Why the "Add spouse" inconsistency?
Having seen records for this individual showing him to have "Single" status up to his 1939 death, I marked him as having "No Couple Relationships" under Other Information / Facts. (The first time I have ever done this for any profile in Family Tree.) However, I then noticed the inconsistency whereby the "Add Spouse" option then disappeared from the Landscape view, but remained on his Details page. I wonder if the frequently requested feature to remove "Add spouse" from the Details page - for an individual known to have remained single throughout their life - is now due to be introduced? Or, perhaps, the behaviour with the pedigree view (upon adding the No Couple Relationships "fact") has always existed, and I have just never noticed it?
Answers
-
As a point of interest, whilst adding a "No Couple Relationship" fact makes the "Add Spouse" option disappear from Landscape, the same does not apply to adding a "No Children" fact. I had not added this to Newton Gray Thornton, but have to his relative Richard Watson Thornton, but note the "Add Child" still remains:
UPDATE
I just added the "No Children" fact to Elizabeth, too, and now the "Add Child" option does disappear:
Sorry if everybody else knows about this and already realise the "Add Relationship" and "Add Child" options only remain on the Details page after adding these respective "Facts".
0 -
Although I have some empathy for those who want to hide options in the UI based on certain data associated with a person or relationship, I'm generally not in favor. The fundamental problem is that we don't know what to trust when there can be data conflicts.
As a simple example, for a person born in 1820, should you be able to add a death date in 1818? The superficial answer might be NO, but that's putting more trust in the birth year of 1820 than the death date of 1818. Maybe the death date in 1818 is well sourced and much more trustworthy than the birth date in 1820. Should the UI prevent the addition of the death date in 1818? Or should you be able to add the death date, be shown the conflict, and then make your decision about updating the birth date? In general, Family Tree has taken the latter approach.
For the topic of this thread, @Paul W referred to "an individual known to have remained single throughout their life." From the point of view of the data associated with the person, we don't know any such thing. We simply know that some user attached a "No Couple Relationships" fact to that person. Is that "fact" to be trusted above all other conclusions? What if some researcher finds a reliable record that certainly applies to this person that shows a marriage? Should the UI prevent the addition of the spouse, or should it allow it and then point out the inconsistency?
Now of course those who favor hiding the Add Spouse option could respond "If the Add Spouse option is hidden, and you need to add a spouse, then just remove the No Couple Relationships fact and then you can add the spouse." But that's not easy for a user to discover. Is every user even aware that there can be a No Couple Relationships fact, and that it might be the cause for options being hidden in the UI? Where can it be found? In general, I favor making options visible and showing warnings or conflicts, as opposed to entirely hiding options based on some mysterious combination of data values.
1 -
I was afraid my personal thoughts on this issue might be misunderstood - and it appears they have!
In raising this topic, I was merely highlighting the inconsistency between the two pages, certainly not that I wanted the Details page to match how these lack of relationships (no spouse / children) are shown on the Landscape view. I was hoping that someone might advise if the ability to hide the "Add Child" or "Add Spouse" boxes (in pedigree views) was a new feature, or whether it has been like that all along.
As I stated, this was my very first time in adding these "Facts" to "Other Information" and I have no particular intention of doing this again. My "justification" in adding "No Couple Relationship" to the Newton Gray Thornton in the example above was that there are three persons of this name (born in the same area) whose identities had been confused by another user - adding parent / spouse relationships to the wrong IDs. I also checked census and BMD records until his 1939 death (he died just after he was shown as "Single" in the 1939 National Register) and came to the firm conclusion that he had never been in a couple relationship. I did similar work on Richard Watson Thornton & his wife Elizabeth Hindmarsh Peat and found no records (census & GRO birth index) of them having had any children. Usually, I would still not have added a "No Children" conclusion, in spite of the "evidence", but was just experimenting to see how this would affect things on Landscape and Details pages, respectively.
In summary, I sincerely hope that adding these "facts" (under Other Information) will not lead to the "Add Spouse" or "Add Child" options disappearing from the Details page. I am merely worried that FamilySearch engineers might be heading that way - especially as a number of users have asked for the ability to remove "Add Spouse" from the Details page - particularly for those occasions where they "know" their relative never had a spouse / couple relationship.
Sorry, if I did not make my point clear (in spite of the title of my topic) and especially if anyone thought I was proposing withdrawing the ability to add relationships that just might have existed - however sure we might be that they didn't!
(I had one "aunt" who married into my family who successfully hid the fact she had had a child by her first husband. My uncle's siblings were quite close to her for over fifty years and it was not until after her death that I found my cousin had a half-brother, of whom he and the rest of the family had been totally unaware! Just to illustrate why I hold my personal position on the subject of never making these assumptions without "100% proof" - if there can ever be such a thing!)
2 -
@Paul W Thank you for you response. After reading your message carefully, and reading my message again, I'm confident that I did not misunderstand your message at all. Perhaps I wasn't clear, and I was misunderstood. But I actually think we are very much in agreement.
I was not arguing against anything you said, but rather was making a general comment on the topic. I agree that there is inconsistency. I was simply trying to express my hope that that inconsistency is not resolved by putting more restrictions on the UI. I like warnings about inconsistencies instead.
0 -
Thanks for coming back to me, Alan. However, I do wish someone could confirm if the ability to remove "Add Spouse" and "Add Child" (as shown in the screenshots) has "always" been there, or if this is a new ("inconsistent") feature to Family Tree.
Otherwise, I think we are in general agreement ourselves over the issue relating to the Details page. Even being able to remove these options for individuals who seemingly died in infancy would be risky, as I have sometimes seen a death / burial added to the wrong ID and the child did not, in fact, die young, but lived to adulthood - and got married!
0 -
The "No Children" and "No Couple Relationships" facts were added in 2019. Prior to that date, there was no possibility of the inconsistency we are discussing.
And when they were originally added, there was no impact on the tree views -- you could still add children or spouses even when these facts were present. Sometime later (I don't know when), the tree views were modified to no longer allow children/spouses to be added when those facts were present.
1 -
Thank you for that further detail, so obviously the tree views were not affected until at least 2019, but possibly much more recently.
As I matter of interest, I decided to check what would happen if I did try to add a spouse and child to an individual to whom I had added "No Children" and "No Couple Relationships" to Other Information / Facts. I was presented with this:
As one might expect, the warnings do not appear against the spouse / partner until the same facts have been added to them, too. (Even though the relationship and child relate to the couple and not just one of them, of course.)
Having seen that data error warnings do become visible once these facts have been added to an individual, then relationships subsequently added, I do feel a bit happier about how about the general situation concerning the different appearance between the Details and Tree pages on "possible" couple / child relationships, when none such have been indicated by the user.
0