Clarify birth/christening date and place in the "person navigator" dialog
I have a suggestion for an improvement, which should be easy and very helpful.
It's about the dialog that I'll call the "person navigator", since I don't know what you call it. It comes up when you click on a person in the person page of Family Tree. It contains the person's birth and death info; links to Sources, Memories, Collaborate, etc; a temple ordinance summary; and then links to select the person in the tree or the person screen.
Bring up PID MF4B-P2W and display the person page. It shows John Walton, his wife, and his children. Then click the name of the first child Anne Walton. Notice that the "person navigator" window shows only a birth place, no date. Select that person, and see that she has a birth place, and a christening date and place. That's fairly common. The records give a christening date and place (at the church), plus a residence of the family at the time, but no birth date.
I think the logic of the "person navigator" is to show the christening info, but if the birth info exists, then to show that instead. I suggest it should not show the partial birth info. It should show the birth info only if it's complete (has a date and place). The full christening is more helpful than a partial birth.
Of course other choices are possible. You could show the birth place and the christening date, etc. You can choose the best approach. But choose a method that always shows a date and a place (if they exist, of course).
Comments
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(I think I've seen that thing referred to as the "person card" or "profile summary card".)
I think one reason FS hasn't cluttered the card with both birth and christening (or both death and burial) is that in most settings, you can glean the gist of both events without needing to go to the profile. For example, when you click Anne Walton's name in the list of John Walton's children, her dates ("1671-Deceased") are right there underneath. The absence of the date from the card actually clarifies things, because it makes it clear that the date is not entered in the birth field, and therefore must be inferred from the christening.
(I kinda hope that the firstborn Anne died before Hannah was born, because otherwise we have sisters with the same name....)
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I often share your experience of this, so - when I feel it appropriate (i.e. if the partial birth detail is less useful than the christening detail) - I delete the Birth detail from the Vitals section. I provide a reason statement like, "Deleted to allow display of the more useful christening detail". I far prefer seeing (on the person card / profile summary card) detail like: "(Christening) 23 August 1843 Great Oakley, Essex, England, United Kingdom" than the detail provided if I only have the birth registration record to hand. This will read: "September 1843, Tendring, Essex, England, United Kingdom" - where "September 1843" is the "Quarter" in which the birth was registered (if the birth registration was late, this could even read "December 1843") and "Tendring" is the registration district - which covered numerous villages (including Great Oakley) in that area.
I hope others will see my point - researchers of England & Wales records certainly will! Why display less (on the person card) when much fuller detail can be displayed? I admit my argument for this action is not so good if the christening took place many months (perhaps years) after the child's birth! I think I would allow common sense to take precedence on occasions like this. (In this example, detail obtained from the 1851 E&W census would probably be the best data to input.)
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