Adding Reason statement to a Source does not activate Save button

Phil H Dittmer

A friend noticed a quirk in how sources are handled. After clicking the Edit button, if the Reason statement is added or edited and no other changes are made, the Save button is not activated. If any changes are made in the Notes section, the Save button IS activated. My friend asked me to report this to our programmers.

shecorwe

@Phil H Dittmer Just to clarify, you are talking about this edit area, correct? I believe this is working as intended, but I will ask. If this is not what you are referring to, please send screenshots.

Gordon Collett

To confirm this is the case:

However, I would assume this is either intentional or that it just never occurred to anyone that there would be any "Reason to Change Source" if no change was made to the source.

This box is not a Reason statement about why a source is attached or why it is correct. Those Reason statement are added at the bottom of a source here:

And that save button does become active as soon as anything is typed in the box:

Alan E. Brown

@Gordon Collett is correct in his observation that this particular reason statement is different from most other reason statements.

• A reason statement for a vital conclusion is a "Reason why this information is correct." And there are many similar reason statements throughout FamilySearch, such as when attaching a source. It can certainly be useful to adjust that statement without changing anything else, and indeed that is allowed.
• But when you are editing a source, the reason statement is the "reason to change source." You are being asked to provide the reason for this very change. Therefore it makes no sense to provide a reason without making any change, and so you must make a change in order to provide a reason.

With this understanding, it becomes clear that there is no bug here. It is working exactly as it should, and there is nothing to report to the engineers.

MandyShaw1

I agree that there is some confusion here related to the existence of two separate Reasons applying to Sources: this one, which relates to a change to the detail of an already attached Source, and which shows up on the Source change log (which is apparently not, incidentally and frustratingly, visible to any API*), and the 'Reason to attach Source', which /can/ be edited (via its different dialogue as @Gordon Collett says) and which shows up on the ordinary Person change log.

*@Alan E. Brown are you possibly able to confirm this API point one way or the other? Thanks! I came up against this matter when trying to analyse this query:

https://community.familysearch.org/discussion/186883/why-dont-i-see-the-before-and-after-text-when-someone-changes-a-source-reason

Alan E. Brown

@MandyShaw1

Asking about APIs is diverging quite a bit from the specific question asked in the original post about when the Save button is enabled. But I'll just give a quick answer to wrap up your side question about APIs.

There is certainly an API for everything shown on FamilySearch.org — otherwise it couldn't be shown. But FamilySearch has chosen to make only a small fraction of its internal APIs available to third-party developers. As near as I can tell, you are correct that there is no public API for the change log for a source (which, as you correctly noted, is distinct from the person change log). I have no particular insights as to why certain APIs are made public and others are not. If you have questions about developer APIs, I'd recommend that you inquire in the FamilySearch Developers area, which has a forum specifically for developers.

MandyShaw1

Many thanks @Alan E. Brown, I'll do that.