How to revert relationship calculator change?
Seeing today that the relationship calculator appears to have changed in a very significant way. It is no longer considering relationships to my wife. So, a person may be listed as 10th cousin to me, when in reality, there is a much, much shorter connection to my wife (say, 1st cousin). Is there an option where I can switch on the spousal relationship calculations? Or is this a recently introduced bug?
Answers
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Have you checked the relationships between yourself and the ancestor? See, for example, this recent and similar thread:
If there has been a merge or change, possibly by another user, between you and the ancestor, the relationship may not show as expected.
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It most definitely has changed. Not for the better unfortunately.
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See this Help Center article: How does the relationship viewer determine how I am related to someone?
https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/article/how-does-the-relationship-viewer-determine-how-i-am-related-to-someone-in-family-tree2 -
I can't pinpoint when this was last working "right". But its definitely broken. It appears that the calculator prefers to find my own direct line up to a point. Like it would prefer to mention how close the person is related to me, even when the person is far closer related to my wife.
Example: My wife's mother (living) shows as my 10th cousin, rather than my wife's mother. The calculator does still show the connection through my wife in some cases, but this seems to be a 2nd effort. Maybe something like the article mentions — if it can find any distant connection to me, it will mention that, even if that connection is too far distant to really show significant relationship (10th cousin? really?). If it can't find something before a set time (1500, perhaps, as the article says), then it will, begrudgingly, mention the connection to my wife. Even when there is a far closer relationship through my marriage.
Something in the programming appears to consider my own marriage to be some kind of distant relationship, and does not give that connection proper precedence. This is a definite flaw. And an ugly one.
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The way the source linker treats relationships through ones spouse, if I recall correctly, has switched back and forth a couple of times since it was released. From the comments that always get posted after a change, there seem to be two camps of opinion among users: 1) Those who ask, as you do, why doesn't the routine show me related to my in-laws through my wife? 2) Those who ask, why does the routine show me related to my in-laws through my wife? I am already fully aware of that obvious relationship. I want to know if I am related to them in any way.
Personally I fall into camp 2 and so don't find this to be a flaw or ugly in any way. In fact, I find it much more useful. My wife and I know we are related by marriage. I don't need a chart on FamilySearch consisting of just me and her to tell me that. However, we would have never stumbled across the fact that we are 14th cousins without the routine working as it does now.
In any event, since the relationship routine is now used for other purposes in FamilySearch than just showing us that chart, I assume it has to follow the requirements of those other purposes. It would really confuse users to be told in one area of FamilySearch that they are related to a person and in another area to be told they are not. And that means it will most likely not be changing back.
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@Gordon Collett Although you make some interesting philosophical points, I'm quite sure that in this case it is a bug that relationships aren't allowed to go through your spouse.
In the article How does the relationship viewer determine how I am related to someone? It says "In October 2024, the relationship viewer was enhanced to include relationships through your undivorced spouse’s line." Indeed, that is how it worked from October through early December. I don't know when it was broken, but I think it was in the last week or so.
Part of the reason I'm not sure about the timing is that I use the mobile Family Tree app a lot, and it still allows relationships to be calculated through my spouse. That's interesting, because the app uses the same relationship calculating service as does the website (but could be using different parameters).
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A bug or a requirement for the new enforcement of the ordinance submission policy with a help center article that needs further updating?
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I'm quite sure that it's a bug — I don't see anything in the help articles that needs to be updated.
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Or does the situation discussed above fall under the category of "Privacy restrictions may prevent the calculator from disclosing very close relationships."
Or, since "You can be related to a someone else in multiple ways. The calculator displays the shortest path between the two of you," does the updated routine always consider a linage by blood to be "shorter" than a linage by marriage no matter how much longer it is?
Would be interesting to hear from one of the design team what is actually occurring in the program. Because there is at least the possibility that the help center article needs to be updated from:
In October 2024, the relationship viewer was enhanced to include relationships through your undivorced spouse’s line.
to:
In October 2024, the relationship viewer was enhanced to include relationships through your undivorced spouse’s line. However, a relationship through you will always take priority over a relationship through a spouse.
We need to hear from someone who actually coded the routine what the intent was.
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@Gordon Collett , upon further research and reflection, I believe I may have been too hasty in my confident pronouncements that it is a bug.
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"My wife and I know we are related by marriage." Sure, I get that. But I don't have all the cousin relationships memorized. And I'd much rather see "Husband of my wife's second cousin" than "My 15th cousin". My wife's second cousin would still be interesting to me in my research. My own cousin, distantly removed by several generations, is not. Personally (and I'm well aware everyone's choices on this matter are different), anything beyond about 3rd cousins, and I lose the "family" connection. I don't have the same interest that I do for close relations. And as the genealogist in the family, yes, I consider my wife's 1st, 2nd, and 3rd cousins with the same regard as my own.
In regard to Gordon Collett's two camps — now that FamilySearch has proven that they can calculate both ways, a toggle switch in user preferences would be a better way of satisfying both camps. Or even satisfying those users who like to review both lines of questioning. I would fully support allowing users to make their own choice on this matter. This article was titled in a way that acknowledged that I may have missed a user setting somewhere.
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@WDavid72 suggested "… now that FamilySearch has proven that they can calculate both ways, a toggle switch in user preferences would be a better way of satisfying both camps …"
I just wonder in cases like this whether the relationship calculator uses anything set up beforehand. If it does (if) then which method should it use? Via spouse or not via spouse? A previously set-up link can't know which method the enquirer wants to use.
On the other hand, if everything is done "on the fly", then my concern is irrelevant.
I can't get any insight whether or not the system uses pre-set links so it's just a potential concern I have.
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Why not something like this mock-up?
There is plenty of room. If either or both sides did not have a chart to show, still show that for that section as is now done.
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That looks as if it would work @Gordon Collett - if the difference between the 2 methods is simply that one's based on "you" but avoiding your spouse while the other is based on "your spouse" but avoiding you, then it's just like doing the 2 queries separately and pasting them together.
I'm not wholly certain if there are any confidentiality issues - presumably when I say "your spouse", I actually mean your spouse's profile in your private area. Ditto for any living in-laws, etc. But basically it's surely just what happens now. I think.
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@Gordon Collett - I like the side-by-side idea. And I think that is a wonderful way to compromise on this matter. The logistics of scaling the two will likely be a challenge, but I really like the looks of the sample image you put together.
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@Gordon Collett I love the brainstorming, but I would note that there is not really "plenty of room" for that particular layout. Remember that FamilySearch needs to display the same content in a variety of ways. It might be shown on a cell phone, or a small tablet, or in a narrow browser window.
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Regarding scaling, I didn't bother making the two trees the same size but I imagine they would have to be. The programmers are far more creative than I am and I am sure they would make it look good and make it zoom in and out just fine.
Regarding screen size, yes, there would need to be the same allowance as with all other pages. But, as I said, I'm sure the programmers could figure out how to make this work if enough users would benefit from this..
However, if I narrow my browser window to the minimum allowed, FamilySearch generally collapses to the same view as one gets on a mobile screen. (I have not looked on a phone to see what the relationship view really looks like.) Doing that, the relationship view looks like this:
(I do wish the programming for Communities still allowed the resizing of images to work)
The tree wouldn't need to be much smaller to fit two of them. And I notice that even here, at least on a computer, you can scroll this image around:
It looks like there is about triple the width available of what can show at one time. So there is room and FamilySearch has some really good designers.
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@Gordon Collett FYI - resizing of images here in the Community works for me (Windows 10, both Firefox and Chrome, all fully updated). I saved your image just above and uploaded it here as an example.
And here's the image manipulation menu for size that appears on hover, after uploading or pasting. I made it your image small for illustration purposes.
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One way to save space would be to have just one tree instead of two.
The simplest situation would be where the index person is on a line that leads to a most recent common ancestor for me and my wife:
Which brings up the question, exactly how many possible configuration are there for showing a relationship to both of us?
- We share a common ancestor as above.
- I am related to the index person through a common ancestor of his mother and my wife is related through a common ancestor of his father which would give an M-shaped configuration.
- I am related to the index person and my wife is related to the spouse of the index person, or vice versa, either directly or through a common ancestor of the index person or spouse.
Any other ways?
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So sizing may just be a Safari issue. I may have to try just using Firefox when I have images to post.
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@Gordon Collett asked "... exactly how many possible configuration are there for showing a relationship to both of us?"
Ouch... That's why I liked your original idea of the two diagrams in the one output. It neatly avoided all questions of the different configurations of a combined tree by just doing two diagrams which, pretty much by definition, can be done because that's what's being done now - subject only to the decision about whether to go via your spouse.
Trying to put it all in one tree purely for space saving reasons brings back the "How?" question. Indeed, not just "How" but "Is it even possible?"
It very much might be possible in all cases, but I don't think that's obvious. At least, not to me.
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By the way, I take Alan's point about the different output devices but surely if the two won't fit side by side, then put them one after the other.
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In free moments this this morning I've continue to think about a husband and wife can both be related to the same person. If you take as the definition of related as sharing a common direct ancestor (whether biologically or legally), then there are only two ways: being related through a same common direct ancestor or through a different common direct ancestor. Adding in Family Search's practice of including a spousal relationship at the end of the linage gives just one more possibility. That results in these three diagrams which are shown without spouses for simplicity:
(Don't look to closely at the information. It's totally faked.)
Not too bad, but putting in spouses would make it a mess. I think I would prefer the two separate trees. I suspect that would be far easier from a programming standpoint, also.
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