More options to search with specific dates in search parameters
Today I have had 5 occasions where I have gone to add an unconnected person - I have searched using the persons name and his wife's name.
It comes up person not found - so I add the person.
Then I go to add the wife - and it comes up with possible matches !! on checking the "possible matches - some have been correct and so I have had to delete the person I have added.
Other duplicates have come to attention when the actual marriage date has been entered - the system obviously didn't identify the possibility earlier most probably due to spelling differences.
The same frequently happens when adding individuals - it would be helpful to be able to search by christening date not just year of birth - the christening dates are frequently the date on the record and are often several years after the date of birth.
More options to search with "complete dates" that are clearly identifiable in records would reduce the number of duplicate records / searches etc.
Comments
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Unfortunately, your ideas appear to have been considered in the past (through similar suggestions being made here and the platform that proceeded "Community"), but rejected by the developers.
There seem to be two ideas you are suggesting here: for searches to be made on an exact date and for a search on christening date, rather than birth, to be an option. There did appear to be the ability to search on a precise date in the past, but then a FamilySearch manager advised that only the year was ever taken into consideration, so it was pointless to enter the full date!
I find it always best to input a range of dates, for a variety of reasons. These include a date being wrongly indexed - you might know the exact birth / christening date of your relative, but it might have been incorrectly recorded or indexed at some stage. Also, my relatives are frequently to be found with the births registered in the year following their birth (e.g., born 31 December 1895 but birth not registered until January 1896).
Being precise with date inputs is likely to make it more difficult for your relatives' birth (even christening) events to be found, so I would advise you to always add at least a couple of years +/- the date you are "sure" the event took place. You might know the precise facts about dates, but did others who have recorded them in the past?
You have to take into account that much of such information (found in FamilySearch and elsewhere) would not be found at all if you were given the options you are requesting.
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I used to share your annoyance about this behavior.
But I've had a bit of a change of heart when I realized that the Family Tree search routine for finding possible duplicates and hints is far better at searching than I will ever be. I don't know how they constructed it or what cluster of information it uses or if it is a matter of the automatic routine doing a hundred variants of a search in the time I can do one. So now, I won't do more than two or three searches to see if someone is already in Family Tree. If I can't find him or her in that time, I'll go ahead and add the new person with the information I have fully expecting that when I then add a spouse or child, a duplicate will pop up. If not, then I'll stretch, go get a glass of water, then come back and refresh the page and expect a possible duplicate to pop up. I find this far more efficient than constructing dozens of searches trying to find the person in Family Tree myself.
Why those background routines don't work very well when adding an isolated person but work amazingly well when adding a spouse, child, or parent to an isolated person, I have no idea.
This difficulty in finding a person in Family Tree goes away once that person is fully documented in Family Tree with full name, full birth information, full christening information if any, all appropriate variant names have been added, and all family relationships are correct. The next time I need to find such people, they pop right up at the top of the search results list.
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