NEW option in Search Records of FamilySearch - Potential Duplicates appears Unnecessary/Superfluousx
The NEW option, in Search Records, of FamilySearch - Potential Duplicates, appears to be, totally Unnecessary/Superfluous.
The New Option, appears to serve, the same function, as Find Similar People, in Tools.
Not to mention, there is already, the Function, of Possible Duplicates, in Tools.
From what we can tell, there is No benefit, to the New option.
Plus, just to be clear, the NEW option, in Search Records, of FamilySearch - Potential Duplicates, Does Not appear, for all Users! Is this a slow roll out or is it just testing the waters?
Example - New Option
Example - Already Existing, in Tools, Find Similar People; &, Possible Duplicates
Sorry
Answers
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@Jenny.B I am going to attempt to answer your concerns. First of all, thank you for bringing this to our attention. I have looked at quite a few profiles in my tree and I have never seen the Possible Duplicates tab under the Search Records tab. But I totally understand that you might be seeing it in your profiles. It could be something that is being tested. I find Possible Duplicates under Research Help, and when it appears, there is a red exclamation point to draw attention to the duplicate. Possible duplicates also appears under the Tools tab, along with Find Similar People. You are correct in saying that these duplicate tabs all serve similar purposes, and if you are seeing it under Search Records, it may seem a little redundant. However, because FamilySearch is a shared family tree, finding and eliminating the duplicates is a huge part of making the tree as correct as possible. I think those multiple tabs help users “see” the importance of clearing up the duplicates. At least that’s why I think there are multiple chances offered to use this important tool. Hopefully there is someone who knows why you are seeing this tool under Search Records and they will help answer your question. Thank you again for your question!
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Flagged for moderator attention
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@betsy123
Thankyou for responding.
Are you FamilySearch Personnel or just another User?
The NEW option, in Search Records, of FamilySearch - Potential Duplicates, appears Does Not appears for all User - we already established and stated that.
That is why we asked if the new option is a slow roll out or is it just testing the waters.
The NEW option, in Search Records, of FamilySearch - Potential Duplicates, appears to be Duplicating the Functions of both, Find Similar People; and, Possible Duplicates, in Tools - we already established and stated that.
Sorry, but it is an understatement to say that the NEW option, in Search Records, of FamilySearch - Potential Duplicates, may seem a little redundant - it is.
Sorry, it is a given and there is no need to say that, eliminating the duplicates is a huge part of making the tree as correct as possible - we all know that.
We suggest that a Third option, of Possible Duplicates; especially, under "Search Record", is unnecessary overkill, totally superfluous - that is why we raised the question.@MandyShaw1
Thankyou for responding, but, as there was no response for a day or so, we had already Flagged the question, for the attention of a Moderator.All
We suggest that the NEW option, in Search Records, of FamilySearch - Potential Duplicates appears to be a serious waste of resources, to create a Third option for Possible Duplicates which is in fact Duplicating the Functions of both, Find Similar People; and, Possible Duplicates, in Tools, already in place and established for that purpose.
As resources in FamilySearch, seem somewhat limited, they should be better spent, fixing the many flaws, in the System.-1 -
@Jenny.B Mods have the word "mod" near the username.
I do not see a new "Potential Duplicates" option anywhere. Full right side panel:
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(information deleted)
Firstly, we are well aware, that Moderators, have the identifier "mod", after their Username.
But, not all FamilySearch Personnel, are Moderators, and still respond in this Community.
Hence, the question, as to whether, "betsy123", was FamilySearch Personnel or just another User.
Secondly, as we have already indicated, the NEW option, in Search Records, of FamilySearch - Potential Duplicates, Does Not appear, for all Users.
We did not think, that we needed, the Image, to show the Full Right-Hand Side Panel.
But, just to be clear - with Three section closed
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I do not have this new option yet, but I doubt it is superfluous. I suspect that the options, except for one, really do different things.
To start with "Possible Duplicates" in the Tools section. This is redundant. It was first placed in the Tools box back in the days when checking for duplicates took so much computing power that they were not checked for automatically but only when we users clicked that link and requested a search. Shortly after the possible duplicates function was improved and started being run every time we go to a page, and the detail page was in the early stages of being redesigned with user feedback was being requested, I did suggest that that link be removed since all it does now is take you to the "Show All" page under Research helps. That was years ago and they apparently have not seen any need to remove it. Or it might be a major task to rip out all the coding for it and so not worth spending resources on it.
Possible Duplicates are, these days, very obvious when they appear in the Research Helps section with its bright flag. These are other profiles in FamilyTree that have a very high probability of being true duplicates.
Find Similar People, also in the Tools section, is a very different function. It looks for people that have some features in common with the current profile that might suggest a family connection. These profiles actually have a very low probability of being duplicates. For a profile I currently have open, Possible Duplicates has zero suggestions and Find Similar People has over three million.
Going to the Search section, clearly FamilySearch-Records will still be for looking for possible sources for the current profile in the historical record databases. This, of course, has nothing to do with looking for duplicate profiles in family trees.
The new function, FamilySearch-Potential Duplicates, sounds like it is going to be searching for possible duplicates of the current profile in User Trees and some of the trees currently in the Genealogies section. Basically, I would guess this is the future home of the "Search All Family Trees on FamilySearch" function currently found under Labs but with the search fields pre-populated with information from the current profile. These would never be duplicates that can be merged in, because they will be in separate trees, but from which information can be transferred between trees. Again, this is just my guess since I cannot see this function and it may not have much in the way of results right now and won't unless or until user trees get popular or the migration from the current Genealogies trees to the new system for them that has been mentioned is completed.
And yes, this is probably a slow roll out to test the feature. What have you discovered when you test it? Do you have a User Tree? If you go there and use this new search function, does it present you with the equivalent profile in the main Family Tree or with equivalent profiles in other users' User Trees?
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Mod note: Your post was edited to remove information and the profile of another person. Please see the Community Code of Conduct.
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Please remember that when writing a response to another comment to be kind and courteous.
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@Gordon Collett said "… I do not have this new option yet, but I doubt it is superfluous. I suspect that the options, except for one, really do different things. …"
I think that your ideas are distinctly plausible. Just to comment:
- Possible Duplicates - it hadn't occurred to me that this might be redundant because arriving on a profile automatically did the same logic. I'd always though of it as a back-up to the automatic check - if that hadn't work, click that link and fire up the same check but manually;
- Find Similar People - that's the first sensible explanation of this item that I've seen! My problem is that I interpret "Similar People" as "(Nearly) Duplicate People" so have never seen the point of it. "Possibly Connected People" would have been a more descriptive name than "Find Similar People", I suggest;
- "FamilySearch - Potential Duplicates" - if your suggestion is true then this option is seriously badly named. "Potential Duplicates in other FS Trees" would be more descriptive. Although I fear FS has an antipathy towards long names.
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@Jenny.B Good afternoon. Thank you for your patience. After consulting with several of our experts, we have been unable to reproduce the issue you are seeing with the Potential Duplicate screen. Would you be able to provide a step-by-step description of the actions you took to reach that screen? Currently, this is what we are seeing on our end:
If you could share the detailed steps along with any relevant screenshots, it would greatly help us in identifying the cause and providing a clear resolution.
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@Jenny.B After much searching, the mystery is solved! This is caused by a browser extension called FS Tools (https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/fs-tools/mdkonnbiomkkmccchabmcjgocnbpokah?utm_source=ext_a…), which adds this extra line to a person's home page.
It is not owned by FamilySearch.
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Interesting at an extension can cause such a fundamental change in the appearance of a web page that gives no hint as to where the change came from. Seems like there could be some potential security concerns.
However, any chance that FamilySearch will develop a similar appearing function on the details tab that does search for the person in all the user and genealogy trees on the site to have right there in the Search box? Would be handy to have it there.
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@Gordon Collett A search that searches all trees is in the works!
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I've already been testing the Search All Trees Experiment.
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@shecorwe said:
" … After much searching, the mystery is solved! This is caused by a browser extension called FS Tools …which adds this extra line to a person's home page. …"
Seriously? Some software has been written that inserts itself into a FamilySearch screen, looking exactly like FS software?
- There must surely be a "passing off" issue here?
- Has FamilySearch authorised this "inflight" modification of their website?
- Is the modification running in any sort of sandbox or could it alter anything?
- FS lays down ground rules about the appearance of URLs in Memory documents - we have speculated in this Community (because, so far as I know, FS has not confirmed why the default is no URLs) that there is a (reasonable) concern that URLs can go anywhere. Are there similar restrictions on this extension? (URLs is simply the issue in my mind - there may be others)
- What access does this extension have to user data?
- What about the impact on FS' Support teams? Plainly this thread has illustrated the amount of time that could be soaked up by FS' mods and engineers trying to support something that is completely out of their scope.
On the extension's website there is a justification for their Search for Potential Duplicates reading:
Sometimes there is another version of the person you are working on somewhere else in the tree. But you won't see a "Possible duplicate" hint on that person unless the system is *very* confident. Experienced users know to go search the tree to see if there is another version of that person somewhere in the tree. Constructing this search takes time.
FS Tools adds a link to the records section of the page that builds that search for you based on the information on the page. You can check for potential duplicates with a single click!
FS has spent a considerable amount of time tightening the FS algorithms to reduce bad duplicate suggestions. That was supported by a lot of work done in the Community highlighting such bad duplicate suggestions - such as a suggestion that my GG-GF was in a Canadian census some years after his death in Scotland when he'd never left the UK and his earlier death was already on his profile. Such a suggestion has been fixed by FS.
It sounds horribly as if the extension is providing more suggestions than the current FS Duplicate hints. That means it's potentially providing more bad suggestions - the sort that FS put so much work into getting rid of. That will probably lead to more incorrect merges.
Let me say that browser extensions have a long and honourable history - however I do not recollect one inserting itself into an website's existing screens, passing itself off as the existing website in this manner. (Note I have not used this extension to check what the output looks like - with only 84 users, I'd be mad to trust it).
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The nature of browser extensions is such that none of the protections you hope for are available or even possible. If the user grants permission for the extension to read and change site data, then it can do pretty much anything to change what the site displays and does. Thus, to answer your specific questions:
- No. Only the browser manufacturer and then the user can control whether an extension is available and active.
- No. See #1
- No, and so it could modify anything. This particular extension is limited to familysearch.org and findagrave.com, but within those sites, it can do a lot. Extensions can access and modify the Document Object Model (DOM) of any web page they has been granted permission for, which gives them tremendous power.
- FamilySearch has no control over browser extensions.
- Whatever can be shown (and even things not visible) on a page displayed in a browser window is accessible by the extension.
- Since the effects of browser extensions can be subtle, it certainly could use up the time of FamilySearch personnel in tracking down issues caused by an extension. One would hope that users who install extensions would be aware of what changes the extension has made and direct their questions about those modifications to the extension creator and not the website creator, but that clearly may not always be the case.
Finally, I do need to clarify your comment: "Let me say that browser extensions have a long and honourable history." Many browser extensions provide wonderful capabilities, but the history of browser extensions is certainly not completely honorable. Even though browser manufacturers make great efforts to police the extensions they make available, there have been many malicious browser extensions, as well as well-intentioned but imperfect extensions that have inadvertently caused problems.
If all of the above scares you, then that is good. Because of the great potential for mischief, one should always be exceedingly cautious before granting permissions to any browser extension.
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@Alan E. Brown - thanks for your list 1 - 6. Yes, I confess that I had no idea life was so "dangerous". Yes, it does scare me now - I think I've always been fairly careful with what extensions I authorise - I only have 10 extensions in my main browser (Firefox) and regularly terminate unwanted / unused / duplicate ones with extreme prejudice. Slightly less in Chrome.
As for item 6 specifically - as you imply, the existence of this thread suggests... Hmm.
Re "… the history of browser extensions is certainly not completely honorable …" Fair point - I was pre-emptively defending myself against any charges of "But you're only saying this because you hate extensions"!
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Aren't copyright laws supposed to prevent such things as this company mimicking FamilySearch's logo and style to a degree that it is impossible to tell that their additions to the FamilySearch web page are not from FamilySearch? Or did FamilySearch give this company permission to use these features in this way?
Also, regarding item 6, over the past years, there have certainly been a lot of complaints on these boards about FamilySearch being broken and complaints about poor programming where it has turned out that some type of extension has been at fault. It used to be that the common advice here when someone was having a problem with the website was "clear your cookies and empty your cache." Now the advice is "clear your cookies, empty your cache, turn off all your extensions, and turn off your VPN."
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And "make sure your browser is up to date"?
To return to the topic in hand, @Alan E. Brown's note above makes it clear that FS would not necessarily need to be warned or consulted in any way by the extension writer. Would it be feasible, though, for FS to put some defensive coding in place to check for unsupported DOM changes and, if found, to remind the user that they have at some point allowed something, probably an extension, to tinker with the page? That would at least help with the support issue.
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Sorry for being blind. That function of being able to search all trees from someone's profile page is already in place:
Although this may be a partial initial roll out since I don't see this in the images Jenny.B posted.
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@Gordon Collett said "… this may be a partial initial roll out since I don't see this in the images Jenny.B posted."
I've got it and I'm non-LDS in the UK
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Search all trees is a Labs Experiment
Announcement here:
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Yes, I've seen the Search All Trees in the labs for quite a while. Not sure when it showed up on the Details page. I get this recent addition to the Search box on the details tab even if I don't have the Labs Experiment turned on. So for me, at least, it is in production and not just an experiment.
In contrast, when I don't have the MyHeritage Matches turned on under Available Experiments I see this:
and when I turn that experiment on I see this:
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Hmm - I had the experiment turned on, so turned it off. As Gordon indicates, the Search Trees link on a profile is still there on sample profiles, even after I switched it off. It could be that the on/off is stored in the "cache", rather than being dynamic, so won't disappear until my "cache" is cleared - which I don't like doing because I end up having to re-enter so many passwords.
Or…. I wonder if the Search Trees link is always there but it only accesses multiple trees if the experiment is turned on?
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When I first saw the Search Trees link, I did not have the experiment turned on.
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