Index Editor Problem
I was working to clean up the obituaries for George Shelton Jones, Frank Jordan, and Maxwell Kelly as found on this page: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CS4T-L9KP-V?view=index&lang=en&groupId=&personArk=%2Fark%3A%2F61903%2F1%3A1%3AQ5M5-RLQL
I was able to successfully use Drag Names to pull all of the lines for Frank Jordan into a new household group.
When I tried this for Maxwell Kelly, everyone vanished from the index. I created a new record for Maxwell and that worked. Then I added the next name while creating the record the system froze. All I could do was reload the page and when I did, Maxwell was gone. I tried again and this time got through adding Maxwell and the next two names. While adding the forth name the system froze again and when I reloaded the page, all three names I was able to add vanished.
What is going wrong? How can I get Maxwell Kelly's obituary back in the index?
I just checked back to see if the entries might have appeared again, and now the other group I put in a new household, Frank Jordan, has vanished as well.
Answers
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@Gordon Collett I don't know what was going on when you were working on this. I just worked on some of it. I found three Maxwell Kellys and boy is that page mixed up! It seems to be working fine now. It didn't like when I put in a whole bunch of relationships at once, but a couple at a time worked fine. I fixed a couple of those obituaries, see what you see now.
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Thanks for the help. The three obituaries I was trying to fix look in good shape now.
Three Maxwell Kellys sounds about right. The original one that vanished after I dragged him to create a new household. The one I created to replace the one that vanished which then also vanished when the page froze when I tried to get a second entry added to that household and I had to refresh the page. And the second attempt to recreate him after the first attempt vanished.
So potentially this was a system slow-down issue that caused trouble shifting people in the index and the first time Maxwell vanished I should have just gone away for a few hours until he reappeared. It may be that Sunday afternoon is not the best time to try to fix indexes.
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@Gordon Collett Here's what is happening during the editing process. When a new person is added to an image index, the system must update permissions across multiple levels. In normal operation, permission updates take from a few seconds to several minutes to propagate, depending on system load and queue length. If you leave the page or refresh the page too early and the update is interrupted, the persona you just added is coded as “no access” and cannot be seen. Lately, we have received numerous reports of this happening.
On the image that you referenced, @AnneLoForteWillson edited the numerous obituaries on this page. I do not know what, if any names were added but here is an image of her completed edit of Mrs. Mary Ann Mackey Willard.
Apparently, she left the page prematurely because when I looked at the index, Mary Ann Mackey Willard was missing. The rest of the people indexed for that obituary were listed at the bottom under “Names not in records”. (These always come back eventually.)
Names that vanish completely usually come back without a given name. Often the user will attempt to add the missing person again. These come back as duplicates in the index. Mary Ann Mackey Willard came back without given names and with a duplicate without a surname:
Obviously, this is not how we would like to see the edit function perform. In this example, names were restored within a short period, but in many instances the process may take 24 hours or more. Users get frustrated, and rightly so. The issue has been reported to engineering and any updates will be shared as they become available.
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@SerraNola , thanks for the information.
I don't know if this might help the engineers any, but as close as I can recall the exact process I followed was:
- In the combined obituary that Kelley was in, I went to Edit Household then clicked on Kelley and drug him to the box to create a new record group. That seemed to work.
- Clicked on Move Multiple then went back to the combined obituary, checked off the other 20 or so people that should be with him and drug them on top of Kelley's record to move them to that group. When the highlighting appeared I dropped them. At that point Kelley and all of the others vanished.
- Now I get a little fuzzy, but I think that I then tried to add a new Kelley. This went fine.
- Then I tried to add the second person in the Kelley obituary. I was able to add the name. Next, as required, clicked on Add Highlight, did that and clicked Update (I think that is how that button is labeled) which returned me to the screen for editing the name. At that point the Cancel and the Save buttons were both greyed out and stayed that way. I waited a few minutes but the page looked totally frozen so all I could do was refresh the page. At which point the new Kelley vanished.
Next time as soon as someone vanishes I'll take this as a sign that the system is bogging down for some reason and just stop editing then return the next day and see how things look.
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I am a (Information removed) and got a call today from a guest experiencing problems trying to correct errors in an image of an index. These problems sound very similar to those discussed in this thread, though they were encountered using the Manage Indexes feature rather than an Edit button. I am not clever or patient enough to discern if the explanation posted above also applies to our guest. Please read his detailed description and advise me or him how to avoid the problems he has been having.
Thank you!
Guest's message to us:
When using the MANAGE INDEXES function on indexed document images, I have repeatedly had the following BUGS / GLITCHES in the system occur.
1) After ADDING a person who was named in the document, but not previously text-indexed, and then creating a RELATIONSHIP between the new person and the originally-text-indexed person, all text-indexed information for both people disappears from the document source.
2) When trying to add the people and all of the information back to the document, after adding the name and information, an error in red type says "Unable to show if this record is attached to a person in the tree." At that point, there is no way to connect the document to the person's profile. If the page is refreshed or opened in a new page, all information for that person disappears again.
I have had this happen on ship manifests and military draft registrations. Also, on censuses, when all people were text-indexed, but the relationships were not, after adding the relationships between the family members in the document, all information for those people has disappeared from the document. This is a SYSTEM-WIDE problem, not limited to individual documents.
TODAY'S EXAMPLE BUG / GLITCH:
Line 17, passenger Vitaliano Cindolo.
His wife, Marianna Ciudolo (typing error, should be "Cindolo") is listed on Line 17 on the 2nd page of the document:
https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-95H9-CC5?view=index&lang=en&groupId=
After adding additional details to Vitaliano Cindolo's information for that document, which had not been text-indexed originally, I then clicked on MANAGE INDEXES, and then ADD+, and added his wife's name, sex, and residence as in the source document. After saving, I added SPOUSE as their relationship. After dragging the box with the names from the left to the box to the right, and saving, at that point, all text-indexed information for both people disappeared.
I then tried to add them back to the document. Clicked MANAGE INDEXES, ADD+, completed their names, etc., but not their relationship yet, this time. In each case, no button ever appeared to attach to the document to a person profile. Instead, a error message in red type said, "Unable to show if this record is attached to a person in the tree."
I tried and failed multiple times to add them back to the document, so that I could attach the ship manifest to their profile. THIS IS A SERIOUS PROBLEM, because when this happens, the document and historical information cannot be linked to the person's profile, without work-arounds like creating a new source, add a URL and all the info, etc.
As happened today, the problem seems to occur after the point of adding the relationships within the document.
Sincerely,
David (Name removed)
David included his cell number and email address in posting his message, but we should probably leave them out of this posting to protect his privacy. If you have access to Zendesk as used by FamilySearch Support, he discussed his problems in Ticket #2063007. If you do not have this access, we will relay your reply to him.
Thank you!
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Sounds like the same thing I ran into and it seems like the solution currently is to not work on a day when FamilySearch is particularly busy and then if a new added person disappears anyway to just walk away and come back in a couple of hours or the next day when that person will have reappeared and then finish up. It's like the early days of FamilySearch when, after merging, it could take a couple of days for the correct ordinance information to sync with the profile.
The system problem, from the report above, seems to be overwhelmed servers leading to very delayed synchronization of databases.
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@DittmerPhilH David's full name was removed, per the Community Code of Conduct.
It is correct that this is a system wide problem. The experience David described follows the pattern we have documented—added names (and often associated names) disappear. It generally happens when a page is refreshed, but can also occur during the process of creating or managing a family group. The message, "Unable to show if this record is attached to a person in the tree" is an indication that permissions are still pending.
Engineering was not able to confirm that the problem is attributed to data overload. I can however, confirm that waiting 24 hours usually restores the missing people, but with possible data changes. Given names are often lost, as well as relationships that were added. Duplicates may also show up. The index for David's record now looks like this:
The duplicates in yellow can be deleted. Spousal relationship will need to be added.
I would assure David that he can continue to add and edit without worry that his work will be lost and that engineers are working on a fix. Please thank him for his thorough description of the issue.
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I received the following update from David today. He observed what you explained, that waiting a while takes care of some of these problems. Thank you very much for your help!
Thank you very much for your help. I have an UPDATE:
Within hours of the problem with the indexed information having disappeared, the original information for Vitaliano Cindolo and SOME (not all) of the added information from my edits appeared again.
https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:24F6-BR6?lang=en
NOTE: His I.D. is G84K-ZLL.
Also, his wife, whose nane I had added to the document image source, also appeared again in that source, but without all of the details I had added, and without the relationship to her husband that I had added. (Note that the surname was misspelled on the ship manifest for her. It had "Ciudolo" as her surname (even though in Italy, wives don't take their husband's surname.)
Before the reappearance of some of the data, I created and attached information from the image to both husband and wife's profiles, including a link to the image, from which their information had completely disappeared earlier.
Please pass on this additional information about the bug / glitch.
Thank you,
David
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Dear All,
I would like to report, that the problem is still existing. I'm trying to add godparents to baptism records and the newly added people can't be linked to the tree.
Based on my knowledge(experience from when this function worked well), when a new person added to the index, a new record entry was created in the database. When you are click at the upper right corner on the person's name, the record behind the index will be displayed. Only this record can be linked to a person in the tree.
At this moment, if I add a new person to the index page (like godparent), the new record is not created. If I'm clicking the name of the person (upper right corner), the 404 error displayed. Because the underlying record is not created with the new person, that can't be linked to anybody in the tree, so the system is displaying the "Unable to show if this record is attached to a person in the tree." text on the indexing page.
I don't know the underlying database structure, but I have an assumption, a database trigger is failing or crashing somewhere, which is responsible to create the record. Or a queue to create this record is not processed on time, because the worker process is to slow or overloaded. But waiting more than 24 hours, keeping the page open to create a record is not possible.
This is a serious database issue, which at this moment is preventing my work to extend my family tree with the godparents. I don't know how to report this to initiate a resolution.
Thank you for your support in advance, if you can forward this issue to the tech support!
Best regards,
Laszlo Mamrovits
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@László Mamrovits I agree with your assessment that we are continuing to experience roadblocks when trying to edit records. Please review this post and if you can provide additional insight based on your experiences we welcome your comments:
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Dear @SerraNola,
Thank you to summarize all the issues which may come from the same origin! I hope the support is already trying to identify the root cause of these.
Some additions to my cases:
- The underlying record was updated only 48 hours after my corrections on the indexing page. So the 'delay' sometimes is more than 24 hours.
- Parallel with this (record finally updated), the added godparents are disappear from the index page. I checked the page history, and they are not listed as 'deleted people'. (My assumption, there is a sanity check which is executed periodically and delete all entries from the index page, which has no record entry.)
If you are interested about the pages/person in tree information, I can share with you ofc.
Sincerely yours,
Laszlo Mamrovits
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@László Mamrovits Yes, I would like to have your examples which you can send in private message if you prefer. I have at least two other reports of added or edited people disappearing. In one instance the individual was restored several hours later. Still waiting to see what happens with the other, but I may have to amend my summary of the issues.
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Dear @SerraNola,
All records are 'open', so no problem to share them with the public.
I'm working on the family of my wife's 2nd great-grandfather. On today, I corrected the entries of the baptism record of the second child and added the godparents. (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:9398-FF3C-S?view=index&cc=1743180&lang=en&groupId=M9D2-DLN)
When I'm writing this message, the modifications were made approx an hour ago, but the 'Show change history' is still not displaying my changes. (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:9398-FF3C-S?view=history&lang=en) Also, the record behind the primary person is the same as it was before (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:X6K3-26J?lang=en).
I added the two godparents (István Holper & Terézia Kóbor), moved them to the specific record with the 'Edit Households' function and defined the relationships. The index page is still displaying the 'Unable to show if this record is attached to a person in the tree.' message when I click on them. There is a link to check what is the record created, clicking on the name at the upper right corner (View Record Details Page). Clicking on them displays the '404' (page not found) error with the text: 'We can help you search literally billions of records, but we can't seem to find the page you're looking for.'
So the link on the index page points to a non-existing record. I'm copying here the link behind the 'names' for reference:
István Holper: (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XQKP-8GPK?lang=en)
Terézia Kóbor: (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XQKP-ZKFJ?lang=en)Few days ago I made exactly the same thing with the first born child of the family. Baptism record of István Fábián (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:9398-FF3V-F?view=index&cc=1743180&lang=en&groupId=M9D2-DLN).
If you check the change history, you can see my changes from 14th of October, when I modified names, the place and date information. These modifications were visible on the 'Record Details Page' only 2 days later on 16th of October. Parallel with that, the 2 godparent, same people like above (István Holper & Terézia Kóbor), were disappear from the index page. If you check the change history for all the names on the page, you can't find them even in the deleted names list.
I will wait additional 2 days to confirm if the godparents from the 2nd child baptism record will disappear or not. But in both cases I was not able to link the record to the godparents in the tree.
Best regards,
Laszlo Mamrovits
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Now, after 3 days (ok, 1 day as AWS outage) the index modifications applied and! the new entries were created as records. So now, the added new indexed people were available to attach to people in the tree.
I'm still working on this family and indexing the godparents (the same couple for all children), so I can measure if there will be a change of the delay during the upcoming days.I will update this thread if I recognize a change.
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@László Mamrovits Thank you for your time and effort in documenting your experience. It will be included in the feedback for engineering!
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@SerraNola
Hi, the "#2- Delay for Newly Edited Data" issue has now turned into "they will not appear in Record Details even after waiting 24 hours."
It's been since October 17th since I added a name to this record: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:939Z-R1T4-H?view=index&lang=en&groupId=
This one shows no history of being added, yet it was added the 17th: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QHJ-HQ7C-SPT5?view=index&personArk=%2Fark%3A%2F61903%2F1%3A1%3AXQ2F-D312&cc=1807092&lang=en&groupId=&action=view
Similar to above: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:939D-43SC-3F?view=index&personArk=%2Fark%3A%2F61903%2F1%3A1%3AXQ2F-DTQV&cc=1682798&lang=en&groupId=&action=view
Similar to above: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:939D-3QS2-PH?view=index&cc=1682798&lang=en&groupId=&personArk=%2Fark%3A%2F61903%2F1%3A1%3AXQ2N-B9GX&action=view
I have 8 more documents, plus many more if I count the ones that I didn't save to bookmark. None of the names are available, although they were created almost a week ago.
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Hi @SerraNola
Another day, another child in the family: https://www.familysearch.org/en/tree/person/sources/GMYP-2HK
The baptism record was corrected 3 days ago (on 19th of October). Names, data and place were corrected, Godparents were added with highlights, moved to the family/household, relationships were created.
Now the record behind the primary person is updated: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:X6K3-PVC?lang=en
I catch when the added godparents disappeared. Few minutes (max 10) ago, when I checked the index page, one of the godparents was still visible on the index page, but was not in the household and the relationship was already removed. Now, when I'm writing this e-mail, the second godparent also deleted from the index page. No deletion visible in the modification history. (So the deletion happened during the last 10-20 minutes.)
This is now became really strange. Yesterday I was able to report that I was able to link the record to the godparents which I added 3 days earlier. Today, both of them are deleted on a different record.
The index page's link to the primary person: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:9398-FFS2-4?view=index&lang=en&groupId=M9D2-DLN&personArk=%2Fark%3A%2F61903%2F1%3A1%3AX6K3-PVC&action=view
Maybe my question is really strange, but are these modifications are checked by a human? And depending on who is checking, the person is accepting or rejecting the addition of the newly indexed godparents?
Sorry for this, but because I can't see any improvement in the delay to reflect the modification in the records, and other people also reporting absolute similar issues, I have the feeling, there is a non-automatized process, where subjective decisions made. How could be happen that one record is fully updated and additions are there and one day later, in the same family, absolute similar additions are not?!
Maybe I'm too paranoid. :-)
I'm happy to help with more data if a technician would like to know when and how I made the modifications. I'm planning to update another record today and I can report it. Unfortunately, the time-zone differences are not helping our communication.
Thank you for your support!
Best regards,
Laszlo Mamrovits
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@László Mamrovits I can assure you that the change from "AccessAnyone" to "NoAccess" is not being done manually, but I have no other updates on how or when editing will be restored to normal. Any and all user experiences are being compiled.
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Dear @SerraNola ,
It looks like (at least) my problems were solved. I was able to add new names to the Index page and immediately attach them to the tree during the last 2 days. I don't know if other problems, which were reported by other people are solved too or not.
Thank you for your support!
Best regards,
Laszlo Mamrovits
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@László Mamrovits When you attach, are you seeing a padlock on the Record Details?
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I don't see any padlock on the "Source Linker" page when I'm attaching the records to the tree.
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