Being able to delete a person from the FSFT that I did not create
I was looking at one of my great grandfather's marriage records and noticed something odd. After clicking the small image of the marriage record to view it full screen, I noticed that at the bottom of the right side panel it says in red letters "DELETE CHARLES H." I know one is not supposed to be able to delete a person from the tree that they did not create. So I was wondering how to best go about reporting an apparent bug on the site.
EDIT: I checked a few other records that had viewable images and the site was offering me the ability to delete the person when viewing the image full screen.
Answers
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As you say, you cannot delete people you did not create. What you describe sounds strange. Please provide a link to the marriage record in question.
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I think you're confusing the new index editor with the tree. They're completely different species.
You're talking about the red "Delete So-and-So" link at the bottom of the index panel when you're looking at the image of the record, right?
That's for removing a name from the index. The finding aid. It is not at all the same thing as the "Delete Person" button under Tools on a profile's Details page.
It does point out the confusing nature of the new interface. It really does need its own Community group where we can point out such misinterpretations.
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@Maile L @Stephanie V. I agree wholeheartedly that we need a group for discussion of the issues and confusion surrounding the new edit interface. Can we please boost this concept? Thanks.
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Julia's example is exactly what I am talking about. I thought it was referring to deleting the person completely. I clicked on the delete link once when I first saw it with the belief that I would get some sort of warning about what I was about to do. Sure enough, I did but I was able to cancel it. I just checked it again and the exact wording in the pop-up is "Deleting Charles H will remove this person and all of their content. Undo this action through the individual's Change History in the record." Saying "remove this person and ALL of their content" made me think it meant deleting from the tree completely.
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It happens with any record where you can view the actual document and you get that index panel on the right side. The one I first noticed it with though was this one for my great grandfather:
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@Yakkadoo, I'm curious: what is it about the index editor view that makes you think it's part of the tree?
Just to be clear, there are no references or connections shown in that view that have anything whatsoever to do with any Family Tree profiles. The closest it gets is the "Attach To Tree" button. All of the text in the right-hand panels relates to the index of the image shown on the left.
Would it help if that right-hand panel were labeled differently? Right now, it basically equates the person with the index entry about the person ("View Charles H Munro" -- as if it were offering a photograph or painting of him), which is doubtless part of the problem, but I don't know what wording to suggest instead. (All I know is that it shouldn't use the word "record", because FS overloads that to the point of uselessness.)
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I wasn't for certain what it would do. But it was confusing for me when I got the pop-up and read "remove this person and all of their content." I was wondering all of what content? The indexed info from the document I am looking at? Or does it delete the person from being attached to the document? Or does it delete them entirely from the tree? I'm still not sure what it does, just that it has nothing to do with deleting them from the tree.
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Julia has given great info. I am very visual so I thought I would try to explain with some screenshots.
Below is the Historical Record for Charles Munro. This is what is attached to his Person Page under the Sources tab. This is generated when an Image is indexed. Each collection has specific editing permissions. This particular record can be edited and clicking EDIT takes you to the new editing tool opened to Charles's indexed data.
"DELETE CHARLES H" is in reference to all the information indexed on the person that created the historical record. The person remains in Family Tree but the record does not.
I hope that helps. If there are errors, we can correct the index and if the source is for the wrong person, we can detach it. I personally do not delete indexed entries unless the entry was created for a non-person such as "Not at Home" in the 1950 census.
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Good visual, @Maile L. I think the wording of "Delete Charles H" could be better. Maybe too wordy to use "Delete Charles H from this index" but that's the meaning.
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I get it now. When it says "Delete so-and-so and all of their content" it means remove the record from their sources section of their person page and therefore all of the indexed information or "content" as it is called in the pop-up. I don't know what other phrasing could be used and if there is a character limit for what can be put there but just saying "Delete Charles H" had me wondering.
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@Yakkadoo, no, editing the index to delete an entry will not delete any attached sources in the Tree. It'll just make the attached sources rather uninformative, since the "Indexed Information" sections will no longer have anything in them. What I don't know is if they would still have URLs, and if yes, would those work?
I'd like to test this in Beta, but I cannot find the new editor there. (The 1950 Census shows up as a hint on profiles in Beta, but the actual sources are 404 Not Found. I think that that part of the database has not been copied over, i.e. the automatically-generated URL starting with "beta.familysearch" doesn't point to an existing page.)
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