Other Relationships - Description Required (question for developers only)

Sheryl S

I am working on reconstituting an entire county of enslaved persons/families in CET. I have run into an issue and would like clarification from the developers…

I add an Enslavement relationship and link the Enslaver and Enslaved in the relationship.

I then Edit the Enslavement relationship and try to Add an Event. I have the Date, Place, and plan to attach a Source. I am at a dead stop on the project because a Description is required before I can save the event.

**Why is a Description required? What would be needed for this event that isn't included in the Event Type, names, date and place?

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

Áine Ní Donnghaile

There is a dedicated group for CET questions where the developers are active. https://community.familysearch.org/en/group/338-cet-feedback-early-access

Gordon Collett

This really isn't exclusive to the CET section but is common for every profile whether in the main tree, one's private section, a Family Group tree, or a CET.

In the Other Relationship section, after creating the relationship:

You can add Events, Sources, and Notes. Here, when adding an Event, the save box does not activate until you have entered Relationship Description.

This description acts as a title for this particular date and place. I can see why it is required. You can have multiple dates and places and things will get really confusing if there were no indication as to what each one represent. (Think of all the complaints there have been that for marriage events we are required to use one of five options and cannot create our own descriptions.)

I would suggest you go ahead and create a list of short descriptive titles that you can use. You'll probably be happy you did when you come back to in a few years. Without the title you, and others, will be wondering what those dates and places really represent.

Sheryl S

I have Degoe who was enslaved by Doodis Minor from 1663 to 1673 in Middlesex, Virginia. The Parish Register page documenting the enslavement will be attached as a source.

For my project, adding the event serves only to establish dates and places of enslavement for that relationship.

Making the Description mandatory before I can save the Event at this point will cause me not to add an event, which I would like to do so I can show movement of Degoe to other enslavers over time.

I understand that this isn't unique to CET, which is why I did not submit it to the CET group.

**I would like to have a developer respond on why this is mandatory, what they would expect me to enter in that field, and whether or not that requirement can be removed.

Please, responses only from developers. Thanks in advance!

MandyShaw1

You are unlikely to get a response here from a developer as they rarely visit the Community except for the Groups relevant to Labs etc. So the CET Group is really a better bet.

But surely you could just add a standard description such as 'To establish dates and places of enslavement for that relationship' as you mentioned above? Or is this an automated import (e.g. gedcom) issue?

It's perhaps worth mentioning that Other Relationships aren't discussed explicitly in the FS API documentation at all as far as I can see (beyond their appearance as relationship types in the gedcomx standard).

Gordon Collett

If this is passed on to a developer for comment or if you post it elsewhere, you might as well as save the developer a step. The very first question one is going to ask is, "Why?" "Why is this requirement to document what the date and place are, which seems like a good research practice, putting you at a 'dead stop'?"

As I stated above, comparing the section without and with, it seems like a good requirement to me.

What I don't like is that the description, just like in the Other Information section for custom events, comes after the date and place with too much of a space which makes it hard to quickly read and understand. I've complained about that before. I also don't like that, as with the couple relationship box, only the first date and placed are displayed on the profile page itself while the feature is designed to have as many as you need. A lot of people have complained about that.

I would much rather see:

Sheryl S

This issue has been posted to the CET Feedback group.