Too easy to mess it up; hard to fix errors
I love the many features (some new) that enable finding and attaching sources, etc. However, a few tweaks need to be made to guide the less careful patrons. I do know that familysearch is a shared tree and not my tree.
For example, I have some ancestors with first and last names that are very common for their area. Even though I've added an Alert Note, people keep adding records that do not apply. I know this because they are usually census records and my people were living in another town as per the Census.
Some suggestions:
1) So I'm asking that when there is an Alert Note, or a Not a Match, please put up a verification screen. For example, if I use the new All Collections Search and I see a record that I've already marked as Not a Match, and I have added an Alert Note, there is no warning on attaching the record to the person. So if a less careful patron does not see that the info conflicts (and sometimes it's subtle), then we get errors.
2) While it's wonderfully easy to add, please help us to remove bad links. When I've had to remove an incorrect source, the tags are particularly hard to remember to remove too. Please help me to be thorough.
3) Please detect errors better. An easy example would be when 2 records of the same type exist on a person, such as christening, census, or death, and the locations are wildly different, please offer that as a problem to check out.
Thanks so much. FamilySearch is really awesome and I love the mission of a single human family tree.
-Devon
Comments
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As you have acknowledged, even an Alert Note does not deter certain users from their careless work. I was particularly pleased with this new feature, but other users have completely ignored my remarks and added incorrect data or carried out merges with unconnected individuals.
The merge process in itself is far better than in the past, with warnings (in red) if dates are only slightly different on the two profiles and the fact highlighted if there have been previous merges carried out.
As long as Family Tree retains an open-edit format I can't see how these problems will ever be resolved. You soon realise what you are up against after sending a polite message to a user who carried out the careless work. Either I get no reply at all (I have repeatedly tried to contact one particular contributor who has carried out damaging work, but never had a response), or it's a case of, "Thank you for advising me - (full stop)".
Perhaps more could, and should, be done to restrict the problem, but nothing will deter the determined wreckers, I'm afraid.
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I don't think detecting errors is always black and white. When you get back several hundred years, or into locations where there has been record loss, it can be very, very difficult to determine if a name was 2 people or actually the same person. When someone keeps adding a "son" of the same name as the father, yet you feel there was no son, there was only the father with that name, it could be that no good sources ferret that out. Perhaps only questionable [in your mind] sources prove the son existed. I don't think it is reasonable at all to have a computer "detect" errors.
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Instead of getting the computer to help out with stuff that it's bad at, such as recognizing errors versus variations, I think what we need is an easier-to-use change log or undo mechanism: some method by which fixing an error is just as easy and straightforward as it was to introduce it. The problem is, I have no clue how to achieve that. If the "restore" function on the old conclusion was moved, becoming an "undo" function on the new conclusion, would that make it easier to fix errors, or would it create new problems? And how can changes to relationships, which affect multiple profiles, be best presented in the change log so that it's clear what was done to whom?
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