Life Sketch miss-used to "warn" people
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I'll let the mobile device users say how much they do. We design the site for several different sizes. While not all of the features are displayed in the same way. We need to make sure the feature works well for everyone.
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@Gail Swihart Watson and @lyleblunttoronto1 it appears that the About page could even be renamed "Life Sketch" or "Life Summary" or for the sake of brevity, "Life"! And yes, @Gail Swihart Watson that would be an excellent option to have the Collaborate get some attention and display the notes and discussions; do you think a pod at the right side of the Details page would be more visible to the user than having it automatically open in the side panel after opening the Person page or Details page? Whatever happens, it must be a siren going off to get the attention of the user and avoid unnecessary changes that cause data issues. I've always thought that having the Sources and Collaborate page highlighted in some way is critical; they are the most important and the most ignored friends of the avid researcher.
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Ottley BQ Your comment, "do you think a pod at the right side of the Details page would be more visible to the user than having it automatically open in the side panel after opening the Person page or Details page?" was addressed in my comment. I said "... similar to the Latest Changes pod." Latest changes automatically opens in the side panel. So, your suggestion is exactly what I was making except I used the word pod to indicate the side panel is full of square things with different purposes.
Right now on the new person page, the top thing I'm calling a pod is research helps. Three are displayed and then there is a show all link. My suggestion would have a 2 part pod: notes, with the first 3 displaying and discussions with the first 3 displaying each with a show all link.
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I think I quite like the side-pod, if that is what we are going to call those now, idea. That may be just what Collaboration needs. I don't think discussions need to go there. I would picture what @Gail Swihart Watson and @Ottley BQ are describing to be something like this mock-up:
This would be sufficiently out of the way to not have any reason to close it.
If there were no notes, it would be small enough to not be in the way. It would then have the same configuration as Research Helps in this image.
Clicking on an entry or icon or Show All should go to the current Collaborate tab.
The title and one line of text may be sufficient instead of two lines of text. Don't know if More needs to be there instead of the ellipsis.
One thing that would need to be included somehow is a way for users to select which three notes would appear on the Detail page. It won't do much good to have an anti-merge warning be twentieth in a list of notes. Maybe there could be check boxes so that users could check up to three high priority notes. Or maybe notes should have the same drag and drop ordering system that the source page has so the three most important notes could be dragged to the top of the list.
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I don't see why Discussions couldn't be included in the same pane. They could have a different icon, but they have the same title-and-text setup as notes, so the same type of summary would work for them.
I think the ellipses are the better choice if clicking the note opens a different pane or page; a "MORE" link would imply that it adds the rest of the text in the same pane, which would be unworkable for long notes. Consistency with the other panes in the right-hand column would call for the note or discussion to be shown in a side panel, like they initially were in the new format, but they'd need to make sure that formatting and whitespace were preserved.
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I love these Ideas.
Personally, I’ve been playing with the idea of a note types or tagging like sources.
A general type would show in the side panel like you mocked out above.
Other conclusions could show note links above the sources when you see details and edit.
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I have seen virtually no valid uses of the Life Sketch field. I would rather see it iconified (i.e. separate tab), e.g.:
About Details Sources (20) Collaborate (0) Memories (0) Life Sketch (1)
In its place, I would rather see the subject lines from the Notes fields. These fields are more suited for the research notes and processing instructions that we often find in the Life Sketch field, and it is important that they be displayed prominently.
As for using a tablet for the "genealogy" part, I use my 11" tablet in landscape mode on a daily basis for genealogy. More complex work (e.g. creative work using the Film Viewer) is usually reserved for my dual-monitor desktop setup.
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Bruce Compton "I have seen virtually no valid uses of the Life Sketch field." Why do you think you are the authority? Any use of Life Sketch which conveys information is a valid use. End.
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I have been following this discussion with growing concern. Moving the Collaborate from a "side pod" to the center of the screen just below the heading was, in my view, a big step forward. At the same time, the programmers fixed a formatting problem that existed in the side pod: showing the notes in an extremely narrow field with all the formatting missing.
I worry that moving the notes to a narrow side pod will resurrect the problem of a too-narrow and too-long field which may play havoc with the formatting. I much prefer the wide field for the notes which the programmers created a week ago when they moved Collaborate to center stage.
In the mock-up by Gordon Collett, above, the side pod/pane for notes has a clickable "SHOW ALL." Would it be possible to show the notes in a wide pane when the SHOW ALL is clicked?
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@gravelleus my thought, and the intent of the "side-pod," was to give clear indication that Notes actually exit and might contain important information by showing the title and first few words of the notes. But then actually just be a glorified "icon" to get people to click on anything in the pod or the Show All link to jump to the current full screen, fully formatted Collaborate tab. I don't think there is any way to squeeze the entire notes section in to a side panel as was tried unless notes are limited to a dozen words or less.
Show All in the other sections, that is, Research Helps and the Change Log, does jump to a full screen page.
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Instead of yet another type of collaboration note, perhaps it would be better to just properly separate conclusion explanations from change log reasons. The existing persistent "reason" boxes ("Reason This Information Is Correct") already basically behave like conclusion explanations, except for the absence of a separate change log reason when you make any change, and the error message if you don't change the note when editing a conclusion.
I envision something like:
Name (19 sources)
nagyrápolti Szent-Györgyi Albert Imre [edit icon]
Conclusion Notes: The noble predicate is properly lowercase, to differentiate it from a surname. He didn't use it, but other people did and do, especially after the Nobel.
Last changed: March 4, 2020 [Julia Szent-Györgyi]
Then in the Change Log, there'd be:
Vital Changed Name March 4, 2020 Current
nagyrápolti Szent-Györgyi Albert Imre [Julia Szent-Györgyi]
Conclusion Notes: The noble predicate is properly lowercase, to differentiate it from a surname. He didn't use it, but other people did and do, especially after the Nobel.
Change summary: fixed capitalization of noble predicate and added note
And clicking the edit icon would give both a "Conclusion Notes" box and a "Change Summary" box; the former would contain whatever had been entered previously, if anything, while the latter would be empty (except for maybe some suggested text, along the lines of "fixed typo").
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THIS POST IS ALSO in the thread about the placement of the Life Sketch.
I am one of those researchers who use the Life Sketch "incorrectly." But, I also use it "correctly." I must note that I'm also a Certified Genealogist and have been researching for over 45 years.
Some of my ancestral lines have been very, very challenging to research and I've spent hundreds of hours researching them and proving relationships. Some of these relationships have required that I write proof arguments with many footnotes. Consequently, I want to ensure that this research is not easily ignored. But, there is currently no "correct" way to do this on the Person Page of FamilySearch's tree. And, so, I, like others, have used the most prominent editable field to alert other users to read my research before making changes. Please, either don't move the Life Sketch to the bottom, or put an editable field for "Alerts" or "Important Notes" or something of that nature. Please include the first few lines of the text entered in view also.
If you want to see how I "incorrectly" and "correctly" use this field, here is one example: https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/G996-VMS
John Carter is my 4th Great Grandfather and because of misinformation that was published in the early 1900s in a noteworthy book, his identity has been hidden, and a person who did not exist has appeared in family trees where he rightfully belongs. His wife has also been misidentified and not connected to her parents. I use John as an example because it took me over 40 years to finally find his, and his wife's, true identities and connect them to their children and parents. There is also a 16-page proof argument attached as a memory on FamilySearch: https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/memories/G996-VMS (John Carter in "The Misunderstood Ancestry of the Anne Carter Family")
I must also share that I volunteer at the Family History Library helping patrons with German research. I have found in the last few years that more and more patrons are shying away from using the FamilySearch tree and moving to Ancestry as their primary family tree. Invariably this is because they feel that if they put information on the FamilySearch tree it will just get changed - regardless of how many sources they add. There is a real need for a simple and clear way for users to protect their research. If FamilySearch doesn't address this problem I believe we will continue to see advanced researchers avoiding using the tree in favor of Ancestry and other online trees. If this happens, I believe we will see the tree become less and less accurate and seasoned researchers will suggest other trees to those that they influence.
Although FamilySearch has a broad audience, and users that range from professional researchers to children, I know that the goal is for the tree to be accurate. To be accurate, the information that has taken so much time and effort to discover must be protected from the casual user who may unintentionally modify the information that took many hours, days, weeks, months, or years to prove.
I will continue to use the FamilySearch Tree as my primary tree - but I will "incorrectly" use whatever fields that are available to protect my research.
Kimball G. Carter, Certified Genealogist
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Here are a couple of ideas on incorporating an Important Research Notes into the interface.
Aren't our important research notes really Research Help? If we have information that will impact research of others perhaps this is a better way to share it and make sure others are aware of it.
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Of all of the ideas presented, I think that I like best the display of the Collaboration note headers above the Research Help area. It would be even better if we could change the order of the notes.
Putting the notes above the Vitals makes sense, but it pushes everything else down the screen. When considering small screens (think tablets), this is very much to be avoided.
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The FamilySearch Tree has a unique challenge - the tree is intended to be a one-world tree, which requires collaboration if the tree is to be accurate. Why do many users love Ancestry or My Heritage? Largely because no one can change their trees - they don't have to deal with the collaboration issue. So, if the FamilySearch Tree is to be accurate and require collaboration, then more importance must be placed on promoting collaboration. Whatever you want to call it, "Collaborate," "Discussions," "Research Notes" or "Life Sketch." There has to be more prominence, and emphasis on, placement and size/color/etc. on these areas. Burying these areas will make the tree less accurate, which is difficult to imagine!
The words "Collaborate" and "Discussions" aren't active enough - words like "Caution," "Alert" and/or "Important" should be explored. Red should be explored, also Yellow. I have found that on FamilySearch the Red "!" for Data Problems is pretty effective and makes the user stop and look. This is partly due to the fact that it's about the only place Red is used on the site and also our natural association of the color as a warning. However this area ends up, it seems to me like it should receive the same level of importance/emphasis as "Data Problems" does.
It's interesting to think for a moment about the Data Problems icon. This appears when dates don't work [like a child being born before a parent], or when placenames don't match the FamilySearch placenames - interesting. In the past, I've found that I get data problems mostly if I enter a placename that doesn't match the FamilySearch placename database. These are all automatically generated cautions - so, if we care so much about those automated cautions why not provide a more prominent way for the users who do actual research to alert others and preserve their hard-earned data?
Personally, I believe "Important Research Notes" (or something like that) should be the first thing the user sees and it should include the first line of text that has been entered. Understandably, it should be aesthetically pleasing, but it also should stand out. FamilySearch should encourage users to post warnings when they are backed up by research, not discourage them. The tree would be better with more warnings, more notes, more sources, more memories, etc. The goal is to be the most accurate one-world tree, isn't it?
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@lyleblunttoronto1 I LOVE the idea of notes that allow tagging! I would love to be able to create a quick note about a birth date that is commonly entered, but is not actually correct, and attach it to the birth event. You could then see it if you attempt to edit the birth date, if you attempt to merge someone, or if you just look at the Collaborate tab.
Can we also attach it to a Discussion so that people can dispute it, if needed?
I'm OK with the idea of putting the collaboration section in a pod at the top of the right column on the Details page. I would prefer to see it replace the Life Sketch at the top of the page.
My concern with that though, is that all of the Collaboration tabs I've seen are either empty or full of gibberish. I was just looking at Susanna Hunt K8JD-ZQN today, for instance. Collaborate tab has 7 entries. All of them imported during the original creation of the tree or shortly after. They're a combination of gibberish text added to the file by software when a GEDCOM was created and old disputes transported from the previous family tree system.
Is there a plan for cleaning this up before everything is moved around? If this gibberish ends up in a section on the Details page, people are just going to start ignoring it there too.
I like how Geni.com handles discussions. They also just have a tab, labeled Discussions, on the person profile. So also not very conspicuous. But it actually gets used a lot. For real discussions. Starting a discussion in a person's tab also creates a topic in the general Discussions area of the website. It's possible to tag other users & other person profiles in a discussion. Then the discussion shows up those person's tabs, too. This increases the visibility of the conversation & encourages more participation.
I also still like the idea of having the ability to redirect people to other profiles. A "Not to be confused with ...link..." statement just under a person's name. I can think of many people I would use this for.
Of course, if this is done, there has to be a way to prevent people from just going in & changing someone into a completely different person, which I have seen happen a lot. Hopefully the collaboration improvements we're talking about would help prevent that.
I'm honestly not a fan of the Life Sketch. I've seen it used very few times as an actual Life Sketch. I'm surprised that there are roughly 3.7 million entries that might actually constitute a valid life sketch. The ones I have seen are not backed up by sources. There might be some records attached to the person that corroborate some details, but usually they're just a story someone wrote, or copied from Find A Grave, with no way to verify any of it.
If we're going to put this much effort into figuring out what to do with the Life Sketch, I feel like we should also improve it so that sources can be attached. Maybe Life Sketch is one of the options that should be available when you tag a source in the Sources tab.
This whole discussion is kind of contradictory to me. We have this Life Sketch & About page that is just full of information with almost no focus on sources on the one hand. And then all the concerns about all of the erroneous data entered all the time and strong tactics to prevent it on the other.
If it's that difficult to guarantee quality data, do we really need a whole unsourced Life Sketch & an entire landing page of unsourced details for every new beginner on Google to copy & post on all the other websites?
The best thing about the FamilySearch tree compared to other collaborative trees is the ability to attach original sources & the sheer amount of sources available. This is a checks & balances system that no other website has, especially not Ancestry. This is the most important feature of the FamilySearch tree, in my mind. I feel like this About landing page, that is probably the first thing beginners are going to see, is just going to give them the impression that everything about a person has been worked out & that what they see is their complete & undisputed story. They're not going to be encouraged to learn about the value of sources in general and the valuable sourcing tools on FamilySearch.
Too much of the erroneous information on the web is being perpetuated by people that haven't learned yet that trees on the internet can't be trusted. How do we get them past the landing page & right to the sources & discussions so that they can start to understand what internet genealogy actually entails?
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@redheadkelly : My concern with that though, is that all of the Collaboration tabs I've seen are either empty or full of gibberish. I was just looking at Susanna Hunt K8JD-ZQN today, for instance. Collaborate tab has 7 entries. All of them imported during the original creation of the tree or shortly after. They're a combination of gibberish text added to the file by software when a GEDCOM was created and old disputes transported from the previous family tree system.
Is there a plan for cleaning this up before everything is moved around? If this gibberish ends up in a section on the Details page, people are just going to start ignoring it there too.
Unfortunately no automatic routine can tell gibberish from meaning writing and FamilySearch trying to do so is just courting disaster. Also, just like all the other data on a family, no one at FamilySearch would have the background information to clean any of this up. It can only be us users who can fix these entries as much as we can. Notes can be edited by anyone. There are some types of discussions that cannot be deleted and that is part of why I don't think discussions should be in any type of pod on the detail page, just the Notes.
So just like all those nonsense Legacy NFS Sources that we need to evaluate and detach, meaningless or wrong notes will need to be edited or deleted. Many of the notes I see should not be notes at all, but rather stories or documents under Memories. I've just left them alone under the theory that no one paid any mind to notes anyway. But if the Notes section develops a prominent and meaningful role on the Detail page, then we have one more area of people's pages to deal with that has been sadly neglected.
Looking at Susanna, you might as well start. Five of her notes just need to be deleted. The one that actually has information needs to be written and taken out of all caps and potentially moved to be a note on the source it refers to which I hope is attached to her record. If she's your family, you might as well take this on. It's too bad no one can do anything about the Legacy disputes.
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@redheadkelly wrote:
I would love to be able to create a quick note about a birth date that is commonly entered, but is not actually correct, and attach it to the birth event.
You can already do something very like this, by using the "reason" box. It will only show if detail view is on or when editing the conclusion, but the system will squawk if someone tries to edit the birth without changing the "reason", which would hopefully serve to reinforce the message.
Some might consider this to be at least a slight misuse of the reason box, but I disagree: FS conflates conclusion notes and change log reasons, and the persistent boxes -- like the ones on Vitals events -- function a whole lot better as conclusion notes. Filling them in with actual change log reasons results in disconcerting nonsense showing on the profile. "Reason this information is correct: fixing typo." Unfortunately, this means that there is no place to leave actual change log reasons for most conclusions, except with a messy kludge of editing twice. (First, fix the typo and enter "fixing typo", then edit again to delete "fixing typo", hoping that the reason for doing so can go without saying.)
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As I've been following comments here, I've also been thinking more about the side pod idea and would like to revisit it and add a couple of suggestions while the designers are working on this (I'm being an optimist!) as I hope they have time to.
Adjusting the Detail page proposal I posted earlier to include suggested icons:
Reading @redheadkelly's post reinforced my thought that only Notes should be included in the side pod for two reasons. 1) There are too many junk discussions from New Family Search that no one can delete. 2) Since discussions can only be edited or deleted by the original poster, one user would be able to hijack the Detail page side pod to only show his or her own opinion that no one else could modify or remove, violating the wiki-philosophy of the site.
I would want them arranged so that there is some limit to the number of notes shown here. Three seems a minimum with five probably the maximum with notes marked as warnings coming first no matter their date, otherwise in reverse chronological order since that is how Latest Changes is arranged and what people are used to seeing.
Clicking Show All would go to the full Notes page where the usual reverse chronological order would be fine still. The warning notation should be added:
The editing box would be the appropriate place to set the warning flag:
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Gordon's "pod" suggestion is excellent. The only feature of the Life Sketch that it's missing is placement (visibility) during a merge, but that's a function of the merge tool, not of the person page.
Speaking of wiki philosophy, is this a good time and place to raise the idea of drastically revising how Discussions work? Uneditability is often a problem, and the function is not different enough from Notes for most people (me included) to keep track of which is which, so my vote is to just make them into Notes.
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@lyleblunttoronto1 the high level statistics you provide are very helpful in understanding the issues with Life Sketch, and also highlight the great need for users to have a prominent place for collaboration, discussion, notes, warnings, etc. My question is, will there be an attempt to programmatically segregate and migrate this information to the "appropriate location" once the decision has been made as to where the information belongs? Or will this be the responsibility of the user? Personally, I believe Life Sketch heading and the About heading should somehow be merged, since they both appear to serve the same purpose, which is another discussion. However, based on your high level stats 2/3's of the information would need another home - how would you envision that being accomplished?
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I can't imagine any way to correctly move information in a life sketch to a warning note by any automatic process. What possible criteria could be developed?
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Regarding Julia's suggestion about possibly combining Notes and Discussions, I see arguments pro and con. I'd like to suggest something I've been raising in Feedback for years: get rid of the word "Collaborate" completely. It may be a nice verb that describes the bedrock philosophy of Family Tree itself, but it in no way describes or suggests that "Notes" and "Discussions" are located thereunder. How many users never think to click on "Collaborate" because they don't understand what is contained there? I recommend scrapping the word, and having two words on that header line: "Notes" and "Discussions" - or one word "Notes," if the two are combined.
I also like Gordon's "side pod" idea for the reason he mentions in his 19 August post: to give a "clear indication that Notes actually exist." I'd not limit them to five notes, however. For those of us who have been doing genealogy for years before Family Tree existed, our notes contain our sources, and support all the names, dates, places and relationships that we have entered into Family Tree (mine do at least). And, these source notes are available to facilitate finding and attaching the actual records, which admittedly is a far superior and modern technique of documentation.
Adrian J. Gravelle
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No, no, not a limit on the number of notes! Keep the note page just as it is. But there is only so much room on the detail page. The Change Log display is limited to three even when the Change Log is miles long. The Research Helps side pod shows up to three each of data problems, hints, and research suggestions and when all nine are there, that is a bit too long. The full page of Research Helps is unlimited. Notice in my mock up above, after the word Notes is the number of how many notes will be found on the Notes page.
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The method used to categorize the life sketch data was a very rudimentary word selection search. It is full of assumptions and there are plenty of known exceptions to the assumptions. To do this properly would take building a computer AI in every language to sort the data.
We’ve thought about providing full page view tools or quick copy buttons to help in the clean up. These kind of tools or even partial automatic clean up are all dependent on the final solution.
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FYI, this is a very helpful and healthy discussion for UX and product management. Please continue to share your ideas and promote ideas others have suggested about life sketch, collaboration, notes, discussions, warnings, and impedence.
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It appears the About page is intended to engage the youth and novice users. I’m not sure many serious genealogical researchers would ever look at that page. If the Life Sketch is moved there, then it’s unlikely serious researchers will ever see it. That means there needs to be some other way of communicating research issues to other users. As has been suggested, a Research Warnings or Research Notes section needs to be added to the Details page.
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Lyle--
In terms of mobile devices, I don't know how you define 'doing genealogy'. I routinely make simple corrections and link indexed sources using the tablet's keyboard. When at a library, I use a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse to add information and to create notes and sources. I have tried to use the Film Viewer on my tablet, but there is a bug that makes the Film Viewer cumbersome to use on the Android platform. Unmerging is a task that I usually perform on the desktop.
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I can't disagree more - I'm a serious researcher and I know other serious researchers who use the Life Sketch both as a place to display a life story and as a place to post warnings. Although I advocate for an area for "Warnings" etc., I also advocate for more user areas where we can post information that others will see easily to protect our research. It's too easy for casual users and inexperienced users to ignore sources and memories that might make it more obvious to these users that there has been serious research done on a person, and that they shouldn't mess it up.
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I'm going to stand up for keeping the "Life Sketch" where it is and the way it has been displayed in the past. But, I would suggest the name be modified to "Life Sketch and Important Notices." In my opinion that's what it has become and this would also make it a clear home for "Warning" by expanding the name. It's position on the page would make it difficult to ignore which I believe none of the other suggestions so far really addresss as well. Also, if the name were changed to this, the words "Important Notices" would draw greater attention to the area - we need more attention to this critical information that some of us are "hijacking" currently.
Given the challenges of an open tree where anybody and everybody can, and do, change anything and everything, this solution would be simple and accommodate the users who have worked hard to draw attention to their research. Of course, there may be some abuse - so simply put a "Report Abuse" link in the field as some sites do. Personally, I've never seen any abuse on FamilySearch.
We've all become accustomed to the real estate occupied the the "Life Sketch" in it's current position, users typically hate changes to the interface anyway, so let's simply modify the field to serve the users who have found a great way to use it and still accommodate the original intent of the field if users choose to use it in that way. This is a win, win solution.
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