Private Source Boxes (Remove Ability to Edit Other Peoples' Sources)
I use the source box a lot. The way I use it is that I create sources for different record collections, such as the 1891 England Census. Attached is a screenshot of my source box.
Since these are general record collections, they can be attached to hundreds of thousands of people. When I attach a source to an individual, I add a link in the Reason to Attach Source section to give more information. But, I don't change the URL of the source to the URL of an individual record. That changes the URL for EVERYBODY the source is attached to. Recently, my 1891 England Census source was changed to give more details of a George White, one of the many people the source is attached to. The 1891 England Census source is also attached to a William Gerrard, another of the many people the source is attached to who is totally unrelated to George White. Here is the newly edited source in William Gerrard's sources.
You can see how this presents a problem. By changing the source to provide more details for George White, every other person who has this source attached to them, which is over 500, will have inaccurate information about some random person.
Sources from the source box should not be editable by people other than the creator. If you have created the sources, you should not have to worry about them being changed by others. This change would help me out tremendously as I am someone who uses the source box constantly, so I hope that this change will be implemented.
Comments
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Michael
I am just another 'lowly' User/Patron ...
Just in passing ...
As an aside ...
Regarding, the "Sources" 'Tab', for William GERRARD ( 27G7-4RY ) ...
ie. https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/sources/27G7-4RY
Just so that you are aware ...
This is what OTHER Users/Patrons 'see' ...
ie. NOT quite the same; as, your 'Image" ...
Brett
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Aack! Ohmygoodness NO!
To my thinking, you're totally misusing the Source Box and completely misunderstanding what a source citation even is. Your "citations" are equivalent to telling someone that "the word contumelious is in the Oxford English Dictionary": true, but utterly useless. What possible utility is there in attaching an entire collection as a source for an individual profile? I'd have to re-do whatever search you've already done in order to find the information relevant to that person, meaning that the "citation" may as well not be there, for all the good it does.
One of the beauties of FamilySearch's Source Box tool is that it allows me to only do a task once: if, while exploring Aunt Myrtle's sources, I discover that I made a typo in my transcription of Uncle Hubert's obituary, I can fix the typo right there in Aunt Myrtle's sources, and it'll be fixed on Uncle Hubert's profile, too, and on all of their siblings and children and other profiles where it has been attached as a source. This is emphatically a Very Good Thing.
If I encountered a generic reference to an entire collection on a profile's Sources tab, I would assume that it was the result of some sort of error or misunderstanding, and I would either edit it to be more specific, or -- if there was already a more-specific reference cited -- I'd detach it. If I kept encountering the generic reference, I suppose I would eventually think to check the citation's attachments (by clicking the title and then View); I have no idea what I'd make of the result of one of your hundreds-of-thousands-of-people entities, but I think "flabbergasted" would describe my state of mind.
It's unfortunate that this forum does not allow downvotes.
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Thank you for taking the time to respond to my suggestion, although the condescending and adversarial tone is a little surprising, given that we are both working toward the same goal of learning about our ancestors and linking our families together. Allow me to better explain what I am suggesting.
I'm not saying that you shouldn't be able to edit your own sources or that changing a source should not change it for all references, nor am I saying that you shouldn't be able to detach sources attached by others. I'm saying that other people shouldn't be able to edit your sources.
We use the source box differently. I use it so that I don't have to create new sources for every new person. As for the citation, I previously mentioned that when I attach sources, I link the URL in the Reason to Attach Source. The link is available so later researchers know what I am referencing. However, I don't think the source is totally useless without a URL. The purpose of a source, in my view, is to say how you got the information given in the FamilySearch person profile. Using your dictionary analogy, if you wanted to know where the definition of the word contumelious was found, a source telling you it is in the Oxford English Dictionary is not entirely useless. You simply can open the dictionary and search for contumelious, knowing it is in there. Likewise for a source without a URL. Trusting that the reference is correct, you can search the record collection specifically using the information from the FamilySearch person and find the reference the majority of the time. But, I still understand that a source with a URL is always better than a source without. That's why I add it with every source.
Regardless, I don't think we disagree on my suggestion. You can still edit your own sources and detach other people's sources. All I am suggesting is that you shouldn't be able to edit others' sources because you don't know how they use sources and the source box.
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Yes, I changed the source back.
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@michaelbenjaminbeecher1, I apologize if my tone came across wrong; what I was (and am) feeling primarily is incredulously confused.
The point of my dictionary analogy is that saying "contumelious is in the OED" doesn't tell me anything that I didn't already know: every English word can be reasonably expected to be in the OED. Likewise, every Englishman who was alive in 1911 can reasonably be expected to be somewhere in the 1911 England census, so seeing a source title of "1911, 1911 England Census" in his source box tells me exactly nothing.
When I fix a typo in the citation for Uncle Herbert's obituary, I don't care whether it's my typo or my godmother's or an utter stranger's. I just care that (a) I can fix it, and (b) it'll be fixed everywhere, i.e. I don't need to repeat my efforts. If anything, I'd like the linked-citations concept expanded, not reduced. (See for example my suggestion for adding an "attach" button to the "view - show all" screen: https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/120662/can-we-please-have-an-attach-button-on-viewed-sources#latest.)
A group of linked citations links all of the editable fields of the citation, including the title. This means that the title for such a group needs to be somewhat generic: "John Smith and household, Southwark, 1911 census" rather than "baby Jane Smith in household of John Smith, Southwark, 1911 census". As you've noticed and capitalized on, the only profile-specific field is the reason box, which in this example could hold the "baby Jane Smith" part. But seeing "John Smith and household, Southwark, 1911 census" in Jane's Sources list is actually useful: it tells me not just the what and when, but also something of the who and where and why. I don't need to expand the citation to learn something from it or to mentally categorize it.
In your setup, the surprising thing is not that people change the citations to be more specific, but that they don't do so more often. They're just trying to create useful entries on their relative's Sources tab. The fact that this then creates a problem on all of the totally-unrelated people it's also attached to is not their fault. It's a result of your use of the Source Box tool contrary to its design or intended use.
One flaw in the current implementation of the linked-citations concept is its invisibility: an individual, unlinked citation looks exactly the same as an instance of a linked group. Perhaps this could be the key to your issue when people expect your non-standard usage to behave like usual. If an instance of a linked group of citations had a different icon than a one-off citation (as of an index entry), then people could tell that changing the meaningless title to something more specific may have unintended consequences.
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