with Find-A-Grave for over five years at that time, and still had no memorials under her management, therefore contributed very little to the community, who exactly was she to think that she ran the roost?
c: I also asked her to tell me what infraction I was guilty of if people had to "Copy & Paste" the web address of my website into their browser to get there? In other words, it was not a direct link from Find-A-Grave, and therefore it wouldn't have been a virus threat for anyone using it since they actually had to leave Find-A-Grave to get to my site.
It goes without saying that Karen continued to stalk me through the following several months, continually pointing out "my policy violation" another dozen or more times about various other memorials. Eventually, I began responding to her memorial suggestions with "The memorial is just fine as it is". And at one point, I even warned her about reporting her continual harassment. Miss Miserable evidently couldn't sleep at night unless she got her way, so she complained to the staff of Find-A-Grave. That's when they, shortly afterwards, fired off a couple of warning emails to me concerning my violation of their policy and telling me to remove them and to play nicely with the other kids......or else be locked out of all of the memorials that I had managed, and quite often created. No appreciation or recognition for several thousands of hours of research, my visiting over 400 cemeteries throughout the U.S. while looking for the grave locations for those men whose memorials were represented. On several of my memorials, I had posted photographs of the military headstones that I had obtained through the Veteran's Administration, and had often personally set, for those men. Please don't misunderstand me, as I am certainly not boasting of my works here. I was always just doing "the right thing" for those men and never had an ego to feed. I still don't. I am simply pointing out that I had invested quite a bit of my time and money in the memorials for those soldiers and Karen couldn't have cared less.
I'm one of those individuals who don't respond very well to candy-coated ultimatums, and so I quit Find-A-Grave, rather than rolling over to Miss Miserable and the two staff members of Find-A-Grave. They never had any intention of ever listening to my side of the story. But just in case you're wondering, I never removed any of the references to my website in those memorials and just went on to transfer all of my memorials to hundreds of other historically interested members. So, don't believe the lie that Find-A-Grave has since posted on my member profile (4thmichiganinfantry) stating that I "retired" and that they now manage them. I quit, and the loss was theirs.
Bringing the