All "Ancestor Hints" not showing all hints
I have hints that are not listed in the all hints list. I would like this problem fixed. My ancestor L1NH-6PL has two hints under two alternate names and none of the names are listed in my "Ancestor Hints" list even when I choose all hints.
Best Answer
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@davidjaygross1 since you are finished with this conversation, please to not read the following. I'm just going to make a few comments for the benefit of others who might be following this.
This series of posts is actually a good demonstration of the value of this forum. It started out with a rather vague complaint which initially several other users had difficulty understanding. Through the discussion, the problem was clarified so now, if desired, an actionable suggestion could be formulated and posted. Not as a bug report, since there is no bug, but as a request to the engineers.
If I were going to post it, I would write:
On the new Home page, there is a section labeled Hints. Three such hints are displayed. At the bottom of this section is a link "Show All." This is easy to misinterpret to mean "Show All Hints On All My Relatives" rather than its actual meaning of "Show All Hints In This Short List of Selected Hints."
In order to prevent confusion, please either change the title of the section back to its former "Recommended Tasks" which never implied this was a comprehensive list of all hints or something similar like "Selection of a Few Hints" or change the wording of the link to something like "Show This List."
As a separate topic, would it be possible to create a comprehensive list of all hints on all people for whom the relationship viewer would show I have a relationship to? I realized this could easily run into the hundreds of thousands of hints, but it still could be useful to have.
We've been assured that pertinent posts do get passed on to the engineers and through the years, many suggestions posted here have been implemented without comments from them. The new features just showed up. It was not long after Family Tree opened in 2012 that requested were posted repeatedly to have a View Relationship function. It seems it took about five years for it to be developed, tested, and released. As another example, shortly after the ability to tag sources to vital information, requestes started being posted to be able to also tag sources to Other Information data. This has been going on for about ten years and now, on the new Detail pages, this function exists.
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Firstly, you need to make corrections to some of the details shown on her page. It is a wonder any accurate hints can be found when she is shown as having a child at the age of 1!
Regarding "hints" in general, it can be useful when FamilySearch offers suggestions, but these do not always match the individual concerned. Also, there are many other records (perhaps not yet indexed) that are probably to be found on the website. It is our responsibility to find this detail, not to rely on FamilySearch's algorithms to produce them for us.
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You missed my point. All hints does not show all hints. I'm discouraged that the few times I have bothered to notate something irregular or make a suggestion, most of the responses are irrelevant or tell me why it can't be done. It appears there is no way to actually contact Family Search developers to report issues or make suggestions.
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@davidjaygross1, both Paul and I are simply fellow users of FS.
I don't quite understand what you mean by "has two hints under two alternate names"; Kaile Raise's profile has no record hints -- unsurprisingly, given the impossible dates -- and only one alternate name. So there's nothing for "All Hints" to show about her.
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Often times the trouble with getting specific answers are insufficient details in someone's post.
Exactly where are you seeing the two hints that are not listed under my "Ancestor Hints"? URL's help. Which list is the "Ancestor Hints" exactly? I don't recall seeing that name anywhere but then I don't use many of those lists for anything. Are you on the website or in the mobile app?
By alternate names, do you mean duplicate profiles? What are the alternate names? Where are you seeing them?
Also, images help. You can only post one image per post.
The programmers can't fix any problem without full and specific details.
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I understand your status. I wasn't expecting someone like you to respond. I was hoping that someone who can actually make a difference with the software and web developers might notice.
It appears there is no way to actually contact Family Search developers to report issues or make suggestions.
I processed those hints so they are not showing as hints now. See the attachment.
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Perhaps @davidjaygross1 has noticed that lately additional sources may be shown on attached sources in the Similar Historical Records list, or in the Descendancy Tree View, while on the Details page the Research Help list is empty.
I am noticing that a lot lately.
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I don't work the descendancy tree much, so I can't comment about hints showing there and not on a person's detail page.
But I do have a few comments. We've been assured in the past that bug reports and suggestions for improvements all get passed on to the appropriate engineering teams and I certainly hope that is still the case. However, it has rarely been the case that replies from them show up here or requests for more information. That is why I generally encourage people to post clear, exact, specific bug reports that outline with full details what one expects to occur and what is actually occurring. The engineers cannot fix anything they cannot reproduce. Then whether something gets fixed or improved depends on where it lands on a priority list and how easy it is to fix. Time span for change can be days, months, or years.
Now to some background on Hints and suggestions. The formal Hint routine that places hints on a person's detail page has been adjusted through the years trying to deal with four types of Hints:
- Hints on a person's detail page that should be there. (True Positives)
- Hints on a person's detail page that should not be there. (False Positives)
- Hints that are not on a person's detail page that should be there. (False Negatives)
- Hints that are not on a person's detail page that should not be there. (True Negatives)
I have no idea of the details, but the hint routine somehow looks at all the information on a person including relationships, all sources, and all rejected hints, to generate a score. A cutoff is set, and if a score is over the cutoff, the hint is posted to a persons page. If the score is below the cut off, it is not.
I have heard in presentations that FamilySearches goal is to have the cutoff set to give the greatest number of True Positives and the smallest number of False Positives on the detail page.
Basic statistics govern such a goal: Try to get every single True Positive, that is, have has few False Negatives as possible, will result in a greater number of False Positives. Try to eliminate every False Positive, and you will get a greater number of False Negatives. You will never be able to have only True Positives and only True negatives. Because there is greater risk for people blindly and incorrectly attaching False Positives, that last I heard from an online presentation last year by Ron Tanner was that the score is set quite high for the Detail page to try to eliminate as many False Positives as possible.
Based on this view, I'll take a look at the two hints you found elsewhere that were not on the Hints list.
The person you reference has on her detail page a first name of Kaile Raise with no last name. She has a single alternate name of Rose with no last name.
Right off the bat, there is a problem here. With no last name, I would assume the hint score is going to plummet. There is simply not enough to match. The Find-A-Grave record has the name Rose Gordon Millman and the birth record has the name Rose Cohen. The only way to get theses sources to show up as a hint would be to set the bar so low that you would end up with hints for Roses of about any last name that even vaguely matched your person.
That is why you really don't have a bug to report. The program is working as designed to protect you from false positive hints.
There are other parts of the web site that have looser criteria for results. For example the Search routine is happy to give you thousands of False Positives for every True Positive. We have to use all the tools we have provided to find all the sources for our relatives. Hints is just one tool and is designed with strict limits to prevent its misuse.
You are the only one that can correct the non-existent problem you are reporting. To do this, add last names, and add every variant name you can discover to her detail page. Add as complete of dates and places as you can determine through research to her detail page. Then the Hint routine will be able to find more records for you.
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add every variant name you can discover to her detail page
For what it is worth, I find this popular advice has become highly counter productive.
Add as complete of dates and places as you can determine through research to her detail page.
This is definitely worth doing.
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The "all hints" that I am referring are found on the home page after you sign in. If you have the "Try new home page features" turned on then you can see all your hints without having to repeatedly press more.
I found another example and I will not process this hint. I attached the family tree showing how I am related because I don't want someone to think that this person is a distant relative and that is why the hint is not appearing on my list. This is the link to his page and there is one hint about the 1910 census. Maurice Berman (1900–Deceased) | Person | Family Tree | FamilySearch. I can't find any way to show all of my hints but I guarantee that he is not listed. Also, his father has the same 1910 census hint and a marriage record hint and his mother has a marriage record hint and neither of them are on my all hints list.
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I don't want someone to think that this person is a distant relative and that is why the hint is not appearing on my list.
No worries. FamilySearch does not know or care who you are; Family Tree is a collaborative tree.
Did you look at the descendancy tree like I suggested? Here is a screenshot, showing several hints are waiting. As I said in my previous comment FamilySearch does not show all hints on the Details page. You have to dig for them. I recommend looking on the descendancy tree.
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Some more improvements for you to make:
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OK, now I see what you are talking about. And the misunderstanding involved. On the home page, there is the Hints list that has a View All link:
This list for my wife has 58 items in it. Here, View All means view all the hints in this list. Clicking it goes to this page where all 58 items can be seen:
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To repeat: View All only means view all the hints in this list. It does not mean view every hint on every ancestor that can be traced in some way to you.
I would assume that FamilySearch has some criteria for selecting these hints and for determining how many to present. I do know that as you deal with all the hints on the list, then within a few days the list will be refreshed and recalculated and give you a few dozen more. Eventually that 1910 census hint would show up here. The programmers probably feel this is a better way to conserve computing resources and to not overwhelm people. Due to a massive record collection released about a year ago, if this list showed hints for all of my wife's relatives, it would probably have not 58 items, but more like 58,000 which is far too many to display in one list. It's nice they are given in manageable chunks instead.
I have always viewed this hint list as something to work on if I don't have anything to do. Generally I am working directly in family lines and work on hints from the Detail pages. I think that is the best way to take care of them all in related groups.
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the Family Tree app has a Descendants with task list which shows hints for up to 5 generations of descendants of any ID. I work from this list because it automatically groups hints with a common ancestor. Unlike the Descendancy view in web Family Tree, only persons with outstanding record hints (or temple tasks if selected) are shown.
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Along with the descendancy chart, you can always use the fan chart to make sure you are taking care of all the hints for direct ancestors. Use the settings button to show hints like this:
The blue people all have hints on them.
But back to your original complaint. There is no "all hints list" and probably never will be due to the cost in computing power and the difficulty of displaying such. There is only a "show all of a few dozen selected hints" list which is periodically refreshed with additional hints as it gets shorter to keep things manageable.
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I've been using the software since it started with PAF. I wasn't looking for explanations regarding the how and why from the community. I have multiple local resources if I have questions.
Family Search shouldn't call it ALL hints then. I only have about 35 names on the list. I have literally thousands of hints on Ancestry. Family Search could limit it to a certain number of generations or within a certain number of cousins if they wanted to.
As I stated before, I was hoping that someone who can actually make a difference with the software and web developers might notice.
It appears there is no way to actually contact Family Search developers to report issues or make suggestions.
I'm done with this subject unless someone who can actually make a difference with the software and web developers wants to contact me.
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This forum is primarily about ordinary users helping each other in finding solutions to problems they encounter. There is rarely full-time employee involvement (e.g. any responses from FamilySearch developers) as we have been advised in the past they are too busy getting on with their day jobs to keep coming here to deal with our queries.
However, it has been advised that the engineers / developers do visit the "Suggest an Idea" section of Community to note any reported bugs and other issues. However (apart from issues related to the New Person Page topic), again they are highly unlikely to respond directly. So, you could slightly rephrase your subject title (and text) and post again at Suggest an Idea, but you will probably only know if your issue has been taken into consideration if / when you see a change indicating the engineers have thought this a valid point and worthy of implementation.
One factor that could be involved (in adoption of your suggestion) is there being the ability of user Community members to "upvote" any suggestions posted at Suggest an Idea. So, in theory at least, a lot more notice would be taken of your point if it gains a lot of support (votes) from other users.
Sadly, I would not advise a great deal of optimism in this case, as many requests for desperately needed enhancements (e.g. a complete overhaul of the structure of the Family Tree Relationship Events section) have still remain unaddressed, many years after suggestions for improvement.
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