Organizing sources in the tree

Dana Palmer

It would be helpful to indicate if a source in the tree was for that specific person or if they were mentioned in someone else's record. Right now the only way to organize these records is to (1) have it sort by date for which it sorts all the records for the person whether it is their direct records or their children's or (2) to customize which allows you to drag and organize them. I generally use the customize feature to keep the direct records for that person at the top and the other records below them. The problem is that when someone else adds a new record in, it puts the new source at the top and then the list is no longer organized. It takes a lot of extra time to go back through and constantly reorganize the records. If there was a way to tag the sources when it is attached to indicate if the record was for that person directly (such as a vital, census, obit, etc.) or for someone else where they are listed, it would be really helpful. Then you could have a third choice to sort by records for that person, then arrange them by date or customized. This would make things so much easier when collaborating with relatives who attach sources but don't like to keep things organized in the sources.

Paul W

This appears to be a relatively new problem, which I have highlighted in a separate post. Once a source was added the format used always to be (as an example): "William Brown in an entry for John Brown" - where, say, William was shown as the father of John in a baptism or marriage event. Of late, FamilySearch appears to be applying a new format, whereby there is no mention of the primary individual to whom the source applies, in such cases. I, too, am finding it a nightmare (especially if another user is working on the same profiles) to have to open every source to ascertain whether it applies directly to (say) William Brown, or whether it relates to one of his children or even a spouse.

I believe this has been escalated to the team concerned - I sincerely hope so! True, when one opens up the record detail the exact nature is clearly shown (see below), but this "...in an entry for..." detail needs to remain in the source title, not buried on the record details page.

Note new title format (only Stephen Hunton mentioned), whereas the record now has to be opened to determine he is "mentioned in the record of Ann Knaggs, his new daughter in law:

Incidentally, this reveals a further common error with "recently modified" sources - the bride is being indexed as Male and the groom as Female!

Back to the drawing board, please, FamilySearch engineers! These sources / records need to be modified asap.

See https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/sources/LQR2-C19 for a comparison with the previous (correct) way of presenting such sources.