improve the "View Relationship" feature
This has been a big frustration to me for some time. I’m sure others have felt the same.
There needs to be a toggle switch on how relationship trees are built. Turning on/off the use an a marriage link.
The problem is when I select the "view relationship" link it finds the shortest route from me to the person selected. If that includes a marriage that is the only tree displayed. Usually I am interested to know if I am related to someone not by marriage but through my own pedigree. I am looking to know if I am related through our respective progenitors not through common spouses. I think this is the case in most of my use of this feature and when it displays a marriage link I'm left frustrated not knowing if there is some other common ancestor.
I will admit that there are times the marriage link is interesting but this I believe is the exception. I hope you agree and will implement this modification to your system. I appreciate your consideration in this matter.
Sincerely
Comments
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I don't understand: my frustration is exactly the opposite -- I have to basically find the relationship path myself if there are any marriages involved, because FS claims "no relationship" if there's even a half-step sideways. Does it behave differently for other people?
For example, a couple of weeks ago, someone inquired whether I was related to her relative. FS said not.
But the surname of that relative's husband was vaguely familiar, so I took a random stab in the dark and checked my relationship to one of her sons.
In other words, that message in the first screenshot is flat-out lying: the relationship is Right There, one single connection away. But it's a half-step sideways, so in FS's world, it doesn't exist.
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Family Tree shows relationships where there is a common ancestor. A couple relationship may be included at the beginning or the end of the relationship path, but never in the middle. You are related to Kesztyűs Kálmán GW7N-N85 only because he is married to Heitler Margit, with whom you share a common ancestor (her grandparents). But you should not expect to see any relationship path to Kesztyűs Kálmán through his parents.
What you seem to be hoping for is akin to me hoping to see a relationship to my wife's parents through her. That would violate the rule of only using relationships that include a common ancestor (with a possible couple relationship only at the beginning or end of the relationship path).
By no means is FamilySearch "flat-out lying"; it is simply being consistent in applying the rule that there has to be a "shared relative" within 15 generations.
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@kmbybee , if you want to show relationships that don't include a marriage relationship, then you might consider trying relativefinder.org (which uses data from Family Tree).
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@Alan E. Brown, RelativeFinder is actually worse than FS: it doesn't even find my connection to Kálmán, never mind his mother. I have to put in his wife's ID for it to find anything. (BTW, his wife's surname is Heitler. That first 'e' makes a world of difference. :-/)
There is no universal law requiring FS to only consider common ancestors, and part of my point is that it doesn't actually say anything about lack of a common ancestor. It claims lack of a common relative, and that's simply false.
Granted, a Geni-style "Salamon Grün is your spouse's second great uncle's wife's uncle's wife's brother's wife's first cousin once removed's wife's father" is perhaps too far in the other direction, but it shows that a more versatile connection finder is eminently possible.
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I apologize for the very unfortunate autocorrect typo. By the time I noticed it, the edit window had closed. I flagged my comment and requested a moderator update, but I guess they didn't get to it.
Of course, other relationship algorithms are possible, but FamilySearch has chosen to show only relationships with a common ancestor as I explained previously. That's a very reasonable choice in my opinion; as soon as you start taking more oblique paths through the tree, there are no clear limits. I agree that the documentation should be clearer about the common ancestor rule -- the "shared relative" term is regrettably vague.
As for Relative Finder, I didn't recommend that for you. I understand that you were looking for less restrictive relationship rules, but RF uses more restrictive rules than Family Tree. That's why I suggested it for the OP, who did want more restrictive rules.
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Mod notes - The surname was fixed per Alan's request we are sorry it wasn't seen earlier. @kmbybee Your post was edited to remove your contact information for privacy reasons. Please see the Community code of conduct for more details.
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