baptisms not recorded on Detail Page when adding this ordinance via Record Hints

lylecookwinterton1

When I go through record hints adding sources, and I add source information to the individual such as death, burial or baptism (by moving from the record on the left to the individual on the right), burial always is automatically added to the persons Detail Page. But baptism (or christening) is never added.

After adding the source for christening, I'm required to go to the detail page, find the source, copy and paste the event location and date, and then manually add this information under the detail page for Christening.

It would be good if that information were added automatically. Is this a system bug?

Gordon Collett

Can you post an example where this is happening? I haven't had any difficulty adding such information via Source Linker.

Paul W

@lylecookwinterton1

I do not recognise as this being a problem with christenings, but certainly if the source has the event as a baptism. With a christening, it should only not be possible to move the event directly to the Vitals section if there is an existing input. However, events categorised as baptisms never go to the Christening section of Vitals, but go to the Other Information section instead.

I, and others, have repeatedly requested that all (infant) baptisms should be categorised as christenings (exactly the same thing), so this problem can be overcome. Unfortunately, FamilySearch engineers (or whoever does the categorising) continue to persist with this current bad and inconsistent practice.

We have been advised that the problem does not arise during the indexing process - where there is no differentiation between baptisms and christenings - so this problem must be created between the indexing stage and the records / sources being put online. Where there are multiple sources for the exact same event, I often even find one or two appear as baptisms, whilst one or two are shown as christenings!

Obviously, this is an issue that can easily be rectified, but FamilySearch chooses not to recognise there is a problem here - and one for which a solution could be easily implemented.

paulav

I have had this happen multiple times. You ask for an example. so here goes.

This is the source from record hints https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:68ST-X8VS

This is the persons ID that I added the source to. GX1W-KZR

The christening field was empty when I attached the source and the infant baptism was added as a custom event baptism.

I have also had this happen consistently with German church records when I am attaching I am attaching.

Gordon Collett

This is a well known issue and common complaint. If a record was indexed as a baptism, as this one was:

then the source linker creates a custom Baptism event. The Vitals section does not have a spot for baptisms, only christening.

It is only when an event is indexed as a christening like this:

that the source linker puts the information under Christening in Vitals.

Unfortunately, while all the events in the "Norway Baptisms, 1634-1927" database were correctly designated as christenings, in the "Norway Church Books, 1815-1930" database, all the christenings were designated as baptisms.

I agree with you that this adds a lot of unnecessary work to get this information in the right place. I do use the source linker to create the baptism event then to go Vitals and copy it into Christening, then delete the baptism event. I really wish this would be corrected. What is really annoying is that if a person has full, complete, well formatted christening information, people still push the baptism information in via the source linker, usually poorly formatted, when they attach source hints. I am spending a lot of time deleting the duplicate custom event.

Julia Szent-Györgyi

Yep, as Gordon says, it all boils down to chance: if the chosen label happened to be "christening", then Source Linker puts it in the correct place, but if the chosen word happened to be "baptism", then it's treated as if it were some sort of leprous other species of event that cannot possibly be Exactly The Same Thing as the event in the Vitals box.

(I have spent many, many words trying to convince people at FS that their distinction is nonsensical, given that no other language besides English even has two separate words for this rite.)

And the reason people add a duplicate baptism when the same exact event is already there as a christening is that Source Linker does not show said christening.

Gordon Collett

And because too many people just attach hints, probably from one of the suggested task lists, without looking afterwards to see what it did to person's details page, which I am really conflicted about. It is great that they are attaching the hints, which saves me work, and all the ones I have run across have been attached to the right people, but I really wish they would go take a look at the person's detail page and clean up after themselves rather than just move on to the next task, which leaves more work for others.