more easily change information when adding new records

KarenGreding1

In Ancestry when comparing records it allows you to make corrections, additions or changes right then. In Family Search when adding a record you have to write down the changes, and after adding the new source, go back into the Details page and then go to edit and make changes then. It would save a whole lot of time if you could just change it right when you are adding a new record.

Cindy Hecker

While I understand this request, and have felt that way I also know that some of the reasons for not having that edit option at source attaching page is because it slows down bad changes. There are lots of newbie and untrained people working in the shared tree, who can get click happy and make edits quickly and without being careful. By making the editing a second step, it slows bad changes. Those who are more diligent will time the time to edit the information and I appreciate those that take that time.

Cindy

Gordon Collett

To echo what Cindy has written, when you are attaching a new source in the Source Linker, you cannot see all the information on a person so that you are able to determine if the existing information is correct and the source you have is incorrect. For example if you are adding a birth source that has the birth date of 5 July 1920 and the Family Tree record has the birth date of 5 August 1920, when adding the source you cannot see that the Family Tree record has ten other birth sources showing 5 August 1920 or read the carefully constructed Reason Statement that thoroughly explains why the 5 July 1920 date cannot be correct.

In addition, when attaching a source, you are only seeing the indexed version of the information which can easily have transcription errors and is often formatted incorrectly. You need to check the actual record and you will likely need to go into the Family Tree record and edit it directly anyway.

Accuracy is more important than speed.

One thing that can help, is to dispense with the paper and pencil and just the correctly edit right on the screen to start with. For example, if adding a birth source, you can set things up like this:

Here I have the Family Tree page open to edit the christening date. I can see if there are other sources and/or a Reason Statement. I can copy and paste the complete christening date from the indexed record and fix the format if I need to after comparing it with the record image to make sure the record was transcribed correctly. Then I can attach the source and not need to transfer any information in the Source Linker at all. The extra minute this takes is well worth the time to make sure Family Tree is accurate.