User Experience
Hello FS Team
Thanks for looking into these issues for me:
1) Just made a beautiful long post to request help researching an ancestor and it literally disappeared. It was titled “Family Beard (Catholics, South Africa 1900s)”. No explanation, no warning, not put into drafts for editing. Just gone.
I tried posting something else, as a test, that was not removed: https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/147156/my-discussion-disappeared#latest
2) Several source-linking problems that could be rectified or improved:
- “OTHER” tab, residences don’t attach or record properly in some cases
- “FAMILY” tab, marriages are not always recorded as events or tagged with sources
- “VITALS” sections have reason boxes that are not updated with each new source
3) Occupations are often they only distinguishing factor between families of identical origins and names. This should be included under “Vitals” (not “Other”) and should definitely become part of the indexing process.
4) Blue “Discussions”, “Bookmarks” etc links are redundant and either don’t show any information or the wrong information:
https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussions/mine
I imagine more detail is needed to explain the above suggestions which I am happy to provide on reply, to avoid extra long post and especially since this might get deleted somehow without warning! :(
Thank you
Comments
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1) Another user here, not FS Team, but what probably happened is an annoying flaw here in Communities. You can be signed in and have your session time out without any indication that you have been. If you write a post then, when you hit Post Comment you will either be taken to the sign in screen or will be occasionally be signed in automatically, and your post will be deleted. To avoid this make sure you really are signed in by refreshing the web page before you start writing and if your post is going to be extra long, write it in your favorite word processor then copy and paste it here.
Regarding your other statements, let me mention that feedback here in Communities has two functions.
First it is like a Comments box stuck on the wall of a restaurant. You fill out a form, drop it in the slot, and go on your way. You never hear anything back from the restaurant. If the card says "Great Meal" or Horrible Meal," it just gets tossed because it does not have anything actionable. If it says "The mashed potatoes were dry and grainy and could have used more garlic." It will get evaluated and the potatoes might get fixed.
In other words, your post will get forwarded to the right people at FamilySearch but the more detailed information you provide about what you see as a problem and how you think it could be improved, the better. Putting one item per post will keep them from getting too long. You cannot expect to be contacted and asked for more information and it is unlikely you will be..
Second, it is like sitting with a group of friends, who sometimes get annoyed with each other, at a table at the restaurant. You say, "these potatoes are dry and grainy with too little garlic." Your one friend says "No they aren't. They're just fine." Another says, "I hate garlic. There is too much garlic in them. They should take it all out." The waiter may be eavesdropping and report back to the manager the various views, but will not intrude in the conversation.
In other words it is a public user discussion group and you are going to get comments from other users such as that occupation is not a vital and should never be moved to the Vitals' section. You may hear from other who agree with you. Sometimes these discussions help refine and clarify ideas. Sometimes they just go around in circles with no conclusions. You can either be involved in the ongoing discussion or ignore it and move on to taking about how tough the steak is.
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In addition to Gordon's good evaluation, one other thing that can happen when posting - there are words that will trigger the censor/nanny-bot and the post will be sent to the spam filter. A mod may find it there if it contains one of the trigger words. No, there's no list of those trigger words anywhere that I know of. We've learned what some of them are by trying to use them.
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@Áine Ní Donnghaile and @Gordon Collett
Hello 😄 and thank you both for sharing your insights!
I did wonder about a nanny-bot, and I did forget about the time-out (as noticed in FS itself, and even in the Indexing project area). I appreciate I might not get a specific reply. I also appreciate that having this discussion may or may not result in change.
I particularly love a good analogy, and I throughly enjoyed your take on things, Gordon. I agree entirely, that flavours and preferences for food are very subjective, impossible to accommodate individually due to overwhelming numbers that attend this "restaurant", even more so to cater every cuisine.
To continue your example, Occupation is choosing how you want the steak to be cooked. Though the restaurant might accidentally call it stake or even styk, you know they mean the food because it comes with recognisable items like potatoes and you are provided branded tables, chairs and utensils which you recognise are for customers who are eating and with which to enjoy your meal.
When the food starts arriving from the kitchen, you know it must be your table's set of orders because the selection matches with what was ordered by your guests. And you know which steich with potatoes is yours when it is served, because you requested medium rare not blue.
While individual user tastes cannot be fully encompassed, the full nature of the dishes (AKA sources) should be recorded and indexed to prevent allergic reactions and disastrous reviews (AKA infinite circular searching or forking out for unnecessary and expensive professional research). Sometimes the key fact distinguishing one plate from another is something small and perhaps overlooked; relevant only to the person who cooked it and that person who will eat it. Everyone else's opinion is rather irrelevant.
For example, after I lost my beautiful post yesterday, I went on a deep dive of all the FS sources and the sources of the FS sources, to (finally!) discover a small detail - my ancestor's middle name - which had not been included in the FS index. My sanity and years of time might have been saved had this been included as historical fact (an poisonous allergen for chef to be aware of), and not disregarded as frivolous preference (I like less garlic in potatoes). Phew, I hope I haven't lost anyone yet.
In case someone does actually read this, I have taken your suggestion and broken up the rest of my reply into smaller specific posts.
In case someone does actually read this, I would summarise with regards to Experience:
- It's in FS interest to maintain engagement with Community as an equally important part of the site, most often used by invested and long-time participants helping others on FS' behalf.
- simple functions like the timeout pop-up already exist within the FS site and can be easily modified for this area.
- An autosave function would resolve this regardless - keeping whatever was written, at the point of time-out, in the drafts. Again, the function already exists - in the Indexing Project.
- FYI - If you refresh the Community post page while you are writing (within the given window of time!) your post will still be there - or most of it at least - just don't press "post" first.
- Another pre-existing function is to prevent an action due to an error (length of reason, unacceptable characters etc), which may not explain the problem clearly to the user, but at least keeps what was written for user to edit, as seen with the Source-Linker application.
- Adjusting the Source-Linker to pull out "Occupation" and all available details would decrease the risk of mistaking one person for another and prevent hard work and trees being dismantled because of convoluted design
- Review of the indexing process is vital as the records become more (or less) detailed and practically defines how invested users might become or how much attention they pay to getting details correct
- All of which relates to Time/Energy Spent which, when relying on the grace of Volunteers and determination of Users, should be a FS priority and preserved by improved logic and design
This is particularly important since records are increasingly commercialised, gated by pay-walls. The opportunity to index them properly and for free might be available only once; everyone who searches thereafter needs to spend about £300 a year (!!!) on the various sites to get the physical image of the record to make sure any finer details were not missed/ignored/presumed unnecessary.
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More on the Source-Linker Application and suggested ideas:
More on the Layout ideas
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When you write that we should "make sure any finer details were not missed/ignored/presumed unnecessary", you demonstrate an erroneous belief about the nature or purpose of indexes.
Indexes are finding aids.
Period, full stop, end of story. Indexes are not meant as replacements for the record: they are not transcripts.
When an occupation or grandparent isn't indexed, it's not because it was missed or ignored, but because in the balance between usability and effort involved, that detail was deemed too expensive.
Perhaps the evolving capability of computers to read handwriting will result in indexes that verge toward transcripts, but we're not there yet.
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Hi again @Julia Szent-Györgyi
As this is a suggested idea for FS to consider, and is requested feedback from FS, I would appreciate a kinder tone. I also politely request that you not muddy the conversation by going off-topic or nay-saying and nitpicking, especially if you are not associated with FS directly or are not replying on their behalf.
A considered response would be appreciated, but from your other posts I can see a great confusion on your part as to what I have said and what I have suggested. For that, or my part in being unclear, or misunderstanding how something works, I apologise. But I would ask that you re-read and rather ask me questions about what I wrote and suggested, rather than seeing red and pouncing on a detail that is not relevant or related.
But I do appreciate that you took the time to highlight some possible reasons why certain things do not work. Thank you.
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@KJUSTB perhaps you are not aware this is a community for open discussion. Staff is a limited group; users make up the majority of the participants here.
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@Áine Ní Donnghaile not at all. I am fully aware of the volunteer and user status of everyone here. I have said as much, more than once.
A discussion is welcome. I will also say I don't know if you are referring to my reply to Julia or to the post itself.
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Firstly, to get your posts noticed it would be easier on all (FS employees and everyday users alike) if you kept to one subject per "Idea" raised. FS employees rarely respond here, but if they are reading the points you raise, it is likely they will be considered / dealt with by different teams within the organisation. So, if you are talking about indexing and the way the Community forum operates, putting the completely different issues into one long post is not really advisable.
As you have done so, however, I will respond to some of your points - in the capacity of a long-time user of FamilySearch and "Community" (and predecessor forum). Some of the points will merely confirm responses you have previously received.
On the subject of indexing, this is a fairly complex issue. Much of the indexing is performed by volunteers (LDS Church members and otherwise), but other collections on the website appear courtesy of Find My Past and other organisations - often involving reciprocal arrangements. Each FamilySearch project is subject to an agreement with another organisation - either a record custodian or a commercial concern, like FMP or Ancestry. This means FamilySearch contracts often preclude the rights to index certain items from the original record. As an example, there may be an agreement that only names and locations can be indexed / published on the FS website, but not the finer detail such as occupations, or even ages in certain cases.
Given that, there are certainly flaws - especially in the post-indexing process, whereby items get indexed as something they are not, or end-up as Other Information instead of appearing under Vitals headings. Examples of this are with baptism events - which are treated quite arbitrarily as a "Christening" (Vital) in some instances, but as a "Baptism" (Other Information) in others. Another example is when the executor / administrator or a will ends up being shown as a "Beneficiary" in an indexed record. These issues have been repeatedly reported to FamilySearch (via Suggest an Idea, etc.) over a period of many years, but there has been no response from FamilySearch employees as to whether these items have been noted, let alone whether the matters will be addressed at some stage.
I mention these points to give you an idea of the likely responses you might receive to issues raised, That is, you probably will have no idea of what FamilySearch intends to do about your suggestions - until, hopefully, one day you will find they have been implemented. Hence, why a lot of members of this forum are likely to "jump in" and offer advice themselves, knowing you might be waiting a long time for a response otherwise!
On the issue of how "Community" works in itself, it is not a platform that was designed by FamilySearch, but - as was the case with an earlier forum - by a third party. Hence, any changes are subject to agreement / implementation from / by the provider - i.e., FamilySearch is not able to change features directly, due to the third-party nature of the product.
There are a number of other points that I am not responding to at this time, but would confirm that - when posting here - it is best to make your posts one-per-subject matter and to always save them in Word (or similar) in case you are timed-out and find your text disappearing without trace. (Far better to compose items elsewhere and to copy / paste here after reviewing.)
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4) Blue “Discussions”, “Bookmarks” etc links are redundant and either don’t show any information or the wrong information:
This forum platform has some quirks that we try to address by cannot totally control. Please see https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/comment/498777#Comment_498777
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