Automate unblocking temple work for valid surnames in Family Tree that are in the invalid words list

Bruce Wilkinson · October 7, 2021

Surnames such as "Body" and "Baby" are quite common in Family Tree as legitimate names. The persons that are blocked from showing availability for Temple work span generations in both directions in the tree if they have a surname that is an invalid word with the error message, "This person's name contains one or more invalid words." No example is provided here as a quick search for a surname (Body or Baby) in the list using the Find feature returns too many examples of names with yellow icons and the error message to even page through. A search here in Community, alone, also returns enough examples of the issue to illustrate the scope of the potential for a more efficient process. And the number that are submitted on calls, chats, and emails is not even represented here.

The proposal in this "New Idea" is to automate the clearing of that error for persons who legitimately have surnames that are in the invalid words list. Maybe it's not new but it remains new in terms of being acted on.

This would only be recommended for relatively common surnames. Counting the occurrence of invalid words in surnames is an easy statistical analysis to do--even manually using the find feature in Family Tree--as is deciding from that analysis at what cardinality of occurrence of a surname in the invalid words list to draw the line for the best ROI based on the probability of finding multiple generations of that surname to check against. The main criterion would be to search for ancestral lines containing instances of a frequently occurring "invalid" surname that spans several generations in a line. There are other indicators of validity that can be cross-checked to confirm. Then anyone with that surname in the entire connected ancestral line could be released for Temple work.

A search for the exact surname "Body" returns 646 pages at 25 names per page--or more than 16,000 names. In the current inefficient process, each of those names will eventually have to be requested one to ten at a time on a call, email, chat, or question here in Community, documented for sending to another team by a missionary, and posted for review by the appropriate team who manually review it and manually release it to the requester. This is a time-consuming and tedious process--both for the guest as well as the multiple FS Support missionaries who touch it.

Obviously, prioritizing this value proposition between programmer resources and "free" volunteer missionary resources is really a decision for those who understand the opportunity cost of the current expenditure of "free" labor on this labor intensive process in terms of their truly higher value work that requires brainpower that programs can't supply and that needs to be done to hasten the work.

Dee Smith 111 · November 16, 2021

I have called family search numerous times about this problem. Recently we are working on a family where the last name is Sons and another family where the last name is nephew and we have never had problems before they implemented their latest computer bug. It's super frustrating ~~and~~ I'm sure that our ancestors are frustrated by the people in charge who are holding up our ability to do their Temple work. I always wonder if the people in charge at FamilySearch are people who actually use the system to do family history work. Maybe they do but they must not spend hours researching like the rest of us were they would be super frustrated with all of their new helpful changes!

ifyerhappyanduknowit · November 17, 2021

@Dee Smith 111 I totally understand your frustration. However, I've seen both sides. Whenever something automatic is implemented as you are suggesting, to eliminate the need to contact FamilySearch, others who just want a short cut jump right on board and use it as well, then we are right back to where we were before the restriction was made in the first place. Unfortunately, in order to reduce the number of people taking shortcuts in FamilySearch (and thereby causing more errors than would have happened had there been a restriction), those of us who do the research, insert the correct names and dates, have the proper relationships, etc. have to jump through a few more hoops to get it done.

I'm sorry this is a frustration for you. I've seen way to many mess ups, however, so I'm happy when I have to take some extra steps to get names cleared, because I know more of them are being done correctly. I don't know if this perspective helps even a tiny bit, but it really does help me when I think of it this way.

Good luck with your continued research and I hope your frustration can lessen a bit.

Sincerely,

Tricia