Automatic source tagging for linked census records
When one links a census record to a person, why aren't the sources automatically tagged? That is a LOT of extra work that should be automatic, and I thought it used to be... It seems that every item that goes under Events is not tagged anymore.
Regards, Bill
Answers
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Memory is a funny thing. Prior to the release of the updated Details page, we could never tag sources to anything in Other Information. The tagging feature was only available in the Vitals section.
Being able to tag to Other Information had been a regular request on these and previous feedback boards for about the last ten years and I know I am thrilled that they were finally able to find a way to add this feature. I agree that it would be very nice to be able to add the tag through the Source Linker like we can with vital information. And I hope it will not take another ten years to see this. But apparently this is a very complex process.
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As Gordon says, you're misremembering. The reason the "0 Sources" notation is new in the Other Information section is not that sources have stopped being tagged automatically, but that they've started being tagged at all.
Source Linker has been around, mostly unchanged, since 2014. It doesn't know about the expansion in source tagging that the new person page introduced. I'm sure someone at FS is hard at work figuring out how to add this feature to the process, but I don't expect it to be easy or quick.
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Okay, thanks
I haven't been using the Community posts for a long time so didn't know the history. I still think it should be a relatively easy thing to add, and a needed 'feature.'
Regards, Bill
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Hummm, I don't think I'd use the term "a relatively easy thing to add" in front of a programmer unless you have a few hours. But then, I'd probably get lost pretty quickly during the subsequent explanation.
When the feature of tagging Other Information was released last year and people started asking for this to be done through the source linker, one of the developers did post a brief explanation. He stated that since the data fields in Vitals always exist even when they are blank and because there is only one of each of them, tagging through the source linker works fine. Under Other Information, however, none of the fields exist until they are created at the end of the source linker routine and non-existent fields can't be tagged. Also, there can be multiple data fields of the same type and the source linker can't tell which to tag. These two characteristics make the current tagging process impossible through the current antiquated source linker.
Apparently it is going to take a major re-writing of the source linker to make it possible.
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Gordon - thanks for the added information. Bill
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