Streamlining The Process for Adding and Appending Godparents to Baptism Records
Hello, Family Search Staff,
I have been indexing Godparents for some baptism records, and it takes many steps with lots of scrolling and clicking. It could and should be streamlined. What's more is that the process is finicky, requiring me to wait several seconds before clicking "save" on the "Record Type" page, or the process freezes and I have to reload the webpage and start the index from scratch
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A STREAMLINED PROCESS
(1) Even before opening a Principal's index in the sidebar, a User should be able to Right-Click on the Principal's name in the list and then a *short* pop-up menu would appear, including among its few options "Add Associate." The User would then be taken to the "New Index" page described in the next few paragraphs.
(2) At the very top of a Principal's focus page there should also appear a similar "Add Associate" textbox with a pull-down menu of options. By typing into the textbox, suggestions would appear. After the User selects an option from the pull-down menu — whether by clicking on it or typing "Enter" when the suggestion is in focus via sufficient typing — the side-bar would immediately show the "New Index" page.
(3) Under the "New Index" title would be a short label element stating "Associate of [Principal's Name here]," to help the User avoid adding an Associate to the wrong Principal.
(4) The next element down would be the same "Add Associate" textbox as shown at the top of the Principal's page, but filled-in with whatever the User already chose from the pull-down menu. Please also add "Witness" to the options available (for marriage records.)
(5) The next elements down would of course be blank, labelled textboxes for the newly indexed Associate's prefix(es), first name(s), maiden surname, adopted surname (for those with Step-Parents), married surname(s) and suffix(es). These would be automatically offered, instead of requiring the User to click and scroll several times to add them as entries. IMPORTANTLY, the User could enter multiple names in a text box by separating them with commas.
(6) The next element down would be a textbox-pair showing residence. When the record is for a marriage or baptism, where the newly-added index will almost invariably be for a Witness or Godparent present at the event, the textbox-pair would be automatically filled out with whatever Date-and-Place was assigned to the Principal. ***See Improvement Request (B)***
(7) Since Parents and Godparents in baptism records are often described as coming from particular villages, towns or cities, it would also be very helpful to add an "Additional Date-and-Place" textbox-pair below the one just described, or supply a button to create such textbox pair(s), in case there is more than one other additional residence listed in the record.
OTHER IMPROVEMENT REQUESTS
(A) Please also automatically include in a person's visible list of Alternate Names whatever name is in an index attached to their profile. And when a User edits a name in an index, said User should have the option of checking or unchecking a checkbox that indicates whether the correction replaces the old Alternate Name or is saved as a new one in the linked person's list of Alternate Names.
(B) For any index, please offer a "Suggest and Save New Place" option, instead of requiring users to go to https://www.familysearch.org/research/places/ to request that a new standardized place be added. It's faster, and automatically links "New-Place-Reviewers" to the relevant source document.
(C) Please make it possible for Godparents to show up when searching for them. I have added them both with and without Residence Events, and tried searching for them to confirm that they can be found, but they didn't show up in the results, whether I filtered by Residence location or not.
(D) Please add to every Image page a button to report that an Index List is Out of Sync or otherwise in error, so the collection's indexes can be reviewed for re-synchronization or so they can be indexed afresh.
That's all for now. Thanks for considering my suggestions and requests!😊
-ZB
2024-01-23